| 1 | Have a large bowl at hand, containing cold water and the juice of two lemon with the four halves of the rind. |
| 2 | Keep the artichokes in another bowl of cold water while you are working on them. |
| 3 | Take one artichoke at a time, drain it, and pull off and discard the smallest outer leaves. |
| 4 | Holding the artichoke with its bottom toward the little finger of your hand, tilt the top away from you, and holding a small sharp knife tightly with your right hand, insert its tip, one leaf deep, into the tender, lighter part of the leaves. |
| 5 | Keeping your right hand steady, slowly rotate the artichoke with your left hand so the bottom moves in a clockwise direction, and cut upward in a spiral. |
| 6 | The tough part of each leaf will fall off, while the tender edible part remains attached. |
| 7 | Peel the green layer off the bottom and stem, and then drop the trimmed artichoke into the lemon juice until you are ready to cook. |
| 8 | This operation requires some practice; you will know if you have mastered this technique when the artichoke thus cleaned looks more or less like the one you started with, only smaller and whiter. |
| 9 | If you are not ready to use the artichokes immediately after you have cleaned them, try to keep them completely submerged in lemon water. |
| 10 | This is not easy. |
| 11 | Artichokes are very buoyant and float to the surface making it difficult to keep them covered. |
| 12 | An inverted plate, just a bit smaller in diameter than the bowl, place over the artichokes, will keep them below the surface. |
| 13 | Another way is to crowd them inside a glass jar and cover them with the lemon water. |
| 14 | If you plan to leave them at this stage for more than a hour or so, you must refrigerate them, but it is not advisable to keep artichokes this way for more than a few hours. |
| 15 | Lemon is used to prevent discoloration; on the other hand, the lemon will cause the artichokes to spoil very quickly." |
