©iStockPhoto/lbrinck The boy I was seeing last year, a cook, passed on his knives to me before I started my first gig in a restaurant kitchen. They were his set from culinary school—sturdy and unfancy in their utilitarian black case. His nonchalance gave way to unfamiliar gravity as he ceremoniously bestowed them upon me. He demonstrated how to sharpen them, first with stone and then with steel, and looked concerned when I was catching on slowly, if at all. Knives are serious business—any cook knows that. On my first day in the kitchen, the cooks asked to see my knives. “They're hand-me-downs from a friend,” I explained. But the chefs proved far more interested in showing off their own. They...
Continue reading »
