Lesson 3: Introduction to Knife Skills

Today was a pretty exciting day because we finally got to take out our fresh knives and put them to work!  We began today's lesson with vegetable ID.  I was hoping we would get to taste the different veggies, but he basically just showed us some of the more foreign vegetables and explained what they were and how to cook with them.  

Next, we set up our cutting board stations and each grabbed a pepper, carrot, celery stalk, tomato and onion.  We got our first lesson on chopping and then small diced our first tomato.  I love chopping vegetables and have a lot of experience chopping, so I had no problem doing the small dice. We went into the harder cuts, like julienne, fine julienne, brunois, and fine brunois.  I was extremely happy to get positive feedback from Chef Allen as he complimented all my cuts and said they were "perfect" and "beautiful"  wahoooo!  

At the end of class a lady came in to talk about careers in the food industry and Chef Allen heated up some fresh bread for us to snack on :)    

That was pretty much it for the day.. tomorrow we're going to do more chopping and learn how to do a medium dice.  We're also doing cheese ID tomorrow which I'm sure will be very delicious!!