this is my new knife, hand made in Tokyo, with my name engraved on it! One of my fellow Sous chefs at Zuma bought it back for me from a recent trip to Japan,he really knows what he is talking about when it comes to knives, he was trained in Japan and frequently tells of stories of how he spent the first 6 months of his apprentaship sharpening the knives of every chef in the kitchen, he would arrive at work at 6 in the morning and sharpen every one of the chefs knives! Until they were all happy that he knew how it was done properly, frequently they told him ''it's not right, do it again'', until they were content that he could sharpen each knife properly, then he spent another month sharpening them, just to make sure!
I asked him to buy me a good Sashimi knife and that is what he did! It feels amazing to use, it is relatively light but razor sharp, I have been using it for 3 days now without sharpening it and tonight it still felt as sharp as a razor! It slices through Tuna and Salmon as if they were soft butter.
Good tools are essential to good cooking. Sharp knives of good quality steel are essential to the professional cook, they seperate the Pros from the Ams! In the completely outfitted French kitchen, for example, the array of instruments range from large tools for meat and poultry, including cleavers to split large pieces of meat and straight-bladed choppers for breaking light bones, to a battery of knives for chopping, peeling,, and paring, to all-purpose utility knives. Asimilar varied group of knives is to be found in the Japanese kitchen. Of course, the shapes of Japanese knives are different from those of the West because blade shapes evolve in conjunction with native techniques of food preperation and indigenous foods.
My Sashimi knife is specially designed for slicing meat and mainly fish.
It was expensive, £164 to be pracise, but if I look after it well, and I will, it will last me a lifetime and I will not have to buy another, so to me it was worth every penny!
No comments:
Post a Comment