Thumbs, a paring knife and a party trick involving an egg.
Christmas has been and
gone and my black 'Bah Humbug' Santa hat has been put away for
another year. Now we are in that short lull in festivities before New
Year. Time I think to reflect on what Christmas means.
Apart from the obvious
celebration and accompanying feasting it is the time for good will to
all men and a time for the giving and receiving of gifts. For me it
is also the time for oranges. Not those large citrus big boys that
refuse you access to their juicy flesh until you go for it with a
knife, slicing off the skin and pith and leaving you no option but to
cut out each fleshy wedge grapefruit segmenting style. No we are
talking Mandarins and the like. The ones you can stick your thumb in
and peel almost in one go leaving an intact globe of segments that
can easily be pulled apart and popped straight into the mouth.
It was this seasonal
fruit peeling that got me thinking about what else has peel appeal.
The thing with the most
peel appeal for me has to be the onion. There is an almost sensual
joy to skinning a nice, round, firm bulb. There was a time when I
would roughly slice off the leaf end, slit the thing in half down
through the root and rip away the skin before doing the business of
chopping or slicing. Since onion must be the most used vegetable in
cooking surely it deserves more respect and gentle handling. I like
to start by rubbing my chosen onion in both hands to remove the loose
dry skin. I use to do this at the point of purchase until it was pointed
out that it made next to no difference to the weight when paying for
them (you can take the boy out of Yorkshire but you can't take the
Yorkshire out of the boy). My next move is to tug off the roots by
trapping them between my thumb and the blade of my paring knife. Now
for the real fun. Carefully pick away at the top of the onion with
the point of the knife until you can trap a little of the brown
papery skin between your thumb and blade as with the roots. Peel
gently down as far as you can. The trick here is to just go for one
layer at a time remembering that each layer browns from the top.
Continue round the top and then move onto any skin that hasn’t
peeled right down to the root. You should end up with a round white
onion with the root core at one end and a small tuft of brown skin at
the leaf end. A thing of beauty.
Having discussed the
onion I suppose it is only natural to talk next about it's little
buddy the garlic. I say buddy but if you believe some Italians the
two should never meet in the same dish. Rubbish, they are natural
partners they just cook at different speeds but back to the peeling.
Technically of course we peel the cloves not the garlic but lets not
get too pedantic it is the season of good will after all. Sometimes
it is more appropriate to use the clove still rapped in its thin
delicate paper but other times they must be peeled. Peeling can be
hard work, hard work that is unless you have a couple of techniques
up you sleeve. I have three techniques of differing sophistication
which I use at different times for different outcomes. First is the
smash. Lay the garlic clove on the chopping board place the blade of
a large knife over it and smash down with all your force. The skin
can now be picked out from the crushed flesh. Pretty crude but
effective. The second technique is my most often used and second
favourite. I like to remove the little green shoot you sometimes find
in the middle of the clove. This is the new leaves in the making and
some find it bitter and indigestible (the same can be found in some
onions). The method here is to cut off the root end of the clove and
halve it length ways. This will loosen the skin on each half so that
it can be more easily removed. It also exposes the little green shoot
which can now be flicked out using the tip of the knife. This leaves
two neat halves that are ideal for thinly slicing if that is what you
want. The last technique is my favourite and most impressive although
the one I use the least. Take the cloves you wish to peel and put them
into a small glass jar or similar. Replace the lid and shake
vigorously as if you were making 007 a Vodka Martini. Tip out the
cloves, any skin that has not come away can now be easily removed
leaving perfect peeled whole cloves. A thing of beauty.
Traditionally potatoes,
with the exception of new and small salad ones, are peeled before
boiling. However I recently delved into the art of gnocchi making. A
lot of chefs, presumably in the know about these things recommend
cooking the potatoes initially in their skin to keep the flesh as dry
as possible. This I did with a couple of King Ed's. A good boil, the
trick apparently is to put the potatoes into cold water and bring up
to the boil, this should stop the skin splitting. The cooked potatoes
were extracted and left to cool for a few mins. Grasping the still
warm potato in an oven glove the thumb and paring knife technique was
applied to the skin. Wow, thin strips of skin come away with peeling
pleasure. Given we are constantly told the goodness in the potato is
just under the skin perhaps this method should be more widely used.
