Author Archives: chriswardpress

Knives

13 Friday Mar 2009

Posted by in Cooking, Restauranting

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My knives, l-r: Henckels de-boner, Sabatier palette, H. fillet, S. steel, Swiss Army turning knife, no-name Chinese cleaver (just for breaking up bones), Arcos chef's knife, A. slicer, A. bread knife, A. de-boner, Metro paring knife

My knives, l-r: Henckels de-boner, Sabatier palette, H. fillet, S. steel, Swiss Army turning knife, no-name Chinese cleaver (just for breaking up bones), Arcos chef's knife, A. slicer, A. bread knife, A. de-boner, Metro paring knife


Several people have asked me about how and where to buy knives to use in the kitchen. In a few words: find a knife shop, chat with the owner, talk about what you’re doing, ask for recommendations. Don’t go buy a Shun/Henckels/Wusthoff/Japanese set online because you’ve read they’re the dog’s nads (or perfect for removing the dog’s nads), that won’t work. You’ll buy half a dozen knives of which one or two will suit you and the rest will never be touched.
Instead, buy a knife when you need it. To start, a big chef’s knife (20-30 cms, I find 25 perfect) and a small vegetable/paring knife will get you through most jobs, and I probably use these two for three quarters of everything I do in the kitchen. Add a filleting knife if you start working with fish, a de-boner if you work with meat, a slicing knife if you need to slice stuff thinly (for example, if you start working in a kebab restaurant..) I’ve never found a vegetable peeler that lasts more than a few weeks so buy packs of three or five at a time from the restaurant wholesaler and chuck them when they’re done cutting, recommendations accepted (I prefer the ones that are shaped like knives, not those other weird ones).
Keep them sharp. This means using a steel every single time you use a knife, and getting them professionally sharpened whenever the steel no longer does its job. Almost all my knives are German Zwilling Henckels. My 25cm chef’s knife, my slicing knife, bread knife and one of my de-boners are the Spanish, Arcos brand which belongs to Henckels. My flexible deboner (the Arcos one is a solid blade) is a Henckels Premium Brand, as is my filleting knife.
I have Sabatier vegetable, small chef’s (15cm) and filetting knives but I keep them at home and don’t use them at work, they don’t hold an edge long enough.
I have Swiss Army straight-blade (the cutting edge is straight, not curved) vegetable and turning (looks like a Turkish assassin’s curved blade) knives, and a Sabatier palette knife and steel. I also have a conventional-blade vegetable knife bought from Metro, the big French restaurant supplier/wholesaler, and given to me as a present by Jean-Rémi Joly, one of my first Chefs. I use Arcos scissors at work for cutting fish fins etc.
And I SWEAR by my Bron Coucke mandolin, I use this more than some of my knives for slicing vegetables. Microplane graters in three or four different sizes.
I didn’t particularly choose these brands, I came to own them by going to the knife shop in town (here in Avignon) and discussing what I want to do with the owner. He’s very helpful. He sells the whole range of Henckels, from the cheap Arcos to the very, very expensive premium ones. So when I started I was going to cookery school I wanted something cheap and durable and he recommended Arcos. Then I moved up in the kitchen, needed a flexible deboner, he recommended the Henckels. Last knife I bought from him was the (Arcos) slicing knife which I used dozens of times a day last summer to slice marinated and smoked salmon. I also take all my knives back to him every few months to get them professionally sharpened. I used my big chef’s knife the other day to slice some dried apricots and it’d been literally months since I’d used it, so I managed to slice off almost my entire index finger fingernail with it, clean in one go, easier than cutting apricot. They’re SHARP when they come back from him.
If you’re going to do anything with your knives I highly recommend finding a local knife shop to sharpen them for you and show you how to use a steel to maintain the edge. Hand wash, dry and keep them either in a wood block (I do this with my home knives) or in a folding knife pouch, which is where I keep my work knives. Not in a drawer!
When it comes down to it, though, in the end what counts is not how good and/or expensive your knives are, it’s what you do with them. Nothing beats buying a sack of carrots and julienning/brunoising them until your fingers bleed. Search on Google or Youtube, you’ll find plenty of videos showing you good knife techniques – keep your thumb AWAY from the cutting edge!
Practice makes perfect.
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Let’s cook

08 Sunday Mar 2009

Posted by in Cooking

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Made the best apricot chutney I’ve ever turned out this morning:
250g dried apricots
125g raw palm sugar. I think this is what it’s called. I find it in the Chinese supermarket, it comes in solid packs with the sugar in really solid 50g bars.
80g white vinegar
45g lemon juice
5 whole cloves

Cook very slowly – on the ‘leccy, it was at 2/9 for two or three hours, then bumped up to 6 for about 10 minutes to finish at the end. I don’t know if it was the lemon juice or the slow cooking, but the apricots kept their colour magnificently. The end result doesn’t taste quite vinegary enough for my taste, next time I think I’ll use the lemon juice in addition to the vinegar – basic chutney proportions are half the quantity of vinegar and sugar to your quantity of fruit or veg. I’ll try some vegetables next time too, I think.

Job fell through

07 Saturday Mar 2009

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Turned out their idea of ‘1500 a month’ was actually 200 a month less than my idea of ‘1500 a month’. And their idea of ‘overtime payments’ turned out to be ‘we’ll give you a share of tips if there are any’. And when I said, ‘Erm….’ they said ‘Troublemaker! Troublemaker! You don’t understand how restaurants work! Run away! Run away!’

You’re shitting me

27 Friday Feb 2009

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Ryanair has long been my most-loathed airline. Most loathed company in the world, probably. Now they’re considering installing pay toilets on their planes according to this story from the BBC. Oh please, just machine-gun your passengers on the tarmac and steal their belongings from their bleeding corpses. Rape their chidren and sell any survivors into slavery. Ryanair, you set new lows in ‘We despise our customers and are proud of it’.

Continuing anger

24 Tuesday Feb 2009

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I’ve written before about how the anti-vaccination ‘campaigners’ annoy me. Anger me. There’s another good article refuting all their arguments by David Gorscki up here.
I would love the anti-vaxxers to read it, to slap their foreheads and say, ‘Blimey mate, I’ve been wrong all along! I’m so sorry for being such a fuckwit, for trying to kill my own children and trying to kill yours! Can you point me to the nearest doctor so I can jab my children now please?’ but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Anti-vaccination has become a religion for these nutters. And I mean that in the following-blindly-no-matter-what-happens-to-prove-I’m-a-fuckwit sense, not the handing out stale buns to the starving sense. Idiots like Jenni Barnet who has now removed all evidence that she ever uttered the word ‘vaccination’ from her personal website. That’s right love, pop a few homeopathic pills and pretend nothing’s the matter. Fuckwit.
Oh and yes, I do realise that many who, like me, despise and despair of the anti-vaxxers do their best to be polite and reasoned, to produce logical arguments against their stupidity and point them gently towards arguments proving them wrong.
Not me. I want to beat them with pointy sticks and stab them in the eye with a fork. Stupidity around the world is on the increase, not decrease, and reason doesn’t work against stupidity. These people need to be removed from the gene pool by a system of licenses for having children. An IQ higher than the wattage of an old-fashioned lightbulb will be one requirement. Acceptance of the scientific method will be another. Anyone who thinks that crystals can cure herpes or that wearing purple clothes will stop them coughing will be pushed off a cliff.Me after reading something written by Jenni Barnet