Drag the tip of this citrus zester across an orange and you'll get a pile of thin,
curly strips of peel without any of the bitter white pith. The five holes in the tip
have sharp edges that cut into the peel, releasing fragrant volatile oils.
I can’t begin to tell you how fragrant the kitchen has been this week.
Vanilla beans sweetly perfuming the air, oranges spurting zesty terpenes …
Um, terpenes?
That’s what makes citrus peel smell so good. In On Food and Cooking, curious cook Harold Magee explains that terpenes are “defensive” carbon compounds found in the peel of citrus fruits, pine bark and needles, and flowers.
When you zest an orange, you puncture the volatile oil glands in the skin, releasing terpenes into the air. They are usually the first molecules to reach the nose, says McGee, flooding your smell receptors with heady notes of limonene, pinene, neral/geranial and linalool—that would be citrus, pine, lemon and flowers.
Before I get too blissed out on these aromas, let me praise my trusty citrus zester. This traditional tool, different from the excellent Microplane grater, has a stainless steel tip affixed to a handle. The tip ends with five, sharp-edged holes. When you pull the zester across an orange, it produces thin curls of aromatic zest without any of the bitter white pith.
You can zest a bowl of oranges in six minutes flat.
My tool was made in Japan and I’ve had it forever, but you can find similar zesters at Williams Sonoma, Sur La Table and cooking.com. Use it to zest any citrus fruit or, when you host your next Friday night sushi party, to make curly mounds of carrot and daikon strips to garnish your spicy tuna rolls.
Comments (2)
I always use my microplane to zest citrus. Other than the fact that microplaned zest is much smaller, what's the advantage to using this specialized zester?
Posted by Ken | March 23, 2009 9:27 AM
Posted on March 23, 2009 09:27
Good question, Ken. If you want to have just one zester, then I would go with the microplane because it is so versatile. There are times, however, when I would prefer long, thin strips of zest, both for looks and flavor. The flavor differences are subtle: The smaller bits of zest that you get with the microplane tend to disperse the flavor of the zest more evenly throughout the dish. Great for tart shells, for example, or sauces. The other zester produces thin, curly strips for garnish and concentrated flavor bursts since there are fewer, larger pieces.
In the lentil salad in the previous post, Gerard Vives uses curly strips of zest as a garnish, but I also love the contrast between the bittersweet orange peel and the earthy, vanilla-scented lentils. Still, the dish would be equally good if you use your microplane.
Posted by Courtenay | March 23, 2009 10:49 AM
Posted on March 23, 2009 10:49