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1
Have a large bowl at hand, containing cold water and the juice of two lemons with the four halves of the rind.
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2
Keep the artichokes in another bowl of cold water while you are working on them.
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3
Take one artichoke at a time, drain it, and pull off and discard the smallest outer leaves.
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4
Holding the artichoke with its bottom toward the little finger of your hand, tilt the top away from you, and holding a small sharp knife tightly with your right hand, insert its tip, one leaf deep, into the tender, lighter part of the leaves.
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5
Keeping your right hand steady, slowly rotate the artichoke with your left hand so the bottom moves in a clockwise direction, and cut upward in a spiral.
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6
The tough part of each leaf will fall off, while the tender edible part remains attached.
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7
Peel the green layer off the bottom and stem, and then drop the trimmed artichoke into the lemon juice until you are ready to cook.
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8
This operation requires some practice; you will know if you have mastered this technique when the artichoke thus cleaned looks more or less like the one you started with, only smaller and whiter.
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9
If you are not ready to use the artichokes immediately after you have cleaned them, try to keep them completely submerged in lemon water.
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10
This is not easy.
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11
Artichokes are very buoyant and float to the surface making it difficult to keep them covered.
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12
An inverted plate, just a bit smaller in diameter than the bowl, place over the artichokes, will keep them below the surface.
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13
Another way is to crowd them inside a glass jar and cover them with the lemon water.
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14
If you plan to leave them at this stage for more than a hour or so, you must refrigerate them, but it is not advisable to keep artichokes this way for more than a few hours.
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15
Lemon is used to prevent discoloration; on the other hand, the lemon will cause the artichokes to spoil very quickly.
