How to de-seed a pomegranate

I love pomegranates. The exotic perfume, the beyond beautiful blushed pink skin, the seeds glittering in their jewelry box creamy casing. The model of the apple of Eden, the fruit of choice for the Pre-Raphaelites:

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

(Christina Rossetti)

But for years they only a solitary pleasure, sucked and slurped in the bath with nere a thought for juice stains or decorum.

Then I read Nigella Lawson’s wonderful book How To Eat, where she revealed that the best way to get seeds out of a pomegranate is to

• Cut it in half
• Hold the half over a bowl
• Thwack it with a wooden spoon.

Suddenly, miraculously, a rain of fragrant jewels plink down.