One of the reasons why I love to cook is one I have in common with people who knit: it is involving enough to keep your mind off world peace issues, but leaves enough mental space that you can wander, hold imaginary conversations, turn sentences around in your mind (everyone does that, right?), and generally putter about in the coziness of your own head.

Prepping vegetables launches me into such inner monologues, and in recent months they have been dominated by this nagging question: why does food stick to my knife, and how do I make it stop?

You know the phenomenon, I’m sure, but let me describe it for you: whenever I slice something (say, an onion or a zucchini), the pieces I’ve just cut tend to stick to the right side of the blade (I’m right-handed), so that when I’m cutting the next slice, the pieces that are stuck on there get pushed up and off by the new slice, and fall either to the right of my blade (unruly, but fine), or tumble off the cutting board and possibly onto the floor (messy), or fall to the left side of my blade, in which case I’m likely to cut into them again moments later (extra annoying).

After composing an imaginary email in my head over a few zucchini-slicing sessions (I eat a lot of zucchini), I finally sat down and wrote to Peter Hertzmann, the spectacularly knowledgeable creator of the à la carte website and associated blog, cooking instructor, and author of the must-own Knife Skills Illustrated, of which he kindly offered me a copy when we met in San Francisco a few years ago (more details about the book)*. And naturally Peter had answers, which I’m sharing below, mixed in with a few more tips I gathered in my research.

So, why does food stick to my knife?

The main reason is surface tension, a physical phenomenon that makes the surface of liquids resist an external force. In this case, it means that foods with a high water content (and many vegetables are more than 90% water) create slices with a moist surface that clings to the flat of the blade.

And how do I make it stop?

You could decide to subsist on low-water foods — I’m sure a diet of beef jerky and rice crackers will do you a world of good — or you could adopt one or more of these three strategies:

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If you plan to be in Paris on Saturday, September 28, please join me at WHSmith for a booksigning from 3 to 6pm! (Here’s a link to the Facebook event.)

This event marks the release of my latest book, The French Market Cookbook, and will also be an opportunity to celebrate C&Z’s 10th anniversary. Complimentary wine and nibbles — cooked from the book by yours truly — will be served. I look forward to meeting you then!

{WHSmith, 248 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris, M° Concorde, map it!, +33 (0)1 44 77 88 99.}

On an unrelated note, for those of you who have nutritional restrictions, I have drawn up a comprehensive list of the recipes in the book with the allergens and possibly problematic food groups they contain (gluten, rice, soy, corn, other grains and pseudo-grains, dairy, eggs, nuts, legumes, nightshades).

I make it available to you (at no cost, naturally) so you can see if enough recipes will meet your dietary needs to make it worth your while. Feel free to request the list through my contact form and I’ll email it to you. I hope you find it useful!

We had our neighbors Stéphan and Patricia over for dinner last week to celebrate their respective birthdays, and it was as much a treat for me as it was for them.

Though it is a bit more of a challenge to cook multi-course meals now that I have a child — as all Parents Who Cook will no doubt agree — it is spectacular how refreshed and energized and just plain giddy I feel when I do get to spend quality time in the kitchen.

Favoring slow-cooking recipes for dinner parties

For dinner parties I’ve always favored make-ahead, slow-cooking recipes that require little active work, so that hasn’t changed, and as I discussed in this 5-question interview on Food52 last month, I have become a master of mise en place in both my daily, and my special occasion cooking.

Because each part of the meat is alternatively exposed to dry and wet heat, the whole cut remains very moist, while also developing an irresistibly caramelized outer crust.

This means I select recipes based on their ability to be sliced up into small steps that can be executed earlier in the day, the day before, or even two days ahead. And this recipe is a fine example.

Braised pork is exceptionally flavorsome: you place it in the oven in a shallow pool of liquids (here, white wine and tomato juice, or tomato water saved from roasted tomatoes), turning the meat regularly over the span of a few hours. Because each part of the meat is alternatively exposed to dry and wet heat, this method allows the whole cut to remain very moist, while also developing an irresistibly caramelized outer crust.

Amazing braised pork, broken down into make-ahead steps

And it is an ideal recipe if you want to spread out the different steps over two or three days; in fact, it is recommended that you do.

It is spectacular how refreshed and energized I feel when I do get to spend quality time in the kitchen.

On the first day, you’ll make a simple rosemary salt to rub onto the pork, and you’ll dice the flavoring vegetables (carrots, fennel, onion, garlic). The next day, you’ll cook the meat in the oven and let it cool, so you can skim the excess fat. Later that day, or the next day, you’ll reheat the whole thing and serve it to your very appreciative guests with the gremolata you’ll have had plenty of time to prepare because you were so un-tied up in the preparation of the meat.

As for sides, you can serve braised pork with mashed potatoes or a purée of celery root, but this time I served it with my current favorite blend of roasted vegetables: zucchini, cabbage, and sweet potatoes (with garlic, ground cumin, and olive oil), a mix I once serendipitously prepared based on what was left in the vegetable drawer, but which I’ve now purposely recreated a few times, so tasty it was.

Join the conversation!

Is braising a technique you like to practice with meat? And what’s your favorite “sliceable” recipe to prepare in installments for dinner parties?

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Gremolata is an Italian condiment I adore — a simple, and quickly assembled mix of flat-leaf parsley, lemon zest, and garlic, chopped finely.

It is most traditionally associated with osso buco, and indeed it works wonders (wonders, I tell you!) on any slow-roasted or braised meat dish, sprinkled on just before serving. It tastes fresh and clean, and cuts right through the richness of a stew, brightening the overall flavors by several notches.

But it would be a pity to restrict gremolata to this classic use. You can also:
– stuff it underneath the skin of chicken before roasting (I detail this technique in my post on salt-crusted chicken),
– sprinkle it over roasted eggplant, mushrooms, carrots, or cauliflower,
– use it to garnish soups, especially winter squash soups,
– add it to salads (especially lentil salads) and sandwiches,
– toss it with pasta, white beans, or small waxy potatoes,
– add breadcrumbs and a little bit of oil to form a paste, and spread on fish fillets before baking,
– use it to season steamed mussels or grilled sardines,
– fold it into ricotta or fresh goat cheese to top crostini…

The list goes on and on, so you would do well to mix a big batch whenever you have the ingredients on hand, and keep it in the fridge for a couple of days to add to your cooking and spark new ideas.

And just as the uses are multiple, so too are the possible variations on this glorious trinity: you can use parsley in combination with another fresh herb (I do recommend keeping at least a portion of parsley to retain that flavor thumbprint), you can mix and match citrus zests (orange is also a classic, but grapefruit or bergamot would be inspired twists), and you can add a fillet of anchovy or a few black olives to replace the salt.

I myself like to add roasted hazelnuts to my gremolata for a nutty note, an idea that comes from genius cook Sonia Ezgulian by way of the gremolata bowls she placed on every table when she was a guest chef at Café Pleyel.

And part of my pleasure in making gremolata is that it gives me a chance to use the very nifty hand-cranked mini-chopper I got from Tupperware years ago*. It works a bit like an old-school salad spinner, with a handle and a cord that sets in motion a rotating set of blades (see below). I like the retro-ness of it, and find it is just the thing to produce a gremolata that’s chopped tiny, but not completely ground. Also, handy in the event of a blackout!

Join the conversation!

Do you make gremolata? What’s your version like, and what do you use it on?

*Disclosure: I received this mini chopper for free from the press services of Tupperware France a few years ago, with no obligation to write about it, and no compensation if I ever decided to. All opinions expressed are my own.

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