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Halibut and Artichokes a la Barigoule

One of Provence's most iconic springtime dishes, artichokes à la barigoule, meets up with halibut and becomes a meal in itself.  Classic artichokes à la barigoule uses young artichokes braised in white wine and olive oil, with onions, carrots, and other aromatics.



This one adds mushrooms, basil puree, and beans.  If video is your thing you can watch the great Roger Vergé cook artichokes à la barigoule, but after you skip the ads you still need to fast forward to about the 1:50 mark.  He sort of piddles around pealing the artichoke, for a more proficient job check this Italian green grocer out.  He does 4 in under 55 seconds and he still has all his fingers.  I've seen the dish paired with fish before, here I started with a recipe from The Balthazar Cookbook.  One of my favorites for bistro style cooking, especially fish.  Usually restaurant cookbooks are useless, dishes are pulled together from multiple elements all on hand in a restaurant, rarely at home.  They also often use obscure and hard to find ingredients. These guys do none of that, or very little.


I can be cantankerous when it comes to following recipes.  This time I only added a few mushrooms.  Some recipes include mushroom, traditionally saffron milky caps, but I don't seem to have those around right now.  They go off script from traditional themselves by adding beans.  Tonight both beans and mushrooms go in.  I won't bother with repeating the recipe here as you can find the basics anywhere and I've already mentioned the differences.  Everything else just requires attention to detail.  In a pinch you could use canned beans and frozen artichoke hearts.  I had a huge artichoke with a long stem making it worth pealing the stem.  If you haven't used the stem before, it's not really pealing you need to cut away all of the fibrous green part so look at the stem end to see if it has a solid white center or don't bother with it.  The green herb on the left corner of the cutting board is savory so I'm guilty of another extra.


The beans are cooking in another pot and join the party in the last few minutes.  This is one of my favorite ways to cook artichokes.  We often have them sans beans and mushrooms as a side vegetable.



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