The Burnt-Out Cook | BY PATRIC KUH
Men who love the knives my first collection of cooking knives came in a green metal toolbox. I was so proud to own it that I carried it from my cooking school near Montparnasse all the way down the Rue de Renne to the Boulevard St. Germain and across the Seine to my little maid's room near Bastille. I wanted as many people as possible to see me in hound's-tooth chef's trousers carrying the tools of my profession. I was proud to be the very picture of a chef.
The knives rattled around inside the box all the way home. It was an awful sound for me because I could picture the blades dulling as they knocked against each other and against the hard inner shell of the box. The moment I got up the service stairs to my room I opened the box and took out my new poultry shears and cut up a strip of carpet that I'd bought at the BHV department store on the Rue de Rivoli and had intended for the floor. Instead, it ended up lining my knife box. The well-being of my knives was more important than the temperature of my feet when they hit the cold floorboards in the morning.
A few months later, when I got my first restaurant job, I tried to calm my nerves by carefully aligning my knives along the cutting board when I arrived to set up my station. I noticed the veterans rolling their eyes. They'd seen this before and been there themselves. It was the "I'm a trained surgeon" stage of beginner's panic. As soon as the orders started to come in there were so many crossed blades lying around that my station looked like an Errol Flynn movie set. Worse than that, I was wasting valuable time deciding which knife to use to slice rather than just grabbing one and slicing. I soon learned to work with two knives, a large one and a small one. Eventually, when I worked the meat station, I added a boning knife to my on-hand selection.
The way they fire you in a kitchen in France is to simply say, "Take your knives." In my four years in France I only heard it said once. A commis had raised his voice to the chef during the service. The chef knew we were already understaffed and he'd have to work the station himself but he preferred to do that than to allow someone to speak to him like that in his own kitchen. "Prennez vos couteaux," is what he said -- "Take your knives," and the commis knew that he was fired. He wiped the blades clean and put his knives into their carrying case and he walked out of the kitchen in the middle of the service with his knives under his arm. It was then I started to understand the symbolism that knives hold for restaurant cooks. In a transient profession, they are the one constant.
The first thing you learn in a kitchen is to never try to catch a falling knife. The chances of being able to grab it by the handle are tiny, the chances of it slicing your hand open are great. When a knife is falling, you let it drop. There are numerous other rules and points of etiquette regarding knives in kitchens: Keep your fingers tucked in while you slice. Never walk around with knives pointing outwards (you never know who's coming running around a corner). Obviously, you always hand a knife to someone by the handle. If it's a big kitchen always mark your knives whether with initials or a certain sign or masking tape. And never, ever, borrow someone's knife without asking them first. With knives it quickly gets personal.
Seeing a cook sharpen a knife says it all. He'll crouch over the whetstone, turning the blade back and forth at the perfect angle and constantly testing the blade with his thumb. The final test is often performed on the forearm. If it cuts hair as cleanly as a switchback blade, it's ready for work. Cooks will rarely give their knives to a knife sharpening service. Only the very best do it with care, charging by the inch. Most charge by the knife and simply grind away at the steel, taking years from a blade's life. One doesn't do that to something one cares about.
The knives I've had for a long time are like friends. We've been in many tight situations together. I reach for one and it feels good to still have it with me. My boning knife has become a steel ice pick with use. My slicer has cut through a thousand lamb racks when I worked that party, that season, that year's stint somewhere. My paring knife I've had since France. It's cut shallots, turned vegetables and taken blasts of the butane flame used to caramelize crème brûlées. I've torn apart million-dollar kitchens to find that 30-franc knife. It's more than a knife, it's like a tiny photo album of places I've been and people I've known. A locket, with a blade and a very worn handle.
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