After a morning subjected to the wonders that is Culinary Math (I’m horrible in all things mathmatical and always have been), we were finally allowed to enter the “Temple”, also known as Skills Kitchen 1 and try out those shiny new Mercer knives. I’m firmly convinced someone is going to get hurt in there with the bunch I have in class, and I’ve taken to working on the tables furthest away from everything else simply because I won’t have bulls running through the china shop behind me while carrying extremely sharp cutlery.
Don’t get me wrong, hustle is fine and normal – shoving while you’re holding a 10″ blade that’s razor sharp isn’t. Hot Topic girl and myself stay out of the worst of the action and have already learned to jump in front of the line or simply wait until all the ramrods are done dealing with whatever we are all trying to get to. I was shoved forcibly while holding my knife – all because someone wasn’t paying attention and thinks saying “excuse me” is a perfect excuse to shove your way into where I’m standing without giving me a chance to move.
My classical knife cuts? Not bad, but I need some practice. I have a habit of somehow angling my blade so instead of perfectly brunoise, I have little parallellograms. Chef giggled over that one and immediately asked if anyone could cut a rhombus. My problem is, I don’t know how I’m forcing that blade to angle, so I’m not quite sure how to prevent it. Sometimes being a lefty has it’s problems, because I do strange things to compensate, but no one can tell me exactly what I’m doing so it’s a trial and error game.
