[Sca-cooks] article on Fruit and Vegetable Subtleties & Carving

[Johnna Holloway]

Fuchsia Dunlop in Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper talks about Chinese  
culinary students sitting around with hard vegetables and paring  
knives and carving all the time in off moments. Always practicing for  
the day when they get asked to create something for a buffet table.

She says that "Vegetable
carving can only exist in a society with a surplus of underpaid and
underworked youths, who can be persuaded to spend hours engraving the
outside of a watermelon with minutely realized scenes…”

I think it's a long practiced skill and those that are expert at it  
and make it look so easy
have spent years perfecting those skills. We just see the end results  
of all those hours spent practicing.

Johnnae

On Jun 26, 2010, at 12:38 PM, Suey wrote:snipped   At that point they  
were advertising some kind of plastic instrument on TV that was  
suppose to do that. I brought one and no way. All my radishes turned  
in to chopped radishes :'( and not the pretty flowers as advertised.  
So when I saw that dining room table covered with so many gorgeous and  
artist flowers etc I was in awe. It is a super idea but I don't know  
how she did it! I guess it is like ice carvings. Cooks can produce ice  
carvings that are better then some sculptors. The only successful ice  
figures I have made are in ice trays in the form of some little  
figure. . .
> Suey