Knife
Page 4
The curve of the blade is dictated by the rocking motion that’s key to the Western style of chopping – the point of the blade rarely leaves the board – but it’s noticeable that, as Japanese and Chinese knives have gained acceptance, Western chefs have begun to favour wider blades that enable a more ‘up-and-down’ chopping style.
BONING KNIFE
BLADE LENGTH: 130MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 240MM
WEIGHT: 99G
MANUFACTURED BY: THIERS-ISSARD SABATIER
MATERIALS: HAND-FORGED CARBON STEEL, BEECHWOOD
PRESSURE-TREATED WITH EPOXY
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: FRANCE
USES: BONING MEAT OR POULTRY
ALTHOUGH JOINTS CAN BE BONED with a regular chef ’s knife, it can be tough on the blade. Boning requires a certain amount of sawing, ‘keyhole’ working and occasional use of leverage on the blade. Boning knives, therefore, are usually shorter and ground to be much narrower across the blade – usually the bolster sticks out further than the edge.
Chefs rarely work from whole carcasses – meat arrives from the butcher already broken down, so the boning knives in their rolls are rarely beyond 7 inches in length. It’s all you need for preparation of joints and birds for cooking. Butchers’ boning knives, covered elsewhere, are of more terrifying size and infinite variety.
The chef ’s boning knife will be expected to work down the thighbone of a lamb leg without much collateral damage to the meat, and have enough stiffness in the blade to enable tough tendons to be cut with the extreme tip. Yet the blade that can ‘tunnel-bone’ a lamb leg will also serve to remove the oysters from a chicken carcass or shape up a standing rib roast.
This is a carbon-steel Sabatier version with a rosewood handle. The handle here has been impregnated with resin, so it will have a much longer life than older-style plain wood.*
* Old wooden handles can be revitalised by standing them in a jar of kitchen oil overnight.
FILLETING KNIFE
BLADE LENGTH: 150MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 250MM
WEIGHT: 110G
MANUFACTURED BY: THIERS-ISSARD SABATIER
MATERIALS: HIGH-CARBON STAINLESS STEEL, BEECHWOOD
PRESSURE-TREATED WITH EPOXY
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: FRANCE
USES: FILLETING OR SKINNING MEAT, FISH OR POULTRY
RESTAURANTS USUALLY TAKE DELIVERY of pre-cut fillets of large fish so a chef will only regularly fillet smaller ones. For these the flexible filleting knife is perfect for the job. Flexibility means that the flat of the blade runs along the ribs with no waste of flesh and little chance of nicking the soft bones. The same technique, flexing the flat of the blade against the waste material, means that the flexible filleter is also a brilliant skinning knife and can work flat against the surface of meat, removing silverskin or tough connective material. It’s also terrific for poultry, which requires a more delicate approach.
The filleting knives used by fish professionals are in a different league. There are now machines that can fillet fish well but for centuries it has been a manual skill, each fish individually cut in almost inconceivable quantities by skilled men and women. A fishing fleet returning from weeks at sea could arrive with hundreds of tons of catch that would need to be filleted for salting within hours if it wasn’t to spoil. A trawlerman or a herring girl would have no time for the careful surgery of the chef and different, tougher tools evolved.
For maximum flexibility, the kitchen fillet knife will almost certainly be made from a different steel to the knives in the rest of the roll.
ON CUSTOM KNIVES
PEOPLE OFTEN ASSUME that a chef will commission a special knife in order to achieve a better ‘balance’ or ‘weight’. Actually, the style of knife usually dictates whether the bulk of the weight is in the blade or the handle and, as it is ‘locked’ to the hand in use, it’s almost impossible for any special ‘tailoring’ to improve or speed up your knife work. The centre of gravity is effectively immaterial. The shape of the blade matters but, as we’ve established that the blade changes to fit the user and the user changes to fit the blade, this kind of ‘technical’ bespokery is largely hokum. But the lure of the personalised, ‘custom’ knife is powerful.
Here in the UK, our culture of knifemaking is in its very early beginnings. Yes, there have always been a few people out there making broadswords for fantasists or hobbit halberds, but it’s only recently that a very few have begun custom-making knives for cooks. Many of the knifemakers are cooks themselves and the blades they fashion are made to be used.
In other parts of the world though, places with a culture of hunting, fishing and of the private ownership of weapons, knifemaking is more developed. The knife in the picture is a custom-made filleting knife for a fisherman, made by Guillaume Cote in Ontario, Canada. The handle is made with pine cones set in resin and then highly polished to resemble fish scales, the pommel end is shaped into a symbolic fish skull.
Though the knife would do sterling work on a boat or at the side of a river, gutting a freshly caught salmon, it’s too beautiful, and way too costly, for such use. One could spend pages debating the exact point at which a piece of craftsmanship becomes a piece of art but it’s fair, I think, to suggest that this knife was made at the very least to be looked at and appreciated as much as used. Though some knifemakers will take commissions for blades made to a customer’s exact designs, many now prefer to execute in their own unique style, a further push into the area of the art object.
