Paper Palate

Impress your friends, terrify your enemies, dice like an Iron Chef! Last week’s Chronicle offered a few tips on improving your knife skills.

There really are four simple steps to improved knife skills: practice, slow down, be more precise, and practice some more. Here’s how I learned to make square dice of any size (shown large size for easy viewing). First, it is essential to square off the victim (in this case, an unsuspecting jicama), then slice it like a loaf of bread.

Next, cut each slice into strips, and then into little squares. At first, they won’t be square, they’ll be little trapezoids and pentagons and whatnot. Just slow down, and try to be really careful to keep all the edges square and even. Keep practicing.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that it’s nearly impossible to force yourself to practice knife skills at home. What could be more uninspiring than dicing a vegetable into perfect squares for no reason whatsoever? Surely you have something better to do? Like scrubbing the baseboards or checking the roof for loose tiles?

Fine Cooking to the rescue! The colorful Chopped Mexican Salad with Roasted Peppers, Corn, Tomatoes & Avocado provides plenty of opportunities for dicing and mincing. The honey-lime-cumin vinaigrette is refreshing on a hot day and the components travel easily when packed in separate containers (best to chop the avocado on arrival, if possible).

I made a few modifications to the recipe - here’s my version:

Chopped Mexican Salad with Roasted Peppers, Corn, Tomatoes & Avocado

2 large orange or red bell peppers, halved, cored and seeded.
2 ears fresh corn, husked
olive oil
5 plum tomatoes, diced
1 large jicama, peeled and diced
2 firm avocados, peeled and diced
1 15 oz can black beans, drained

Place the corn and the peppers (cut side down) on a foil lined baking sheet. Drizzle generously with olive oil and sprinkle the corn with salt. Roast the peppers and corn in a 425 degree oven until the peppers are soft and starting to blacken slightly around the edges, and the corn is starting to brown (about 30 minutes) rolling and shaking every 10 minutes to turn the corn. Let them rest until cool, then peel and dice the pepper. Slice the kernels from the cob.

Vinaigrette
1 clove garlic
salt and pepper
3 tablespoons lime juice
3 tablespoons orange juice
2 teaspoons finely chopped shallots
1 tablespoon honey
¾ tsp cumin seeds, toasted and finely ground
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro

Fine Cooking has great instructions for making this vinaigrette, starting with a garlic salt paste, which will give you plenty of additional practice mincing. If you’re feeling pretty fed up with the whole knife skills business by this point, skip the chopping and just throw all of the above ingredients (except the olive oil) into your mini food processor and blast them. Add the oil in a thin stream, while pulsing.

I tossed everything together in a big bowl, Fine Cooking keeps each salad component separate. It’s up to you. If your guests are distracted by conversation or wine or even the flavors of this bright salad, feel free to draw their attention to the fact that you cut each and every little piece into a perfect square. Conversation will stop, people will stare at you, but there’s no point in spending your whole afternoon dicing if no one’s going to notice your newly honed knife skills.