Wait, Where's the Choke?

After class on Thursday I decided to explore some online recipes and see how they compared to the books that we looked at. I found this recipe for stuffed artichokes on the Martha Stewart website. It sounds like a really delicious creation, and the picture is very appealing, but I am not certain that if I attempted this recipe it would come out anything like the picture. There are a few things about the recipe that seem a little unrealistic to a person with my cooking experience. To give you a taste of how this recipe sounds, here is step one:

Trim artichokes; snap off tough outer leaves. Cut off about top third of artichoke. Snip any leaf tips remaining below the cut with scissors. Trim stem so artichoke will stand upright. Trim base. Spread leaves open to gain easier access to choke. Using a melon baller, scoop out choke. Squeeze some lemon juice directly onto heart; squeeze juice from lemons into bowl of ice water; add lemon halves and artichoke while preparing the rest."

Now I am not the most savvy chef in the world, in fact I haven't done very much cooking at all, but I know what an artichoke is, and I have eaten them whole. Despite this, I have never heard of a part of the artichoke referred to as a "choke." I actually have no idea what that is. How am I supposed to scoop it out if I don't know what it is I am scooping? I actually had to wikipedia artichokes to figure out what it was. Turns out it is the furry part around the heart.

So, perhaps I am just inept when it comes to artichoke anatomy and other people actually know what the choke is. But what everyone might agree on is that step one is actually 11 steps long! Pretty much all of Martha Stewart's recipes contain less than 5 numbered steps, but really, each numbered step contains so many steps! I was alarmed by this and it immediately made me feel like I was clearly not knowledgeable enough to attempt this recipe.

Here is the link to the article in case you want to attempt it and let me know how it goes.