This weekend I learned how to blanch almonds. Yes, it was a pretty crazy fucking weekend.
Blanching almonds is surprisingly easy. I had always assumed that the removal of an almond’s brown outer skin was the end result of an intricate industrial process involving conveyor belts, bevel gears, liquid vats, machine tools, and possibly radiation.
But no. It turns out that the almond skin slips right off the nut if you submerge it in boiling water for a minute. Luckily, almonds do not have vocal cords, so you cannot hear their anguished death screams.
I felt rather top-chef when I pointed out to Mr. P that the chopped almonds mixed in our green beans had been blanched. “It’s better for the digestion,” I added.
He may have looked indifferent, but I knew that he was inwardly ecstatic. Like all French, Mr. P is obsessed with removing the skin from as many fruits and vegetables as feasible. Zucchini, carrots, asparagus, potatoes, pears, peaches, cucumbers, apples, and even tomatoes are just some of the produce that they prefer naked. (They also have an abhorrence of orange pith, but that’s another story.)
I learned of this habit 4 years ago during my first trip to France, when my beau-mere handed out whole peaches for a dessert. I took a big-ass American bite out of my peach, looked up and realized that everyone else was carving off the peach skin with their knife and fork. It was an exquisitely bizarre social moment.
“What was up with that?” I asked at breakfast the next morning. “You looked like a bunch of fruit surgeons.”
“The skin on a peach is unclean,” Mr. P claimed. “We don’t want to eat the dirt, bacteria, bugs, and pesticides.”
“So why didn’t you peel those grapes that you’re eating?” I asked. “Or berries, or lettuce, or, um, mushrooms?”
He looked at me, confused. “Mushrooms and lettuce don’t have skins.”
Initially I rallied against my husband’s rampant peeling, not only because the skins contain a lot of vitamins and minerals, but also because I’m lazy. Then I found it odd that French people were suddenly worried about cleanliness. I mean, I once took a tour of a French cheese farm, and there were dogs peering into the cheese vat, and no one seemed particularly alarmed.
