Cuts Like a Knife

While trolling the Web I noticed a post from someone on a "chef" site who mentioned that they had just purchased an expensive Henckels chef's knife and then purchased an expensive Henckels electric knife sharpener. This is analogous to purchasing an inkjet printer in many ways; the printer is cheap but the cartridges are horrendously expensive.

So Henckels wants you to purchase their expensive chef's knife and then quickly wear it down to a nub (it would only take a matter of months if you used their electric sharpener) then buy another one.

I have other beefs with Henckels, so to speak. What are you supposed to do with a chef's knife? Well, slice things, but far more, chop things. And the way to chop a lot of things is with the rocking motion--you leave the tip of the blade on the board and rock the rest of it over the food (and not your thumb, which I happily did yet again this week.)

Trouble is, the Henckels has a bolster on the blade--that's the thick metal girdle, or heel, that comes out from the bottom of the handle to form a thick ridge all the way to the cutting edge.

That means that if you use an electric sharpener, which is insane to begin with, you're going to end up with a chef's knife that is developing a gap between the heel of the blade and the board.

In fact, this will happen even if you use a stone (as I do) or a steel (those tubular metal rods with rough surfaces that butchers seem to love.) And that's exactly what happened to my Henckels after a couple of years. Then I found my garlic wasn't getting chopped as well.

So it seems silly to get a knife with a bolster and sillier to get an electric sharpener.

I have a Kasumi "Damascus steel" knife that's light yet deadly (it's not a santoku but is shaped pretty much like a regular chef's knife, but without the bolster.)

And I use a stone with one medium-coarse side and one fine. I find that it delivers a far more accurate edge--because you're carefully controlling the angle of the grind--than a steel, where your hand is going to twist slightly (unless you're a pro, which I'm not.)

A good article on chef's knives can be found here. And an excellent article by our very own Barry can be found here.

The guy says "when I run my finger along the blade I can actually feel it curve upward . . ."

Ouch. That really proves his case that he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

More Vacation Scribbles

Since I’ve been in California for the holidays, I’ve been immersed in foodie stuff, although I haven’t felt hungry for the past few days. I made an absolutely brilliant batch of garlic dills the first day I arrived. I’ve now taken to dragging around a food diary. It’s absolutely essential when you make stuff. You think you won’t forget, but you always do.

When that magical moment hits, when you really nailed the curry, that’s when you’ll be glad you wrote it all down. So I’ve finally worked out all the proportions for the dills—believe me, even 1/6 of a cup of salt can make a huge difference—so now I’m confident I can replicate it over and over, thanks to my food diary (really a tiny battered dollar-store notebook with its own pen.)

A couple of other foodie things have entered my universe, although I actually detest the word “foodie” and will never claim to be one.

One is the Bill Buford book, Heat. I read rave reviews of it here and there, so I was curious to pick it up. It’s actually one of the oddest books I’ve ever read. It’s like this middle-aged guy decided to get into professional cooking all of a sudden and applied to work for free at Mario Batali’s Babbo restaurant. So far so good, from an interesting point of view. You get a perspective from a non-career dude, and one who’s actually a journalist by profession. But when you actually get into the book, it seems like it’s just one stream-of-consciousness narrative from a sometimes drunk writer. He hops all over time, doesn’t mention his two kids even once throughout the whole book, and I was convinced he was gay due to his writing style until he finally mentioned that he had a wife.

Very different from Anthony Bourdain’s tautly-constructed style. Bourdain has a true writing talent and organises his anecdotes in a meticulous, word-spare fashion that neatly builds, shocks, amazes, and resolves in a true writerly manner, yet one is not constantly reminded that he’s writing. A chef homeboy, unabashed and unvarnished. But Buford’s book just left me feeling like he should have maybe smoked less weed during the writing of it.

And tonight I finally saw “Sideways.” Of course, as anyone connected with food should be aware, this was a landmark “foodie” picture. Well, maybe a landmark “winey” picture. As foodie pictures go, it was absolutely first-rate, never losing sight of the story and realism. Which reminds me of another foodie picture, Dinner Rush. That was so involved with food that you knew some major food fans had a hand in it, kind of like Francis Ford Coppola’s movies, in which he worked as much of his love of food and drink into the script as possible.

But this tiny immersion into the foodie stuff that I’ve experienced lately (I actually got a panini grill for Christmas! Damned if I know what to do with it. And a Jamie Oliver Flavour Shaker) reminds me that I really despise those who take food to ridiculous extremes—ever heard of fennel pollen? El Bulli and gastro-molecular cooking? I rest my case—and that food should be what it’s supposed to be—nourishment. Let’s keep the goddamned art out of it. Plaster a canvas with Gouda and green peppers if you want art. Leave my bowl to its lowly misery of mac and cheese.

Now to the matter of the six fondue sauces that I drunkenly promised my sister-in-law for the Great Fondue Party of 2006 . . .

Vacation Thoughts

For most of my life I’ve wanted to Be Somebody. The trouble is, I’ve never known who. I always wanted to be someone else. I always wanted to be able to do the stuff that someone else did. Anything that was remotely cool, I wanted to be able to do. How could these people do this stuff, and how could I do the same thing?

