Kitchen 1 - Knife skills

So today was the first day in the kitchen. Knife skills was the topic of the first lesson. And here is what we were working with:



These vegetables and herbs (celery, onions, carrots, garlic and parsley) we had to cut in different shapes using various methods.


So they ended up looking like this:

It might not look very spectacular. But indeed it was quite hard work doing it according to the methods and techniques.

CARROTS:

• Batons: long, square (not rectangular) pieces
• Cubes (self-explainatory)
• Julienne: also square, but from very thin slices
  

ONIONS:

• Slices - not difficult as it is, but the new slicing technique needs getting used to
  
• Dices - same thing

CELERY:

• Slices - see onions

GARLIC:

• Crushed - press the blade of the knife on the garlic clove, peel it, then slice it thinly. Finally, put a pinch of salt on it and then rub the salt and garlic together with the blades of the knife, crushing it at the same time (I am not sure if that explains it well?!??)
  

PARSLEY:

• Dusted - you get dusted parsley by cross-cutting it and pressing the juice out of the finely cut parsley once in a while until it is super-fine and really dry like dust.

You might not think so but after that first lesson I was a bit exhausted. A lot of info again and you have to really concentrate on the new skills.