Week 2: Knife Cuts, Stock, and a Lot of Mise-en-Place
Week two was a long one. Six hours in the kitchen across two days, and almost all of it came back to the same idea: before you cook anything, you have to be ready.
That concept has a name in professional kitchens. Mise-en-place. Pronounced "meez en plahs." It translates literally as "everything in its place," and it's less a technique than a philosophy. Your station is set before you need it. Your tools are within reach. Your vegetables are cut, measured, labeled, and waiting. Nothing is improvised in the moment, because in a real kitchen, there's no time for that.
Day 1: Cuts, Stock, and Pastry Dough
The cut list for day one was specific:
- Apple, sliced 1/8" (peeled and cored)
- Celery, bias cut, thin slice (peeled)
- Potato, rondelle at 1/4"
- Carrot, rondelle for stock
- Leek, half moon at 1/8"
- Yellow onion, small dice at 1/4"
- Rosemary, minced
- Garlic, minced
Each cut has a purpose. The small dice on the onion means even cooking and clean texture. The bias cut on celery exposes more surface area and looks clean on a plate. The rondelle on the potato is exactly what it sounds like: a round, even slice. Consistency matters more than speed at this stage. The ruler on the cutting board isn't a joke.
While we were working through the cuts, we were also building a French vegetable stock with partners. The ratio: 4 pounds of vegetables to 1 gallon of water, simmered between 185°F and 205°F for 45 minutes to an hour and a half. The aromatic base is the classic French mirepoix: onion, carrot, and celery in a 2:1:1 ratio by weight.
It's worth knowing that mirepoix isn't just a French thing. The Spanish call it sofrito. In India it's miraa. Cajun cooking uses what's called the Holy Trinity: onion, celery, and green bell pepper instead of carrot. Different foundations, same logic.
The family meal that came out of those cuts: a potato and leek galette with a celery, apple, and fennel salad, toasted walnuts, and lemon vinaigrette. The dough for the galette was pâte brisée, which we made individually from scratch.
Pâte brisée (pronounced "paht-bree-ZAY") is a French savory tart dough. The danger points are adding too much water, which develops gluten and makes the dough tough, and overworking it, which does the same thing. You cut cold butter into the dry ingredients until you have pea-sized pieces, flatten them quickly by hand, add water a little at a time just until the dough holds, then wrap it and let it rest in the refrigerator. The cold matters throughout. The restraint matters too.
Day 2: Blanching, Sautéing, and Noodles
Day two introduced two cooking methods back to back.
First: moist heat. Blanching means dropping vegetables into boiling water at 212°F briefly, then immediately transferring them to an ice bath to stop the cooking. The technical term for the ice bath step is shocking or refreshing. Blanching sets color, softens texture slightly, and makes the vegetables easier to finish by another method. We blanched broccolini.
Second: dry heat. Sautéing transfers heat by conduction through a hot pan with a small amount of fat. Fast, high heat. The cut list for day two added batonnet (1/4" x 1/4" x 2 1/2" sticks), onion julienne at 1/8", bias cut again, and mince.
The mise-en-place for the sauté was a sheet pan with everything prepped and organized before we turned on a burner: fat, at least three vegetables, an aromatic (ginger, garlic, scallion, or onion), optional herb, and seasoning including an acid finish. Lemon, lime juice, or rice vinegar. The acid at the end is what wakes the dish up.
Family meal was pan-fried Shanghai noodles with sautéed vegetables.
What Week 2 Actually Taught
The cuts are not the point. The cuts are the practice ground for attention. Every slice at the same angle, every dice at the same size, every piece of carrot hitting the board at the same thickness. It's repetitive and that's the purpose. The goal is to make precision automatic so that when things get faster and more complicated, the foundation holds.
Mise-en-place is the same idea scaled up. You're not just cutting vegetables. You're building a system for how you work. The sani bucket in the corner, the bench scraper within reach, the compost container where you always expect it. The organization isn't aesthetic. It's functional under pressure.
Next week: eggs and breakfast, potatoes, and hollandaise.