The highlight of my weekend

I finally managed to do a decent-looking tourné after buying a turning knife on Saturday from Kitchen Pro in Shangri-la mall, Ortigas. It's a small knife with a curved blade that measures around 2in. long.

I practiced with the knife, first on candles (too hard), then on jicama, and finally on soap. This was the product of my soapy efforts:

Why are they so important? My grade (for my practical midterm exam later) and future depend on these seven-sided, football-shaped buggers. While a huge improvement over a previous effort, they are far from perfect, so I will practice every chance that I get. And who knew that Zest soap would be the key to excellent knife skills? The soap has just the right firmness for practicing on. It reminds me, in fact, of the flesh of an eggplant. One also does not have to worry about discarding or consuming pounds of vegetable; just melt the soap in a little boiling water, re-form, and practice again!

Stupidly, I also got cut on two fingers while washing the tourne knife, but I take comfort in the fact that I was cut while cleaning the knife, not while I was cutting with it, so that means I was using it correctly.

Days 15-16: In which rocking saves the day

These are our final exams. The written one covered everything we'd previously studied, except for food safety, sanitation and nutrition.

The practical one, which I was more worried about, required each student to fillet a tilapia, brunoise an onion, and make the julienne and batonnet cuts on a jicama.

I was doing fine in spite of my onion brunoise being too large. Chef Vic praised my fish - hooray, practicing at home paid off! - and my clean station, but the jicama was the spanner in the works. I remembered the wrong dimensions and used the measurements for batonnet - 1/4in by 1/4in by 2-1/2in - for my julienne. My finished product was too large, of course, and if I'd been the teacher I would have failed myself, but at least, said chef Vic, I had the rocking motion down almost pat, and that saved the day. I think I got 85% for my practical, which is more than great, considering the flubbed julienne cut.

Day 10: In which we earn our first battle scars

As expected, some of us got cuts while practicing our knife skills last night in class. We earned some sort of dubious school record after eight people, including myself, got injured. I got my cut attempting to tourné a jicama (that's the real English word for singkamas, not turnip). The tourné, where you make a vegetable into something resembling a seven-sided football, is the most challenging cut of all to master. My turned vegetables, especially the one of the eggplant, looked like monstrous alien invaders more apropos for a science fiction B-movie.

My other cuts were also uneven, although Chef Vic, our instructor, praised my batonnets and minced garlic. By God, I'll keep attempting the tourné and the other cuts, even if I manage to fillet all of my fingers. My friend and house neighbor A has even kindly agreed to let me do the cutting and chopping for her Monday dinner.

Tonight, meanwhile, is fish and seafood night. This is one of the things we're going to be doing:

Day 9: In which we get acquainted with our best friend

Last night was knife skills lecture and demo. These are all the cuts we have to master (click the picture to zoom in):


Tonight, we do the cuts ourselves. Since students are not allowed to take videos in class, I turn to the old reliable stand-by, YouTube.