On a cold november morning in brooklyn edward Hamann, a buyer for Barnes & Noble, drops to one knee and cautiously cuts a green chill with a 300-year-old Bengalese fish slicer. The device is an upright sheet of hammered iron in the silhouette of a swan, its neck a vertical sword. "Too fast!" warns Julie Sahni, the raven-haired Indian chef who is teaching this master class. "Indians do everything by hand, so you're going to need all your fingers," Her three students laugh nervously. Ten years ago this type of intense, private, hands-on instruction was seldom available to amateurs. Persons studying one-on-one with chefs were almost always other chefs looking to broaden their professional horizons or add a new technique to their repertoire. Today amateurs are welcome. Every chef worth his salt (and plenty who aren't) offers such elite instruction.
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