An Edge in the Kitchen

Food Borne Illnesses

Background

There are thousands of viruses and pathogens and millions of bacteria swarming in, on and around us at all times. E. Coli, as a matter of fact, is a natural and necessary inhabitant of the intestines of nearly all animals, including people. Don’t want to deal with it? Get yourself a big plastic bubble and a sleeping bag. Otherwise, just accept the fact that we’re surrounded by bacteria, most of which we will never need to worry about, and get on with your life.

The Bad News

The bad bugs are out there. You’ve probably already run into them. There’s no such thing as a “24 hour stomach flu,” so that long night you spent endlessly counting your bathroom floor tiles was probably food poisoning of one sort or another. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that there are between 76 and 81 million cases of food poisoning each year, the vast majority of which go unreported because they didn’t require a trip to the hospital or doctor’s office.

Food borne illnesses kill between 5,000 and 9,000 people each year, mostly the very young, the very old and those with compromised immune systems. If you are cooking for someone who falls into this category, you need to take extra precautions to prevent cross contamination in your kitchen. Most people suffer mild to severe diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain and get well on their own in about a week. About 325,000 cases are serious enough to require hospitalization.

And the Really Bad News . . .

Somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of food poisoning incidents can be traced to food prepared and eaten at home.

Wash Your Hands

Common kitchen pathogens include Salmonella, Campylobacter jejuni and the ever popular E. Coli, along with a whole host of other bacteria, viruses, molds, fungi and parasites. While E. Coli O157:H7 gets a lot of press, campylobacter is by far the most common source of food poisoning.

Today’s factory farmed chickens, tasty as they might be, are inbred mutants with more recessive genes than the royal family.

Hand washing is the best preventative. Eighty percent of all pathogens are spread through hand contact. Every 60 seconds a working adult touches as many as 30 objects. The number of people who say they don’t wash their hands or cutting boards after cutting raw meat or chicken has dropped to 15 percent in recent years. Those are the mouth-breathers who admit it. Videotaped studies of kitchen habits show that the real number is about 30 percent. That is just scary. Knowing how to minimize cross contamination is vital. Hands, sinks, sponges and cutting boards are prime bacteria delivery systems. Sinks and sponges are the worst offenders. Cutting boards, because they come in contact with a variety of foods during a single meal preparation, have got to be kept clean to avoid transferring pathogens from one food item to the next. That’s why you need one board that is just for meats, fish and poultry. A recent report found that 80 percent of all grocery store chickens in the U.S. are contaminated with Salmonella, Campylobacter or both. You don’t want that in your salad or on your strawberry shortcake.

“But,” you say, “my grandmother/mother/aunt used the same cutting board forever and never gave it anything more than a quick wipedown. We never got sick.” Maybe. Times are different now. Your grandmother’s fish and chicken came from a neighbor or the next county over. Even grocery stores were stocked with relatively local ingredients farmed on a moderate scale. Today’s factory farmed chickens, tasty as they might be, are inbred mutants with more recessive genes than the royal family. Your leafy greens were picked under conditions that in no way resemble those in your grandmother’s garden. Wash your hands. And your cutting board.

Raleigh food blogger, attorney, and man about town Dean McCord has written a very kind preview of “An Edge in the Kitchen” titled These are the Days of Our Knives on his blog, VarmintBites. Dean writes about dining, home cooking, family, and the Triangle’s burgeoning food movement. His cobbler recipe is also top notch. Definitely go read his preview of my book, but bookmark the site. It’s good reading.

The first review is in. The good folks at OnlyKnives.com have just posted a glowing review of An Edge in the Kitchen:

If you’ve spent any time at all researching kitchen knives, you quickly realize that there’s a lot of disinformation out there. Myths, misperceptions and outright lies abound. Chad attempts to debunk some of these myths and give you an unbiased, straight scoop on knives. . . .

Overall, the book is a great read. Chad’s got a breezy writing style and a sharp sense of humor. I doubt we’ll see a sequel or that they’ll turn it into a movie, but it’s quite entertaining nonetheless.

If you want to learn about knives, as any serious cook really should, I can recommend no better way than to check out this book. <click to see the whole review>

The only thing I object to is the dismissal of the movie idea. I often spend hours wondering who is going to play me on the big screen.

I’ve updated the News & Reviews page. In short, I’ll be at the Blade Show in Atlanta May 30 through June 1 and the East Coast Kitchen Knife Gathering June 20 - 22 in Pennsylvania. See the page for details. Hope to see you at one of the events!

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”