Looking sharp: with a little know-how, you can chop, dice and cube with blinding speed - using kitchen knives - Getting Started

Vegetarian Times, June, 1996 by Catherine Censor Shemo

Tim Aitken, chef and senior instructor at the New York-based Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health, is not like ordinary mortals. He isn't intimidated by multi-ingredient stir-fries, and he doesn't break into a cold sweat over crudites. His secret? He slices, dices and juliennes with the precision and intensity of a late-night infomercial gadget.

If you've been making dinner from prepackaged broccoli florets, salad bars and sacks of frozen veggies, you're not alone. Many harried cooks rely on these shortcuts because they think preparing fresh vegetables is too time-consuming and labor intensive. But Aitken insists that anyone can learn to cut quickly and efficiently. if the wheels of your shopping cart are digging grooves in the frozen-food aisle, get out your cutting board. It's time to learn a little technique.

First, let's talk equipment. According to Aitken, all you really need are two knives: an eight-inch chef's knife for most cutting, and a small paring knife for peeling and finer cuts. A good knife will cost as much as $75 but it's a lifetime investment," Aitken says. The knives should also be razor sharp to make cutting easier. Don't worry about cutting yourself - you're more likely to slice open your hand with a dull knife that forces you to push harder than with a sharp knife that allows you to cut easily and smoothly.

As an additional safety measure, Aitken keeps the hand that holds the vegetable in a "bearclaw" position: Fingertips are bent under the knuckles, away from the cutting blade. Aitken rests the flat of the blade against the knuckles to guide him in the cut. The constant pressure of blade against knuckles also reminds him where his fingers are in relation to the action. He claims he's never cut himself.

We challenged Aitken with the toughest veggies we could find and asked him to tackle them step by step. Here's how he handled them.

1. Hold the broccoli by its thick central "trunk" with the head resting on the cutting board, facing away from you. Cut large florets from the thick stalks and then give the trunk a quarter turn to reveal a new side. Repeat until all florets are removed. 2. Cut a small incision in the base of each floret but don't slice through. 3. Put your thumbs in the incision you've just made and pry apart the floret into smaller pieces. 4. "Whittle" the bark of the trunk by making a thin, starter incision at the base. Peel strip toward you to remove. Rotate trunk and repeat until tough, fibrous layer is removed. 5. Slice horizontally.

1. While you can peel ginger with a standard vegetable peeler, Aitken prefers the squared tip of a chopstick. He rubs it rapidly up and down the rhizome, stripping it of the papery bark. 2. Cut thin "coins" by slicing horizontally (just as you would a carrot or cucumber). 3. Stack the coins a few at a time and slice long, thin, vertical sticks. if diced ginger is desired, line up the sticks so that their tops are even and chop horizontally.

1. Slice off root and stem ends of onion and stand on end. 2. Slice vertically from one end to the other. 3. Remove peel and any tough layers with fingers. 4. Take one half of onion and lay flat on cutting board. With knife, score slices lengthwise, cutting almost - but not completely - through the bottom of the onion. Keep slices close together for small dice, farther apart for large. For example, if recipe calls for 1/2-inch dice, make slices 1/2 inch apart. 5. Rotate scored onion a quarter turn. Holding the knife perpendicular to the slices, chop through. (Notice Aitken's "bearclaw" positioning of the hand that holds the onion. His fingertips are bent under, away from the knife's cutting edge, while his knuckles rest against the flat of the blade to serve as a guide.) Move hand that holds uncut portion back by approximately a 1/2 inch. Cut again. Keep moving hand back in 1/2-inch increments and cutting until remaining uncut portion of the onion is too small to hold. Give this a quarter turn and chop. Repeat steps four and five with remaining onion half.

1. Cut squash into two pieces by chopping off bell-shaped portion. Set bell aside and stand long, narrow piece upright on cut end. With chef's knife or paring knife, remove peel. Work from top to bottom. 2. Cut thick slabs from peeled squash. 3. Cut each slab into strips. 4. Cut across the strips to make cubes. Repeat the whole process with the bell, standing it upright on its cut end.

1. Remove top of pepper, cutting about one inch from top. Cut off bottom. Reserve these two pieces 2. Stand pepper vertically and slit from top to bottom. 3. Unroll the resulting strip of pepper and trim away the seeded core. Discard the core. 4. With chef's knife or paring knife, trim away any white, spongy membranes. 5. Slice into short sticks. To dice, line up the sticks and chop. 6. Take reserved pepper bottom and with knife, remove interior ridges and membranes. 7. Flatten onto cutting board and slice. 8. With your thumbs, push the white spongy remnants of the core through the pepper top. Slice remaining usable pepper.