It was Christmas again yesterday (in more ways than one, but I’ll get to that some other time). In December Kisa bought me a knife. I guess, according to someone in the culinary world, it is bad luck to buy someone a knife. To offset the “badness” you must give money as well. Are you thinking scam? Because it sounds like a scam to me…but nevertheless Kisa presented me not only with an eight inch Santoku (pictured here) he also gave me a gift certificate which I used for a knife skills class.
Class was yesterday. For me, the biggest rattler of life is thinking you know something and then finding out you’ve been wrong all along. A loser in the knowledge department. Playing the fool in the grand scheme of things. Such was my case before getting to class. I have been slicing, dicing, mincing, milling, you name it, for years. Someone had tried to show me the “right” way to dice. What if I really had been doing it all wrong, wrong, wrong all this time? A worse thought? I’d have to touch a chicken bone-in. I even joked with kisa the night before, “watch. They’re gonna make me debone a chicken.” I was practically trembling when I got to class. And I was right. And wrong.
I was right about the chicken.
Wrong about my abilities. Here’s the bottom line on holding a sharp instrument – it’s a sharp instrument. Hold it any damn way you please to get the job done…with care. There are four professional ways to hold food while “knifing” it. But, variations are acceptable. Completely acceptable. Yay. Class was easier than easy because everything the instructor taught us was something I either knew how to do really well (citrus supremes) or had attempted a few times (Asian garnishes) and everything in between. I’ve never worked in a restaurant but somehow I’ve held my own when holding a knife.
Then came the chicken. Unchartered waters for sure. I have never ever so much as touched a raw chicken that still has it’s skeletal structure. Panic set in. Surely this is where I would slice a thumb off, throw up, or worse – faint. Meat on the bone creates vegetarian thoughts in me. Seriously. Bones make it easier to see the creature it really is. Or Was. Whatever.
The instructor set to instructing. Her “first you do this, then this, then this, then this, then this…” play by play made my head spin. How would I remember to do that in that order? I think my eyes glazed over at that point. When we finally put boning knife to bony chicken I thought “surgery” and went to work. By the end I had a perfectly butterflied, boneless, not-resembling-an-animal-anymore piece of meat. The instructor came by and uttered “perfect” before moving on. Who knew anyone would say “perfect” in my presence? Perfectly unprepared for that.
I learned. I learned how to hone a knife (I mastered 20 degrees on my first try). I learned what dulls a knife (fat, picking up food). But, most importantly, I learned not to take my own knowledge for granted. I sell myself and my abilities short and this was just one more reason why I shouldn’t.
SoulSessionSeanRoweComingSoon…..
