Warm Artichokes and Bacon Over Dandelion Greens

Recipe can be found here, courtesy of Emeril Lagasse and his Cajuniciousness, a cuisine I'll admit I don't entirely understand. The greens I had were relatively bitter, since it's pretty late in the season, so I blanched them briefly first and then stirred them into the sauce rather than pouring it over. I used just one strip of bacon and some jarred artichokes from TJ's. I expected this dish to be reviled, but oddly enough it was admired. Second helpings were even requested. Bacon makes everything wonderful!

I did a quick pubmed search on dandelions to see why they're reputed to be so good for you. It turns out that they have a number of amazing superpowers: they modulate blood sugar, they can restore experimentally-suppressed immune function in animals, they can restore experimentally-induced pancreatitis in animals, and they have antitumor and anti-oxidant effects (like just about every other vegetable, I suppose). As for the liver, which is supposed to benefit especially from dandelions, it appears that these greens increase the expression of hepatic antioxidant enzymes (specifically, superoxide dismutase and catalase) and decrease lipid peroxidation. The result is a decrease in total cholesterol and triglyceride levels and an increase in HDL cholesterol. Another study found that dandelion dramatically increased the activity of "phase II detoxifying enzyme UDP-glucuronosyl transferase" in the liver. Sounds delicious, whatever it is.