Who said cutting vegetables is easy?

First class Friday, June 4, 2010

I cut the side of a turnip as if tires screeched on a car with worn brakes. Across the counter, my classmate, who interned for well-known Chef Thomas Keller, had whizzed through most of the vegetables we had to cut for our first class at The French Culinary Institute. The majority of the sliced, diced, and julienned onions, leeks and carrots on the sheet pan were his. We were presenting them to Chef X as a team.

I cut all but one of the sides of the turnip, turning the root vegetable into a cube with a rounded edge on the left side. My knife squeaked through the block to make slices, or tranches, that were half a centimeter thick. The final rounded edge was discarded. I cut each tranche into sticks that were again half a centimeter thick--- a type of cut called jardinière. (We had to learn French words for all cutting techniques.) Lining up the tips of the sticks against my knife, I cut again, making small cubes, or macedoine.

I was painfully aware how slow I was. I felt so green. Earlier in class, I was about to slice an onion in half when Chef D stopped me, looked at my left hand holding the onion and said, “Like a claw.”

To grip the onion, I bent my forefinger, middle finger and ring finger slightly, hiding the tips, and tucked my thumb behind the others. That way, I’d have less of a chance of cutting myself.

As I sliced my carrots and cabbage, I tried to make sure my movements were like a “choo-choo train” as Chef X described. “Try to do the motion of the steam train,” he said in his French accent.

All vegetables were separated. Peels were thrown into the compost bin. Trimmings of carrots and leeks were dropped into bins at the back of the room so other classes could make stock.

Once, I dropped bits of Savoy cabbage in a bowl of carrot trimmings, forgetting that I wasn’t at home in my own kitchen. Chef X caught me.

“What is that?” he asked, pointing to the bowl. “I made a mistake, Chef,” I said.

“What is that?” he said, pointing to the cabbage vein I had cut out of the leaf before I did a chiffonade.

“Compost,” I replied.

He gave a slight smile and walked away.

Chef X was stern, yet made us laugh. He constantly tested us.

“Where does this go?” he asked, holding up an onion skin he had peeled.

A student took it and dropped it in the compost bin.

“Are you sure that’s compost?” Chef X asked, looking quizzically at the student.

The student hesitated, his face showing doubt even though he could see rotting carrot peels, turnip slices and other vegetables in the bin.

“Oh, it’s compost,” Chef X said, breaking into a sly grin.

At the beginning of class, Chef X told us what he did not tolerate.

“If you have an attitude, I will break you,” he said.

His French accent only put more emphasis on each word.

He was adamant that items were either put in recycle bins, trash or compost.

If Chef X saw any one of us pass by a sink and not pick up food collecting in the drain to be used as compost, he said, “I’m gon’ to mek you clean for the whole class for 19 days.”

“I like the team people,” he said. “I don’ like the individual.”

So as partners, my classmate and I presented our cuttings to Chef X.

“This is good. This is good. This is good,” he said, waving a finger over the cabbage chiffonade, the sliced and diced onions and sliced leeks. Both of us had cut the cabbage. My classmate had cut most of the onions and all the leeks.

“These are too big,” Chef X said, zoning in on the carrots, which my classmate had julienned and cut into even smaller cubed confetti.

When Chef X looked at my turnip cubes, he said, “These are good, but they could be better.”

I took a deep breath. I didn’t fail.

I sat on the subway train headed home, feeling a bud of hope that maybe I could eventually cook like a professional chef.


Other posts:
Panic before my first class at culinary school