Demystifying Knives — You Only Need Two!

The other day I stressed the importance of developing really good knife skills. Now, by “really good” I don’t mean training for a career in food carving; I merely mean getting supercomfortable with the knives you have and use on a regular basis so that you can get meals on the table with just minutes of prep time.

For too many years, I kind of made do with crappy knives. I guess I believed that great cooking was within reach even if all you had was a butterknife. I still think that’s true for certain situations — you find yourself in a borrowed cabin, say, and you’re determined to make a good dinner — but, ever since I’ve used good knives, and kept them sharp, I’m sold on the pure beauty and joy that they can bring to everyday life.

Lots of  cooks have knife sets. Many of you know that I’m not much of a believer in sets of anything, and this most definitely includes knives. Ask a set owner how many of the several dozen knives are used regularly, and the inevitable answer seems to be “two.” I agree with them. I have a few more, mainly because I can’t bear to throw them out, but 95 percent of my prep involves just two knives.  Professional chefs obviously need more than two, but I’m guessing that an overwhelmingly large percentage of us home cooks can cook just about everything we’ve ever wanted to with just two.

Both of the knives shown above are Japanese, but it really doesn’t matter where they’re from. You should have a large (I like six inches) chef’s knife/santoku, and a small paring knife. That’s it. But both should be really good quality. You can probably expect to spend at least $100 on the big one, and $50 on the small one. But they’re the last knives you’ll ever need.

On Sharpening

So how to keep them really sharp?

Lots of people take their knives to a professional to be sharpened; plenty of farmers’ markets these days even have mobile sharpening dudes. I really can’t recommend that route, for the sole reason that the powerful grinders they use really take off a LOT of metal. Go to them often enough and you wind up with knives that look as if they’ve had 30 percent haircuts! Besides, who wants to pack up the knives, schlep them someplace, and pay for this destruction?

I think I’ve tried every method of knife sharpening, including purchasing ceramic knives that allegedly don’t need sharpening at all. In fact, they do, and Kyocera’s solution — to box them up every once in a while and send them to Kyocera for professional sharpening — borders on the absurd; they’re great while they’re sharp though.

The best solution I’ve found is a diamond-surfaced stone, shown above. It has two sides of diamond coating: one rough and one finer. Superdull knives need the rough side, but reasonably not-dull knives work well with the finer side. Three to four strokes on each side of the knife gets them razor sharp.

You’re not quite done yet though — now just glide it up and down a sharpening steel (which would more accurately be called a honing steel, since that’s what we’re doing here) to remove the tiny burrs created by the diamond, and you will have scary-sharp knives.

On Grip

Most cooks grasp the handle of a knife, but my friend Charles Haynes showed me a method that we both believe is superior, and that offers far greater control. Move your entire hand about an inch UP the handle, toward the blade, and grasp the handle where it meets the blade, with your thumb and forefinger, and gently squeeze it. Use your other three fingers to grip the handle, but keep relaxed about it. It’s a lot like “choking up” on a baseball bat. It may sound strange, and perhaps feel awkward at first, but I urge you to try it. You’ll soon see that it becomes like an extension of your hand; it will give you confidence and remove the fear of hurting yourself. Knife slips become far less common because control is radically increased.

It’s also important to use your knives tactilely, not visually. If you rely on the fingers of both hands to do the work, you can proceed literally blindly and not worry about hurting yourself, because when your fingers talk to one another, they don’t miscue.

This is how it’s done, assuming you’re right handed: hold whatever is you’re cutting–be it an onion, a carrot, piece of meat, or whatever—with your left hand by pointing your fingertips toward the middle of your palm. Imagine that you’re imitating a cat, claws drawn—that’s the shape you want for your left hand. Now, holding the knife as described above, tap the flat, broad side of the blade against the first knuckle below your fingertips, to let your left hand “know” where the knife is.  There is virtually no chance of slicing off a fingertip if you do this—it takes the fingertip out of the equation entirely. Feeling the broad side of the blade against your left knuckle, you can now slice and dice with impunity without even looking, since you’re now proceeding by touch (i.e., feeling the blade against your knuckle), not by sight. It never ceases to alarm and amaze my friends and cooking students who watch me do this, and who tend to rely on their eyes to not lop their fingertips off. This “claw” method, along with the “high grip” method of grasping the knife, can be learned in just a few minutes, and will provide a lifetime of vastly increased pleasure and safety in using really sharp knives.

