Weapon of Choice

I'm finding that my methodology of doing this blog is a little more difficult than I thought it would be. The generalist approach is leaving a bit to be desired in topics. For example, all my baseball card posts have been about Stadium Club cards since I'm not really a collector and that's all I have lurking around right now. Likewise, the vast majority of my cookbooks are Deborah Madison's so I'm not generating a lot of variety there. Hmmmmmm.....what to do, what to do?

I have some ideas but for today I am not posting a Deborah Madison recipe I sort of did. I went to do a recipe for tofu, zucchini, corn and basil simmered in coconut milk, made everything and just had to add the coconut milk then discovered I had none. Complete craziness. I could have sworn I had. Based on a suggestion from Gaga, I added shredded coconut and the final dish tasted good but not like it would have had it been steeped in coconut milk. Which may be a good thing. What I ended up making was right tasty. In addition to the ingredients mentioned, it also had cilantro and jalapeno for some kick. I should just put up the recipe. Well, again, if you want it, buy a Deborah Madison cookbook (I think I took this one from Local Flavors AGAIN).

There's my problem. I'm not thinking enough about you, the readers. Right now I think I'm OK with that. I'm not trying to generate traffic. I'm trying to write. I'm trying to share things I like. If I really like Deborah Madison and her recipes, so be it. I'm not going to go out and buy Grant Achatz's cookbook just to make something for x number of readers. This isn't a cookbook review site.

I do tend to get all Melvillian when I write. I like to float away from a subject to talk about whaling and while I'm talking about whaling I might get into the history of some building and then come back to whaling and then return to my main point. My main point for today is the most important item in my kitchen:



When I bought my house, the very first thing I bought for it was this, a Kyocera ceramic knife. I LOVE IT! I was scared to death about owning one because I had a long history of cutting my fingers with other knives. Using this one realized it wasn't inherent clumsiness on my part, it was the lack of a sharp blade. My fingers would get cut from the knife sliding from whatever I was cutting and went into my hand instead. I have had no incidences of self-mutilation with this blade.

In addition to being a cool, jet black color, it is extremely light, well balanced and has a really nice grip. It goes through most vegetables with incredible ease, cuts meats well, and if I went to cut an aluminum can, I could probably do that. The only thing that has been problematic for it is cheese. Just your typical blocks of cheddar or colby or what have you. If I let the cheese soften a little, it has no problem but if I remove the cheese from the frig and go to cut it, the cheese for some reason gives resistance. Not a huge amount but enough so that it is a glaring departure from any other substance the knife has encountered.

I really recommend it. The Kyocera's are pricey (which is why I own one and I don't have a paring knife or any other knives to go with it) but man, whenever I'm somewhere else and I have to do or assist with some cooking, I miss it. Those horrible butcher block knives....ugh, they just make me shudder now.

To wrap up the post, I can't talk about my weapon of choice without including one of my favorite videos: Christopher Walken doing his thing in Fatboy Slim's song "Weapon of Choice" (no embedding for this one).