Lasting Images That Illustrate Good Technique

[Chris Amirault]

I'm usually a word person, but when it comes to cooking, I've found that a few images have really planted themselves in my brain, such that I carry them with me and use them on a regular basis in the kitchen. Some cases in point:

In The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking by Barbara Tropp, there's an image of a knotty piece of ginger that is squared off with dotted lines to form a perfect rectangular solid. Every time I need to julienne, mince, or chop ginger, I think of that little line drawing and proceed to make remarkably uniform bits of the root.

Somewhere in the Jacques Pepin oeuvre there's a photograph of his knuckles bracing a chef's knife and protecting his fingertips. When I first learned knife skills, that image alone towered over lots of wordy explanations that simply didn't add up.

Do you have any images like this? What are they?

[Fugu]

Not from a book but a movie, actually, several movies: The beginning of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, where the Chef/father prepares a Sunday meal for his children. Amazing knife skills and cooking techniques. Another one was Tampopo, makes me want to eat noodles every time I see that film.

Comedic value: Dan Akroyd's parody of Julia Childs' cooking show, simply hilarious!

At work, watching a Japanese Chef, and my mentor, race to peel an apple using his 10" Chef knife and 2 fingers to hold the knife. The cook used a peeler. No cutting board was used.

Knife skills are sorely deficient with North American Chefs, even watching Top Chef confirms this. Aside from Hung, how can you be top chef if you can't even chop onions or break down a chicken?

[gfron1]

For me its the Greenspan/Herme collection with the incredibly detailed closeups. Those images help convey texture which otherwise is relegated to words like "smooth," "creamy," "just combined," "light and fluffy," etc. The cover of Chocolate Desserts is the ultimate example with that incredible chocolate mousse.

[snowangel]

The illustrations in Barbara Tropp's Modern Art of Chinese Cookbook on pleating potstickers are worth a thousand words -- they are the best around.

Somewhere, sometime ago on-line, I came across something on-line about cutting a baguette into an epi -- best instructions around. I think I may have found these on the King Arthur website. Although I can't find it now, the photos have always stuck in my mind.

Edited to add: it's a King Arthur's on-line class about alternative method of shaping french dough.

[kitchenmage]

Susan, I just posted how to cut an epi at my site. Not quite as professional looking as KA's but not too bad.

[SuzySushi]

My most memorable -- and useful -- cooking images come from the early days of cooking shows on TV, from a Chinese cooking show on public television (aka "Channel 13") in NYC. This must've been in the 1960s or early 1970s at the latest, because I was still living at home with my parents. I wish I could trace the name of the chef, because he was really good! Does anyone else recall this show??

One of the lessons I remember was how to use a wok to stir-fry and started by heating the dry wok, then dribbling cooking oil around the inside rim.

Another was on a "master sauce" for simmered chicken.