This is a very simple soup. There are just three main ingredients: potatoes, peas and artichokes. I was lucky to see fresh, local, sweet green peas at our farmer’s market but there are no artichokes grown anywhere near here so I had to settle for buying them in the super market.
Marcella gives easy-to-follow instructions on trimming the artichokes. Doing it reminded me of watching a vendor at the Rialto Market in Venice, trimming the outer leaves, turning the artichoke, at lightning speed, and tossing the hearts into a bucket of (probably acidulated, since they stayed white) water. He did several with a paring knife, in just the few minutes while I observed.
Here’s my bowl filled with the cleaned and sliced artichoke centers:

It took me less time than I anticipated with only three artichokes–no big deal.
The recipe asks for one pound of boiling potatoes. I use two large Yukon Golds and afterwards I thought they may have been too big because there seemed to be a little bit too many.
The artichoke flavor was fully present but so were the other vegetable tastes.
Just for an experiment, the next night, I pureed the leftovers but I didn’t think it was as nice as the chunky original.