Monday, November 19, 2012

Knife Skills

9780756698317HKnife Skills – How to Carve/Chop/Slice/Fillet
Published at DK Canada

About the book

The lightning pace of professional chefs' knife skills can be both intriguing and intimidating to home chefs. With, DK's Knife Skills, cooks can learn to chop, slice, dice, carve, and fillet with the best.

Written by three Michelin-starred chefs — Marcus Wareing, Shaun Hill, and Charlie Trotter — and food writer and cooking instructor Lyn Hall from the renowned La Petite Cuisine School of Cooking — aspiring cooks will learn to cut every relevant type of material — from vegetables and herbs, to fish, meat, breads, and fruits.

Including step-by-step color photographs that help a wide variety of cutting techniques easy to understand and simple to master, this practical guide — enables enthusiasts to learn lifelong skills at their own pace.

My Thoughts

A while back, my husband took a cooking class on how to handle a knife at Loblaws and came back with an amazing creation made out of apple.   He quickly proceeded to do another one for us with our apples to show us how easy it was to make one.   And the swans were fabulous!

2009_11_18_10_05_422009_11_18_10_11_24

My husband is a magician when he is in the kitchen.   He can create a new meal just be leaving him be.    One of the things he would love to learn more is how to use the different knives that he has.   So when I saw the title Knife Skills, I knew it would be perfect for my husband.

There are two big parts in the book.  Part one will instruct you on the basics of knife handling.  The section will tell you how to handle a knife, give you an anatomy of a knife as well as an history of this kitchen tool.  It will present you the different types of knives and how to care for them.  Once you have completed the reading of this section, you will be ready to attack the second section of the book which will detail how to use the different types of knife you might have at home.   This specific section is divided in chapters – vegetables, fish & shellfish, meat/poultry/game, doughs & desserts, and fruit.  For example the presentation pineapple shown at page 204 is marvelous.   Unfortunately, they don’t show how to do the swan like the ones my husband did.

While going through the pages, I learned  how to peel a tomato and do a tomato concassé, I discovered how to prepare asparagus and how to trim a globe artichoke which we never did before.  This vegetable is something that I would like to explore more in the future.  When visiting a farm in the area, we saw artichoke growing and discovered its flower which can last for a long time.

IMG_5402IMG_5409

This book is perfect for anyone in your family wanting to learn how to handle the knives you have.   Not only will my husband this it is a great book, but I am thinking I will learn quite a bit about it.  And when my kids are old enough, they will be able to learn more about handling knives in the kitchen because of this book.    The book is packed with tips and tricks from chefs and will help you to perfect your knife skills.  It would make a perfect stocking  gift for the chef in your house this Christmas!

Knife Skills is available at your favourite bookstore, even at amazon.ca and amazon.com.

Disclaimer: Thanks to DK Canada for sending me the above mentioned product for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.

No comments:

Post a Comment