The Omnivorous Fish

I have been unpacking a lifetime’s worth of kitchen this week, for the second time in less than a year. In some ways it’s exciting, some depressing, but mostly it’s disturbing, how much of this crap I own. Part of my problem is that I can’t throw anything away. I have dozens of old ice cream cans that will be great for sauce when I open a pizzeria someday. I have a 30 quart mixer bowl. I don’t own a thirty quart mixer. I have never worked in a place that had a 30 quart mixer. 5, 20, 60 and 80, but never 30. Why do I have this bowl? Your guess is as good as mine. Somebody gave it to me, and I might need it some day.

That said, when Noah heard the weather report, he asked me to handle the knives. Here is the little knife management system in place in my kitchen, holding maybe 8% of my knives.

Knives On Magnetic Strip

Notice the darker, stained-looking knives at the top. Those are 100% carbon steel. They turn black. They rust. They discolor acidic foods, especially if they’re not broken in. They require a lot of attention. They also take an edge that you could shave with. If you have to fillet fish all day, you can see the difference.

You’ll notice the difference compared to the more standard chef’s knives below them. The top 4 have slender, cylindrical bolsters (the part of the knife between the blade and the handle) that are all metal, which make you hold a knife in a different way than the knives below them. I find this shape very comfortable for repetitive work, which some people think I am nuts for. Those are all made by companies called Sabatier, (suh BAH tee ay, click that link if you’re into knives), which became a sort of brand for this style of knife: basically triangular with a barely sloping curve to the edge, cylindrical bolster, tapered handle. However, several companies originating in Thiers all made basically the same knife, thus Sabatier-K, Sabatier-Lyon, Sabatier-Elephante, Sabatier-Enfer, etc (that last one means ‘hell’ from the temperatures the guys who worked the forges had to deal with). These knives were all individually ground by hand by guys who literally worked lying on their stomachs so they could see up close what they were doing.

Want to know something crazy about these knives? They were my tools when I was pro. Yup. That’s right. The 12” on top was made 40 years before I was born, and I cut my teeth on those dinosaurs. Everyone thought I was crazy.

In my experience, there are 2 kinds of kitchens when it comes to knives: places where all the knives are provided, and places where there is a box of scary dull knives that even the dishwashers don’t want to use. I have worked in both kinds of places, and was happy to use Forschener or Dexter knives with all the other kids, and I was happy to bring my own. When everyone is using personal equipment, however- or in a meat shop where different guys are caring for their own provided equipment- it becomes helpful to have a little insignia on your stuff. Some people use a little stripe of colored tape. Some use a little stamp to indent initials or a mark on the handle or blade. Some people modify the handles in some way that’s unique, this last one being most common among butchers, who just walk over to the saw and take a slice off the handle or something.

Handle Cuts

Notice how the bottom knife has an additional notch cut into the back of the handle. That’s from moving into a shop where someone was already using the slice-off-the-end motif.

Handle Notches

This mark is a little more subtle, and if you look carefully on the middle knife, you can see my initials, JC, stamped into the handle (Fish is a nickname).

Something you may have noticed, none of these knives are Henckels and only one if Wusthof, and, the Wusthof is older than dirt, I don’t even think they make those anymore. It’s the first black-handled knife above the white-handled ones, and it has a very flexible blade that I used to use for fish a lot. I also almost took my thumb off with it when someone thought it would be funny to pick up and drop the end of the piece of ziplite I was working on (a giant cutting board) while I was cutting fish with it. You’ll notice a kind of awkward curve to the tip of the blade. That’s because it’s been ground down, since the original tip bent so severely when it hit the wall near the person who thought the ziplite dance would be funny. Asshole.

As I was saying, most of those knives are needlessly expensive, needlessly heavy and often have very wide blades that are awkward for doing fine work. Forschener is a division of Victorinox, of Swiss Army Knife fame, and you can get one of their knives that will take a frightening edge for 50 bucks or less. They are stamped, not forged, which means a knife-shaped piece of sheet metal gets sharpened, rather than a big piece of steel getting ground down. What does this mean? Not much, unless you’re doing really heavy bone work with them, and even then, I’ve broken Wusthof knives doing bone work, and the Forcheners come with a lifetime guarantee.

I was going to go on a tirade about ceramic knives, but you know, some people just really like them, so who am I to say anything about it? They’re not practical for restaurant or meat shop use, since they can break too easily, or for me, really, since I still treat my equipment like I work in a restaurant, but they get razor sharp and stay that way for a long time. I just think they look silly.