By Pineapple Obsessed

Darin Schultz is a man obsessed with pineapple. He welcomes his guests with a glass of fresh pineapple cider. He tucks them into bed at night with chocolate-dipped fresh pineapple chunks. Along the way, he serves pineapple muffins for breakfast, pineapple gazpacho for lunch, pineapple scones at high tea and foie gras with caramelized pineapple for dinner. He even goes so far as to smoke salmon over pineapple husks.

Schultz is the chef at the Lodge at Koele, a magnificent manor-style hotel tucked in a mountainside on the secluded Hawaiian island of Lanai. His passion for pineapple comes naturally enough. For most of this century, Lanai was the nation’s largest pineapple producer and at one time had 18,000 acres of pineapple fields under cultivation.

Today, the island is in transition from agriculture to tourism. But Lanai still produces the sweetest pineapples I’ve ever tasted.

A member of the bromeliad family, pineapple originated in Brazil. Columbus “discovered” it on the island of Guadeloupe during his 1493 voyage. It was certainly love at first bite. Early European accounts of the fruit wax grandiloquent: One proclaimed it “the king of fruits”; another dubbed it “an excellent arouser of the appetite”; a third described it “of such excellence that it should be picked only by the hands of Venus” (given its spiny leaves, one would hope that Venus wore gloves). Such was the pineapple’s popularity that within a century, it had been exported to India, Africa, Southeast Asia and China.

No one knows exactly when or how the pineapple arrived in Hawaii. Perhaps it was brought by a Spanish galleon that strayed off the route from Manila to Acapulco. In any case, pineapples already grew in Hawaii when Captain Cook arrived in 1778. But it wasn’t until a young Harvard graduate named James Dole founded the Hawaiian Pineapple Co. (which became the Dole Co.) in 1901 that pineapple became big business.

*

In 1922, Dole acquired virtually the whole of the island of Lanai, which he converted into the world’s largest pineapple plantation. By 1940, Hawaii produced 80% of the world’s pineapple crop. The Hawaiian industry peaked in the 1960s, when rising labor costs led Dole to seek cheaper offshore sources. Today, most of our pineapple is imported from Asia and Latin America.

Botanically speaking, the pineapple is a “multiple” fruit, a cluster of 100 to 200 berry-like “eyes” or fruitlets with a fibrous core in the center. It takes about 18 months for a plant to produce an edible fruit. From there, fruiting occurs annually. The fruit becomes smaller but sweeter with each crop.

Most of us are accustomed to buying large, firm, first-year fruits. But until you’ve tasted a “sugar pineapple,” you don’t know how glorious this fruit can be. Low in acidity and super-sweet, sugar pineapples are third- or fourth-year pineapples that are too small to be of commercial value but are highly prized by such chefs as Schultz.

Pineapples are graded according to ripeness. A Stage 0 pineapple is completely green, while a Stage 6 fruit will be completely golden. The more golden a pineapple is, the sweeter. The ripest that most mainlanders can buy pineapples is at Stage 3, when they are roughly one-fourth gold.

Some people judge a pineapple’s sweetness by the ease with which you can pull out the leaves, but I’ve never found much of a correlation. When buying pineapple, I shop with my nose, looking for gold-tinged fruits that smell very fragrant (sniff the bottom of the pineapple) and are neither rock-hard nor squishy. I let them ripen at room temperature until I’m ready to use them.

*

My local supermarket sells pineapples already skinned and cored, but I always feel as if I’m cheating when I buy one. To peel a whole pineapple, grab the leaves in one hand and the fruit in the other and twist in opposite directions. This neatly removes the leaves from the fruit. Next, slice the top and bottom off the pineapple, working on a grooved cutting board to collect any juices. Stand the fruit on end. Using a sharp knife, cut the rind off the fruit in long strips, like barrel staves.

To core pineapple, cut it in half lengthwise. Using a long knife, make two lengthwise cuts in the shape of a V to remove the core.

Pineapples are widely available throughout the year. To taste them at their absolute best, make the pilgrimage to Lanai. But the following gazpacho is delicious prepared with the commonplace supermarket variety.

DARIN SCHULTZ’S PINEAPPLE GAZPACHO

1 ripe pineapple

1 cucumber, peeled, seeded and cut into chunks

1/2 sweet yellow pepper, cored and seeded

4 to 5 tablespoons diced Maui onion or other sweet onion

1/4 to 1/2 cup pineapple juice (preferably fresh)

1/2 teaspoon Chinese chile paste or hot sauce

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 to 2 teaspoons sugar (depending on sweetness of pineapple)

1 to 2 teaspoons lime juice, optional

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1/4 cup very finely diced sweet red pepper

1/4 cup very finely diced sweet green pepper

1/4 cup peeled, seeded and finely diced cucumber

Peel and core pineapple, working over bowl or slotted cutting board to catch juices. Cut pineapple into chunks.

Puree pineapple, cucumber, sweet yellow pepper and onion in blender, adding enough pineapple juice to obtain pourable soup. Add chile paste and salt and pepper to taste. Add sugar and lime juice if mixture is too acidic or sweet. (Gazpacho can be prepared ahead to this stage, but you may need to add pineapple juice or seasonings before serving.)

Just before serving, stir in 1/8 cup cilantro, 1/8 cup each diced sweet red and green pepper and 1/8 cup diced cucumber into gazpacho. Ladle soup into bowls and sprinkle remaining sweet red and green pepper and cucumber on top. Makes 4 servings.