To peel or not to peel, that is the nagging question that troubles chefs and, just occasionally, the home cook. When it comes to the paring, shaping and peeling of vegetables there is always a bourn beyond which few will cross. I know many domestic cooks who will not peel a potato or, when forced to do so, set about the task with a knife and therefore throw half the potato - and most of its nutrients - away. Personally, I disapprove of any attempts to pass off unpeeled potatoes - with the honourable and laborious exception of scraping new potatoes - as any kind of workmanship. "Home fries" and the like are concepts dreamt up by accountants and lazy chefs rather than by a conscientious cook seeking to elicit extra flavour.

Carrots, likewise, come under the same categorical imperative, as do all roots and tubers. But it is with pulses that culinary certainties start to waver. By and large, broad beans, unless very young and small, need to be peeled because as the beans develop, the skins become increasingly tough and bitter. At home, guests are always surprised to see me peeling broad beans and think this extraordinarily painstaking and dedicated. A technique of nicking the blanched beans with the thumbnail and popping them out is soon acquired and once the habit is formed it would seem heretical not to peel the beans, the result being so much superior in tenderness and sweetness.