Peeling and Cutting Butternut Squash

Someone once remarked that the best way to peel a butternut squash is to use a lathe.

The CC fully concurs.

However since most of us don't have a spare lathe sitting around — those of you that do can leave now! — here's how to cut it open in ten easy steps without cutting anything else open.

1. Slice off the top and bottom so that it can sit flat on a surface.
2. Put it on its side. Roll it around to see where it is most stable and using the chef's knife, make a length-wise incision. Press down. Let gravity do the work.
3. You will NOT be able to cut it into a half (most likely, sometimes it works.)
4. In that case, stand it up vertically. (This is where cutting the top and bottom works.) Now slice down vertically using the above incision as a guide. Again, let gravity do the work.
5. Congratulations. You have two halves. Start scooping out the stringly innards and the seeds.
6. Lay down the two flat halves face-down on a surface, and cut downwards with the knife letting gravity do the work.
7. This is the tricky part. You will have four quarters. They tend to be relatively stable when the triangular sections are facing upwards. Cut gently into eighths using the ridge as a guide again letting gravity do the work.
8. With a sharp vegetable peeler, cut the outer skin away from each of the eighths. This is straightforward since each one can be easily grasped. It's a lot of boring work but as they say, "Better boring than ER."
9. Wash, slice and dice.
10. Be thankful you don't run a restaurant.

The Warrior Class Enters the Kitchen

After the Meiji Restoration, the carrying of swords was banned for the samurai class. Since there was significant industry in providing swords to the samurai, as basic economic theory would tell you, the merchants evolved the product into something else.

That something was the production of knives for professional cooking.

Japanese knives are unique in the world. They are arguably closer to swords than they are to Western knives. For starters, they are frequently, but not always, single-ground (sharpened on exactly one side.) In the modern world, double-beveled knives do exist (e.g. santoku which evolved as a response to the French chef's knife) but the rule still stands.

They are also made to a much harder temper and and seriously sharp. You can cut a piece of paper just by gently caressing it against the blade.

Also, the number and variety of precision knives is far higher than what you would see in a traditional French kitchen. The level of detail and control is far far higher.

Lastly, the tradition of sword-like skills in the kitchen made evolve as a matter of routine, an equally important culture of safety skills. Japanese chefs cut away from the body never towards it. Equally importantly when doing fine fillet-work, the knife will angle away from the body while the top is restrained with the flat-face of the left hand. At all points in time, the blade is kept away from the body. It is quite amazing to watch a master knivesman in action.

Like all highly evolved technical cultures, there's an elaborate array of knives and an elaborate vocabulary to describe their properties, relative merits and demerits but that's just grind for a later post.