In the US, knife collecting is a popular pursuit. The work of established star knifemakers like Bob Kramer or Murray Carter and rising stars like Doghouse Forge, NHB KnifeWorks, Chelsea Miller or Bloodroot Blades is so desirable that they have waiting lists months or years long, some even auctioning their work, with prices beginning at hundreds or thousands of dollars ‘per blade inch’.
This is complicated territory. I’m not sure I like it when a knife drifts away from form following rigorously on function and yet… though my computer and phone keep perfect atomic time, I still wear a wristwatch that loses a few seconds a month; though I could buy an efficient modern SUV, I drive an ancient ‘classic’ car. These things are more beautiful than they are efficient, so I can appreciate that for some people the best knives are so lovely that ownership alone is pleasure enough. Occasionally, even I encounter knives so exceptional, so beautiful that it’s almost enough just to stare at them, though often they are most affecting when they are old and worn down by a productive life.
Ultimately, though, the pleasure for me is in a relationship which can only really develop by using the knife as often as possible, caring for it and maintaining it. It might be nice to have a locked case, or even a room, where I could sit quietly and appreciate the work of great makers, but, every now and then, I’d have to take down even the most priceless blade in my collection, carry it to the kitchen and chop some onions.
BOB KRAMER
Bob Kramer is widely accepted as the most important culinary knifemaker in America. He originally trained as a chef but became obsessed with knives and set about learning to make them. Kramer was accepted into the American Bladesmiths Society,* a body of around 120 top craftsmen who, until his arrival, had largely specialised in decorative fighting or hunting knives, and soon became something of a cult figure to famous chefs and wealthy foodies. For a while Kramer merely had a three-year waiting list for a knife – as do many of the better makers – but he now makes fewer, even more beautiful pieces at
his studio in Washington State and sells them only by online auction.
Some of the best chefs in the US own Kramer knives and if that’s the league you want to play in, you’ll need to sign up at his website, undergo a brief credit check and then wait to be informed of an opportunity to bid. At the time of writing, Kramer was auctioning a staggeringly beautiful 10-inch gyuto with a handle made of spalted box elder and a Damascus blade forged with iron from a meteorite recovered from Campo Del Cielo in Argentina. The blade was differentially hardened by heating while parts of it were coated in clay.
It was a hotly contested sale and I have to confess that, weakling that I am, I bottled out when the price went north of $43,000.
* According to Kramer’s biography, ‘The test required building a 10-inch Bowie knife made of 300+ layers of steel. This one knife had to cut through a 1-inch free hanging rope in one swing, chop through a two-by-four twice, shave a swatch of arm hair (after the two-by-four) and, finally, bend the blade at a 90 degree angle without the blade breaking. If you succeed, then you submit five flawless knives (including a 15th-century Quillion dagger, a very difficult knife to make) to a panel of judges.’ After all that, something for chopping carrots must have been a breeze.
OFFICE/PARING KNIFE
BLADE LENGTH: 100MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 200MM
WEIGHT: 59G
MANUFACTURED BY: DÉGLON SABATIER
MATERIALS: STAINLESS STEEL, THERMOPLASTIC
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: FRANCE
USES: VEG PARING, PEELING, DELICATE SLICING
THE PARING KNIFE or couteau d’office usually has a blade length of 10 centimetres or less and is shaped like a slender chef ’s knife. It has three main actions. Like the chef ’s knife it can be used to chop, but just really tiny things. This makes it the go-to blade for shaving garlic into transparent slices ‘…so thin they liquefy in the pan. It’s a very good system.’* The tip of the blade is great for cutting and teasing out small blemishes in fruit, the hard bits in a fresh peeled pineapple or the hulls of strawberries; or the whole cutting edge can be used in the same way as the turning knife – always pushing the vegetable on to the blade – to peel vegetables.
Possibly because they are a little tricky to keep sharp, but more likely because they are constantly getting stolen in busy kitchens, fewer and fewer chefs seem to keep an expensive office knife these days. It has been the first professional knife type to be replaced by mass-produced knives – with razor-sharp but short-lived blades and brightly coloured, plastic handles, priced so cheaply that they are regarded as disposable.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that a classic ‘office knife’ is worth the effort of looking after, particularly where workmates are trustworthy. Cheap, disposable knives are brilliant, but be aware that every time you use one, a tiny part of your soul will die.
* I know Paulie Cicero used a razor blade in Goodfellas. But he was a good enough cook that he would have used an office knife if the screws had let him have one.
TURNING KNIFE
BLADE LENGTH: 70MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 180MM
WEIGHT: 61G
MANUFACTURED BY: J. A. HENCKELS
MATERIALS: ICE-HARDENED STAINLESS STEEL, THERMOPLASTIC
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: GERMANY
USES: VEG PEELING, TURNING AND CARVING
TURNING OR ‘TOURNÉ’ is rapidly becoming one of the lost kitchen arts. Few diners are truly happy to see their vegetables carved into controlled little shapes – it militates against modern ideas of freshness and authenticity – and yet, as the perfect boiling time for a vegetable is a function of its density and thickness, the practice of carving each one to such a shape and size that they all cook perfectly together is not quite as silly as it first sounds.
