Here’s the trick to eating a pomegranate

In the Dahlem Museum in Berlin, there’s a large Rembrandt painting of the goddess Persephone being carried off to the underworld by its lord, Hades. In the underworld, according to the myth, the unfortunate girl eats a few forbidden pomegranate seeds, becomes mortal and creates winter in our world.

Like it or not, winter is approaching as days grow colder in mid-autumn October. And sure enough, the season’s new crop of pomegranates begins arriving in our stores. While we can blame Persephone for the cold weather, we can also praise her for calling our attention to the delicious pomegranates whose most popular variety is called Wonderful.

Why are pomegranates so wonderful? Tear open the fruit’s leathery skin and inside you find groups of fleshy red seeds within the white interior. How are you supposed to eat these things? The first task is to separate the seeds from the white membrane.

Here’s the trick: First, have a large bowl ready. Cut the pomegranate in half through the middle, not from the blossom end to the stem end. Holding one half with the cut side facing you, use both hands to work the leathery skin back and forth to loosen it from the contents inside. Then turn it over so the cut side faces the bowl. Holding the half with one hand, use a heavy metal or wooden spoon to whack the skin side all over. Most of the seeds will drop into the bowl. Repeat with the second half. Pry the seeds remaining in the skins into the bowl, then go through the bowl and remove any white membrane pieces from the seeds.

Now you have a choice. Eat the seeds by crunching them in your mouth and swallowing juice and hard little pits. Or separate the juice from the seeds and discard the hard pits. To separate the juice, put the seeds into a large saucepan and gently heat over low heat. Do not boil or cook. Just heat until they are hot, then remove the saucepan from the heat and mash the seeds with a potato masher. Now set a sieve over a bowl, pour in the mashed seeds, let the juice drain out and then swish the remainder gently back and forth until the dripping stops.

And yes, you can just buy commercial pomegranate juice at the store, but your homemade juice will be fresher and taste better.

If you don’t mind eating the seeds, either eat them out of your hand, sprinkle them on green or fruit salads or add some to oatmeal or yogurt.

But if you’ve gone through the trouble of extracting the precious juice, you are in for a treat — or rather, several treats. You don’t have to use this juice immediately. Fill ice-cube trays with it, freeze and, when hard and frozen, put the cubes into a freezer bags and store in the freezer until needed. Here are some suggestions on how to use the juice:

• For a cocktail, into a tall glass filled with ice, pour 2 ounces of pomegranate juice and either give it a shot of vodka or omit the vodka. In either case, fill the glass with club soda, prosecco or sekt, as you wish.
• Add ¼ to ½ cup of juice to a saucepan and, over low heat, reduce the juice until it’s thick and syrupy, but don’t let it scorch. Use it to glaze oven-baked chicken, fish filets, pork chops or what have you.
• At Thanksgiving, or whenever you need cranberry sauce, add some sweet pomegranate juice to the acidic cranberries. It will freshen the flavor of the sauce.
• Mix the sweet juice into yogurt, which you can then serve over sliced bananas.
• Marinate a butterflied leg of lamb overnight in the fridge in fresh pomegranate juice mixed with the juice of a lemon, lemon zest and a shot of Cointreau.

The pomegranate is native to Iran but has been planted across the ancient Mediterranean region for 4,000 years. And why not? The plant itself is beautiful, its flowers are gorgeous, the fruit is tasty and it’s a nutritional powerhouse, with 7 grams of fiber and 30% of our daily need for vitamin C in 1 cup of arils. Pomegranate juice contains three times the antioxidants of red wine or green tea and has potent anti-inflammatory effects in the digestive tract and joints. So now we know why Persephone ate those pomegranate seeds.