A carrot shaped using the tournage technique
My classmates and I lined up in front of Chef X, waiting for him to judge our shaped potatoes. The potatoes were supposed to look like bullets. But some of us had carved potato wedges into stumpy fingers or whittled them down to fat toothpicks.
In French classical cooking, tournage is the practice of shaping and carving a vegetable. You “turn” your vegetable in one hand, so you can create a shape out of it with your other hand. The purpose of the technique is to make the vegetable look good and make sure it cooks evenly.
“This will become your worst nightmare,” Chef X had said, holding up the perfect torpedo he made for his first tournage demo.
He was right.
We had cleaned up after cooking shaped vegetables when Chef directed us to make four shaped potatoes in four minutes.
I struggled to even hold my paring knife and anchor the potato wedge with my small hands. When I pierced the flesh with my knife, I made jagged edges until I managed to smooth them out.
Chef did tournage so effortlessly. During his demo, he deftly cut curves in a potato wedge with his right hand as he turned the wedge in his left hand. All that was left was a shaped vegetable that was 5 centimeters long—a cocotte.
My joints began to swell from holding my knife, letting pain creep in. Even if I put down my knife, it took a second or two longer for my fingers to straighten.
I tried not to agonize too much over my potatoes or I would miss the four-minute deadline. We kept our scraps and our shaped potatoes in a bowl of water to prevent them from turning brown.
I waited in line and presented Chef with my stumpy nubs.
“They have no shape,” he said. He took one, made quick curved motions and my nub turned into a bullet.
I knew the potatoes looked bad. I just didn’t know when they would ever look better.
Other posts:
Why I'm going to culinary school
Panic before my first class at culinary school
Day 1: Who said cutting vegetables is easy?
Day 2: Cutting, boiling and sauteing vegetables in 35 minutes
Day 3: Culinary class leftovers
6 comments:
I really need to see how this looks like. Get a mini camera in there! :)
I added a photo. That's kind of what a shaped carrot is supposed to look like.
I didn't realize there were so many shapes of veggies that have names. Keep up the good work! :)
What a great post...I bet you want to avoid any shaped veggies for awhile:)
Have faith Grasshopper!
I'm so happy to have just found your blog (found it from your post on The Hot Plate), and this post! I'm in my second week at FC, and last night was tournage. Looking forward to reading the rest of your posts about your expereince at FCI (and what I have to look forward to)!
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