Peels - a series perhaps.

I'm not at all sure why I thought about peels. Maybe it's the last batch of marmalade that I have just finished. Well I hope it's the last batch of the year, because, satisfying though it is, it's a bit of a pain to make - peeling, slicing, peeling another layer, chopping, boiling, fishing out pips, combining peel and flesh, waiting for the dratted stuff to get to setting point and then bottling it. But oh the joy of seeing all those shining jars, with the peel peeking through and the satisfaction of having been a kitchen heroine yet again. Heroine, because it's all for David. I don't like marmalade all that much although I have cooked with it very occasionally. No - it's a heroine trip.

I know I have done a few posts on marmalade, and various others on different kinds of peels, but as I was thinking about it, I realised that there are oodles of different ways that the subject of peels can be approached, so perhaps there's a mini-series that could be wrung out of them.

So today I'm going to look at the 'how' of peeling. How we picked up how to do it, what knowledge we have on how to peel things? Are there new ways of doing things?

This is a photograph of my current selection of peeling and zesting implements, although I have arranged it badly so that you cannot see that the small knife has a curved blade. I say current, because I have also been thinking about how I peeled things in the past. A knife and a grater have always been available, both in my mother's kitchen and in my own. But the knives, I used back then might have been small but not curved. Curved is definitely better for all the curved fruit and vegetables you might use it for. And I don't think we had any of those peelers.

Why would you use a knife these days however? They are, after all, inherently more dangerous as they can more easily slip. In my case I suspect that it's partly habit, even though I have changed some peeling habits over the years. But I first learnt to peel - potatoes I think might have been one of the first things I peeled - with a knife. My mother must have shown me how, and I have this very clear memory of standing in our kitchen over our huge white ceramic sink which looked out on to our small back garden. The sink - or maybe a bowl within the sink - had water in it, in which were potatoes which I was attempting to peel with a small knife. I would have been about nine years old I think, so by then I must have had lessons in how to use a knife. What I remember though is that I felt incompetent - very, very slow and taking off more potato than I should. Did I cry? I don't think so, but I was distressed and told my mother how useless I was, but she reassured me by telling me that once upon a time she also had been slow and clumsy when peeling potatoes, but that she kept on practicing and now she could do it. A lesson about life really and one I have never forgotten. Which is why I probably remember that small moment in my life so clearly. A moment of almost joy perhaps.

Still on peeling potatoes I have another vivid memory of camping in Yugoslavia with David and friends - before we were all married. I was peeling the potatoes for the evening meal, when David came and asked if I knew how to do it, could he help? I was enraged - so angry in fact I poured all the water - and the peels over him. I was in my early twenties - surely he wouldn't have thought I couldn't peel a potato! And here's another memory from that incident. The knife I was using was a small one which we had bought in a Yugoslav market. It was a perfect little knife that I kept for years, and years - well into my forties I think, but somewhere it was lost. I miss it every now and again still.

But as usual I am wandering off topic. The topic being how do we learn how to peel things? Indeed how do we learn what to peel? The answer is easy if you have a mum who cooks which probably means that you hang around the kitchen and watch, maybe even be allowed to join in. Maybe at school? Back then if you didn't have either of those options I'm not sure where you would have learnt unless you learnt from cooking programs, although most of them just showed the TV cooks chopping up onions at alarming speed. And not everyone had a TV back then either.

These days of course it's easy - just use your phone - or whatever digital device you prefer and hey presto:

"the internet – and real life – abounds with nice, different and unusual techniques to prepare fresh produce." Ann Ding/The Guardian

Cookbooks? Not so much. I don't even remember long ago cookbooks telling you how. There might have been diagrams showing how to gut a chicken, or joint a chicken or skin a fish or other fancy stuff like that but not how to peel an onion - or a potato. So I looked up Delia online and of course, she does have all that stuff. I think derived from her 3 volume set - How to Cook which is a treasure for any learning cook who aspires to cook not just the 'ordinary' things but also slightly fancier ones. Her videos showed you how as well - as did Jamie who is also particularly good at passing on those tips and tricks.

Going back to me. Along the line I learnt the slightly cleverer tricks of how to peel a tomato, and a peach - if they weren't as ripe as the ones I ate in France, which could be peeled with a knife. The boiling water thing, which I'm sure you all know. However, I still can't really master peeling a pineapple without leaving in some of those 'eyes'. I really should watch a TikTok video someday.

As to tomatoes - nowadays we are learning that grating the tomato on an ordinary grater is a neat trick, although there are a few things to learn about this. Be careful of your knuckles and fingers as you get closer to the end of your grating. Worse than a mandolin in a way. I end up by holding the tomato skin against the palm of my hand, pressing it against the grater to extract the last bit of pulp, but keeping the fingers well out of the way. Also I have learnt not to do it in a small pudding basin kind of bowl as you keep banging those same knuckles on the side of the bowl. But yes, it's efficient.

And there are lots of tips and tricks on the net. Ann Ding on The Guardian website tested out a few of the slghtly stranger ones, but there are heaps and heaps of others. So next time you are confronted with something you are not familiar with, just feed it into Google or ask Siri, Alexa or Cortana - or maybe even try ChatGPT. I did like this suggestion for passionfruit:

"Slice the top off like an egg and pour a nip of Cointreau into the passionfruit for a no-fuss treat."

As to which of my peelers I prefer. I tried that wider one which lots of professionals seem to prefer but like another writer, I can never get it at the right angle. I do try to use it if I need long thin strips of cucumber or zucchini but I find it awkward and the strips never seem to be wide enough. A mandoline would be better I think. I also tried a much posher looking and larger version of the cheap and cheerful standard peeler, but that didn't work either. A bit too big for my hand I think. Today for most vegetables I just go for the cheap and cheerful, but for some reason I stick to the curved small knife for apples and pears, although why I don't really know. Habit is a curious thing. And hard to kick.

So yes, there is lots more to say about peels. And I will - next time I am out of ideas.

POSTSCRIPT

September 29th

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Experimenting with galettes

2021 - A bee adventure

2020 - Fresh herbs

2019 - Salted caramel - I think I've done this in more recent times as well

2018 - Sauerkraut - that too. Love them both

2017 - Cheddar cheese

2016 - Macaroon or macaron?