An Edge in the Kitchen

David Leite has been kind enough (or desperate enough) to invite me to do a couple of guest pieces for his blog on Leite’s Culinaria.

Today’s entry, “So Ya Wanna Buy a Knife”

You have decided that it is time to get serious, time to show the world that you have arrived and are ready to cook. You have decided to buy some decent kitchen knives.

For those who haven’t yet been introduced, Leite’s Culinaria is food writer David Leite’s multiple Beard Award winning website featuring articles, insights, reviews and recipes. As one writer put it,

“Edited by David Leite, [Leite's Culinaria] is kind of The Atlantic Monthly for food lovers, with well-written essays by Leite or one of his posse of fellow food-obsessed wordsmiths. There are always recipes that are begging to be tried, columns that are both funny and informative, product reviews, interviews…basically hours of enjoyment to delve into.”

Michael Ruhlman, author of The Elements of Cooking, has a short bit on his favorite kitchen gear. I like the way he thinks. We all have too much crap in our kitchens. I do agree with many of the comments, though. I would have a hard time getting along without my tongs.

How a Change in 17th Century French Knifemaking Led to the Uniquely American Style of Eating

Another example of how knives have shaped culture is the unique American habit of switching the fork from the left hand to the right and back as we eat. Ever wonder why we do this awkward little move? It all came about because of a change in knife making in 17^th century France.

From the Middle Ages until the end of the 1600s, most diners ate with their fingers and a knife, which they brought with them to the table. Hosts and innkeepers didn’t provide tableware. Except for the extremely wealthy who owned separate eating knives, these knives were used for everything from cutting rope to defending one’s honor. These long slender knives continued to be used as weapons and posed the conceivable threat of danger at the dinner table. However, once forks began to gain popular acceptance there was no longer any need for a pointed tip at the end of a dinner knife to hold and spear the food. In 1669, King Louis XIV of France decreed all pointed knives on the street or the dinner table illegal. The claim was that this would reduce violence. Other accounts of the story suggest that Cardinal Richelieu was so disgusted by his dinner guests constantly picking their teeth with tips of their knives that he had his house knives ground down. Others in the court followed suit and the King made it official.

By the beginning of the 18^th century, knives imported to the American colonies had the new blunt tips. However, colonists were not shipped any forks, which were still somewhat exotic. Because Americans had very few forks and no longer had sharp-tipped knives to spear food, they had to use spoons in lieu of forks. They would use the spoon in the left hand to steady the food as they cut it with the knife in the right. They would then switch the spoon to the opposite hand in order to scoop it up to eat. This distinctly American style of eating continued even after forks became commonplace in the United States.

Why write a book about kitchen knives? Because kitchen knives changed the world. Because they are the oldest and most important tool known to humankind. As Michael Symon wrote in A History of Cooks and Cooking, “The use of knives does not depend on culture, it is culture.” If you include our pre-human ancestors, we have been using kitchen knives for about two and a half million years. That’s a million years before fire became fashionable, just to put things into perspective. From those first crude stone edges to the sleek, ultramodern hardware lining the walls of your local kitchen emporium, knives allow us to perform the most basic human task - preparing and sharing food.

Two and a half million years ago Homo habilis (”handy man”) first started chipping crude stone tools, including cutting edges. These tools played a significant role in the massive evolutionary changes that quickly followed. The ability to butcher and share scavenged meat, much richer in calories and nutrients than a strictly plant-based diet, led to rapid brain development, interdependent communal living and improved communication skills. By the time the recognizably human Homo erectus hit the scene, they came equipped with big brains, advanced tools and the small teeth that indicate a diet based on pre-processed, i.e. cut up, food. Puts your chef’s knife in a new light, doesn’t it?

Knives are the cooks’ oldest tool, the most essential, the most trusted. Their whole purpose is sharing. Michael Symons, A History of Cooks and Cooking

excerpted from the Introduction to”An Edge in the Kitchen”

Shun has been generating a lot of press lately (at least in the trade pubs) with background information and photos of its new mandolin.

Here’s the press release –

2008 March — Kai Presents the Shun Pro Mandolin to the Marketplace

March 1, 2008, Tualatin, OR – It’s the ideal tool for swiftly slicing firm fruits and vegetables, as well as producing shoestring, julienne, French fry, and plank fry cuts. It’s the only product on the market that can cut a two-pound potato without prior prep work. And with a safety-minded food carriage that keeps fingers away from the blade, the only thing cut is your food. It’s the new Shun Pro Mandolin, a food slicer that has been painstakingly tested to meet the rigors of daily use in local restaurants, but designed for the home gourmet. (more…)

The cover is finally up on Amazon, in all its tomato red glory. While you’re waiting patiently for me to get my act together you can, if you are so inclined, pre-order the book so that it will be delivered as soon as it is published.

Here’s the live link to “An Edge in the Kitchen” on Amazon.

If anyone has, in fact, stopped by chadwrites.com in the last day or two you’ll note that the placeholder page is gone and this rapidly shifting blog/website/disaster area has taken its place. Things are in transition. This will become the venue to discuss my book, kitchen knives, kitchen science, new books and other projects . . . at some point. Sooner rather than later, I hope. It’s going to be like this for the next week or two. I suspect the site will rarely look the same twice as I sort through what works and what doesn’t. Bear with me.

In the meantime, here’s a lovely image to keep you entertained.

Blog. What an unpleasant word. It’s something you expect to see in a horror novel (”It was squatting there, like a blog, looking disreputable and vaguely sinister”) or describing an unfortunate bodily function (”I can’t eat cucumbers, they make me blog”).

Now I have one.

Why, you ask? Apparently this is my publisher’s big plan for reaching the bestseller list. Sheer marketing genius at work. It used to be that only pre-teen girls, English majors and serial killers felt the need to record every passing thought for posterity. Now it seems that everyone with a computer feels compelled to share their gardening tips, puppy pictures, tantric sex secrets and satori-like insights. This is how we now express ourselves. As one particularly tough editor said, “You want to express yourself? Yell out the f**king window.”

Welcome to my window.