Peeling an Orange, the Sicilian Way

Whenever I ate oranges growing up, which I avoided whenever possible, it was a fairly unpleasant experience. The oranges were quartered and served with the peel still attached, and was thus eaten in a watermelon fashion. Bite too deep, you get a bunch of pith stuck between your teeth. Not deep enough and you squirt juice all over yourself.

Then I came to Sicily and discovered that there is indeed a better way to eat an orange... without the peel and extra pith. Though some Sicilians get really fancy with spiral peeling (Zia Michela once peeled an entire honeydew melon in one long spiral), the below instructions are for the basic "wedge" method of peeling.



Materials:
An Orange (Arancia)
A Knife
A plate or paper towel to gather peels.

1. Cut off the top (where stem meets orange) and bottom ends of the orange.

2. Make shallow vertical cuts, just enough to slice through the peel, in wedges all around the orange.

3. Using the knife, dig into the pith between the rind and fruit at the top of the orange and pry the peel away one wedge at a time.

4. Depending on the orange you can now pull apart the wedges of fruit with your hands, or quarter it with your knife.