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Tennessee Resort – Bed and Breakfast Tennessee- near Knoxville
Guests at Whitestone Country Inn enjoy their dining experience on the property for various reasons. Obviously the chefs are able to offer our guests a fantastic palatable situation. However, the appearance of the dish is another important factor of a guest’s visit to Whitestone. During his leisure time Chef Wells offers another tip for the home chef. Today he explains how to prepare an orange crown.

About the Tennessee Chef

Jonathan Wells studied the culinary arts at Walter State Community College. Chef Wells has been working at Whitestone Country Inn for over five years. He not only enjoys executing a fine dining experience for guests but also likes to share his culinary knowledge with people that are curious about cooking.

 Creating the Orange Crown

We begin the whole process by using a zester tool. Some people have never seen this type of zester. You’ll not that it has about five holes at the top of the tool and a notch in the center. The zester can be purchased from most home supply stores and even Wal-mart carries the zester pictured to the left on their website for approximately $15. The center notch is the portion of the zester that begins our process.

 

 

 

 

The center notch of the zester has a cutting “hook” on it. What I like to do is start the hook at the top portion of the orange and drag it in a straight line to the opposite end of the orange.
I’m then going to rotate the orange a little and begin the process again.

 

 

 

 

The lines that are created in the rind of the orange are going to serve as a template for cutting our crown. Consequently, you may choose to execute your lines to make a quarter portions on your orange. However, the number of line is simply up to you, the home chef. Also, the process is limited only by your imagination. Once you have mastered crowning an orange with straight carved line, you can experiment with curved “S” lines.

 

 

 

 

The next task that must be accomplished is a safety measure. We will begin to cut the orange and creating the crown. First we are going to cut off the top and bottom portion of the orange. The only reason for making these cuts is to make two flat surfaces for which we can set the orange. Obviously, a stationary and stable fruit is a lot safer to cut than one is attempting roll around while cutting.
 

 

 

Now we are going to make our cuts that give our orange that crown effect. With your orange sitting flat on a cutting board take the point of your knife and insert is in the center of two of your template lines. Cut diagonal and down and stop cutting when you have reached a template line. rotate your orange a bit and insert your blade again into the center between the next two lines. This time cut diagonal and down so that the bottom of your cut meets the bottom of the last cut. Essentially, you are making “V” shapes all around your orange (///).

 

 

 

Once you have cut completely around the orange you can separate both halves and admire your craftsmanship. This type carving would look great to garnish a fruit tray or in a bowl surrounded by fruit cocktail. For our example we let our halves float in punch in a punch bowl. This added extra is just the perfect touch to not only compliment the color of the punch but gives the whole item an added visual appeal.

 

 

 

 

How To Make An Orange Crown – Whitestone Inn from Whitestone Country Inn on Vimeo.