Paring Knife Use
Jalapeno with the spine of a paring knife, switch to a serrated blade. Notice how much rib and seeds were left behind with his choice of technique. It's a fine technique if you want a half of a pepper for filling or such. And he's right, the skin on any pepper will quickly demonstrate if your knife is dull and you're doing a chop motion instead of a forward glide to finish your cutting stroke. I do prefer to have the skin side up for cuttings same as Brendan does.
My preferred technique, yes even for small peppers like a jalapeno, uses the large chef's knife:
And he does this as well for bell peppers so I don't know why he didn't for the jalapeno. Perhaps just to demonstrate some options and let people use what they like best.
Cauliflower, good technique, and better than I've done it before. I learned something new.
Citrus, good technique again, but the knife has to be sharper than most home cook's paring knife is likely to be. Even his microplane demonstration shows that they dull and become less effective over time. His was dull. A sharp microplane makes a fabulous fine zest without ripping or tearing. A vegetable peeler is likely to be a better tool for most home cooks to pare/peel the zest away. Then clean up the pith as as necessary. Or dedicated zester tools, though I've not yet found one that worked as well as I would like. If you need fine strips, a vegetable peeler and some knife work is my preferred method. Brendan flips the zest skin side up for the cutting for all the same reasons as the pepper.
Citrus supremes, he'd doing it right. The flat top and bottom cuts are important to this technique. One note about supremes. They're great presentation and flavor, but you lose fiber. Our diets are usually too low in fiber and an orange is often one of the higher fiber sources commonly available. This is one of the concerns about drinking fruit juice. It's so high sugar that without the fiber it's little better than soda at that point. Further, fiber slows and even blocks some sugar absorption in our gut. I suggest you save supremes for special occasions and eat smarter and healthier.
Serrated Blade Use
Tomato with the serrated knife. Notice that his circular cutting motions are now much longer on the glide part of the stroke. The edge of a serrated knife only makes contact with the board at the points. So you have to do a longer stroke to cut through the last part of the tomato. This is one of my peeves with a serrated knife is it's less efficient at finishing the cut. A sharp Chefs is just as good if not better at this in my opinion. But that caveat of sharpness is important. For many home cooks, the serrated blade is their reliably sharpest blade. And if that's your situation, using the serrated blade makes sense.
The grape/cherry tomato demonstration is a piece of genius.
Skipping over the peppers, because we discussed them above, Brendan demonstrates preparing a pineapple. He gives a little steering discussion for lefties as they'll have some struggles using the commonly available serrated blades more than the right handed users simply because of how chisel grinds are commonly done. Notice that he keeps cutting on the right side of the pineapple from his perspective. If he tries to cut the side closest to him, he'll run into that steering problem because he's now cutting on the other side of the blade.
Butternut squash, technique is good of course. He clearly knows what he's doing.
Chef Knife Use
Avacado, it was good to see him demonstrate choking up on the blade. That's not something demonstrated very often.
Herbs, he's definitely not a fan of rock chopping and with reason. It's not as even or controlled mostly but less safe as well and damaging to the board and blade. I'm not going to tell you not to if you prefer it. I don't think this is an issue of significant merit in this case. As to floating herbs, spinach, and such for cleaning, that's a good technique to have in your arsenal. Leeks, I can see the appeal, but there's enough grit in cutting the leeks up to that point you could be messing up your blade more than the somewhat simplified cleaning merits.
In summary, there's plenty of good ideas here. Brendan is a good presenter and keeps the lesson moving. It's not especially insightful if you've been cooking a while as you've probably run across them. While he pointed out control and safety issues a number of times, I think he could have explained it more concretely and tied it back to the universal principles he laid out in Lesson 3. Breaking the squash down is not just about creating reasonable shapes. As with the onion, the breaking down cuts create flat stable surfaces for later safe cuts. That philosophy of cutting things will help you as deal with watermelon, cantaloupe, and other large food items.
No comments:
Post a Comment