The hands do a lot better when they operate on their own, without much bossing around from the eyes or, especially, the brain. Try focusing your awareness into your hands, and letting them figure out the best way to chop something.

On Slicing

Most people use a knife like a hammer—they bring the knife straight down on a piece of food, and rarely use a sawing motion. I find that the combination of sawing and hammering is the best; it lets the sharpness of the knife do most of the work. There is also a palpable pleasure in feeling, through the fingers of your right hand, the feeling of really sharp metal glide through something.

Your left hand is the guide. If you want really thin slices of something, you barely, almost imperceptibly, move it. If you want thicker slices, you’ll move it more.

One last, if obvious, point: don’t use your precious knives for ANYTHING other than preparing food. Don’t open packages, don’t use as a screwdriver, don’t cut Styrofoam, don’t cut thread.

Anyone have any tips I haven’t covered?

Administrivia — Please Resubscribe! (plus: we got chicks!)

Lordy, my tech wounds on this site have reached rather deep. Many of you have received emails from me, requesting that you resubscribe (via email or via rss). But for anyone reading this who hasn’t resubscribed, and who would like to, please do so! The links are to the upper right, just above my photo. I’d love to bring all the old Feedblitz people over to the new software, so come on, please.

Other breakaway news: we got four chix! They’re now quite a bit bigger than they look in this photo; they grow like little monsters. We somehow built a coop — pix of it soon. I am the original neanderthal carpenter, so it’s a total miracle it got built, but we got some crucial help from our superfriend and wonderneighbor, Dave Harp (that link includes of a photo Lucelle, the ubergardener, chicken sensei, and cook I’ve written about before; she’s married to Dave).

The middle two are aurecana chickens, the kind that lay the green/blue eggs, and two are vanilla brown crankers. We can’t wait! Look like the due date for the first batch is August. My egg habit is about to go out of control.

We leave for Holland next week. I’ll be chronicling the adventure here, so stay tuned! But I have a few posts queued up in the meantime, so stay tuned for those as well!

And welcome back to the fold, my little stray breakaway flock!

:^)

A Quick Bowl of Umami

Umami is my siren.

It’s pretty much constantly singing out to me, beckoning me with come-hither beams from god knows where. I manage to slip in elements of umami into almost every meal, but occasionally I have to just max it with an umami blast.

Today’s lunch break from painting — don’t even ask! — required such a blast. I had on hand, as I almost always have on hand:

• dried and pulverized shiitake
• dried and pulverized dried tomato
• parm
• onion

So far so good.  I also had:

• ultrafresh smoked ham (from my recent pig)
• a good hunk of butternut squash
• a few sweet peppers
• jalapeno
• citron marmalade bubbling away on the stove

Cube up the squash and dice the onion and off to the races.

It’s times like these that knife skills come in really handy. Is there any skill more useful in a kitchen? Hundreds of hours of relentless practice, like hundreds of hours of anything, can make you really good at it. It’s really, really important to have one good knife that you love/cherish/take great care of. If you’re ever going to splurge on any one piece of kitchen equipment, let it be a good knife. Perhaps a short essay on how I deal with my knives might be of interest, so I will queue up a post on that anon.

Winter squash (i.e. my butternut) cooks quickly once it’s chopped up small, so I was able to finish the dish in about five minutes of high heat in a hot wok. For yet more umami goodness I sprinkled the dish with umami salt, and finished it off with fresh oregano and ham tossed with a spoon full of citron marmalade. With crackers and a glass of the house sauvignon blanc.

Fortified to paint some more!

Deborah Madison’s Delightful New Project

The always-delightful Deborah Madison has been a HUGE influence on my cooking. I can’t recommend her books enough. So a big heads-up for Deborah fans: she just gave me a sneak preview of her new project, called “What We Eat When We Eat Alone.” Complete with out-there and cool illustrations by her husband, Patrick McFarlin (a rather stunning painter; check out some of his work here).

