This week’s theme has been quite a challenge. I’ve struggled all week to decide on a dish. Everything I had in mind didn’t quite stick to the theme. The challenge is to display one cutting skills. Throughout our cooking life we’ve all been doing some cooking and chopping in some ways or another. However, we’ve rarely taken a minute to think that what we were doing was a julienne cut, an allumet, a rondelle, or any other one of the French terminology used to described a culinary cut. But above all the challenge was to decide how to showcase this particular skill in a post.
As long as I can remember I have always favoured cutting my vegetables using a knife rather than relying on the slicer. It is always very handy to have a good hand in the kitchen. Writing these words I wonder if this is where the term “kitchen-hand” was invented. But I digress. I read somewhere that most chefs would teach their staff the claw grip technique to keep their fingers safe from sharp blades when preparing food. I can’t quite remember when I’ve mastered the technique, but every now and then I still manage to slice some skin off my fingers. My husband, impressed with my skills, have tried to learn it too but after a few cut and bruised finger tips he has decided to put it in the too hard category. And yet the claw grip can help speed up the food preparation while preventing unnecessary injury in the kitchen,
To come back to my initial point I wasn’t sure how to present this particular theme. Generally I would write a story about why I decided to prepare a particular dish and then I would provide the ingredients followed by the method to prepare the dish. I don’t think it will work this week. Moreover, I’ve also chosen to take less pictures and provide more gifs content to showcase the dish. I think it demonstrate the cutting skills at its core and is likely to have a better impact on those reviewing the content of the post.
For this week I’ve chosen to do a simple salad with an aioli sauce as seasoning. I’ve managed to get some lovely and vividly lively vegetable from the market. I’ve chosen some cherry tomatoes, colourful capsicum, red onion, white radish, red radish, avocado, baby beetroot and baby spinach leaves. I’ve used a vegan yogurt for my aioli sauce and considering how yummy it tasted this is not the last time I’ll be trying it. I even managed to slice in some thinly sliced garlic into the sauce. To make my life easy I’ve started with the harder vegetables and progress with the softer ones.
Without further ado this is how I’ve set up my salad and plated my dish.
Good luck to everyone.
I hope you enjoy it!
Bon appétit!
- I started up with the carrots. I first sliced it in three equal parts and then cut the carrot lengthways in thick slices. Once I’m done I cut it again into matchsticks to create my julienne cut.
- With the remaining carrots, I’ve carefully made 7 incision lengthways and then carefully sliced them sideways into thin slices to make my tournaged carrots, i.e. carrot cut 7 sides. This one was a bit harder as if I go thinner it would break midway but thicker is harder (from a strength point of view) to cut through.
- After deseeding the capsicum, I've cut them lengthways into fine julienne.
- Next was the white radish. First I’ve peeled the skin off and proceeded to cut one-inch rounds to make my rondelle.
- As I had some spare radish left, I thought I would try a 10 side cut (not sure if this exist but I was excited to try it). Once again I’ve made 10 incisions lengthways on the radish and then cut one-inch rounds to create the 10 side cut.
- I wasn’t sure what would be best for the cherry tomatoes. Traditionally they would be halved and that would be it. But I thought I would sliced them in quarters. And the juices oozing out of the tomatoes just made it so interesting to work with.
- I then chose to slice my red onion half moon. This ensure that the onion remained crunchy and retain most of its flavour in the salad.
- For the red radish I like how delicate they looked when sliced in very thin rondelle and that was my choice for this salad.
- For the avocado, cut in half and remove the seed. Then gently remove the skin. Place the flat side down on a cutting board and slice using the tip of your knife and then fan out.
- Lastly, I’ve quickly chopped some garlic and diced very thinly to add to the aioli.
- Then I just assembled everything on the plate and added the baby beetroot (cut in quarters) to complete the salad. I’ve used a handful of feta cheese that I’ve crumbed all over the salad.
