CUTTING CELERY ON THE DIAGONAL
When you’re instructed in a recipe to cut a stalk(s) of celery on the diagonal, this is what it means and looks like.
Take a clean stalk of celery, lay it flat on the cutting board, hollow side down.
Using a sharp, broad knife, instead of holding it to make a straight cut from top to bottom, like you would do when dicing, you hold the knife at a slant (about a 20 degree angle to the celery and board), cutting across the stalk, producing a cut that looks like a broad arc.
The thickness of the cut depends on the requirement of the recipe.
Many Asian dishes require this particular cut to broaden the cooking surface of the celery, so that in stir-fries especially, the celery cooks more rapidly.
If you want all your pieces uniform in shape, then discard the first and last cut.
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