Week 10: the preemptive Band-Aid

This weekend was all about braising and stews, these techniques require a lot of cooking time, which meant that we had little prepping time AND 2 people from our class didn’t show up, so imagine the chaos. It was simply a version if the Amazing Race in the kitchen, each recipe had at least 10 to 20 ingredients and all had to cook for at least one and half hours. Let me tell you, I have never butchered, marinated and seared a piece of meat that fast, gathered the ingredients and make a great dish, however the dish had to wait, we could not finish in time on Saturday and so into the fridge it went, it would be cooked the next day. It was not easy, but at least there was no precision cutting involved so no complaints. Or at least I thought.

The knife skill drill was being saved for Sunday afternoon.  They cut we were about to learn and have to master is called Tourné. Let me explain, the shape resembles an American football but it has to have 7 sides. If I thought medium square diced potatoes were hard this was like climbing the Himalaya. You can imagine how hard I was laughing; there was no way in hell I was going to be able to do that. In comes the Chef from another class, specially invited to show us how to tourné a potato.  “You quarter the potato take your pairing knife, make the first cut at a 58 angle, twist over, cut, cut, twist, cut and voila this is a tourné” What???? , “Chef can you please do it again?” “You quarter the potato take your pairing knife, make the first cut at a 58 angle, twist over, cut, cut, twist, cut and voila this is a tourné” Ok…. Thanks.  He says goodbye and tell us to not feel overwhelmed, it takes a lot of practice and time to master this cut, practice, practice and to imagine that our first attempt is a million times better than his first attempt more than 20 years ago. He will be giving a 3-hour workshop next week, he strongly suggested we sign up. Encouraging.

So I grab my potato, go to my board, and say a silent prayer: please God don’t let me cut myself. I swear I stared at that quartered potato for at least 10 minutes, I didn’t even know where to start! How, how, how! Do you make an oval/round shape out of this??? But I had to at least make a cut, which I did, not working, second cut, I make a square, third cut looks like a diamond, and fourth cut a triangle. But hey no blood! The chef comes to my board and says,…"ok no”. Let’s get out another knife that may help you, I take out my kit, and she grabs a little knife that looks like Captain’s hook hand. And I am like really? That’s just scary, but she was right, it started making it better…sort of. But I still couldn’t make the right cuts! She comes by again, and says “you are scared of cutting yourself”…Is it that obvious? So she says “go put a Band-Aid on your thumb, and 2 or 3 latex fingers on top, and go for it, that way you can’t cut yourself”. Huh! So I did, and it helped, but I was really embarrassed, I felt like the little kid who needs help on the monkey bars and needs a little step to reach them while everybody else just jumps and grab it.

I have terrible hand coordination; it sometimes takes me 10 minutes to put on a bracelet, I blame my mom, the other day I asked her “did I have that toy that where you had to insert a star, a circle, a square?” of course she didn’t remember, which makes me believe I never had it, so there! That’s the reason Ja! And downhill from there. I never could cut a straight line, color within the lines, or thread a needle to save my life. So I will practice and practice and I will make a tourné damn it!

And as always I can’t wait until next Saturday, oh by the way got on A on course 3! Yes!.

PS: those are NOT my potatoes