Wild stuff! I can’t wait to read it. I only wish I could have been videoed in one of these segments:

How about you? Let’s hear a few secrets about what you REALLY eat when you’re alone. Me: I go a bit feral — it usually involves multiple habaneros and eggs. And beer!

Hot Salad of Long Bean, Carrot, Habanero, and Tofu

I was editing some of the photos I took during our recent swap in Mendocino, including one of a portly looking breakaway cook in a hot tub, so I decided to have a big bowl of vegetables for lunch.  I don’t think I’ve spent a single minute of my life thinking about how to lose weight, but that question is now residing quite squarely in the center of  my frontal cortex.  I’m inclined not to worry too much though, and figure I’ll just up my veg consumption to even more prodigious quantities and drag my ass out the door and up the lovely Mt. Baldy trail quasidaily. (This is the second time I’ve lived at the foot of a Mt. Baldy — the first was in Claremont, about an hour east of Los Angeles).

And thus was born today’s hot salad, made by peeling then slicing a large carrot lengthwise and then into long thin half moon, and sauteing it with

• a handful of long beans
• some spring onions and green garlic
• a few batons of ginger
• a whole habanero, seeds and veins removed, cut into large chunks
• a few tablespoons of very soft tofu
• some green fruity olive oil

There’s something about the fire of a hab on a hot day, counterintuitive though that may sound; it seems to open up the pores and, oddly, let heat escape. Try it sometime! The soft tofu dampens the heat quite a bit, and acts as a loose binder for everything else. With a big glass of bubbly water with plenty of Sicilian lemon in it.  Which reminds me: an update on my adventures in bubbly water should be forthcoming soon; I’ve changed my thinking on it.

A satisfying lunch on lots of levels.

Would love to hear your all-time favorite quickie lunches. And, just possibly, can’t-fail methods of losing weight. Besides, you know, eating less.

Fennel, Green Garlic, and Gojiberry

With my obsession with garlic confit, each year I forget that garlic is available, for just a few weeks, in its young, green, adolescent form. I was jolted out of my somnambulance, as I often am, by my box from Mariquita Farms, which was teeming with a gigantic bunch of green garlic. The smell of green garlic is unlike anything else, including very fresh garlic cloves; if anyone has ever had the pleasure of sticking one’s face near the soil of garlic plants, it’s kind of like that. Earthy, grassy, slightly garlicy, yet sugary; wildly enticing, in other words, at least to this olfactory processing unit!

Also in the box were three beautiful baby fennel bulbs. Sometimes my method of getting through my Mariquita box includes using up whatever is most voluminous, so that I can actually see what else is in my fridge. So my worms got most of the fennel fronds and branches, and we got an incredible tasty side dish of sauteed green garlic, fennel, and gojiberry.

It was just a matter of slicing the fennel (the bulbs were so young and tender that the entire thing was consumed; usually, I slice around the rather-tough stem and discard it, but this stem was very good), slicing the green garlic (the only prep is peeling back a layer or two of the outside covering, and trimming off the root end and the too-fibrous top), and tossing in a handful of gojiberries. Why gojiberries? For texture, taste, and color: I like the chewiness of them, in contrast with the snap-crunch of the fennel, I like their raisiny taste, and I love their bright red color, which contrasts nicely with green). A drizzle of green olive oil,  some tangerine salt, and a light dusting of chopped chives were e only other things happening.

Green garlic lovers: please give us your favorite ways to use it!

Administrative note: I’ve added a button, just below the search box in the right sidebar, to connect on Facebook — please check it out!

On Recharging One’s Batteries, House-Swapping, and Oysters

Nothing like a little ocean air and long walks with a hyperfriendly dog to rest the soul and recharge. We spent a long weekend in Mendocino, house-swapping with our friend Rod, and had a blast. What is it about getting away from the home base and decompressing? I read two books (including Jonah Lehrer’s magnificent How We Decide), got caught up with my New Yorkers, cooked some simple meals, drank a bunch of wine, and soaked in a hot tub. Total heaven.

