I have a couple of friends who belong to the professional cooking association known as Chef de Cuisine. As a result, I have occasionally gone to dinners where chefs are showing off for each other. The presentations are gorgeous and fanciful. They often look too good to eat, though by the end of the evening, that's just what we do.

I went to my first Chef de Cuisine function at the age of about 14. It was a luncheon at the grandstand of a racetrack. Very impressive and it inspired me to buy a garnish kit so I could learn to do what the chefs were doing. Chefs, of course, study for many years and then apprentice for more. There is a reason that I can't achieve the same effects they do. They've got all the tools, instruction, and practice. I didn't think about that. I just figured that I could make an apple swan or a carrot palm tree. Shortly thereafter, I found a book called How to Garnish along with a four piece tool set. I bought it and began to experiment.

My mother and I had a great time with my new toys. We made melons into swans filled with sherbet, fruit salads and jellos. We decorated the edges of cheese platters with fanned strawberries, or apple swans. We made sharks out of cucumbers. And then, it all got old. We stopped playing.

The set comes with a book, How to Garnish, and four garnishing tools - a spiral cutter, a ripple cutter, a serated v-cutter and a paring knife.

How to Garnish is a good book for a beginner at garnishing. It's easy to learn from because it includes simple written instructions with simple to follow illustrations and photographs. There is nothing to wonder about how they got from point A to point C. Every step is made absolutely clear.

The ripple cutter is great for making ripple cut potatoes. (Think Ruffles with ridges.) You can make the slices as thick or as thin as you like. You can use this on root vegetables. I like this for slicing carrots, potatoes, beets, hard cheeses, melons or eggs. The extra texture is lovely. Sadly, the slicer in this set is not set very well into the handle and tends to pop out when working on hard vegetables. Also a problem is that the edge of the slicer is not sharp enough. If you are cutting cooked vegetables, no problem, but I generally want to cut ahead of cooking (except for the boiled eggs).

The spiral cutter twists two spirals together. This is impressive when it works, but I've found this tool a one-trick pony. It does only this one thing and I don't often require two items twisted together unless teaching DNA and the double-helix in a science class.

The V-cutter is a nice tool for making perfect v-cut edges. I use it for halving citrus for the edge of a platter. However, at this stage of the game, I am just as happy using a paring knife. If the results are not absolutely, dead-on identical, no one has ever really noticed.

The workhorse of the set is the paring knife. However, every set of knives I've ever seen has a paring knife. The paring knife in this set is light weight and of lesser quality than those I already have.

When I was 14, I loved this set. I get another one as a gift just about every year of so. I try to be gracious about it. I know that Goodwill will find someone else who needs this sort of thing.

If you have a child or teen who likes to be in the kitchen, this is a great set. If you're an experienced cook, the book by itself is a good way to spark some imagination. This is not, however, the set to give an experienced cook. Much better to buy the experienced cook a quality garnishing tool. Chances are if they're like me, the experienced cook receives one of these sets on a fairly regular basis anyway.

Recommended: No