Turning Vegetables, Turning Tables

The French have charming and specific verbs to describe cooking techniques. Chemiser, from the word chemine (shirt), means to coat or give a “shirt” of butter and flour to the inside of a soufflé dish to reduce sticking and promote rising. Citronner (citrons are lemons) is to rub certain foods with lemon to prevent discoloring. Truffer, easily translates to the action of adding truffles to a meal. So if you and your friends decide to get wild and “truffons” one night, in ONE word you’re actually saying “Hey, let’s add truffles to our meal”. What’s the word for that in English again? Oh, yea, it’s “Hey let’s all add truffles to our meal”.

Most French culinary terms charm my linguistic sentiments--except for the verb tourner. Tourner exactly describes the act of turning vegetables. But despite this verb cognate sounding exactly like what it is, it is completely the wrong lexicon for me. This is because the word, tourner sounds so simple, yet in the French culinary application, it fails to convey its twisted complicated nature. At first, the act of turning vegetables causes students to coo “Oh la la” as they lean forward to watch their French chef quickly turn a vegetable into a perfectly 7-sided "barrel” or “olive” with a razor sharp paring knife. But as soon as the students are on the other end of the knife, their coo’s become “merde”, “ouch”, “damn” or “f _ _ _” in the student’s primary cursing tongue. If I was in charge of the culinary glossary at Le Cordon Bleu, I’d change tourner, as it relates to turning vegetables, to "torturer".

How to turn vegetables:

In French cuisine, the size of turned vegetables is codified (thanks to Escoffier, no doubt) by size and as described in Le Cordon Bleu reference bibliography:

· "l'anglaise": turned to be 5 cm (2 inches) long and 2.5 cm (1 inch) thick (usually for potatoes)
· "cocotte": turned to be slightly shorter and more olive shaped than l’anglaise
· "château": turned to about 1.5 cm (0.5 inch) longer and thicker than pommes de terre à l'anglaise.

Why turn them?

It’s a tradition in French cooking schools. But actually these even-sided symmetrical vegetables and potatoes do roll around nicely in a sauté pan and tend to cook at the same rate. Unfortunately, in most kitchens with fast table turnover and high staff costs, there’s little time for veggie symmetry and the potential amount of food product waist is high. As one of our chefs lamented, “You never see turned vegetables in restaurants any more, but I’m hoping they make a come-back”. This melancholy sentiment is completely lost on the students.

Picture of my Hake w/ Hollandaise and turned veggies

LCB Reference found at http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/restaurant/chef/turning.html