House-swapping is such a wonderful thing; I’ve probably done at least 20 of them without a single problem arising. It’s so great: you show up in some great locale in someone’s home, which is almost always a hundred times better than a hotel. I like finding homes with pets that need care, because OUR house comes with cats! You can even find people, like Rod, who are keen on repeat swaps, especially when things go as swimmingly as they always do with us. The only money we spent was for food, which we’d spend anyway, and gas to get there. All of the benefits of having a second home somewhere, and none of the hassles/expenses/liabilities. If anyone reading this would like to know more or has a specific question about house swapping, shoot me an email. We’re doing another one — in Amsterdam! — in a month or so. I’m especially interested in hearing from people familiar with Amsterdam — must-sees, restaurants, food-related stuff.

We also recently visited the Drakes Bay Oyster Co, where I caught the drillers doing their thing. The oysters grow in these big clusters, which are broken apart by dudes with pneumatic drills and sent up the assembly line for sorting (into small, medium, and large).  Clusters are formed individually, by hand, by the workers,  by setting oyster larvae on shells saved from the shucking and packing operations. These “inoculated” shells containing the oyster spat (baby oysters) are then strung together on wires and suspended in the pristine and nutrient-rich waters of Drakes Estero, inside Point Reyes. Most oyster farms just chuck them on the bottom; fewer than five percent use this Japanese-inspired “string” method.  They were exceedingly tasty! Owner Kevin Lunny, whom I’ve written about before,  once told me  his oysters came out on top in a blind tasting of more than 100 different producers. I believe him! It’s like eating the essence of ocean nutrients. Favorite topping: a simple mignonette made with very finely diced shallots that have been soaked in ice water, freshly toasted and ground black peppercorns, and pomegranate vinegar, though I also like a reduced citrus sauce (ginger syrup, orange/tangerine, meyer lemon).

There is much happening in my little world of breakaway cooking, but I’ll save that for another post. I will be requiring your sage collective advice!

Red Lentils to the Rescue

I love writing this blog, but occasionally I run into technical problems that take days to unravel.  It’s amazing how many hours, and then days, can go by just trying to figure out what is wrong. I do apologize for the little hiatus in posts. To console my tech woes, I made some really good lentil soup.

Lentils are supercomfort for me. When I was a superbroke student, my go-to meal was lentils cooked together with brown rice, then refried with butter, ground cumin, and ground coriander. This concoction was then stuffed into oversize tortillas and wolfed down in terrifyingly large quantities.

Lentils are still one of the cheapest, most satisfying ingredients available, and I still cook a lot of them. I’ve become especially fond of the red ones (they’re also called pink lentils and orange lentils; their color is more orange than pink or red). They make an unbelievable crust: you just grind them in a spice grinder till you get a fine powder, sprinkle over anything you’d like to get really crunchy, spray with olive oil, and bake or fry. Works great for  baked tofu, meatloaf, fish, stuffed squash, chicken. . . .

Another favorite use of lentils is for soup. Dice a large onion and a few carrots and saute them in a soup pan with oil from garlic confit (or olive oil, or butter, or a combo of the two), add large pinches of freshly ground cumin, black pepper, maybe some ground-up chiles, and salt. When the onions get soft, add about two cups of red lentils and saute a little more. Then add a quart or so of chicken stock or vegetable stock, bring to a boil rapidly, and then simmer for roughly 45 minutes. Blend thoroughly in the Vita Prep, and get ready for comfort injection.

I like to garnish the bowls of soup with a good glop of Greek yogurt, some orange zest, and herb of choice. I used nasturtium leaves today, but you could use whatever — chives, oregano, thyme, rosemary, mint, tarragon, or a combo. Be sure it’s adequately salted, slice up some bread, and have a seat.

If anyone has any breakaway ideas for lentils, speak up!

Poached Sole in a Gingery Spice Broth

I’ve been playing with several versions of this soup for a few weeks now, and am liking it very, very much. The version that uses coconut milk tastes vaguely Thai, and the one that uses almond milk tastes kinda hippyish (in a good way). They’re both terrific, and really comforting on all these rainy days we’ve been having. I’ve also been using up the four quarts of crab stock I made recently from the spent shells of a few Dungeness we devoured a few weeks ago, but it’s good with chicken stock and veg stock, too. Haven’t tried water-not-stock version, but I’m betting it will be good, too.

The sweetened ginger leftover from making ginger syrup is so good in this soup — it alone is reason enough to make ginger syrup! You don’t need it, however; sauteed minced ginger in grapeseed oil, along with a little sweetener of choice, is fine too.  For extra credit/extra oomph, dice up some fresh tumeric as well, and toss it in with the ginger.

