Cook with Us #20: Lively Avocado and Vegetable Salad
This week’s theme has been quite a challenge. I’ve struggled all week to decide on a dish. Everything I had in mind didn’t quite stick to the theme. The challenge is to display one cutting skills. Throughout our cooking life we’ve all been doing some cooking and chopping in some ways or another. However, we’ve rarely taken a minute to think that what we were doing was a julienne cut, an allumet, a rondelle, or any other one of the French terminology used to described a culinary cut. But above all the challenge was to decide how to showcase this particular skill in a post.
As long as I can remember I have always favoured cutting my vegetables using a knife rather than relying on the slicer. It is always very handy to have a good hand in the kitchen. Writing these words I wonder if this is where the term “kitchen-hand” was invented. But I digress. I read somewhere that most chefs would teach their staff the claw grip technique to keep their fingers safe from sharp blades when preparing food. I can’t quite remember when I’ve mastered the technique, but every now and then I still manage to slice some skin off my fingers. My husband, impressed with my skills, have tried to learn it too but after a few cut and bruised finger tips he has decided to put it in the too hard category. And yet the claw grip can help speed up the food preparation while preventing unnecessary injury in the kitchen,
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To come back to my initial point I wasn’t sure how to present this particular theme. Generally I would write a story about why I decided to prepare a particular dish and then I would provide the ingredients followed by the method to prepare the dish. I don’t think it will work this week. Moreover, I’ve also chosen to take less pictures and provide more gifs content to showcase the dish. I think it demonstrate the cutting skills at its core and is likely to have a better impact on those reviewing the content of the post.
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For this week I’ve chosen to do a simple salad with an aioli sauce as seasoning. I’ve managed to get some lovely and vividly lively vegetable from the market. I’ve chosen some cherry tomatoes, colourful capsicum, red onion, white radish, red radish, avocado, baby beetroot and baby spinach leaves. I’ve used a vegan yogurt for my aioli sauce and considering how yummy it tasted this is not the last time I’ll be trying it. I even managed to slice in some thinly sliced garlic into the sauce. To make my life easy I’ve started with the harder vegetables and progress with the softer ones.
Without further ado this is how I’ve set up my salad and plated my dish.
Good luck to everyone.
I hope you enjoy it!
Bon appétit!
- I started up with the carrots. I first sliced it in three equal parts and then cut the carrot lengthways in thick slices. Once I’m done I cut it again into matchsticks to create my julienne cut.
- With the remaining carrots, I’ve carefully made 7 incision lengthways and then carefully sliced them sideways into thin slices to make my tournaged carrots, i.e. carrot cut 7 sides. This one was a bit harder as if I go thinner it would break midway but thicker is harder (from a strength point of view) to cut through.
- After deseeding the capsicum, I've cut them lengthways into fine julienne.
- Next was the white radish. First I’ve peeled the skin off and proceeded to cut one-inch rounds to make my rondelle.
- As I had some spare radish left, I thought I would try a 10 side cut (not sure if this exist but I was excited to try it). Once again I’ve made 10 incisions lengthways on the radish and then cut one-inch rounds to create the 10 side cut.
- I wasn’t sure what would be best for the cherry tomatoes. Traditionally they would be halved and that would be it. But I thought I would sliced them in quarters. And the juices oozing out of the tomatoes just made it so interesting to work with.
- I then chose to slice my red onion half moon. This ensure that the onion remained crunchy and retain most of its flavour in the salad.
- For the red radish I like how delicate they looked when sliced in very thin rondelle and that was my choice for this salad.
- For the avocado, cut in half and remove the seed. Then gently remove the skin. Place the flat side down on a cutting board and slice using the tip of your knife and then fan out.
- Lastly, I’ve quickly chopped some garlic and diced very thinly to add to the aioli.
- Then I just assembled everything on the plate and added the baby beetroot (cut in quarters) to complete the salad. I’ve used a handful of feta cheese that I’ve crumbed all over the salad.
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Absolutely stunning work @foodforsoul, you really have outdone yourself, those radishes and the avocado look gorgeous!
