Can't wait to dice my next onion!

Last night, I took a 2 hour knife skills class at the cooking school at Sur La Table in Palo Alto. There were only 6 students in total - they mentioned that the classes have not been full due to their relative newness in our area, and possibly the economy. It was $69 for a 2 hour hands-on class.

The facility is in the back of their store at Town & Country Village and is pretty well set up. It's a little smaller than the local Draeger's cooking school in Menlo Park, and would have been a little crowded had the class been fully subscribed.

The class was a lot of fun - the instructor started out talking about different knives, what they were used for and how they were made. Then she showed us some techniques and we julienned potatoes, peppers and carrots. We moved on to sectioning oranges and also chiffonaded (is that a word?!) mint leaves. Finally we sliced and diced an onion - the onion dicing technique was great, much better than what I usually do - I'm going to make shepherd's pie tonight to try out my new techniques! Wished we'd done some herbs as well - but otherwise, this was a fun and useful class.

Then we had a 15% off coupon to spend on anything in the store and essentially had a private shopping experience. I bought a few things from Le Creuset since it's hard to find that stuff on sale. And a new knife honer of course.

The next class is Knife Skills II where you learn to cut up and debone a whole chicken. Think I'll pass - handling raw chicken is pretty low on my list of things I like to do in the kitchen.