Le Fix Learns a New Word - Chiffonade

Remember our old friend Leekfixer?  He's been busy farming and market-managing, but he's back with a new guest post that takes us further into his exploration of French culture.  Please enjoy with FruHo's compliments. Merci.

Le Fix first heard the word "chiffonade" a couple of months ago on one of those tv shows on the Foodie Network. He was busy with his tweetin', tumblrin' and facebookin' so didn't see what they were talking about. He figured it was some kind of fancy pants drink like koolaid or lemonade, probably made in Le France. The other night Le Fix was watching that new show with that blond spikey haired girl who used to be Bataly's sous chef (Le Fix thinks that must be French for sidekick). The show is about a bunch of nitwi .... um,  people who don't know how to boil water and the blond girl is supposed to teach them how to cook. Le Fix wants to know where they find these people, jeez.

Anyway, La blond told her recruits that they had to chiffonade some bok choy or something. Le Fix was looking for the glass and thinking that bok choy probably would need a lot of extra sugar to make a good drink. Then she showed them how to do it. All she did was cut the stuff up into strips. Hell, Le Fix could do that in his sleep! So apparently chiffonade is a fancy pants (probably French) word for cutting up vegetables.

Then Le Fix was doing some twittering after that (he does that a lot) and one of his twitter friends said she was going to chiffonade some collard. Well, Le Fix just about fell out of his barcolounger laughing at that one. She was from New York City so he figured she didn't know any better. Le Fix thought to him self that his father in law (that's FIL in twitspeak in case you were wondering), the collard king, would roll over in his grave if he heard that. FIL is still kickin it old style so you don't have to worry. He twitted back that down here in the land of collards we cook them whole and cut them up in a bowl after they are tender.

So if you are wanting to be a foodie (Le Fix was called a top 100 foodie on friendseat.com, they must have been lookin in the same place they look for people for that tv show La blond is on), instead of telling people you are cutting up vegetables, tell them you are chiffonading them.

Le Fix would love to hear that fancy pants french chef Eric Le Ripper say " je suis making zee chiffonade de la collards si vou plait"