Pineapple the Asian way

There are different ways to prepare a pineapple. The lazy way to cut a pineapple is to buy a pineapple cutter. This will cut and core your pineapple at the same time and you will have nice even slices. The only disadvantage is that if you have a big pineapple you will waist a lot.

I found that the "Asian" way is the least wasteful. It takes a little bit time, but you’ll have plenty more pineapple to munch on. After a bit of practice you will do it in no time.

I start with sharpening my knife. The sharper the knife the easier it will be to do this.
 First thing I did is chopping off the top and the bottom, so I can put the pineapple up stabile.Then I sliced off the skin starting from the top and worked my way to the bottom.I sliced it as thin as possible and worked my way around until I removed all the skin.Then I put the pineapple on a side so I can see the "eyes", which are the little round spots. To make a beautiful pineapple you will have to follow the line the spots are in. If you follow the wrong line, your pineapple will look funny. It will still taste good, so there is hardly anything you can mess up. So when I found the line I wanted to follow, I made a little slice on each side of the eye.

I did one section of the pineapple first before I rotated it. If you follow the line it would take you more time to do this.

This is the result after I removed all the eyes. Very pretty huh? I would then rinse it and rub it in with some salt. This is a trick my friend taught me. Sometimes when you eat a lot of pineapple your mouth gets itchy. The salt somehow makes it less itchy or not itchy at all.

I sliced the pineapple in half and then in quarters. Make sure you remove the hard inner core. These will give your “canh chua” (sweet and sour fish soup) great flavor, so don’t throw it away put pop them in the freezer.

After I quartered the pineapple I tarred it to bite size pieces and pilled them high on a plate. The only thing missing is a salt and chili pepper mixture to enhance the sweet flavor of the pineapple.

The three of us finished this plate after dinner, but if you have some left over, you can put it in the fridge for the next day or put it in the freezer. Pineapple can be frozen quite well and they will be great in smoothies.