Today’s objectives included learning to cut vegetables into 7-sided, faceted-oval shapes using the tournage method. Tournage comes from the word “Tourner” which means “to turn”. This is a very technical cut, and so far, I’m not very good at it. I’m at the apartment in San Francisco at 7:45 p.m. practicing tournage with a 5 lb. bag of carrots my darling husband bought for me. Here he is, cooking me dinner: 
Today at school, my very adept partner and I made cocotte cuts out of turnips, potatoes and carrots. Cocotte is a tournage cut that is 5 cm in length. Then, we prepared a Garniture Bouquetiere (shown in the pic below) with our turnips, potatoes, carrots, artichokes (cut to act as bowls for our peas), green beans, and pearl onions cooked to show off our glazing/gloss techniques we learned: glacer a blanc and glacer a brun. The former is to glaze but not to carmelize and the latter involves carmelization. What is the key to glazing? Sugar – my favorite! Here’s a pic of my finished dish (not that impressive, but it did take some work): 
I need to give a shout out to Chef Tomm. After teaching both high school and law school, I know teaching can be really tough. Chef Tomm is informative, patient, encouraging, and obviously, a great chef. If you haven’t checked out some of his “how to” videos on his cite, please do. You can find him at cheftomm.com.
So, after practicing more tournage at home, I’m now icing my right hand and drinking some great Pinot Noir, right out of the gate. Happy eating! 
Salty Apron 
Love the little nest thing in the middle! (I mean artichoke garnish)
Looking forward to the next lesson.
You’re a good hubby, Carnet.
You ready to give a few cooking classes to your peers down the road?! Glazing techniques… definitely something worth learning :o)
Just catching up . . .right out of the gate they give you knives? I’m impressed.