The conundrum, now that I see it for what it really is, is that I wanted to do everything, not just one thing. I wanted to do everything well. I discovered an ability to spell very early on; I liked words and their power on the page. I’ve always read like a maniac, but surprisingly, despite my love for reading and love for writing, I just can’t conceive of writing a book. That’s what authors do! And I’m not an author.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a musician. I really, really wanted to be a musician. Coincidentally, I also wanted to be a painter. I actually invested real time—countless hours for a teenager—to practicing music and art, and it wasn’t something forced upon me—it was by choice.

But somehow, the best guitarists were too talented. I practiced and practiced and practiced and they were always much better than me. They had that . . . thing, that good guitarists have. That I don’t have. I became a bass player, but shadowing me was always Jaco Pastorius. In the face of such genius, what can you do?

I went to art school. At least here, from sheer perseverance, was something I could do. I specialised in pointillism, an extremely time-consuming form of self-torture that involved creating drawings just by tapping dots of ink on an illustration board.

Looking back, my ambition was highly unrealistic. Mainly I realised that these things are the only thing these people do. Ordinary people don’t want to write and paint and be professional musicians. Being great in all of these fields is a task for a Goethe, or a Dante.

So why is it that I’m so pissed off that I haven’t perfected the art of cooking rice? Why is it not perfect, time in, time out, every grain fluffy yet tender, moist yet firm? Why is it? Why the hell is it?

Because if you can tell me, I’m just positively keeling over to know.

Huh? Why?

Five-Year-Old Pizza

He rolled out the dough, spread the sauce, grated the cheese and put on the toppings. I'd say he has the makings of a top chef. The pizza was excellent, considering it was made by a half-boy, half-frog . . .

I Scoff You Down!

A few culinary notes (do you say kewlinary? I tend to say cullinary but I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word actually pronounced) but some things are not arguable pronunciation-wise, says my inner beheemoth (--or is it behemmoth?):

Turmeric is not tewmeric. It’s termeric. Cumin is not cummin or koomin. It’s kewmin. I think. Cardamom is not card-a-MON, mon. It’s card-a-mom, Mother. And what is basil? Do you say bay-zil? I tend to say bazz-il but I don’t know where I learned that.

And oh! the difficulties of spelling. Just spell that spice that makes little girls nice. Two Ns or two Ms?

But don’t annoy me about that guy that runs a restaurant. Originally, a restaurant was a place in which you could find comfort; food, perhaps, a bed, perhaps companionship. In French, it was a place that “restored” your spirits: a “restoring” (restaurant) place. This is the “-ing” form of the French verb: “liv-ing” = “viv-ant”, “talking” = “parl-ant” (although in both languages these can be other forms of speech as well.)

Still, there is no arguing about it: a person who owns a restaurant is not a “restauRANT-teur,” a mistaken English extension of the anglicized word (I will leave the semantics of these things to people who actually SPEAK French and rely on my anglinstinct), but a “restauRAT-eur”--pronounced "rest-o-RAH-teur," meaning “someone who restores.” A quibble, I know, but peeve-inducing nonetheless. (I will concede that the "rat" portion of it does contribute to the quality of some restaurants.)

Again, the French will probably weigh in with their (rightful!) opinion.

Lastly, one final pet peeve: one does not “scoff” or “scoff down” food. One “scarfs” it. To scoff is to mock or make fun of, definitely not to eat. Again, I leave the etymology to you, but I know it to be true.

Whaddya know, I kinda rind.

Ray-Bashing Episode II

Tony Bourdain continues to be my candidate for the most hilarious person on the planet, able to say something totally outrageous while couching it in terms more labelled merely inappropriate.

Thus his comment in this article about Rachael Ray: “Chefs aren’t threatened by her because she’s not one of us,” adds Anthony Bourdain, one of the few professional chefs to speak out about Ray. “I’ve run into Rachael,” he continues. “She’s very cheerful and nice in a fem-bot sort of way. I mean I harbor a deep secret wish that in her spare time she’s decapitating puppies in her cellar while worshipping the anti-Christ but I’m afraid I’ll be disappointed.”

Fuckin' hilarious.

Spark o' Life

There was a time when you would have to get out your typewriter, or perhaps use a pen. Maybe even a fountain pen. Then you’d have to type or write something that you thought was relevant, say to the world condition, or maybe something you felt peeved about that day. Then you would have had to finish it nicely and fold the paper it was typed on and then put it in an envelope and either take it to the post office or put a stamp on it yourself and drop it in the mailbox. And then your letter would wing its way to the newspaper where you were sending it. Then, a bunch of people you didn’t know might or might not look at your ramblings and then might or might not decide to put your letter in the “Op-ed” section. One of these days, if at all.

But now, you just do what I’m doing. Type in your room on your computer, click a few buttons, and if you want the world to know what you had for lunch today, you can just click “post” and hundreds, even thousands of people you’ve never met before can read anything you choose to type.

Well, now that you hundreds if not thousands of people are reading, I’ll just tell you that I put a tiny but bright spark of life (my son) to bed and am about to have a beer.

So there.