05 Basic Skills pt. 1:
week 1

Tuesday November 2, 2004

After two and a half hours in the Fishbowl, the classroom overlooking the Careme Room where we attend our Safety and Sanitation, Food Science, and Nutrition classes, we march up one floor to the Basic Skills kitchen (often by way of the trays of freshly baked bread that are left out by one of the Baking and Pastry kitchens). Once in the kitchen, the class of 30 divides up into partners so that we can prepare the night’s recipes.

My partner for the first three weeks of Basic Skills is Chris Kutina, a thoughtful 24-year old who drives to school from San Jose each night, a good one hour drive each way. By setting up across from one another on our first day in the kitchen, we become partners by default. Bonnie and Diane, two forty-something women who also set up at our table, make up the rest of our table.

After our first day of orientation, we’re anxious to being cooking. However, for most of the first week the stoves and ovens remain off, and Chef Steve doesn’t taste a thing. Instead, we spend our time bent over countless raw potatoes, carrots, and onions, perfecting our knife cuts.

For knife skills, the CCA demands nothing short of perfection. A small-diced potato must be exactly ¼” on all sides, while a julienned carrot stick must be 2 ½” long, with 1/8” sides. Although rulers are available to us as we practice, for our timed knife skills practical examination (worth 20% of our final grade) we must be able to produce those dimensions just by plain instinct. No rulers allowed.

The following ten knife skills are included in our practical examination. We are charged with completing all of them in 30 minutes or less:

Onion cut into small dice (1/4” on all sides).

To cut an onion, Chef Steve demos by first slicing it down the middle from root to tip.

After trimming off the tip of one half and peeling off the papery skin (leaving the root intact), he places it flat on the table, holds it steady with the palm of his non-knife hand, and makes horizontal cuts with the knife parallel to the table every ¼”. He is careful not to slice through the root end, since that is what keeps the onion together.

He then uses his fingertips to keep the onion steady while he slices downwards, perpendicular to the table, with the tip of the knife pointing toward, but not going through, the root end. Again, he makes cuts every ¼”.

To finish, he curls his fingers on top of the onion (keeping his thumb tucked behind), and moves his knife from the tip end to the root end, slicing through the onion every ¼”. Perfect ¼” cubes of onion result.

For the test, Chef Steve encourages us to pick through our diced onion and pick out the most regular pieces to present to him. “I don’t need the whole onion,” he explains, “I just want to see enough so that I can get the idea – maybe a tablespoon. You’ll easily save yourself a few points if you sort through the product you give me first.”

Potato cut into small dice and batonnets
(a 3” long stick with ¼” sides)

Carrot cut into brunoise (1/8” on all sides)
and julienne (a 2 ½” stick with 1/8” sides)

Potatoes and carrots both are squared off on all sides so that every cut will be even. This leads to a large amount of waste, but for the timed knife skills practical, it’s inefficient to waste time on the skinny end of the carrot or the sides of the potato. All waste is either used for stock, or thrown into the large green compost bins at the end of every table.

To make cuts that are in the exact dimensions, we use our knife as a guide. About 2” down the blade from the hilt, manufacturer information is printed on the side of the knife. Using this as a marker, we can easily determine the approximate location of 2 ½” and 3”. Likewise, the top of our knife closest to the hilt is 1/8” thick. We can eyeball that distance and more easily estimate ¼” cuts as well.

Tomato concassé (peeled and seeded tomatoes cut into ¼” dice)

Peeled, seeded tomatoes are far easier to cut into an even dice than a whole raw tomato. In addition, removing the seeds prevents the cut tomato from becoming watery.

To peel a tomato, Chef Steve first removes the core and then scores an ‘X’ over the tip of one end. He then drops it into a pot of boiling water for 20-30 seconds, and quickly moves it to a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. If you don’t stop the cooking, the tomato quickly becomes too mushy to cut. The blanched tomato can easily be peeled with a paring knife, especially if you start from the scored end. To seed it, cut the tomato in half and use your fingers to remove the pulp.

Spinach chiffonade (shredded leaves cut 1/8” wide)

The chiffonade cut is a way of attractively slicing leafy vegetables, such as spinach, lettuce, or basil. Unlike mincing, the chiffonade cut leaves the greens in long, slender pieces appropriate for mounding up in a garnish, or strewing over pasta or salads.

