Right you lovely lot, so I'm celebrating all things veg so I've given you a
whole bunch of different tips and tricks to help you prepping in style.
Let me show you some really easy ways to chop and slice your garlic.
We can slice it. We want to get our thumb out of the way. We want our fingers to go over the garlic
like this and just do that little tap chopping method
and slice it up like that.
Very, very simple. We can just continue to
chop through this to make chopped garlic and that's the cross-chopping method.
Very safe. You can see how delicate and fine it is.
There is another way you can do chopped.
Just grab your garlic clove like this, just put it on a flat edge
just go about a millimetre slices, not quite to the end, like that
then flip it over and do exactly the same.
Take your time and then you can put
it on its side and then you can literally just slice. That's rock-chopping method.
Look at that. Very, very nice.
Let me show you how to take the stone out of an avocado.
The humble avocado. Funnily enough, taking the seed
or the stone out of an avocado is one of the biggest causes of cuts to the hand.
So there's a really simple way to do it which means that it's all good and
doesn't end in tears. So just remove the little bit of stem from the end. It might
look like nothing but that can send your knife in a totally different direction
which is really dangerous and then put the avocado down very importantly and
then carefully but slowly cut using no weight or power down to the stone in the
middle then slowly rotate the avocado so it just gently cuts around. Twist it.
And then tap it on the board.
And off it comes.
Let me show you how to safely cut
and prepare a squash or pumpkin.
Let's have our hand out of the way.
We got this core here. Get that off first. Get the tip of our
knife in the centre, don't put too much body weight into it, rock it down. You're
just taking on the fight with half of it then we can spin it around. See that cut
there? Put our knife back in, keep it sturdy, keep your fingers out the way.
Sharp blades, moving targets, not very good.
Getting the seeds out, let's just use a spoon.
These little seeds you can roast and of course you could plant
these. Let's get it on a flat edge, hold one end, go in at one half, spin around
and then go back to here. If you go to a quarter, you can use the same principle.
If you want to cut it into different slices remember we got a nice flat base
here. That's how to tackle a big old squash or pumpkin in a nice safe way.
Let me show you how to remove the skin easily and fast from an avocado.
You see people picking this away, like this, which takes a lot of time. It can be
a little bit bitty. That's the wrong way to do it, in my view. Let me show you the
right way to do it. This is dead simple. Get a regular spoon like this, go in here,
push the spoon right on to the skin and push it against the cup of your hand then
simply knock it out. Works every single time. Really, really good.
And if you want to stop the avocados from discolouring, squeeze some citrus over the avocado.
An old-fashioned way of preparing avocados in the 80s was to cut it not quite to
the end and then fan it out. It's really tacky, I never do it these days but it
does tend to make people very happy. So there you go guys. Super quick but
doesn't it look good.
Let me show you how to make the most amazing, healthy,
delicious grilled veg.
Get your gas on a high heat then place a
really good-quality griddle pan on there and preheat it for about four minutes to
get it nice and hot. Finely slice, chop half or slither any vegetables that are
beautiful and in season. Without any oil, put them dry into a pan to lightly char
on both sides. When you cook veggies without oil, you get the most incredible
nutty natural flavour. You don't have to cook it all the way through, it's really
about just taking the raw edge off the veggies, applying a little bit of char
for added flavour and then when you remove it from the pan, we're gonna dress
it in gorgeous homemade dressing. So veggies cooked like this are fantastic as
any side dish. It's wonderful in an antipasti or tapas table. So there you go guys.
Let me show you how to really efficiently and easily deseed a chilli.
Let's just click off the stalk at the end, like so, and then very carefully we
want to split this chilli. Put the knife tip in the middle and gently put in to
the middle and down to the bottom like so. Drag the knife very carefully. Now
I've done that slowly for you guys but it's as simple as this. Click and split.
Nice and easy. I'm gonna take a teaspoon and I'm simply
going to scrape down the contour of the chilli. This little teaspoon scoops out
the seeds. You can put these into a little envelope and you can leave them
for a couple of months so they dry. You can plant these seeds. They'll grow into
wonderful chillies and you never ever have to buy chillies ever again. So there
you go guys, that's how you deseed a chilli nice and safely.
I'm going to show you two really quick ways to peel your garlic easily.
The first thing you do is just put your body weight onto your clove of garlic and just sort of break
it all off. Find the little core end here. Put your knife down like that but don't go
all the way through and then what I do is I just pinch off this here and if
you're lucky you'll get a whole strip left just like that. So I've been lucky,
great, often you are. Then we put it back down put the knife back down just give
it a good old friendly tap. Do not cut yourself. Angle the blade down.
At that point, we just take the skin, garlic, happy days.
There's another way to do it. Get yourself a rubber glove. Yes, you heard it right.
Take off one of the fingers, take off the end and you've created a little cylinder.
Get your garlic clove, just pop it in and roll it and then when it comes out the
other end, peeled, brilliant.
Let me show you two ways to peel your ginger in the most efficient way.
The most efficient way to peel a piece of ginger is simply to use a little spoon and scrape it.
Just like that. It barely peels just the brown skin off.
Ginger's not cheap, okay, and you don't want to waste it so getting the minimal
skin off is a brilliant thing and then you've got a lovely piece of ginger
ready for some chopping action.
Now - let me show you another way to peel ginger.
You will see me do this quite a lot.
If you just let that dry in your kitchen
you can make the most fantastic ginger teas with a little teaspoon of honey.
It's brilliant any time of year. You can put that into a pan with stewed fruit
and it turns humble fruit like apples and pears into something way more exotic.
Hi lovely people. I'm going to show you how to prepare the perfect fennel.
Remove the top, keep it. Have a look at if there's any mark on the fennel. Remove it.
This is small fennel. It's the best. So put those on the side then cut them again.
Remove that part which is tough. You can wash it if you want at this stage or
you can make a lovely salad.
This part is a little bit tough. Cut it. You can place
them in the oven with a little bit of butter and sprinkle some parmesan on top, fantastico.
With the tops, select it, all the green parts. This will go very well with the
salads then with the top you can use them in a stock - just a little bit
because it has a very strong flavour.
I'm going to show you how to prepare a celery.
First of all, chop the end.
Peel all the leaves off, wash under running cold water.
Cut off the ends. You can always use for stock.
Just a little cut. Break it and start to pull it. Remove all the stringy
bits because the stringy bits it is not very nice.
Discard all the stringys.
I'm going to make a little salad. Chop up the celery, normally tomato, chop it. Nice pinch of
oregano, little salt, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, mix all together.
So delicious.
And this is the perfect celery and tomato salad.