Tourné This!

Or, “Will I EVER learn to cut a potato?!?”


It was back to potatoes tonight, this time a tourné (to turn). I swear, I am gonna get these knife skills down even if it kills me.

I almost tourné’d my thumb off. ☺

We used small, new potatoes, started at one end with a bird’s beak knife, then turned the potato away from us while holding the blade along the end, cutting a curve across the surface. We then followed that along, making curved slices along the length of the potato, all the way around, until we (supposedly) had a football shape.

Mine looked like sawed-off lumps of, well, you know.

I barely even had the basic instructions down, and I think Chef was rather frustrated when he saw I’d tourné’d about a dozen of these things wrong by lopping off the ends as well. Sheesh, I gotta take better notes…

In all, it was quite a learning experience. I found a really good video on this technique on YouTube, though the guy does it real differently than we were taught in class (his way looks easier!).

There’s also some decent discussion on it over at Chef2Chef. I love one poster’s little tagline: “If you don't talk to your cat about catnip, who will?” Heh heh! Stoned cats…

A’ight, it’s gettin’ late. I’m hittin’ the sack. Namaste.