How thin can you slice a carrot? I tried. And it’s hard.
The purpose? To fill a sushi roll I’m making. One carrot is more than sufficient. By the time I finished a quarter of it, I have more than what I need. And yet, it’s still not as hair thin as I want it to be. The movies make it too easy. I did take a picture of it though. WIll see how I do the next time.
The obsession of slicing it thin? Well, it was quite therapeutic.
There was only 1 focus, to slice it as thin as humanly possible. You have to adjust according to the shape of the carrot. The carrot changes its shape with every cut. The stability of the carrot changes with every cut. The fingers can only hold so much of the carrot to avoid it moving around (and to avoid cutting your fingers of course!). You can say that a good knife is key. But then, the knife is only half the story. You must be able to know where to slice the carrot, which way is best to get the thinnest possible slice from the carrot. And because the carrot is big relative to the hair thin slice I’m trying to achieve, it took me almost an hour to cut the carrot. And it’s just one carrot. I wonder how the restaurants do it.
But I start to get what Zhuang Zi is trying to say. I love the story extracted at Cook Ding’s Kitchen, where the butcher no longer see the ox he is cutting. He sees it with his mind. The best part of the story? The knife doesn’t need sharpening even after 19 years!
The trick is not to butcher the knife you’re using to cut.
I’ll still be sharpening my knife for a while now, until I can see the carrot with my mind. 
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