The Essential Perfect Knife
The One Knife
Most Important
My Leith’s culinary training has certainly groomed a love for my chef’s knife and accompanying colour coded chopping boards. However, it is the mighty ‘all purpose’ paring knife that finds pride of place in desi kitchens.
At times, no bigger than the length of your hand (I have got big hands to be fair but we’re saying a 4 inch long handle, with a 3.5-4 inch blade), the paring knife is the go-to-general-purpose tool in the Pakistani kitchen. Whether you need to peel a vegetable, de-vein a prawn or quickly slice open a plastic packet, the paring knife has got your back… hopefully not a knife in your back, you know what I mean.
The small size certainly allows for more control, allowing for tighter motions and speedier action for the seated cooking culture of Pakistan. The knife is often light in weight, with a flexible edge. Some may prefer a pointed end for delicate knife work. Others are happier with the rounded french tip for finely slicing those onions, crushing garlic or deboning a chicken.
The control of the knife is reflected in the speed of the cutting itself. Speed is not priority here; it’s about even cuts for even distribution of heat. If you’ve got uneven slices of onions in your saalan, well be prepared for my mum to berate you!
In addition, (Pakistani) home cooking doesn’t involve perfect slices and dices with French names of culinary school and fancy restaurants either.
I’ve heard many a chef at work commending a knife’s ‘lively’ edge, that distinct ‘ting’ sound when the knife comes in contact with the board during slicing. This was news to me.
Much like most home cooks (mainly women!), the paring knife works away silently, doing every job in the kitchen.
This quiet art performed by Pakistani cooks is in the handling of the paring knife itself.
Food is cupped in the palm of the left hand while the right yields the knife. Gripped by three fingers, the forefinger and thumb are free to navigate the pincer like movement of the blade in slicing and dicing automation.
A combination of experience and yielding a sharp knife is necessary for this technique of chopping. You may be busy and juggling multiple tasks in the kitchen, but take your time. Careless chopping can result in significant nips and cuts to your hands.
Sharp knife = safe knife = all your fingers
Returning from work, my mum would cook the evening dinner, her hands hovering over the cooking pot already on the flame, preparing the vegetables with impressive dexterity. ‘Using a chopping board only adds to the washing at the end’ she says.
Interestingly enough, the knives used in most Pakistani kitchens aren’t very expensive, a dime a dozen from a local convenience store. This gives them a disposable quality, to be used until they lose their edge, at which point they are replaced.
However, no two knives are ever the same. In fact their perfection in slicing comes somewhere in the middle of their life span. At first too sharp, then just right and then one day, blunt from repeated use, the paring knife loses its edge.
Every woman in my family seems to have a romantic tragedy about the ONE knife.
For my mum it’s the one that got away, her cerated Kitchen Devil that mysteriously disappeared after a family event.
My nani recounts her grief on discovering the bent and damaged blade of her cherished one so many years ago. ‘Someone must have used it to open a can’ she says with a broken heart.
And for me, that autumn love affair in Doha,Qatar, with not one, but a series of colourful knives in a client’s kitchen during a stint as a private chef.
‘It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all’ I say.
Do you have a love story to share about your knife?