kaberett | [tiny adventures] Knife skills - fruit, vegetables and herbs

It's my birthday in two weeks' time, so today Adam & I spent the morning at Leiths School of Food and Wine waving knives around, this being last year's birthday present. (It was delayed by surgical recovery, and then availability over the summer, and then buying a house, and then Belfast, because apparently we have done A Lot Of Things in the last twelve months.)

I really, really enjoyed it - every hour or two I'd glance up, catch sight of the clock, and be a little startled by how much time had passed. So here, have some notes.

Access

Leiths were informed at the point of booking that I'm a wheelchair user. There was some discussion (via phone calls with A and e-mails with me) about how to make me as comfortable as possible; I was offered a lower worksurface (so I could remain seated in my wheelchair), a stool provided by the school, or the option (suggested by us) of me bringing in my own (adjustable) saddle stool. We ended up deciding that I'd bring in my own saddle stool and show up a few minutes early so we could get set up before general introductory material, but it was made very clear that I could at any point say "actually, I need a lower table after all" and This Could Happen. I get the impression that if anyone else had wanted a stool at any point during the class they could have requested one and it would have been provided with absolutely no fuss. On the day, everything in terms of set-up went very smoothly.

The building has level access, though it's via a short and fairly steep ramp with a pull-to-open door at the top of it. There were no shortage of people around to open it for me, however, even if I hadn't had Adam with me. Inside the building reception is then off to the side through a slightly awkward door (it's clearly not part of the main day-to-day operations!); there's a cloakroom, a lift, and space in the kitchens to leave bags, and I was able to leave my chair close by me in the kitchen as well.

Evacuation plans are a thing. In my case I Really Hate dealing with detailed evacuation plans because in fact I can walk out even if stairs were involved (in that if I can't walk out I won't have made it to wherever the venue is so it's a moot point), so my evacuation plan was "if I gotta I'll walk it"; I got the impression that had something more involved been required they'd have arranged for that too.

We were prompted to drink water at regular intervals. I might have had a bit of difficulty reaching the handwashing sink had I been remaining in my chair, largely due to the position of the bin for paper towels, but I expect that would have been moved had I needed it. I was at one end of the table (there were about twenty of us plus the instructor), and sometimes struggled to hear the instructor's voice, especially as there was another class (macarons) going on in the other half of the kitchen; I was on her left and she was right-handed, so also sometimes couldn't see demonstrations in detail. Instructions were given verbally and were also (in slightly condensed form) available in writing (not in large print by default); our instructor has apparently spent some time teaching knife skills to blind and visually impaired people, so has a bunch of established techniques for that, though I imagine that works less well in the large group setting we were in. However, teachers circulated post-demonstration and encouraged questions, left-handers were identified at the start of the session and put in positions where they'd be able to chop easily, and I'm absolutely certain that had I asked to be placed close to the instructor that it would've happened without a problem. We were also encouraged to take notes throughout.

This was overall a genuinely positive experience for me in terms of access. I'd been worried about it, but in fact it all Just Worked.

Structure of the day
We arrived a little before 9.45 for a 10.00 start, and having got me and my kit set up we were settled in a dining room with refreshments various, with everyone attending classes that day. We got given a big group introduction to Leiths, an overview of the materials we'd been handed and some safety information, and a relatively gentle sell on The Leiths Shop. We were taken through to the kitchens one group at a time, so that the congestion around putting on aprons and getting through the door and milling around sorting out bags and name tags was minimised. (There were sticky-label name tags! I wrote my pronouns on mine. There were no comments, but also no misgendering.)

We then got an overview of knives, some of which was included in the handy booklet. We were talked through the six most common knives -- cook's knife, paring or office knife, boning knife, filleting knife, serrated fruit knife and bread knife -- and then cheerfully informed that really the only thing we needed was a cook's knife, though you should probably also have good scissors, a peeler (replaced regularly), a steel, and perhaps a pastry brush and measuring spoons. Storage options were discussed: knife roll ("wallet"), magnetic racks, and knife blocks all good; storage in drawers BAD, because of safety -- of course -- but more importantly because they'll get blunt. (I knew this but was charmed by the emphasis.)

One of our classmates asked about Santoku knives. I hadn't quite put together that the principal virtue is that the dimples help prevent the knife vacuum-sealing the thing you're cutting to it, which is particularly helpful for starchy vegetables but good for vegetables more generally; our tutor isn't massively keen on them but allowed that they're very good for vegetarians or vegans. Unfortunately, this might mean that I have a solid excuse to get one. (I don't need another cook's knife; we already have... three or possibly four.)

