Artichokes with Divers Sauces

Artichauts aux sauces diverses (whole artichokes with assorted sauces) teach a clean principle: when a vegetable is cooked plainly, the sauce must be exact. The one true thing to know before you touch the pot is that an artichoke traps water between every leaf. Drain it upside down and thoroughly, or even a beautiful Sauce Hollandaise arrives diluted at the table.

The source entry assumed a vegetable station trimming a service's worth and a saucier ready to send beurre fondu, Sauce Hollandaise, or Sauce Mousseline at precisely the right moment. For one cook, making all three is brigade scaffolding and can go. Choose one sauce, cook four artichokes in one generous pot, and use clean cotton kitchen twine to hold the leaves snugly. This dish needs neither a stock never off the fire nor a salamander, only brisk salted water, a folded napkin to catch the last drops, and one sauce treated with attention. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Keep the tying, the brisk boil, and the last-minute drain. Those steps are the dish. Remove the string only when the platter is ready, and don't let the artichokes lounge in their cooking water after they're tender. The final draining matters most, so give it the patience the boiling did not ask for.