Slicing celery with a Chroma 301 chef's knife. (This is neither me nor my knife.) Photo: M. Brandt at Kochmesser.de

Staying true to my “relearn how to cook” objective from earlier this year, I’ve enrolled in a six-class back-to-basics course at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. Gary’s taking the course as well as he, too, would like to be able to cook simple or gourmet dishes without cracking open a cookbook each time.

First up: Knife skills

In this first class of the Back to Basics series, Knife Skills, we learned the parts of a knife (tip, edge, spine, bolster, heel, tang, handle, rivets) and the materials or structure that makes a quality knife a quality knife. I now know how to hold, hone, sharpen, clean, and store my knives, and how several knife-users can safely coexist in a busy kitchen. I organized all the tips and tenets learned into two categories: Respect Your Cutlery and Respect your Safety.

Respect your cutlery

• Keep knives sharp.
• Keep knives honed.
• Keep knives clean; wash immediately after use if possible.
• Use the right knife for the task.
• Store knives smartly and securely.
• Only use knives to cut food.
• Do not wash knives in the dishwasher.

Respect your safety (knives edition)

• Always use a cutting board.
• Secure cutting board to counter (put a wet dishcloth or rubber shelf liner under the board, or use a board with rubber feet).
• Use the right knife for the task.
• Find or create a flat surface on the item to be cut. Rest this surface against the board. (Not sure how to follow this advice to create onion rings.)
• Cut away from yourself.
• Keep an eye on your blade.
• Keep the other eye on your fingertips.
• Clean one knife a time.
• Don’t leave knife in sink full of water.
• Hold the supporting hand in a claw position to prevent fingertipectomies. (The hardest tip for me to follow.)
• “A falling knife has no blade; do not attempt to catch it.”

Choosing the right knife for the job

Hong (our instructor) showed us some common types of kitchen knifes, their uses, and how best to use each type:

• Chef’s knife. The most-used kitchen knife. Common blade sizes are 8-inch, 10-inch, and 12-inch (8-inch is a popular size). The blade can be narrow or thick. A thick-bladed chef’s knife can be used like a cleaver to hack away at chicken bones and such.
• Bread knife. My favorite kind of knife. It is serrated (has teeth) and has a narrow blade. Serrated knifes, especially bread knives, are great for slicing items with a lot of different surfaces and textures going on, or items such as cakes that have compressible, spongy textures too fragile for a toothless blade to slice through without damaging the food. A bread knife is good for slicing crusty bread (of course), tomatoes, pineapples, pies, and chopping chocolate. (This surprised me; I’ve always used a chef’s knife to chop chocolate.)
• Paring knife. Perfect for in-hand peeling of foods such as garlic and apples. Also good for chopping small items such as garlic, separating citrus fruit into sections, and hulling strawberries. Because paring knifes are used for a lot of in-hand tasks, using one safely requires a lot of control. One caveat of many: Make sure you can see the tip of the knife when paring.
• Boning knife. Use a boning knife to trim meats from bones. A flexible blade that can easily slide through and around bones is key. We don’t own a boning knife probably because we rarely buy whole chickens or bone-in meats. We shall strive to be more adventurous in this realm!
• Fillet knife. For filleting fish, of course. Has a thin, flexible blade that can slide right through the flesh of fish and detour around bones as necessary. Another knife we don’t own; we generally buy our fish already filleted.

When I had my own Henkels 4-star knife set, I used the chef’s knife and the paring knife most of all. The bread knife was a noble runner-up, as I was always happy to have some extra crusty bread, or pumpkin or banana bread at the ready. Gary had his own Henckels Professional “S” set, so after a period of cohabitation and our respective knife blocks commandeering precious food-preparation space, I offered to find a new home for my blades (I kept the bread knife, though, because Gary’s set didn’t have one). I am in love with his Wustof Culinar Santoku knife, which I now use more often than the chef’s knife, even for slicing and chopping. But love can be blind; after the brief these-are-some-common knifes presentation, I decided to reacquaint myself with the chef’s knife.

Practicing knife techniques

Hong had set up cutting stations for each of us before class. Each station included a cutting board anchored to the counter with a sheet of something akin to nonskid shelf liner, a chef’s knife, a paring knife, and a vegetable peeler, plus our test subjects—an orange, a carrot, an onion, a pepper, a celery stalk, a few garlic cloves, and a potato. Every two students were given an enormous zucchini to share. Also shared were bench scrapers, bowls of salt, and large garbage bowls.

Per Hong’s demonstrations and instructions, I peeled and de-pithed my orange by cutting off one end, placing the flat end on the board, and using curved, downward strokes of the paring knife to detach pith ‘n peel simultaneously. Then, with the naked orange resting in my left hand, I cut it into segments, leaving the inter-segment membranes behind. Then I ate the sections. The carrot was julienned, then minced. Half the onion was sliced into equal-sized pieces by way of a method I’d never used before but won’t describe here, the other half was diced. The pepper was also julienned after its top and bottom were lopped off, the remaining torso cut vertically then flattened into a strip, and the membranes cleared away. Rondelle was the technique used to prepare the celery stalk. I smashed the garlic cloves with a side of the chef’s knife, peeled and minced them, then added some salt and tried to mush them into a paste. The potato was sliced into batonnet sticks (about 2.5″ by .25″ by .25′). (Please pardon my naive use of these French cooking terms.)

The fruits (and vegetables) of our labors were collected throughout the session; we then prepared ourselves a very tasty lunch of fresh vegetable salad, pasta with vegetables, grilled crusty bread, rosemary-parmesan french fries, and sliced pineapple and watermelon. (Hong’s demo included cutting up pineapples and melons and carving little flowers out of celery root, but we did not practice these techniques in class.)

I’d still like to know how to make uniform onion coins (for sandwiches and onion rings) without using a mandolin. The two techniques I need to practice most are keeping my left-hand in the claw position while the right hand cuts away, and keeping my slices, dices, and minces uniform. I’m not watching what’s happening behind the knife; I’m not making sure my cuts will be the right size before I make the cuts. So much to learn, so much to practice . . . !