Peeled, deseeded and cooked soft
The one instruction that turns a restricted vegetable or fruit into one you can eat, and how to tell when it has worked.
Peeled, deseeded and cooked soft is the most repeated instruction in every hospital leaflet compared for this book, and it is worth understanding rather than obeying. It works because the hazard in most fruit and vegetables is concentrated in three places. The skin, the seeds and the fibrous core survive digestion largely intact. The flesh between them, once cooked, does not.
Remove those three things and heat what is left until its cell walls give way, and a food that sits on the avoid list becomes one that behaves like mashed potato.
How to do it
Peel properly. A vegetable peeler taken twice round a carrot removes more than a hurried single pass, and the pale layer just under the skin is the tough one. On squash, keep going until the colour changes from the dull outer green to clear orange.
Deseed generously. Scoop out the whole seed cavity of a squash or courgette, including the stringy webbing the seeds sit in, which is more fibrous than the seeds. Core an apple wide rather than narrow. Take the woody centre out of a parsnip.
Then cook past the point you were taught to stop. Boil, braise or stew rather than roast, because dry heat firms edges. Cut into even pieces so they finish together.
The cue
A piece should collapse when pressed against the side of the pan with a spoon, with no core of resistance in the middle. A knife should go in and come out without lifting the piece off the board. Stewed apple should look like a rough purée before you have mashed it, not like tender slices.
Common mistakes
Peeling but not deseeding. Cutting unevenly, so the small pieces collapse and the large ones stay firm in the middle. Roasting for flavour and leaving a chewy edge. And trusting a blender to finish what the pan did not, which it cannot do. If you are unsure, sieve it.