Italian Riviera artichoke pie

What to do when a huge box of fresh, flavoured, thorny artichokes– a present of your trusted farmer – stand mocking on the table of your kitchen? You watch it, you try to ignore it, than you watch it again and eventually you give up. That’s how it goes. You arm yourself with a knife, a big bowl full of water, a couple of lemons and a great deal of patience. And you start cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and again cleaning artichokes. Then – provided that in the meantime the sun hasn’t set – with your hands aching for the scratches and the tips of your fingers darkened by the chlorophyll, you eventually have fun and start preparing the Italian Riviera artichoke pie, one of the best ever springy pie and deserved reward for the hard work done! This is what I actually learned a couple of days ago after an afternoon spent cleaning artichokes, and here below you can find the traditional recipe of the artichoke pie I used and which is reported in all the ancient regional cook books.