By popular demand (well, the many demands of one person in particular), the next subject of our research was the courgette. This suited me as I quite fancied courgette for tea (in case you were wondering, no food was wasted during the making of this investigation).
It was decided that we should aim to cut the courgettes in two different ways; sticks and slices, since this would provide a bit more of a challenge to all concerned (both man and machine).
First up was the Pizza Cutter, keen to put in some good moves given its recent drop in form. First were the sticks, which didn’t seem to pose much of a problem, the Pizza Cutter’s rolling blade scything cleanly through with a good degree of control and a fair whack of satisfaction.
Moving on to the slices, we found this is an area in which the Pizza Cutter isn’t so slick. This is due to its circular blade, which causes problems when cutting foods thicker than its radius: there is potential for the food snagging on its central mounting. This resulted in a minor food retention issue here, with some wastage resulting. However, this shouldn’t detract from the fact that the slices were otherwise cleanly cut.
In summary then: good overall, excellent at sticks, although it can cause trouble with snagging due to a centrally anchored blade.
Trying to slice a courgette into sticks with the Scissors might not seem like a sensible idea, and as we clumsily hacked the vegetable apart we were beginning to think so too. It wasn’t a good start for the Scissors, as although it had no difficulty cutting the thing once it had been halved into semi-cylinders, there was an unnerving sense that the blades might veer off to one side at any moment.
In the slicing round, the Scissors showed little improvement. Although not as disastrous as the slicing had been, the edges were left rough due to the shearing motion of the blades, and we certainly wouldn’t want to serve these to our Mums in this state.
All in all, the Scissors represent a rather crude way to prepare a vegetable such as a courgette. That’s about it really - the courgette deserves better.
With a performance worthy of any self-respecting Simply-Not-Good-Enough club, the Scissors’ short run of victories ends here. It’s a win for the Pizza Cutter, leaving it needing just one more to clinch the overall prize. Can the Scissors hold on and claw back some respect?
Thanks to Carl for the courgette idea.
