Hullo again and welcome to all new subscribers. Thisedition sees the start of a new column, a culinary alphabet. Yes, of course M.F.K Fisher did it first and much more elegantly but, honestly, the flattery is sincere.

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Knife Rules and Distraction

A culinary Alphabet:

A - Apicius

There is a disheartening moment at too many dinner parties when some pompous bore solemnly intones ‘I think it was Oscar Wilde who said…’. Nine times out of ten, it wasn’t. Neither, indeed, was it Winston Churchill, the other catchall for any half remembered quote. The sensible diner is well advised to mentally switch off as this useful warning phrase is spoken.

For those who pontificate about food, at either amateur or professional level, there is a similar, usefully vague source – Apicius. He is imagined to be a sage and portly Roman voluptuary, possibly chef to one of the more colourful Caesars, and gets the blame for any culinary myth involving tongues, udders, unlikely birdlife, unspeakable bits of otter or dormice in honey.

It’s time for a little precision.

Apicius was a legendary Roman gourmet of around 100 BC and later became a nickname for anyone who was a bit handy with the pans. The eponymous cookbook is a collection of around five hundred recipes of which 200 are for sauces. It is written in the Latin vernacular to be read by cooks rather than noblemen and, to the chagrin of Apicius quoters, it appears to have had more authors than the bible.

At least three Apicii are mentioned by name in the text. The first (C2nd- C1st BC) is chiefly remembered as an appalling glutton and the third (C2nd AD) for a way of keeping oysters fresh over long journeys (there is no record of how he died but acute ptomaine poisoning looks like a fairly safe bet), but it is the second, Marcus Gavius Apicius (b. 25 AD), who particularly stands out.

According to Athenaeus, he moved to Miturnae because of its unusually large prawns. When he heard that bigger prawns could be found in Libya, he set off by ship to find them but, on meeting Libyan fishermen off the coast he discovered that he’d been misled vis a vis crustacean enormity. He turned round and headed home without bothering to land, reasoning that, unless the food was spectacular, he might as well give the country a miss. Many of us feel the same way about France.

Between gargantuan dinners, he invented a process for fattening sow’s livers with figs to produce a kind of foie gras de porc, which is more than due for revival.

Were this not enough to make Marcus Gavius Apicius an all-time culinary pin-up, we are told that he blew his entire fortune on banquets and, when his accountant told him he was living beyond his means and might have to slow down a little, he killed himself.

Tragically, though each Apicius was fascinating, there is no historical evidence to prove that any of them actually wrote the book that bears their name.

A couple of weeks ago I watched an autopsy. As the result of a series of rigorous experiments with Chateauneuf du Pape, I found myself slumped in font of the telly at three in the morning watching a pathologist at work. As he sawed his Y incision, did my mind drift to the ultimate frailty of our human shell, the evanescence of our lives; the miracles of the human biology or even a healthy repulsion? No, I found myself wondering how he could bear to work with such a shite knife. I mean dammit, the man had some top kit, people to look after it and, working from rectal temperature at time of death, it wasn’t even as if the meat had had time to toughen up. I’d have done a better job with a Stanley knife.

I’ve got nice knives. I’m not ashamed to admit that they’re a bit of a fetish. I’ve still got the first Sabatier I inherited, a Henckels I bought when I got my first job in a pro kitchen, a set of Globals I won on a cookery show and the four Japanese knives I use every day - two debas, a yanagiba and an usuba. Before you ask - no, they are not crafted to fit my hand – I am not yet worthy.

Sobered up, the following morning, I was able to take a more rational view on what I’d seen. We work, every day, with tools of incredible precision and capable of wreaking effortless and appalling damage on flesh. Most civilians, if they own a sharp knife, chuck it in a drawer, wash it in the dishwasher and handle it with no more respect than the rolling pin. A mechanic wouldn’t handle his tools that way and you can’t really hurt yourself with a spanner. This is why I have rules about my knives.

I learned the first rule at my grandfather’s workbench long before I ever stood at a stove. Any tool that’s not in your hand should be in its appointed place. If it’s not, it’s an accident waiting to happen.

In an operating theatre, tools are counted in and out of the surgeon’s hands. Any swab or retractor not accounted for at close is still inside the patient. Pit crews mount their tools on a board painted with brightly coloured outlines. If you realise you’ve mislaid a wrench just as Schumacher hits 200 on the Paddock turn, it’s already too late.

My knives live in a block and on two magnetic strips just to the right of the sink. I still check that they’re all in place before plunging my hands into a sink full of soapy washing up. It’s not difficult to rinse each knife and put it away as you finish with it. It protects the knives and, though this is obviously less important, it prevents over helpful guests opening a vein in the washing up.

The second rule comes from workshops, factories, hangers, and pit lanes the world over but, somehow always seems to get forgotten, even in professional kitchens. There is a proper tool for every job. Never use the wrong one.

In years of working in kitchens I’ve only ever seen one accident that stopped me dead in my tracks (remember, I can watch autopsies without missing a sip). One of the cooks, in the weeds, asked a waitress to help him out by separating some frozen fishcakes. She decided to do it with the first thing to hand - a serrated bread-knife. The results of extreme force exerted on a serrated blade, on a finger joint are best left un-imagined.

Today, I’m officially adding a third rule.

Until last week, I had not cut myself in the kitchen for as long as I could remember. Now I’m no longer paid for it, there’s no need to chop at lightning speeds. Lacking the constant practice of exacting daily prep, my knife skills have atrophied to a comfortable and relaxed competence. Consequently on a relaxed and pleasant afternoon, I was completely sanguine about juilienning a bag of carrots.

I like music in the kitchen. I used to keep a little stack of suitably inspiring CDs in the kitchen; you know the sort of thing, Louis Prima singing ‘Angelina’, Dean Martin in ‘jolly Neopolitan’ mode, a bit of Cosi Fan Tutti and perhaps some Handel for the larger beef joints, but now I have an iPod.

I was, as winter sun arced through the kitchen window and the warm smell of fresh bread rose from the oven, experimenting with the ‘shuffle’ function when Noel Coward broke into ‘Mad Dogs and Englishmen’. It is a song I particularly like and one that, such are the delights of the shuffle, I wasn’t expecting. I launched a particularly spirited rendition and, paying too little attention, picked up the wrong knife.

It was only the tip of the thumb and a half moon section of the nail but Christ, it hurt!

Rule three. Know your music when using knives. Well-known compilations, where you’re singing the opening bars of the next track before the last has finished, are absolutely fine but anything involving the word ‘random’ has no place in the kitchen.

I just read an ad for kitchen units with the offer of a free ‘flip-down flat screen and DVD player’. A whole new world of distraction has, suddenly, to be dealt with. OK, ‘Goodfellas’ might work if you’re knocking out pasta and I’m intrigued by the idea of constructing an enormous, phallic crocquembouche while watching ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ but if I ever have to watch a Adam Sandler movie while having anything to do with sharp knives and boiling fat I won’t be responsible for my actions.

 

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