We also discussed sharpening! Quick points:

I had not heard the "five to or five past the hour" mnemonic for estimating the angle at which to hold the blade, but that... is in fact straightforward and makes me much less anxious about Doing It Wrong, hurrah.
It is in fact okay to run the knife both ways across the steel; you do not in fact just gotta sharpen one way only. (This... makes things quicker, surprise!)
It's still important to wipe the edge of the blade down with a damp cloth before using it on food again (and if you're bracing the steel against a solid surface, brace it on said cloth to minimise risk of slipping).
Sharpen your knives back up... basically after every vegetable. Or, slightly more usefully, ideally approximately every time you change tasks, e.g. I was told that this was a good question (my inner teachers' pet glowed), but one that they possibly... hadn't... quite... anticipated despite the variety of steels laid out around the workbench for us to look at, because they hadn't actually provided cloths for us to use, up until I started actually sharpening my knife fairly frequently and others followed suit. One the one hand, I feel slightly bad about this (because many of these people had never sharpened knives before and it's entirely possible the tutors were in fact wincing at the amount of work they were going to have to do subsequently to sort out the mess) and on the other, I learned things! Hurrah!
Carbon steel takes a better edge and therefore also blunts more quickly than folded or Damascus steel. (Folded steel knives are generally heavier, possibly?) Either will last you a lifetime, taken care of properly; one-piece knives or riveted handles are best. (I mean. I hadn't been intending to get anything with the handle glued on, but I'm amused that those are Well Known to actually just... fall off...)
And in fact possibly the most life-changing thing I learned was my knives can indeed be sharper than that and it does in fact make a massive positive difference so yes, Alex, it is worth investing more time and energy in keeping them properly sharp. (Guess what I've spent a chunk of this evening on.)

Cook's knife

Skills covered:

celery -- rolling chop
onion -- dice
potato -- cube
carrot -- baton
leek -- julienne
garlic -- cross-copping, pureeing
herbs -- cross-chopping, chiffonade, How To Do A Chive

Being shown it in person, and having someone watch me and comment, and having a properly sharp knife, means I have finally got the hang of the "rolling chop", which is something I've been a little dubious about for some time.

(We started out being shown how to hold our hands in a claw and use our index knuckle to guide the blade to enable us to chop fast and safe;

evilsusan showed me this several years ago, and happily it has more or less become second nature at this point.)

I asked nerdy questions about the onion (vertical cuts tip-to-root or angled ones? what's the difference? to which the answer was, loosely translated, "vertical cuts are safer but will give you a slightly less even chop, so if you're a massive pedant you can use angled cuts but like fuck are we teaching that to a bunch of freshly-minted amateurs"), and was informed (which I had not previously known) that the worst of the makes-you-cry chemicals are concentrated near the root end, so you wanna disturb that as little as possible. I'm slightly dubious and need to look it up, but... not right now. There's a photo guide on the Leiths website that I found quite helpful. Also: onions are Tol, such that sometimes you will just have to lift the tip of the knife off the board in order to cut them efficiently, and that's fine.

Potatoes and carrots we squared off before cubing via batons; apparently (1) carrots are slightly less prone to bending if you don't let the batons get any longer than about 5cm, and (2) getting actually even and square carrot batons is enough of a pain that it's one of the things proper students doing longer courses get examined on. Mine were mostly trapeziums. On the one hand I sort of want to practise until I actually do have a reliable square cross-section; on the other, for my purposes I really don't actually care that much.

Julienning leeks, my reaction was broadly "I am never actually going to do this at home", and then our instructor pointed out that you can flash-fry the julienned strips and use them as a garnish on soups and salads and I was abruptly sold on it, albeit somewhat resentfully. The deal being: you cut the leek into segments (about 5cm long, because consistency), you cut the segments in half lengthwise, and then you peel off three-or-so layers of leek at a time, flatten them, and chop them finely. This is a tremendous faff and I was a little alarmed and surprised to realise halfway through my leek that I was taking much longer than everyone else... and another few minutes to realise that I was julienning the entire thing, where the majority of my classmates had entirely reasonably decided that having Shown They Could Do It they were going to do the rest of the vegetable as the bias-cut ovals we'd also been shown, and told go well in tarte tatin. (Which I'd decided I didn't want to do, because I'm confident in my ability to cut leeks on the diagonal, but I still had a brief moment before I realised what was going on.)

The Garlic Bureaucracy was explained to us; main take-homes for me here are (1) rotate it every time you get a convenient flat surface that's wider than the garlic is long/tall because it's less faff, (2) sprinkle the board with a pinch of salt (because the combination of this and sharp knives makes garlic much less sticky and miserable to deal with), and (3) having cross-chopped to a fine dice you can then use the knife flat (towards the edge of the board or you can't get it flat enough) to gradually scrape the garlic into a paste. (Adam did much better at producing a fine even paste than I did! I was impressed.)

