Keep your knife skills sharp with a properly honed blade
When I was a teenager, back in British India during World War II, my brothers, sisters and I were great readers — mostly one book a week of all genre in three languages, including our mother tongue Urdu but mostly in English and Bengali, the local language of our homes in Bengal.
In the tight wartime supply economy, food was on strict government “rationing,” but for us children what really mattered was our daily sugar quota, just 2 or 3 teaspoons a day, I don’t remember which. Five of us older siblings were a very tight-knit group, sharing and doing things together.
The youngest was my sister, Rahmat, a preteen so good and beautiful we called her “farishta bachchi” (angel child). She would give us part of her sugar ration to get the first crack at reading a new book, a fact I recalled with tears when she passed away recently in Patna, India, as an octogenarian.
We would read anything we could lay our hands on, but one of my favorite genres was about the Crusades — books mostly in English and only occasionally in Urdu. Sultan Saladin, the most famous Muslim fighter of the age, and a contestant of Richard the Lionheart, was my hero. Here is a story I have always cherished, although I don’t recall where I read it.
It is well-known that these two champions of chivalry were not only contestants on the battlefield but respected each other, and may also have met occasionally as “friends.” At such a meeting Richard showed off the prowess of his sword by chopping a block of iron in two with a single stroke. Saladin clapped but said with a smile t hatthatwas ajobforahatchet.
Thereupon, he drew his own weapon and threw up his silk handkerchief into the air. As it began to float down, he held his sword up and allowed the kerchief to pass over the razor-sharp blade. Lo and behold, it fell down in two neat halves. The secret of Saladin’s sword was the legendary Damascus steel.
Alas, that secret technology was lost hundreds of years ago with the decline of the Muslim rule. Some of it was salvaged by the Japanese sword-makers but that was no match. One thing I’ve found out, though, is that whatever the quality of steel, the edge of a knife will dull eventually, even those made of the best of German or Japanese steels.
We have a set of rather mediocre knives, but sharpened every other week or so on a sharpening system I have, it can hold up its head with the best of Henckel or Wusthof. The Diamond Precision Sharpening System is made by Smith’s of Arkansas, the edg e experts since 1886. I bought it at Lowe’s many years ago for around $40. Go to www.smithsproducts.com to check out their products.
The secret to the sharpening system is a knife clam p—onw hich you can lock the blade securely — and multiple diamond stones, to each of which you attach a guide rod. This allows you to maintain a constant angle as you stroke the cutting edge up and down. There two guide slots on the clamp, one for the 20-degree angle the other for 25-degree. I always use the lower 20-degree slot, mea ntforkit chen knife blades. The angle is the degree of bevel to which the edge is ground in relation to the blade plane. The 25-degree is meant for outdoor knives.
The guide-rod-rack-slot system won’t allow any deviation from the angle selected as you glide the attached grindstone block up and down. After one side is done, you turn the knife over with the clamp still attached and stroke the other side, keeping strict count of the number of up-and-down strokes on each side so that the bevel you have created on each side meets precisely at the blade’s end to form a keen cutting edge.
The first building up of the desired edge bevel may take a dozen or more strokes on each side with successively finer grit stones. For maintenance, probably once every few weeks, it should take just four to six passes on each side of the blade, counting both up and down strokes.
I hold the clamp on the edge of a high countertop to hold it steady but have to make sure the blade is always fastened securely to prevent any slippage that can cause the knife to drop to the floor. (Advice: Never ever try to catch a falling knife.) The recommended method is to hold the knife in one hand with the clamp attached to the blade while working the stone, attached to the guide rod that has been slipped through the proper slot on the rack.
In our family, I am “the fixer.” Eve r since childhood I’ve been taking toys and gadgets a parttosee how they work. And in most cultures anyway, it is the man’s duty. But in this day and age when women are taking top mechanical engineering degrees, any home cook of the female persuasion can keep a knife well-honed on Smith’s rack or by whatever means she prefers. Kitchen Counselor is a weekly column about kitchen and cooking tips written by Gholam Rahman, a former staff writer for The Palm Beach Post. To reach him, email gholam_rahman@ pbpost.com