Session 2 — The Claw
← Block 1–2: Knife Skills & Kitchen Setup Overview
Skill: Before touching the stove, take 2–3 carrots and 2–3 celery stalks. Practice the claw grip — fingers curled, knuckles as the guide rail for the blade. Keep the tip of the blade in contact with the board, pull back slightly until the blade slices in, then press down and forward using the full length of the blade. Dice everything into rough ½" pieces. Time yourself. Don't worry about speed yet — worry about uniformity. You want enough cuts to feel the motion start to settle.
The onion is handled separately: halve it through the root, peel it, and dice it with the same claw grip. This is the classic mirepoix — the aromatic base of much of French and Italian cooking.
Full Meal: Ribollita
Your diced carrot, celery, and onion are the aromatic foundation of the whole pot — this is the exact dish the mirepoix was invented for. Add cannellini beans and Tuscan kale for bulk, simmer until everything is soft and deeply flavored, then tear in a few pieces of stale bread at the end to thicken it. This is a real dinner — hearty, complex, and genuinely better the next day.
Season in layers. Salt at every stage: when the mirepoix goes in, when the beans go in, when the broth goes in. Taste before the bread and again after — bread absorbs a lot of salt. If it tastes flat, it needs salt; if it tastes dull, it might need a splash of red wine vinegar or a rind of Parmesan dropped in while it simmers.
| Component | Recipe |
|---|---|
| Aromatics | Mirepoix (carrot, celery, onion) — your claw drill is the prep |
| Beans + Veg | Canned cannellini beans + Tuscan kale (cavolo nero), added after aromatics soften |
| Thickener | Stale or day-old bread, torn in for the last 10 minutes — the soup thickens around it |
| Broth | Chicken or vegetable broth, 4 cups |
🎥 Compare Notes: Knife Skills: How to Slice and Dice an Onion — Watch the claw grip in real time at speed. Notice how knuckle position changes between slicing and dicing the same onion.