Artichoke Gratin

Such a shame of the artichokes! We used fresh ones, and it really wasn't worth it. The technique for cleaning them described in the book didn't work, especially the part cutting the hair. In the end, we tried a few other techniques we found on the internet. Whichever technique you use, you end up not using the leaves, which I think is a shame if you've already paid to get fresh artichokes. But the worst was that with all the work involved, you could hardly taste the artichokes. If you really want to give this recipe a try, use frozen artichokes (if you can get them), or try canned ones, and eat fresh ones the classical way.

I'm not a big fan of the ricotta lumps - I'm not a big fan of ricotta anyway, but blobs of ricotta throughout my dish is not what I expect.