A Prickly Exterior

This seems to be a theme for me lately: produce that presents itself as a puzzle, a difficult safe that one must figure out how to crack. The second artichoke I had, the one I steamed one day then ate cold from the refrigerator the next, made me relent and decide that, dipped in a good vinaigrette, it was worth it. The bowl of plain yogurt and diced fresh pineapple I just had has made me change my mind about what I had believed was a waste of time.

First, the pineapple Todd picked out was pretty green, but I found online that as long as it has some yellow or red at the bottom (which ours did) you can ripen it on your counter, upside down (I think it was NBC's Produce Pete who gave me that tip). It's almost as though the ripeness gradually runs down the pineapple, and over the course of a few days the pineapple turned yellow, from the bottom (which was on top) to the top (I had perched the pineapple on of that tuft of stiff leaves that come out the top).

Once it's ripe, you slice off the top and bottom, then the tough exterior. Then there are all those eyes; I had seen people on TV find the rows of eyes and cut out a row at a time, which I did, then picked out the rest. It's not a quick job, though, whatever TV chefs may say. Mine also had all these little seeds embedded in it, and so I took out as many of those as I could. Then I quartered it lengthwise, cut out the fibrous core and chopped it into chunks.

I diced a bit up and mixed it with plain yogurt: sweet with the tang from the yogurt, smooth creaminess with the juicy, slighty fibrous pieces.