The turning knife is designed, uniquely, to cut towards the hand. It is held curled in the fingers with the thumb used to push the vegetable on to the blade. It’s vital to get this right because, by reversing the action and pulling the blade back towards your thumb, you’ll almost certainly end up having to explain to an overworked doctor precisely why you’re bleeding all over her nice, clean Emergency Room. By turning a length of carrot in one hand and taking identical crescent-shaped strokes across it with the curved blade, the poor sous chef whittles a sort of long, regular oval shape which looks spectacular on the plate.
To modern cooks this must seem like an immensely wasteful practice, but bear in mind that any kitchen that has enough sous chefs to turn vegetables – and customers rich enough to pay for them – is almost certainly making stock in industrial quantities, so no peelings or trimmings would be wasted.
The tip of the turning knife can also be used to cut even grooves in the cap of a mushroom to create champignons tournés, or fluted mushrooms. When Shirley Conran said that life was too short to stuff a mushroom, she had only touched the very tip of the possibilities of true time-wasting.
STEAK KNIVES
BLADE LENGTH: 133MM
OVERALL LENGTH: 254MM
WEIGHT: 88G
MANUFACTURED BY: UNKNOWN
MATERIALS: X50CROMOV15 STEEL,
DUPONT ‘DELRIN’
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: GERMANY
USES: TABLE SETTING FOR MEAT OR GAME
FOR CENTURIES we carried knives as personal accessories, everyday tools and sidearms. There was no point in having knives at table when everyone – men, women and children – carried perfectly serviceable blades at their belts. It was at aristocratic tables, then, that the first purpose-made ‘eating’ knives appeared; decorative, usually expensive to better display the host’s wealth, often with rounded ends and blunt edges. Fine for dividing soft cooked food and pushing it on to a fork but, perhaps most importantly, useless as an offensive weapon.
It’s only in more recent years that the steak has become a high-status food, as symbolic of wealth as finely carved and sauced meat. Big, juicy, seared and properly near-raw at the centre, and needing to be dealt with at table. It’s actually impossible to cut a steak with the kind of knife you’d use to cut and push refined, prepared foods. We need the ‘steak knife’.
This pair is sold by Donald Russell, an extremely high-class butcher in Scotland, famous for spectacularly good steaks. The knives are made to the same standards as kitchen knives and are deliberately designed to have many of the same visual cues.
Steak knives don’t need to match your forks, they need to look like they can honour a serious piece of meat and so need to appear both reassuringly expensive and brutally efficient.
THE NAT GILPIN COLLECTION
NATHANIEL GILPIN was the head chef at The Silver Cross in Whitehall from 1920 to 1950. Today it’s an imposing traditional boozer, popular with tourists, but when Gilpin was in charge it served substantial, high-quality food to members of parliament and civil ser vants. It would be hard to imagine a more stereotypically British dining environment; solidly Victorian, at the very heart of ‘The Establishment’ and yet, somehow democratic. Unlike the surrounding private members’ clubs, pubs and chop houses, The Silver Cross ser ved all social classes. In a photograph taken in 1932 for Country Life magazine, Gilpin stands behind the Luncheon Buffet Bar flanked by his assistant Fred Sadler (right), proudly displaying a spread of hams, turkeys and cooked crabs and lobsters.
Beginning as a Royal Navy Officer Steward 3rd Class during the First World War, Gilpin worked his way up through the catering trade. He favoured Sheffield blades and, though often partially obscured by sharpening, you can st
ill detect the ghost trademarks of once great British cutlery brands on his knives: Mexea and Co., Beehive, Wm. Gregory ‘All Right’, Butler. Some of these marks are from companies already defunct when Gilpin began cooking, so we can imagine that he may have inherited them from older cooks.
The long, straight knives probably began as ordinary slicers, with parallel-sided blades a centimetre or two across. Having a knife sharpened to just a few millimetres in width, though, looked good in front of the customers. Even today, if you order a salt beef sandwich, or good smoked salmon carved to order, the counterman will use a knife that’s sharpened almost to the point of non-existence. It reassures the customer to see a tool of the trade so obviously well used and cared for: ‘Look how thin and sharp that old knife is, he must really know what he’s doing.’
Some of the knives with chunkier, more substantial handles would have been more like thick butcher knives in their original form but, with admirable thrift, Gilpin has kept them going through other useful incarnations in the kitchen. One or two have curved backs, indicating that they may have functioned as boning knives.
Unpacking the knives and arranging them for photography is a powerfully affecting experience. There is always something moving in handling someone’s tools – the feeling that they have sat in someone’s hand every moment of their long working lives imbues them with emotional weight. But there is more in these knives, one begins to imagine more. Do the thin carvers reveal a pride in a skill that Gilpin enjoyed displaying? There is a flash of the swashbuckler in their absurdly rapier-like shape. Some knives have stayed in use beyond the point when their original shape was gone. Does that imply a kind of stern thrift?