good afternoon my name is Rob Layton and I am the food passionist oh and a cardio gourmet welcome to the criteria kitchen today we're going to do a quick preparation of a artichoke fresh artichokes they're delicious but some people get intimidated and how to prepare them so let's quickly go through about how to prep for steaming the whole artichoke cut off the bottom nice fresh bottom there I'm going to quickly take off a couple of the bottom layers here and we'll do leaves now an artichoke is really a blossom it's a thistle so when you're basically eating a flower here so what we're going to do that's a nice little fresh looking bottom but the tops of the order choker very sharp you don't need to eat them no need to prick yourself with them be careful when you're cutting an order show but we got a regular pair of scissors that we're just going to cut around cut the tops off real quickly you think you're cutting away if you think you're cutting away to meet you really not because that flavorful part is at the base of the leaf let's see what we got here all right let's pretty good let me get this one really nicely cut around but okay so now what we're going to do we're just going to cut off the top of the fifth I'm actually using a serrated knife it's actually a bread knife if you have a very short knife you can use that as well I'm going to find that this time works a little better just cut right through it remember the bud about to open in order isn't that a beautiful flower we're just going to trim this up a bit it looks good when we talk and then there is the flower on the inside open it up a bit so when we steam it or roast it Pete will get in and later on what we're going to do is put a put a sauce down in there a lower fat very high lots of oregano sauce so there you go a artichoke ready for steaming and roasting and welcome to the criteria kitchen come over to the wwrd a kitchen to get more recipes on springtime artichokes thank you