Fried Baby Artichokes with Pink Peppercorn Aioli

It's artichoke season so time to try out the artichoke recipes. The artichokes available here are usually withered measly specimens compared to the large plump ones I've seen for sale in Italy France and USA. I guess many people don't eat them or know how to prepare them and others find them too tricky to prepare or eat. We used to go to a place in Landsdale and buy them grower direct in the season but that place is long since covered with suburbia.

These I bought at a growers direct shop run by Italians so at least they looked better than the supermarket ones. They were small so i guess they qualified as baby - i thought they were actually under-ripe. anyway, there wasn't much "meat" on them.

I'd never roasted them before but that was just as easy as trimming, quartering, then slicing them and placing in a roasting pan with EVOO, S&P and lemon juice.

Onto the aioli, just zooming all the ingredients in the mini blender and adding crushed pink peppercorns for pretties and a little flavour boost. Yummo. I'll definitely be making more of that. So often I am finding its the sauces, spice blends and side accompaniments that go onto the greatest hits list. I could even do a blog post on those one day.