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by knife — cut into 2-inch lengths, then planks, then sticks about 1 cm square

carrots, cut by hand into matchsticks. This is not presentation and a box grater will not do it. Grated carrot has enormous surface area and dissolves into the zirvak within minutes, taking its sugar with it and turning the base sweet and sludgy; coins hold their shape but sit as separate discs and never thread through the rice. Sticks of about a centimetre survive an hour of simmering intact, stay identifiable in the finished dish, and release their sugar slowly enough to sweeten the base rather than swamp it. Cutting a pound of carrots this way takes real time, and it is the point at which most cooks abandon plov