title, what title?

I was in i due forni , which makes the best pizza in berlin yesterday. the discussion lead -don't ask me how, I guess I was too hungry- the 3 vegetables whose absence would make the world unbearable. I knew my answer beforehand, onion, garlic, and artichoke. What I was no sure about their order. After a quite some contemplation I have came up with the ordering in the last sentence. I want to praise this delicious vegetable which can render almost every type of food edible, with Pablo Neruda's poem "Ode to Onion"... Ode to Onion Onion, luminous flask, your beauty formed petal by petal, crystal scales expanded you and in the secrecy of the dark earth your belly grew round with dew. Under the earth the miracle happened and when your clumsy green stem appeared, and your leaves were born like swords in the garden, the earth heaped up her power showing your naked transparency, and as the remote sea in lifting the breasts of Aphrodite duplicating the magnolia, so did the ear...

I am not a vegetable fan. As a matter of fact the number of vegetables I eat is shorter then 10 items. They are either too soft, or too thick, or too tasteless or too grassy. Artichoke however stands out in my mind as one of the most elegant and delicious things that mother earth has given the mankind. Its as if it's firmness, consistency, juiciness, flavor and texture has been optimized both independently and jointly. My favorite way of eating it is the Turkish "Zeytinyagli Enginar" which can be translated dully as "Artichoke with Olive Oil": The quality and the taste of olive oil is a very important factor. So for an artichoke lover cooking it with another type of oil would be a serious insult. And some artichoke lovers can take it to extreme ends. Caravaggio, or Michalengelo Merissi da Carravagio, who is considered to be by some the father of modern painting, -and also my favorite painter, for rescuing the world of painting from the disturbing and artificia...