A New Way to Dice and Julienne
Palo Alto cooking instructor Peter Hertzmann was kind enough to invite me to be a guest at his recent knife skills class at Sur La Table in Los Gatos. You may recognize his name from his regular comments posted on my FoodGal blog.
Admittedly, my brunoise may not be the world’s most perfect looking, but I know my way comfortably around a chopping board and chef’s knife. Even though Hertzmann is the author of “Knife Skills Illustrated: A User’s Manual” (W.W. Norton & Company), I did wonder just a tad how much new information I would pick up from the class.
The answer? A whole heck of a lot.
Just as my pilates instructor often points out to me that I have a bad habit of standing with one hip higher than the other, Hertzmann quickly noticed that I don’t always stand facing the chopping board straight on. Yes, another odd quirk, probably because I’m so used to talking to people while I cook that I naturally turn my body toward them.
Among his other tips to the class: Avoid making a banging noise when the knife blade forcibly hits the chopping board. In other words, don’t wield your knife like an axe against your vegetables. Use a quieter sawing motion instead.
But what I will forever be indebted to Hertzmann most for is showing me an ingenuous way to dice an onion and to julienne a carrot more quickly. Here’s how to do it. We’ll start with the onion first. (By the way, in the top photo, those are Hertzmann’s hands. In the next photos below, the hands belong to my husband, aka Meat Boy.)