To make the cut, pile up several leaves, one on top of the other, and roll them tightly lengthwise into a cylinder. Make 1/8” slices through the leaves, and then use your fingers to separate out the long, thin strips of green into wispy piles.

Parsley, minced

Garlic, minced

When mincing either parsley or garlic, it’s most important to create pieces of uniform size. As Chef Steve reminded us repeatedly, it’s often worth picking out the larger pieces before presenting the cuts for grading.

To make the mince cut fast and efficient, pile up the garlic or parsley and use a rocking cut with your non-knife hand held over the tip of the knife for stability (this also keeps your fingers out of the way of the fast-moving blade). Your knife should never loose contact with the table. Periodically run your knife lightly over the minced vegetable to expose larger pieces that need more work.

Turned new potato (a football-shaped nugget with exactly seven sides)

The most challenging of all the cuts, the turned new potato resembles a 1-2” football with exactly seven smooth, curved sides. This cut is so challenging and unique that it uses its own blade – a curved paring knife about 2-3” long, with the sharp side along the inner part of the curve. A straight paring knife will also suffice, but makes the cut even more challenging.

To make the cut, trim the ends off a potato and then hold it between the thumb and index finger of your non-knife hand. Using the curved paring knife, make a curved cut down the length of one side, taking up about 1/7th of the potato’s circumference. The trick is to make the cut in a single continuous motion – any jerks or stops will leave a perceptible line in the face that you are trying to make smooth. Repeat around the perimeter of the potato until it has 7 equally smooth and shaped sides.

Turned potatoes are used for roasting, or any other presentation that uses a whole, small potato.

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One week into class, we take a knife skills practice test, where we are timed and graded as if we’re doing the real thing. Chef Steve is strict with his grading, docking points for small dice that are not exactly square, or potato batonnets that measure 1/16” too thick. Most in the class do not even get to the turned potato during this trial, and many students vow to buy carrots, potatoes and onions to practice with at home.

I spend much of the weekend practicing my cuts, since the turned potato I made for my practice test looks more like a twenty-one-sided diamond, and my julienned carrots always end up wobbly, with one end a different size than the other. It helps that Andrew’s away for the weekend – he doesn’t mind the potato and carrot peelings that the cat tracks all over the house.

On the day of the test I try not to get too nervous. I can’t be sure, but I’m about as stressed out for this test as I’ve been for any test in high school or college. I tell myself to take it slow, and be methodical, and everything will work out.

Twenty minutes into the thirty minute test, I’ve finished my diced and batonnet-ed potatoes, my bruniosed and julienned carrots, and my diced onion. I have five more cuts to go, including the turned potato, but the others are faster, and I’m feeling okay about finishing everything in time. At that point, Chef Dylan, one of the assistant chef instructors in the Skills kitchen, walks by. “I’d redo those onions if you want to get a good score,” he murmurs under his breath, “You need more quantity there – I can’t grade just a few diced pieces.” All of a sudden I’m deep in the weeds -- now I have six cuts to do in the last 10 minutes, and the clock is ticking.

I race through the minced parsley and garlic, rocking the somewhat wobbly table with my chopping. While my tomato blanches I quickly slice a few spinach leaves for the chiffonade, and then finish the concasse. I whittle a new potato down to practically nothing for my tourné cut, and with a minute remaining, I do my best with the second half of the onion that I’d worked on earlier. There’s just no time to measure in the way I normally do. I’m pissed that I managed my time so poorly, and despair of getting anything over 90%. The rest of the night I’m in a crummy mood.

At end of class, Chef Dylan calls out to my half of the kitchen, “Who’s Caroline Carter?” I look up dismally, thinking he’s going to shame me for turning in such a screwed up set of cuts. Instead, he continues, “Caroline Carter got the highest score on this side of the room – a 95.” I’m floored. As expected, I missed 2 points each on the diced onion and the turned potato, plus another point on the julienned carrots (always a little misaligned). However, the rest of my cuts turned out perfectly. Perhaps it was all the practice the weekend before, or perhaps it was sheer luck. Regardless, going home that night I feel like a million bucks.

Next: 06 Basic Skills Pt. 2
Last: 04 Safety and Sanitation

The turned potato is one of the most challenging cuts in the Basic Skills kitchen. It must have exactly 7 equally smooth and shaped sides.