I've also been stumped this week and finally got cutting yesterday but my knife skills let me down, will still post it though :(
Very well done with yours :)
Oh it would be great to have your entry. I think that while it is a contest it is also a great platform to better ourselves and if we make errors or are not quite there we still get to learn and improve ourselves. That’s how I’ve improved my picture skills. And that’s how I’m going to improve other aspects of my cooking.
@foodforsoul, you made a gorgeous salad and demonstrated skillful use of your knife. I am so happy that you took on this challenge and had fun with it. Which reminds me that cooking gets so much more fun when you can quickly and precisely cut up all of your ingredients. You mentioned the claw grip which is so important to getting to knife skills mastery. Another thing that I noticed in your gifs is that your knife is sharp. You can really see that in your tomato cuts. Most people's knives are so dull that they would of turned those tomatoes into puree. A sharp knife is essential to knife skills.
One of my goals for this challenge was to show people where the beauty in a dish comes from. When you symmetrically cut foods and display them artfully you will have a beautiful dish. You have done that so well here. Thanks for your entry!
Thank you @chefsteve. As I’ve mentioned previously it did take some thinking but I’m glad to have pulled this particular salad which included a few different cuts. Regarding the knife I’m glad this particular one is still in good condition. We generally change knives every 4 months based on how many specials there are at the supermarkets lol. My husband loves buying knives even if we never get to use them. For this challenge I’ve even considered salmon at some point as we do have salmon knife at homes as well as a few different specialised knives that we’ve never ever used!!!
This is simply amazing @foodforsoul - Your photographs are superb and your gifs are so perfect. Your overall artistic presentation is 10 star. Thank you for this wonderful entry
Oh thank you. Honestly it was quite hard to come up with something that does justice to the theme. And a salad was, according to me, the best way of showcasing all the different cuts and knife skills. And it was important to me to use the gifs to demonstrate that I did the cuts using a knife and not an electric slicer. So trying to get all these together was tough.
Absolutely beautiful! You really nailed this challenge, your salad looks amazing and I love the yummy yogurt sauce! Well done!
Thank you @birdsinparadise. I must admit that I didn’t plan on making the yogurt sauce. Whilst buying my daughter’s yogurt for the week I came across this vegan version of it that I haven’t seen before and thought I’ll give it a try. Knowing the supermarket I’m sure whether they will keep selling it if it’s not populate. But I’m glad to have tried it.
What a fantastic way to highlight the theme! The gifs are such a great addition to really show the cuts. I do love seeing radish slices like that, too. That little hint of color on the outside makes it so delicate and pretty. This is such a great entry! I'm definitely inspired to improve my knife skills!
Thank you @plantstoplanks. I was really torn between taking pictures and overusing the gifs. I wasn’t sure how to show the cuts through pictures. The gifs were the only option. As for the radish regardless of the final dish I was always going to use them as they are so elegant and delicate.
Looks amazing
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Thanks for taking the time to read my post.
Yum. Looks good. Another gorgeous post.
Thank you @choogirl.
Looks awesome! I love the look of a vibrant salad like that.
I was teaching my son how to cut onions once and chopped the end of my finger clean off. Note the irony with that one😂 He now says that I taught him how NOT to cut onions!
Lol. I hope your fingers ok. I like how things can be chopped off fairly quickly. Obviously the more difficult cuts take longer but I reckon with practice we can improve ourself.
Funny right?! I've got a big scar and a divot on the tip, but otherwise all good. It's a reminder to watch a little more closely 😅
What a wonderful entry! I agree that this week is quite a challenge. You have, however, definitely showcased the different cuts as well as your knife skills.
I love the way the veggies turned out. The avocado slices were cut so thin and fanned out beautifully. The paper-thin radish look delicate. Also, the julienne, dice, etc cuts show your attention to detail as well as your great judgement in composing the dish.
Thank you for taking the time to put this salad together. The gifs were great to see and the care you have put into the salad (and the post itself) is so appreciated. Amazing and beautiful work @foodforsoul!
Thank you. I really thought for a moment I was going to be the sole participant. I’m glad everyone else joined in. It was a great challenge for all of us and I’m glad that we were able to produce a dish in the spirit of the theme.
Your recipes are awesome. I enter in your blog and get hungry every time :)
much love
Rifat
Thank you @rifkan I’m glad to enjoy the recipes.