My friends have been wondering for years why I go to Rome every March. Maybe I’m rendezvousing with a mysterious Italian lover (they’d be sick with jealousy), sneaking off to experience the rejuvenation powers of a thermal spa (they’d be jealous of this, too); maybe reaffirming my faith at a Vatican-sponsored religious retreat (they’d probably question this one). Love does play a role here, and I certainly do get a physical and spiritual boost, but the object of my passion happens to spring from the rich, humid earth of the Roman countryside. I go to Rome every March because the artichokes are in season!
And a Roman artichoke, unlike a lover, never disappoints.
The artichoke is indigenous to the Mediterranean region and was first recorded in Italy around 1400. Here in the United States, artichokes have been successfully cultivated in California and now appear in our markets throughout most of the year. So why would I travel 5,000 miles for something I can buy at the grocery store up the street? What’s so special about an artichoke from the Eternal City? The Roman artichoke—Il Carciofo Romano—is the original, an exquisite rendition of its American cousin. Without thorns, its shiny purple-tinged green leaves tuck inward to form a compact and solid globe that hides, like the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box, the coveted heart, nutty-flavored and totally without fuzz. What the Roman cooks do to these visually splendid specimens, how they prepare them—that’s why I hop that plane to Leonardo da Vinci airport every year.
Inside the DNA of every native-born Italian is a gene that honors and reveres food. This reverence reaches exaggerated proportions for fruits and vegetables. As each fig, asparagus, or porcini season approaches, the air vibrates with an excitement similar to the anticipation for the birth of a long awaited prince. You can’t christen a vegetable, so the Italians do the next best thing. They hold a festival in its honor.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, artichokes could be found growing in many gardens inside the gates of Rome. The best, in fact, were from the Pincio Hill and around the Trevi Fountain. Hard to imagine today. The modern generation of this most Roman of all vegetables grows abundantly in the rich soil of Ladispoli, a rural, seaside community about forty-five minutes from the center of Rome. Here, every spring, when the graceful buttery-colored mimosa flanking the narrow roads bend with the sea breezes, Ladispoli celebrates “La Settimana Gastronomica del Carciofo Romanesco,” literally a weeklong competition among the town’s restaurants to make the winning “piatto dei carciofi romaneschi,” the best Roman artichoke dish.
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