Cutting vegetables is something that each and every home-cook think they would have mastered – including me. However, after today’s lesson….vegetable cutting takes on a whole new level!

For lesson 1, we spent 2.5 hours on doing just one thing – cutting vegetables. It includes zesting, segment, julienne, brunoise, mirepoix…among others. Everything has to be cut to precision (ie. Julienne = 2mm by 2mm by 40mm) and for a wild/crazy moment I actually thought of bringing a ruler to class the next time 😛

Everything that we needed to accomplish for today’s prac (these were done by Chef John during demo session)

Garlic paste was on the list as well as chopped parsley – both relatively easy. We also made a bouquet garni – which is a combination of herbs wrapped in muslin cloth (popiah-style) and tied. It is used like a seasoning packet for soups and stocks – which we will be preparing tmr!

To keep up the excitement, I went home…dropped my bag, opened the fridge and took out every vegetable/fruit I could lay my hands on. Since I did not manage to take a photo of my work in class, I made sure I snapped a couple of shots of what I did at home –

As can be seen – I only have onions, carrots and lemon in my fridge 😛

I ended up with too much carrots and onions:(….so I made egg white omelette! 😀

Takeaway of the day: Chopping greens is far from easy – especially to achieve precision. (I cannot imagine when we have to start turning vegetables from this saturday – it’s going to be tough I heard!). The other major takeaway (for me at least) is that we are not required to wash our own dishes at LCB – WHEE BIG NEWS!