Day 20: Triumph of the Paring Knife

Potato tournés awaiting their doom.

We had our first knife practical yesterday. While we technically have had 19 days of class so far, only half of that has been our hands-on kitchen class, and really only about a third of that time has been spent with knife in hand. Which meant practice, practice, practice over the weekend.

Carrots and potatoes. Julienne, brunoise, batonnet, macedoine, and last but not least, my new frenemy, the potato tourné. The technique so wicked, and so heavily written about on this here blog, that I can now type the acute diacritic mark (´) without losing a beat. (Mac users, it's option+e, then the letter you want it to appear over.)

One of our instructors recently said it took him several years before he finally mastered the tourné. Yikes.

I practiced Saturday, Sunday, and again Monday morning before heading to class. I laid waste to six potatoes and six carrots, resulting in the roughly 48 tournés pictured above, plus two ziplock bags of julienned and roughly chopped carrots.

The practice paid off. I did very well overall, and my best grade? My tournés.

I'm going to roast those bastards with some butter and salt and they are going to be delicious.

By the way, I listened to The Black Keys on the way into class and had them in my head during the practical. I highly recommend them for purposes of chopping.