Okay, sorry for the cheese-ball title of this entry, but it is a food blog after all. Plus, puns
used to be regarded as the highest form of humor. I promise. They said so on
True Blood, and vampires would know, right?
So ‘twas a dark and stormy night at my dear older sisters dwelling
when I decided to cook for her, her husband, and her five mewling babes. Fortunately
for me, my sis happens to be a licensed O&M-Braille instructor. Note to
those not in-the-know: O&M (Orientation and mobility) teacher - typically
instructs the visually impaired and
blind at an early age to know directions, cane use, and how to trick sighted
people into serving us when we’re too lazy to get somewhere on our own. There are
also some independent living skills they endeavor to impart, and it was this
knowledge I wished to tap that night. Here’s what I learned about chopping
stuff up for a nice tossed salad as part of the meal.
Stuff You’ll Need:
Sharp knife
Cutting board (preferable a flexible bendy one)
A couple of ingredient bowls
Stuff you put in it
2 bell peppers (your choice of color)
Spring mix leafy vegetables for substance
1 Cucumber
1 Zucchini
Mini-Portabella Mushrooms (5 or 6 per person)
Large onion
Salad dressing
On Chopping
Now, this is rather counterintuitive. But I promise it works
well IF YOU ARE FOCUSED AND PAYING
ATTENTION AT ALL TIMES. For this reason, the very first step in chopping up
veggies is to remove all distractions from earshot. Refer above to the mewling
and hungry Cherubic Quintet. Banished!
Start with something non-threatening like a cucumber or zucchini.
The grip is the most important factor in keeping things under your control,
both on the veggie, and on the knife.
·
Knife Hand:
Curl your pinky, ring, and middle fingers around the handle of the knife. Now
with your thumb and pointer, pinch the flat edge of the blade’s base, point
away from you and sharp edge down. You have the most control with these two
digits.
·
Veggie
Hand: When grasping the cucumber, make sure your
fingers are clasping the far side of the thing in a claw-like grip. That is,
make your fingers bow outward so that only your fingertips, not your
Braille-reading finger-pads are on the surface. Use your palm to steady it. This
is the crazy part, but it works. With your pointer finger as a guide, set it so
the flat edge of the knife is pressed up against your pointer fingernail, and
align the knife where you want to make the first cut. You gotta, gotta, GOTTA
make sure your finger stays perpendicular to the surface of veggie, the same
direction your knife is going! Otherwise, this won’t be a finger-licking good
recipe since you won’t have one to slurp.
Once you’re confident your alignment is good, use a sawing
motion to dig into the poor helpless vegetable. I try to angle the knife so
there is some forward pressure on the far tip, which should be pointing away
from you. Did I mention yet that you need to have your fingers clawed and out
of the way of your knife? Ok. Just makin’ sure. Do it!
Now that you know how to do it, here’s the order of
operations.
1.
Wash the veggie.
2.
Prepare for surgery and proceed:
a.
Peppers: Cut off the stem top using our
technique above. Slice the inner membrane out to reach the hollow innards. Dump
seeds. Pull out the little fleshy strips that line the inner walls. Now just
use the natural ridges as guides for your knife. It may be easier to cut the
thing in half and start slicing from the inside. If the long vertical strips
your making are too thick, use the technique above to cut them down to size.
b.
Onion: Cut off the top and bottom. To peel, use
the knife to make an easy-pull-tab on the peel by cutting straight into the
defenseless creature. Then just rip the whole layer off and trash it. Now, set
it on a flattened edge upright and slice down the middle. Cry. Set both halves
on the flattened edge you just made. Cry more. Then slice along the grain of
layers using the above method. Weep piteously.
c.
Zucchinis and cucumbers: Just cut off the end
caps. Make nice round slices with our new finger-guide technique.
d.
Mushrooms. Thoroughly wash these since they
typically have dirt and crud still caked on. Dismember the stems and toss ‘em.
Then set them on the flattened surface, and slice them like the cucumbers.
3.
Tip: Since you
are the alignment guide here, you can easily feel how thick you’d like to make
your slices.
4.
Throw all the goodies in a big bowl, including
the spring mix, and get in there with your hands to toss it all up. Or, I
suppose you could be civilized and use some new-fangled utensil like tongs.
Bam! Now you’re a master! When I was doing this, the sound
of my knife hitting the chopping board was occasionally punctuated by the
deathly screams of children as thunder raged outside. The lesson here is that
if I, your hapless Half-Baked Host, can do it without even following my own
advice about distractions, you should definitely have no trouble.
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