Finally in this section: herbs! Basil was chiffonaded, i.e., stripped off the stem (gently), stacked ~half a dozen leaves high, rolled lengthways (this was the part I'd previously missed), and then cut across the roll to give very fine, minimally-bruised strips. I'd previously read descriptions of chiffonading but hadn't quite got my head around what was involved; hurrah for learning things. The other revelation here was chives: cut the bundle in half, rotate them so the cut ends are all in one place, bundle them up firmly in your claw, and tap the end with the flat of your knife to get them all lined up, then go. (Coriander and time we cross-chopped, again bundling them all up and chopping finely, and... yep, sharper knife means finer cut.)

This knife was the bulk of the day, and I am now feeling much more confident that (1) my fundamental technique is fine, and (2) I can get better and faster and more consistent.

Office (paring) knife.

Apparently so called because it's a smaller knife of a style that one used to take into the office, with which to e.g. pare one's apple at lunch!

Used for "airwork" (Leiths terminology for paring etc done off the chopping board), and for more delicate work (they're about half the thickness of a cook's knife).

We used these on (banana) shallots and chilli.

Shallots we treated a lot like onions, though we were encouraged to try dicing one half with an office knife and one with a cook's knife (having done the initial cuts with the office knife), in order to compare speed and results. Our tutor did cut these slightly on the camber. I preferred using the paring knife throughout; A preferred using the cook's knife for the second round of slicing. I am wondering how much of this is just down to the difference in our hand sizes.

Chillis we scored, halved, deseeded (using a teaspoon) (which I would... probably not bother with at home), and then flattened out on the board (skins up) to dice. (I was fine continuing to use my finger as a guide at that point; A struggled, presumably because larger hands.)

Fruit knife

A short serrated knife. Apparently Yotam Ottolenghi used to teach at Leiths occasionally before he got famous, and loves serrated knives and uses them for Everything. This is understandably viewed as slightly eccentric (serrated knives take longer to dull but you can't sharpen them and they require a different chopping motion).

We were to notice how we automatically used more of a sawing motion with these.

Tomatoes we quartered, deseeded (sliding the knife round the inside of the quarter from base to tip) and then cut into a concassé (coarse-ish dice). These we flattened out skin-down -- we were using out-of-season tomatoes so they were quite firm, but (1) if you cut tomatoes skin-up (as we did the chilli) you're likely to smoosh all the flesh into incoherence, and (2) given that we were using a fruit knife (and a sawing motion) rather than an office knife the chances of failing to cut through the skin properly were much reduced.

Oranges we topped, tailed, pared, and segmented. This... was the job that was least like anything else I've done, and the one I was by far least competent at (though I was improving towards the end of my second orange) -- we were aiming for pith-free wedges with a minimum of flesh stuck to the peel, and my results were... messy and uneven.

Upside: it helped me articulate what I dislike about Large Oranges, which is indeed the texture of the membrane! So that's something to reflect on, even if it doesn't change my behaviour at all.

What we made

Chives, parsley, thyme and some of the garlic paste were combined with salted butter. This is now in our fridge waiting to be eaten (more of).

Tomatoes, chilli, shallots, basil, and some more of the garlic were combined with olive oil and red wine vinegar to make a salsa. This too we have brought home, and subsequently eaten one of our four (!) tubs with dinner, which was burritos, because I was having a craving.

Oranges were combined with caramel (which we were not allowed to make ourselves, which I consider entirely understandable) to be Oranges In Caramel as A Dessert, which again we have brought home with us.

The vegetables various we were encouraged to bag up and take home with us for use at home, which A & I promptly did, which has the bonus that we were out of onions... and now we are not. So far onions have gone into refried beans, potato cubes have turned into half-arsed patatas bravas, and everything else is languishing in the fridge to be used another day.

There was bonus leftover caramel sauce, which A and I also won two tubs of, because nobody? else? wanted it? so that's a win!

Closing notes

Having finished the teaching and had the workbench cleared up after us, it was laid for lunch: a "Leiths Ploughman", which is apparently a standard thing, which came with a lovely white wine and amazing pickled onions, I now officially actually like pickled onions, good grief.

I had a fantastically good time, I've learned a fair amount, everyone involved was lovely, and I am inevitably contemplating whether there are any other courses I both want to and reasonably can do. At a point in the future.

But "level up at knife skills, possibly via some formal teaching" has been on my aspirations list for a while, and now I've done it! And gosh does the skill acquisition feel good.

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