Flash back – there were times while serving on Her Majesties Ships
the potato peeler would break down. Bags of potatoes would be
distributed to each mess for peeling. Disgruntled sailors and peeling
potatoes with a table knife was not a good combination. More often
than not the result was the square potato. A thousand mile from the
square potato are the fresh from the ground newbies that can be
peeled by a quick rub of the thumb. Now those little pebbles are, yes
you guessed it, a thing of beauty.
Thumb rubbing aside,
the joy of peeling seems to be the satisfaction of pulling the
longest strip away as possible. A feeling not unlike that when
striping wall paper you get a length that comes away from skirting to
ceiling in one go or when as a child you get a great sheet of skin
from a body previously exposed to too much sun. That doesn’t seem
to happen the same these days, is skin getting tougher or are we more
careful, although I do still burn my head with unnecessary regularity in
the sunny season – like the scabby knees of my youth I just can't
resist a pick at a flaky head.
Still
with the long strips of skin I think we should move away from the
human to the aubergine. Simon Hopkinson tells us for his grilled
aubergines to 'run a small, sharp knife round the top of the
aubergine, 1cm/½in or so below the stalk and only just cutting
through the skin;' (I go for just tidying up the jagged hem of the
pixie skirt – look at your aubergine, you'll know what I mean)
'then make four evenly spaced, similarly shallow cuts, along the
length of the aubergine right down to the end'. Then after 20 mins or
so of grilling 'peel away the aubergine skin in four long, narrow
sheets using a small knife'. Not only a good peeling experience but a
great dish as well, try it, you won't be disappointed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/grilled_aubergines_with_73271
Do
you peel boiled eggs or shell them? Not to worry, it doesn't matter.
For what appears to be a very basic task there is an awful lot of
advice available on how it should be done. Now I agree sometimes eggs
peel perfectly and sometimes not but I have too many exciting things
to do with my life than worrying about boiled eggs – no seriously I
do! For me the trick is to get into the membrane and peel membrane
and shell off together. To do this whack the blunt end of the egg on
the work surface or chopping board, this is the end with the air
sack. Next roll the egg backwards and forward applying a slight
pressure with the flat of your hand until the shell cracks all over.
Peel from the blunt end. Although I really do have many exciting
things to do with my life I did take a few minutes to Google egg
peeling. One article I read suggested blowing the egg. I say read but
in truth I just quickly scanned it (places to go, things to do). Now
for a person of my age egg blowing was a technique for removing the
yoke and white from a birds egg while preserving the integrity of the
shell. I know that nowadays it is totally unacceptable to collect
wild birds eggs, not to say illegal (and rightly so) but in my youth
it was neither and in fairness we didn't know any better - good
grief, we used to dig black stone from the ground and burn it in open
grate. Not been able to get my head round why this technique would
work for a boiled egg I revisited it. The trick is, in brief, to boil
the egg in water and baking soda (?) then crack and pick the shell
from each end of the egg, cup it in your hand, raise to your mouth
and blow from the thin end. The egg should just pop out. I did a test
blow and after a couple of tries the egg did pop out or rather it
shot out like a dart from a South American pygmy’s blow pipe,
ricocheted off the coffee machine, bounced on the draining board, did
two circuits of the sink before coming to rest in the 'plug 'ole'. A
neat party trick but perhaps not appropriate when you are cooking for
guests.
Having
dipped our toes into shelling we should look at nuts but I am not
much of a nut shell-er so we will leave them for another day. That
said I am partial to the odd pistachio, well they do come already
half opened. Even so shelling too many makes my thumbs sore. Thumbs
have featured a lot today, handy little things aren't they.
What
not to peel? Pineapples and roasted peppers - what's the point, get
them in a tin or a jar. Neither are a thing of beauty.
Can't
go without confessing that I rescued the blown egg from the sink,
rinsed it and added it to a kedgeree. Does anyone else like to
smoother their kedgeree with tomato ketchup?
No comments:
Post a Comment