By Julie Giuffrida
From Los Angeles Times
Artichokes are serious business in my family. Not just any artichokes. My grandmother’s stuffed artichokes. This isn’t fancy, froofy food. Rather, it is down-home, roll-up-your-sleeves and eat-with-your-fingers food. Even my mother, who ate potato chips with a spoon, cast aside her cutlery for these Sicilian delicacies.
Grandmother (as we called her) migrated from northern England to the U.S. with her family in 1910. She learned how to make the artichokes from her Sicilian-born sisters-in-law — my great-aunts — who also taught her how to make many of Grandfather’s favorite foods from “back home,” including fried peppers, eggplant Parmigiana and baked ziti….