Cleaning and Cutting

One of the pleasures of cooking is preparing fresh vegetables.  The first task is to wash and peel. Safety rules for modern produce require washing in hot water and peeling when you can. Squash is cooked intact and then the edible tissue is scooped out of the shell. Yams and sweet potatoes can be peeled, cut, and cooked as vegetable pieces, but it is easier to cook them intact and then remove the peel. Watch out for black spots in potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes—these tend to penetrate into the flesh and should be removed with a wide margin since the black is fungal growth.

Cutting practice begins with carrots, broccoli, green beans, and zucchini. Carrots are little mandalas. When you slice them, enjoy the circle designs. Cutting across, length-wise, diagonally, and cubing are all options to change the appearance, cooking time, texture and mouth feel of vegetables.

For steaming, it is best to cut thin slices so that the vegetable cooks quickly and thoroughly. Cut poultry breast meat in slices or small chunks for quick cooking. Make the pieces quite small if you are sautéing, so as to minimize the time it takes to brown and seal the surface. Think of 1 to 3 minutes as the optimal time to sear the surfaces of meat and vegetables at higher temperatures.