What I Ate: January 18, 2010

Posted 18 January, 2010 at 9:29pm by Michael Chu

(Filed under: Food, What I Ate)

4 comments to What I Ate: January 18, 2010

Optimista, January 18th, 2010 at 9:54 pm:

• Wow. How'd you get the skin to come off those so neatly?

Michael Chu, January 20th, 2010 at 12:45 am:

• A lot of practice. Most people who watch me do it think it's ridiculous that I go to the trouble of peeling my grapefruits and pomelo in this way, but once you sit down to eat the fruit without the bitter and chewy membrane, there's no going back. I'll try to do a photographic tutorial in the future - but for now, I'll just describe the process. I cut the top and bottom of the peel off (the side with the stem and the opposite side) to get a stable platform. Then standing it on the bottom of the fruit (side opposite of the stem), I slice down the sides following contour of the exposed carpels. I try to cut into the vesicles as little as possible while still trimming off every bit of the pith (to make it easier to separate the carpels later). Once all the pith has been trimmed off, I cut the orange in half from pole to pole and begin removing each carpel by peeling it away from the partitions (membrane) on each side with the help of the knife (I use the heel of the blade).

  Now I think I should write up an article on the parts of a citrus fruit as well…

Scott, January 20th, 2010 at 2:50 pm:

• So what you're basically describing is this technique, correct?
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwzuoEDPAWo&feature=related

  Only instead of cutting the segments out, you slice it in half (but not the way that would cut through all of the segments) and peel the segments out?

Michael Chu, January 21st, 2010 at 1:05 am:

• The technique shown in the video is the standard way to segment a citrus fruit. I start the same way, but I peel the carpels out whole (not cut) to reduce waste. I would guess that cutting the carpels out results in about 20% of lost fruit because you can't slice perfectly along the partitions. It also releases a lot of juice.