Mandolines and Vegetable Slicers

Slicing vegetables by hand with a knife can be tricky, especially if you want paper-thin slices and you’re slicing something round or cylindrical that has no flat surface to stabilize it on the cutting board. There’s no shame in using a gadget to do this. In restaurants in France, a metal plane-like device, called a mandoline, with an adjustable blade is used almost constantly for jobs of this kind. A French mandoline is handy in any home kitchen, but expensive. In the last several years, inexpensive plastic mandolines with razor-sharp blades have become available in kitchen supply stores for about one-fifth the price of the classic metal model. There are two kinds. One has two or three inserts, each allowing you to slice at a different thickness. Another kind, the kind I prefer, is called a Benriner cutter and has little screws on the back that allow you to adjust the blade to produce slices the exact thickness you want. This kind of cutter is perfect for slicing fennel, root vegetables, radishes, and truffles into very thin slices. There is also a special wide model, slightly harder to find, that better accommodates larger vegetables like celeriac and cabbage (see Sources). If you’re slicing truffles, you can use a truffle slicer, but since the Benriner cutter works just as well, I recommend spending your money on the Benriner instead. If you’re slicing truffles at the table, however, as when slicing white truffles over pasta or other goodies, a truffle slicer is more compact and prettier. If you trust your guests or love them dearly, you can pass the truffle and slicer at the table so they can help themselves.