Pomegranate Report

[ellarien]

Interesting, but an awful lot of mess and fiddling about for each tiny burst of tart juice. I don't think I'll try again in a hurry, but it was worth doing it once, just for the experience.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

If you are going to drink pomegranate juice - and I love it - it is normally better to buy it in bottles.

You can squeeze the juice from a halved pomegranate with a squeezer or by hand, but it isn't fun.

I used to peel pomegranates, divide them into sections, and eat the fruit from the sections.

However, if you are going to use pomegranate in a salad (whether fruit or savoury) or mixed with lamb (yum), then you can do no better than use the patented Nigella Lawson method of halving the pomegranate, holding it cut side downwards over whatever dish you are using and bashing it with a wooden spoon. Astonishingly, this works. (One of my favourite all time recipes - and one that has never failed at dinner parties, is lamb shoulder cooked for hours at low temperature, stripped off the bone and into shreds, mixed with fresh mint, pomegranate seeds, and salt, then dressed with pomegrantate juice. Served with a salad of grilled peppers,blanched almonds and feta cheese, dressed with good olive oil. Thank you Nigella!)

[ellarien]

Thanks for the tips! My -- somewhat suboptimal, it turned out -- approach was to cut the thing in half and then dismantle it a bit at a time, sucking the pulp off the seeds as I dug them out; sometimes I managed to get a section more or less intact. It ended up with an incredible mess and took about an hour, but I got most of it.

Lamb isn't easy to come by in these parts, alas, and cooking anything for more than half an hour is rarely an option, but that sounds lovely.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

My -- somewhat suboptimal, it turned out -- approach was to cut the thing in half and then dismantle it a bit at a time, sucking the pulp off the seeds as I dug them out

Uh, you did eat the seeds, didn't you...?

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

You are supposed to eat the seeds with the pulp, fellas.

[ellarien]

Ah. Maybe I should try again one of these days after all.

[ellarien]

Ah. No, actually. It would have been easier, but I had a dim notion that Bad Things (having to take out a timeshare in the underworld?) would happen if I did. Obviously I should have researched more beforehand.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I guess there aren't many fruits where you do eat the seeds deliberately: certainly not with seeds that size. I suspect everybody's first encounter with a pomegranate goes somewhat like yours, unless they have a guide to show 'em. I know mine did.

But yes, next time: eat the seeds and the pulp together. It's just the white pith you want to avoid.