Don’t these vegetables look gorgeous? I went to an Oriental-cooking class earlier this week and watched amazed as the chef produced piles of perfectly chopped and consistently shaped fresh veggies. I would have snapped the actual cutting but his knife was flying so fast I didn’t want to get in his way. He made it look easy, but I’ve taken a knife-skills class and let me tell you that it is not. I guess experience is the key, though. Our teacher/chef — Justin Letson, chef de cuisine at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Muscle Shoals, Alabama — did show us an easy trick for julienning peppers: Cut off the ends, then make a slit in the pepper and sort of unroll it as you use the knife to cut out the core and membranes. Then pop out the stem and cut up the end, too — which I wastefully never did before. So simple! And the resulting Lemon Stirfry with LoMien was delicious. And pretty. Our class was at the Shoals Culinary Complex in Florence, Alabama — a kitchen incubator that’s part of the Shoals Entrepreneurial Center, http://www.shoalsec.com/facilities/SCC_index.html — and this class was so popular that director Sherry Campbell is scheduling a second one. Maybe I’ll go to that one, too — best stiry fry ever!