Before embarking on the daunting task of teaching my very first cooking class, I stopped by the café for a heartening Americano. While waiting by the bar, I informed Boss man of the impending class. “I’m a bit nervous,” I admitted, “but it’ll be fine once I get in the kitchen and have a knife in my hand.” I continued airily and grinning: “I always feel in control of things with a knife.”
Once at the local food bank, where the class was to be held, I busied myself preparing the kitchen, searching out necessary equipment, and then waited apprehensively for the participants to arrive. Damian, the man in charge of the kitchen (and former chef himself), plunked a heavy black case onto the counter: “Here you go. These are the sharp knives.” Happy not to have to wrestle with the assortment of dull specimens I’d found, I opened the case and admired the selection. Choosing a sizable chef’s knife I felt that predictable welling up of confidence and courage. What’s a little cooking class to a girl with a razor sharp blade in her hand!
And this sense of assurance only grew as, to my immense relief, a mere trickle of people showed up for the class. They all gathered round, relaxed and expectant, and as I began a marked feeling of ease—even a hint of a swagger—settled upon my being. The first item on the menu was kale salad with raisins, pears, and a honey-lemon dressing. I reminded the students to tear away the rough central stem from the leaves, and then gathered the shreds of green into a bundle and began to casually chop them into slices. I remarked on the virtue of a sharp knife and demonstrated how to make a claw shape with the hand holding the item to be chopped, thus neatly avoiding dicing your finger tips into ½ inch cubes.
Perhaps all of my previous nervousness had fled my brain and settled subconsciously in my hands, or perhaps I was just not accustomed to chopping and chatting simultaneously, but within moment I was contemplating an expanding slash of blood across my right forefinger. I cursed inwardly and slapped a band-aid on the offending extremity, commenting brightly that here was a perfect example of what not to do. I shoved a glove on my hand and went back to work.
Alas, the fates were clearly determined to make me repent for the flippant words I’d used at the café—In control with a knife in her hand? Hah! Some control to be bleeding all over the place—because barely had I returned to the demonstration when I managed to slice into the tip of my left forefinger. (I have to give it to those three old Fates; there was a stylish symmetry to this act of divine justice.) I shuffled back to the band-aids, slipped on another glove, and again girded my loins for battle.
Thankfully there were no further incidences with the knife and I managed to finish the salad and move on to the next item on the agenda: nettle pesto. It was as I was softening cloves of unpeeled garlic on the stove that I glanced down at my hands. To my disgust there was a distinctive red tinge lurking beneath the pale, surgical green of the gloves. The band-aids were clearly not up to their task of damming the flow. So with studied casualness I wondered back over to the boxes of gloves and slipped another pair on top. This seemed to do the trick because I succeeded in finishing the class without actually peppering the pesto, risotto, or chicken with blood. Occasionally I would glance furtively down at my hands, and although a pale pink sheen might just be discerned beneath the double layer of latex, no real blood appeared. Although it was tense towards the end, by which time the vague pink tickles had descended almost to the cuffs of the gloves, teetering on the brink of escape. And all this was made the more annoying given that the cuts I’d been silly enough to get were very minor indeed.
At work the next day I recounted the whole drama to Boss Man. He pounced with alacrity on this easy target, grinning about when we should start the knife skills course and benevolently offering to lend me a book on the subject. But no teasing could get to me now: the nerve-wracking class was over, I had hopefully imparted at least a dash of useful knowledge to the participants, and above all the blood had not escaped my gloves. Considered as I whole, I was content in the reflection that it had avoided becoming a comprehensive catastrophe.
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