It Slices, It Dices, It Makes Julienne Fries!

"None of my students has cut themselves bad enough to need stitches. Yet."

That's what chef Dan Thiessen said at his Basic Knife Skills class last night as he tasked us with our kickoff vegetable victim: green onions. If the other students at the Kirkland Sur La Table were like Seattlest, they suddenly became nervous about breaking his lucky streak.

The evening began with a 45-minute presentation on cooking knives, knife care, cutting boards, the difference between sharpening and honing a knife, and the three basic skills (how to hold the knife, how to position your left hand, how to move the knife) Thiessen wanted us to take away from the class.

Seattlest's inner gadget freak wrestled with our inner financial planner as we bemoaned the crappy chef's knife we have at home (by Oxo) and coveted a good honing steel and sharpener. (Sur La Table may be sad to know that our inner financial planner won -- for now.)

Then it was time to slice. Seattlest has never been so nervous about chopping green frickin' onions before -- but we've never actually chopped things with a knife blade touching our left fingers the whole time, either.

But the nervousness dropped away as we sliced our way through the vegetable kingdom. We diced onions, minced scallions, julienned leeks and carrots, diced tomatoes, thin-sliced mushrooms (which earned Seattlest a "nice job" from Thiessen, making our night), chopped parsley, and otherwise set free our inner Veg-O-Matics.

We would by no means claim to be knife experts after two hours in Kirkland, but we're pretty sure our stir-fry prep time will be shorter from here on in.

As it turned out, Thiessen's stitchless streak remained intact at the end of the night -- no one required medical attention. We're pretty sure no one even drew blood. And we're looking forward to taking Thiessen's advice and taking the class again in six months or so.