I never tried to stuff an artichoke until I found myself embroiled in the Great Stuffing Controversy and asked the scientific question: Is it really worth the trouble?

Right now is the pinnacle of artichoke season in the US - They're huge and heavy and about a dollar each. I got a request for stuffed artichokes (after a discussion about foods our mothers make) and called our own Casual Cook, the magazine's food editor (and editor's mother) Martha Strom, who said she never stuffed an artichoke in her life. She never saw the point of it. Mom simply boiled the bejeezus out of them and we ate them with butter and lemon. It takes 40 minutes to an hour to cook them, and the extra step never seemed worth it. So I looked through my two cookbooks, The Joy of Cooking and The Butte Heritage Cookbook and also went on line for more info. In my skepticism, laziness and practicality, here's what I've figured out:

STUFF THEN COOK VS COOK THEN STUFF

The basics of stuffed artichokes fall into two categories - stuff-then-cook, and cook-then-stuff.For both, you prepare bread crumbs and parmesan cheese and melted butter and olive oil and garlic into a crumbly stuffing. There are other formulations but this one's pretty satisfying and includes the requisite butter.

To prepare the artichokes for cooking, cut off the stem and about a quarter of the top. Cut off the little bottom leaves. Prepare a pot with a few inches of water and some olive oil.

For stuff-then-cook, shove the stuffing in between the outer leaves. This takes time and you get stabbed a certain amount and the leaves are quite resistant to spreading. (Can you tell I hate stuff-then-cook? Well, I do.) Then you put the artichokes into a few inches of water and olive oil and cook them for about 40 minutes or until an inner leaf pulls off easily. The advantage is that the stuffing cooks along with the artichoke. The disadvantage is that the fuzzy center choke is still in the artichoke because it takes a chain saw to get it out prior to cooking.

Which brings me to the whole Choke Issue.

The middle of the artichoke, before you get to the yummy base, has a fibrous center of fuzzy bits called the choke. Usually, you can scrape it out easily with a spoon after it's cooked. Some filling that goes into the center of the artichoke will likely be pitched along with the fuzzy bits so there's no point in putting filling there. So in the name of science, I prepared some artichokes the second way, cook-then-stuff.

I trimmed, then cooked the artichokes, then removed the center chokes, then piled some of the filling into the nice neat center cavities, changed the water and cooked them another ten minutes. The filling didn't have a chance to cook as long as the pre-stuffed artichokes, but I was able to get a lot more of it in, which in my opinion is the whole point of stuffing, or else, really, why bother? It didn't sit neatly on each leaf, so when eating the artichoke, one has to fish a bit of stuffing out of the center and pile it on the leaf, then eat it.

The filling has enough butter and olive oil in it that you don't need separate butter for dipping, which makes it just as gratifying and quite a bit neater.

So my recommendation, in conclusion, is just buy a bunch of artichokes (and a pound of butter), cook them up, and eat them any way you want. If you're in a hurry, don't stuff. If you have time, stuff. Either way, you'll be happy. Artichokes can do that to a person.

Ocean Mist Farms is all about the artichoke