The Knife

Cooking, child of fire, is the original art of transformation. This may account for its close association with sex and violence. To bring nameless nature into the civilized event known as cuisine requires speed, patience, imagination, timing, gallows humor-all the virtues of love and war.

What is passing strange is that most cooking columnists-to say nothing of cooking- show hosts-try to play down the primal undercurrents of their trade. In haute cuisine as in bake sales, they would have you believe that cooking is a safely domesticated affair.

Having worked in more commercial kitchens than anyone should have to admit, I'm duty-bound to include the seamier side of the tale. Because that is in fact where the tale begins. As mushrooms rise from the dung, so does the five-star meal grow from the dank well of the passions.

Consider, if you will, that centerpiece of kitchens the world over, the knife. The knife is essentially a weapon without a safety lock, a naked thing in the middle of the room. Like a gun, if you introduce one into a play, someone had better use it before the curtain goes down.

I didn't receive many clues about kitchen knives when I was growing up. This was because my mother simply didn't own anything worthy of the name. Until I was old enough to hold the turkey-carving set, my knowledge of such things extended to somewhere around the steak knife and then stopped cold.

Not coincidentally, I don't recall much in the way of fancy meals, either. My mother acquitted herself well, given the era. She limited our tv dinners to special occasions (the Salisbury steak, thank you) and accommodated my father's tastes (lima beans, no fish) as best she could. But all in all, the food around our house-I'm speaking of ancient history now-was more functional than phantasmagoric.

It wasn't until I left home and fell in love that I discovered what a kitchen knife could really do.

K.T. was a short black woman with saucer-wide eyes and a high, tinny voice, a B.A. in philosophy and a completely mortifying background. Certainly, she was a novel combination of forces for a Jersey boy like me. When she was quite young, she'd been abandoned to her grandmother, who celebrated her first period by beating her. When her mother did come back into her life, as she did every now and then, it was always with a new boyfriend.

One day, the buffoon of the moment decided to try his chances with the daughter of the household. All of 10 or 11, K.T. picked up-that's right-a kitchen knife and told him, "Get out of this house and never come back, or I promise I will kill you."

She must have sounded convincing, because the guy was not to be seen again on the premises. Just as well, too. Rather than going to jail for murder, K.T. became a phenomenal cook. By the time I met her, she was a professional caterer who could wax ecstatic on croutons for a good hour. Any restaurant in which she worked invariably became her fiefdom. And the food was excellent.

Years later, when I was a cook in my own right, I worked in a Boston restaurant we'll call Firehouse Ten, with a guy named Chuck, whom we won't call a cook at all. Chuck didn't need to tell you he was from Southie. The handlebar moustache, the accent and, most of all, the attitude gave it all way.

Probably the nastiest of Chuck's habits was his tendency to spit "in the direction of" black people. After one such incident, which brought said spittee to the threshold of the restaurant door in pursuit, Chuck started carrying a machete to the night shift.

"I need it for my mother's yahd," he would explain, going on to rhapsodize about his prime attachment while casually demonstrating his vast knowledge of horticulture. We heard more and more about the origins of the word "geranium." But Chuck wasn't fooling anyone. Not long after, it came out that he was mugging people "for fun" on his way home from work.

Clearly, for Chuck, the transformative power of cooking didn't take.

Of course, it goes without saying that a knife can be dangerous to its owner as well. Cooks, like carpenters, live in fear of losing digits, and legion are the tales of them cutting themselves. My most vivid memory in this regard is of a coworker named Kendra searching for the top of her finger in the murky innards of a Cornish hen. I don't believe she ever found it.

Many people will settle for something tamer rather than face a prospect like that. Cowardice, however, is a sin in its own right, and not to be countenanced.

When my wife was pregnant in Germany, I took charge of her kitchen and discovered that she had only a steak knife with a melted handle and a loose blade. Gamely trying to make the best of it, I routinely botched what would otherwise have been the easiest of dishes, simply because my timing was off. I'd heat up the oil in the frying pan, thinking I had plenty of time to slice my onions, only still to be hacking vainly away as the oil started to smoke.

Soon the evenings were filled with my curses and the smell of mediocre dinners. In the end, I got so cranky that Claudia threatened to throw me out of the kitchen altogether. And so she might have, had I not marched us off to the department store and picked up a serviceable French knife for some 20 euros. Peace reigned in the household after that, and the compliments on my lasagna returned.

Killers, cowards, Cornish hens... The moral of the story is perhaps best explained in the standard slicing technique of all cooks, from the cold-side hack to the four-star chef.

Watch a working cook sometime and you will see that he rests one hand lightly on top of the food he's cutting, such that the knuckles closest to the fingernail come in contact with the side of the blade. You should do the same-taking care to slice away from yourself as the knife goes down. For as scary as it looks, this position will give you the best control over your results. And in the wider sense, you'll always know where the danger lies, because it's as close as it can possibly be without the authorities getting involved.