And do seek out dried persimmons if you can find them; I get mine from the local farmers market, but Chinese and Japanese markets always have them. When they get rehydrated in the soup, they plump up with the essence of the soup, and are just delightful. People have a hard time guessing what it is. Dried persimmons also make a really great salt — just grind in your coffee grinder, and pulse in some sel gris.

This soup takes very little time to assemble and cook, roughly 10 minutes. Just heat the stock, add everything but the fish, and bring to a simmer. Let the green veg cook for a few minutes over low-medium heat, and then add the fish.  Simmer for just a minute or two longer, until it’s barely cooked. Serve in heated bowls with a salad and good bread.*

• chicken stock, vegetable stock, or crab stock
• almond milk or coconut milk
• 1/4 cup sweetened ginger (the dregs of ginger syrup)
• a few wheels of dried persimmon
• pinch of cayenne
• three or four star anise
• splash of apple cider vinegar
• 2 cups Petrale sole (or other white mild fish), chopped roughly
• something green (I like using Chinese broccoli stalks, but anything would work — asparagus, green beans, kale, chard ….)
• cellophane/glass noodles (optional — makes it heartier; it’s cleaner/more elegant without them)
• a little chopped cilantro on top

* For truly artisan breads, Tartine’s country loaf gets my vote for best bread in the bay area, followed closely by the all-grain loaf from Brickmaiden and Della Fattoria’s meyer lemon brea. For nonartisan, La Brea gets the nod for best widely available bread.

The Occasional Fancy Dinner

Every once in a while I cook elaborate multicourse meals for clients. I find them really fun, and tend to take lots of risk with them; I just trust that, if I’m relaxed enough and give myself plenty of prep time, it’ll all turn out just fine, even if I’ve never made, let alone practiced, some of the dishes. I just make a ton of food, figuring that I’ll have enough winners to keep everyone happy.

Last night was a dinner for a few of the board members of the SF Zen Center, held at the home of my dear friend Norma. I was prepared to go all vegetarian, since a few priests were present, but votes came in for lamb, so lamb it was! I didn’t have time to take any photos, alas, but here was the menu:

• Mezze (kind of a starter plate) of carrot pate, smoked trout, a spicy feta spread (made with manzano chiles, shallots, and paprika), spiced cashews, and homemade Turkish crackers
• Petrale sole poached in a spicy gingery broth made from freshly made almond milk, turkey stock, star anise, and sauteed turmeric root and ginger
• Salad of dungeness crab, mache, pink lady apples, fennel, pomelo, and calendula flowers, with a coriander-pomelo vinaigrette
• Lamb done two ways (a rack with a crust of cumin, coriander, and fennel, and a leg marinated in pomegranate molasses, roasted and thinly shaved), with four side veg dishes: cauliflower cooked with saffron, elderberries, and pine nuts; squash timbale/kibbeh and spiced breadcrumbs; three-beet tartare (red, golden, chiogga); and little nuggets of tofu/egg/sunchoke/herbs, rolled in sweet rice and steamed
• Matcha panna cotta, served with a dizzying variety of citrus wedges, adroitly prepared by Kaz Matsune, my sous chef for the evening (and many other evenings; the man is a wonder).

Everything turned out as I had hoped, with the exception of the panna cotta, which didn’t quite gel enough. So it got turned into a kind of matcha dairy dip for the citrus, which turned the dish into modern,  breakaway creamsicles!

It all started with a trip to Berkeley Bowl (where else?). The incredible selection of citrus — mulitiple types of tangerines, tangelos, clementines, grapefruit, oranges of every stripe, pomelo, blood orange, every lemon and lime  — was beyond inspiring. Seven-eighths of my huge shopping cart was filled from the produce aisle. The only other shopping was done at Monterey Fish, where the crab and petrale looked crazy good.  I took it all home, plopped it on a big table, and started formulating ideas.

Menu writing can be a lot of work, and I’m bloody tired from all that cooking. But man, it’s good work. Sometimes I can’t quite believe that I actually get paid to do something that gives me such thrills, and I can’t quite imagine not doing it.

(photo by Annabelle Breakey)