[Sca-cooks] Another knife question

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Sue Clemenger:
>I'm thinking of getting a couple of Henkles for myself, as I've
>completely fallen in love with the medium-sized one a dear friend gave
>me for my birthday this year.  I don't need a huge set of knives, so I'm
>puzzling, now, over what the other knives should be, size-wise.  I'm
>thinking, at minimum, a paring-sized knife and a chef's knife? Of should
>I be looking for a larger (than 3) range of knives? I'm either 
>cooking for myself, or doing an occasional SCA feast.  I'm 
>competent, but not a gourmet, so I know I don't need any of the 
>fancy filleting knives, etc.
>--maire

My mother uses Henkels; when I was a kid absorbing this kind of 
information from her, they were _the_ brand to get, or at least they 
represented a favorable price-quality ratio.

At home, I use the knives my lady wife is comfortable with, which she 
bought for herself, probably in the mid-1970's:

an 8", high-carbon, non-stainless Sabatier chef's knife, which takes 
and holds a lovely edge easily, but which has me thumping my knuckles 
on the cutting board occasionally -- the heel of the blade is fairly 
narrow, maybe 1 3/8 inches, tops. In general, an 8-inch chef's knife 
is a good choice for women, who tend to have smaller forearms and 
hands then men, all other things being more or less equal.

a 6-inch Sabatier chef's knife which is otherwise the twin of the 
8-inch. I sometimes use it as a paring knife, but I expect many 
people would look at it as a "utility" or a "tomato" knife. As a 
chef's knife, it's pretty silly for anyone without really small hands.

I also use a mid-sized Chinese cleaver for vegetables and light 
bones, and a Fiskar fillet knife (which had been my father's), which 
I use for most boning and filleting purposes. I also own, but rarely 
use, an ulu.

Strangely enough, I also own (inherited) a strange little Hoffritz 
cleaver that was probably all the rage among cooks in the 1960's, but 
which appeared, until recently, to have little or no purpose. It has 
a small, broad blade, but a radial arc cut-off of the leading, front 
lower corner, so it looks a bit like a teeny, tiny chopping knife. 
After a little work on the edge (basically making it more 
acute/sharper, since it's a bit too light to use for the kind of 
dull-edge bone-hacking commonly done with American cleavers), it's 
great for boning chickens. I still don't know what it was originally 
intended for.

For working away from home, my tool roll generally includes:

a 14-inch Victorinox scimitar for scaring people (it looks a bit like 
the large curved knives you sometimes see in medieval illustrations 
of carvers)

a 12-inch, surprisingly light, high-carbon "stainful steel" Medal 
d'Or chef's knife, probably dating from the 1930's, sort of a giant 
version of the Sabatiers I use at home, but with what is today a 
distinctive design with a tubular grip and a single, peened tang end 
instead of the more usual rivets. You see knives like it in old 
photographs of Escoffier.

the infamous 10-inch Dick, high-carbon stainless, easy to dull but 
also easy to repair.

a 12-inch Victorinox salmon slicer

a 12-inch Forschner serrated knife for bread

2 7-inch Dick boners (sorry, that's a standard professional term), 
one stiff (again, sorry) and one flexible. I confess I tend to use 
the flexible one more often. Design-wise, they're pretty similar to a 
fillet knife. (There was that time when the same culinary instructor 
who had asked a gaggle of young female students if any of them had 
seen, or was currently making use of, his 10-inch Dick -- totally 
oblivious of too-common slang applications -- accused the same young 
ladies of making off with his stiff 7-inch boner, and then demanding 
to know what they were laughing about, because somebody making off 
with a fellow's stiff 7-inch boner was no laughing matter. You can't 
make this stuff up.)

2 paring knives, one being my 3-inch Dick, and the other a Wusthof, 
which I believe I acquired accidentally (I must have accidentally 
stolen it from some fellow student or co-worker, and by the time I 
realized it wasn't the Dick parer it closely resembles, I couldn't 
find anyone missing a knife).

The Dick knives were part of a set of tools I bought on a student 
discount from J.B. Prince & Co. I don't know if they'd have been my 
first choice otherwise, but they've been good knives over the years.

Oh, and I almost forgot: the Brazilian Tramantina mini-machete I 
hollow-ground and shortened slightly, which is the tool of choice for 
winter squashes, melons, pumpkins, rutabagas (are you seeing a 
pattern here?) and chickens that are still frozen.

Adamantius


-- 
"As long as but a hundred of us remain  alive, never will we on any 
conditions be brought under English rule.  It is in truth not for 
glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are  fighting, but for freedom 
-- for that alone, which no honest man gives  up but with life 
itself."
	-- The Declaration of Arbroath, 1320

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