Pineapple
peppercorn crusted pineapple spears
cilantro poached pineapple with lime coconut mousse
presentation
- do not cut into rings
- cut into slices by halving, quartering and eighting the pineapple
- clean it off well and then feel it for any burrs or hard edges
grilling
- grill pineapple quarters dressed with a little buckwheat honey
- peppercorn crusted grilled pineapple spears
- Serve them with ice cream as soon as they come hot off the grill.
- Carlos Sandoval knows his way around a pineapple.
- He snaps a huge, ripe fruit from its plant,
- breaks off the prickly crown with his bare hands, then deftly skins the juicy bromeliad using a machete.
- He walks around our tour group, individually slicing pineapple rounds and offering them to us.
- My slice is lemon-yellow, patterned with symmetrical gold circles Sandoval says show its ripeness.
- One bite confirms this — it's incredibly sweet, but not overly soft like its canned cousins.
- I'm at the Maui Pineapple Company's Honolua Plantation on Maui.
- Here, 500 hectares of pineapples stretch toward the horizon.
- Back in the 1980s, Hawaii was still one of the world's powerhouse pineapple producers, though a lot has changed since.
- Canned pineapples are out, largely replaced by whole fresh fruits flown in from Asia and Latin America, where most are grown these days.
- Hawaii now produces only 10% of the planet's pineapples.
- Shipping and labour costs are the main reasons Hawaiian production has waned, Sandoval explains.
- Even if you can't make it to a Hawaiian pineapple plantation to sample the fruit in its iconic state, it's easy to suss it out locally and incorporate it into Canadian cooking.
- Here's how to ensure you get a good one: 1. Ogle it.
- It should have big, round eyes.
- Its colour should be green with traces of gold.
- Smell it.
- Sweet and fresh but not sickly —
- an over-the-top fermenting odour means it's past its best-before date.
- Feel it. It should be heavy and firm,
- not rock-hard, mushy or bruised.
- Thump it.
- Hear that hollow sound? Good.
- 2. Slice off the crown, discard.
- 3. Turn the pineapple upside down and store on a plate in your fridge overnight.
- (The fruit's bottom is its sweetest asset and this position helps all those juices trickle down.)
- 4. Slice off the base.
- 5. Skin off the sides.
- Be sure to go deep enough to remove the eye remnants, but not too deep as the flesh is sweetest closest to the skin.
- 6. Whether you slice it in rounds or quarter it, remember to remove the core, which can be tough and rather tasteless.
page revision: 3, last edited: 09 Aug 2009 20:43