Preamble

The [Bell] Pepper is a variant of the Capsicum annuum species. It differs from the jalapeño variants in that it doesn't contain any capsaicin, which is the stuff that makes other peppers "hot", and therefore it tends to be used as a tasty bulk vegetable ingredient, rather than as a spice.

In the UK, we tend to call these fruit "Peppers" (with an optional colour designation attached: "Red Peppers", "Green Peppers" etc.) and use Chili (or Chile) Peppers generically to cover the hot varieties and species.

Despite the [Bell] Pepper's ubiquitous presence, it is amazing how many people still don't know the correct way to cut one up. Having lived with chefs for a few years, each of which took great delight in pointing out my culinary failings, I picked up a number of "corrections" and will gradually pass them along.

Following these instructions will make you both disgustingly rich and happily laid [1]. All you will need are a blade, a [Bell] Pepper (henceforth 'pepper'), and a clean, tough surface upon which to chop [2]:

Problems

The main problems with the pepper are two-fold:

• It has an uncompromisingly awkward shape, especially for cutting.

• Its centre is chock full of tiny, pale, disk-like seeds which will happily ... errr ... "pepper" themselves everywhere until they've pebble-dashed the kitchen.

We want as much of the outer skin and bulk of the pepper possible, with none of the seeds.

Some people start by doing this:

Or this:

As denoted, these are both wrong [3], and you will end up doing far more work than necessary. Not only that, but, by cutting through the middle of the pepper, you will act as a fairly effective seed-distribution mechanism. The right way to do it is as follows.

The Method

1.) Firstly, cut off the stalk / stem of the pepper as close to the surface of the pepper as the knife will go; this should leave a ~0.5cm stub. There's no need to be too scientific; this is just to get the stalk out of the way.

2.) Once this is done, put the pepper on its side.

3.) Place your non-chopping hand gently on top of the pepper to secure it, creating a subtle downward pressure.

4.) Holding the knife blade parallel to the chopping surface, rock it gently back and forth in a sawing motion as you cut into the pepper about half way between the chopping surface and the stalk.

6.) Keep cutting parallel to the chopping surface. As the knife bites into the pepper, use your non-chopping hand to "roll" the uncut pepper in the direction of the green arrow, pushing more pepper onto the blade. The blade should thusly "core" the pepper by cutting along the path indicated by the dotted white line. Note that the cutting hand and knife only ever move from right to left and minutely back and forth, but never up and down (vertically). As the knife moves leftwards, you provide it with more pepper to cut.

7.) If done properly, this will leave you with one, whole "sheet" of usable pepper whilst leaving the core both intact and containing all its seeds. Without requiring any ungainly surgery, it removes almost all of the cook-able pepper in one move. The pepper "sheet" left is easy to clean and cut into any shape required. Put the core, containing its seeds in the bin / compost heap.

THE END

Next week: Granny Shit - The sucking of eggs.

Notes

[1] - For some indeterminate values of both "rich" and "laid", naturally.

[2] - Jah; you get the 'Babylon 5'-grade graphics. I haven't got time for doing ILM-type shit over a pepper. Also: Apologies — The pepper looks slightly more like a hand grenade than an actual pepper. Trying the above on an actual hand grenade isn't recommended; although, if you do it, report back and let us know how it works out for you.

[3] - To the extent that anything is wrong, naturally. Relativists and nihilists can continue living in shameful but blissful ignorance if they so desire.