Background: In terms of prep, Classic French cuisine is all about knife technique, producing things like the tourner or brunoise cuts. Those things have their advantages. However, there’s an argument to be made for more primitive techniques. Sometimes, I want a less refined presentation. Sometimes I’m just feeling like I want to smash things. Sometimes my knives are dull or my cutting boards are dirty. Sometimes, it just feels good to go caveman on a prep job, especially when you are in a moment of crisis. Here are my favorite extra primitive prep moves. Make sure to wash your hands.
- Crush cherry tomatoes with your hands to put into a rustic pasta dish.
- Break carrots and celery with your hands for stock. See how small you can get the pieces. Try an onion, too, just for fun.
- Tear the wings and legs off a roasted (or rotisserie) chicken and serve just like that.
- Tear pieces of bread to make croutons.
- Make a salad by tearing and crushing everything by hand.
- Tear tortillas (corn or flour) to make irregular chips or crackers.
- Use a can of tomato paste wrapped in a plastic bag to pound a cutlet.
- Use a can of roasted tomatoes to break whole nuts into a course meal as a topping.
- Use a rolling pin and a coffee cup as a mortar and pestle to crush more juice out of citrus.
- Use a tin of fish (or a flat rock) instead of a knife to crush raw garlic before peeling it.
Why It Works:
- It’s so satisfying. However, if you are wearing a shirt you like, you might want to put on an apron. I crush them down in a stock pot so the seeds hit the side of the pot and not my shirt.
- Yes. It’s true. You will not get the same surface area out of your aromatics this way and you might have to cook them longer. It might not taste the same, but you will get the soup on.
- Is there any other way to eat a roti chick?
- I like croutons that are weird shapes.
- Of course you are supposed to tear delicate lettuces, but what about grape tomatoes, crumbly cheeses, pounded nuts, those weird croutons?
- Tortillas are made for tearing and the final product looks cool in a world of perfectly triangle corn chips.
- I can’t say anything about pounding a cutlet with a straight face.
- You could crush nuts for that salad that I won’t shut up about. Or for the top of that rustic pasta. Or for dessert. Crushed pistachios on Mexican vanilla ice cream, anyone. It could be anything. Go nuts!
- I’m talking about the kind of rolling pin that’s just one long stick, not the one with handles. UIs that. Unless you have a citrus reamer. Those work even better.
- The papery skins come off way easier after you crack the integrity of the clove a bit.
Mods:
- Make a pico of sorts by crushing all the ingredients with two rocks like a molcajete.
- Use any can you want for 7,8, 10.
- Tear and bake pita bread instead of tortillas for great hummus dippers.