XENIA PACHIKOV
We begin with an incomplete list of the SPECIALIZATIONS of various kitchen knives. The Serrated Knife group: A Bread Knife cuts bread. Its serrated edge bites into the crust and saws through without squishing the core. A Serrated Sausage Knife (a small serrated knife) cuts lemons, tomatoes, bagels, cheeses and also, apparently, sausage. Up next, the Pointy Knives: a group of knives we know best without calling them by name. This includes what's occasionally called Carving or Sandwich Knives - these are long, thin and pointy: the sort of animal you jab into a watermelon or a ham. The long blades on these fellas make them a bit unwieldy, and therefore they are used only in the instance when a deep incision is required. A Chef's Knife is a multi-purpose chopper of vegetables and meats. Very popular. A Steak Knife is the medium sized knife that comes in sets of six if you buy a full set of knives. It can be used for small chopping tasks on leeks and even peppers, hard cheeses and other tasks you'd rather not bother choosing a knife for. A Paring Knife (aka small sharp knife) cuts very small things with great control. In a subset of the Paring Knife is the Peeling Knife. Its much like a small Paring Knife, except the sharp side of the blade curves inward instead of outward. The arch of this blade maximizes contact area with the potato etc. And finally, the Boning Knife whose medium length blade and spine both curve upwards. It's devised to separate the meat from bone. Now onto Flat Blade Knives. Remember the Cleaver? It cuts through thick masses of meat and bone. And coming into fashion now is the Santoku Knife. This Japanese knife is like a Chef's Knife, except the blade is flat while the spine is curved. And the last group of knives are Blunt Knives, namely the Butter Knife, which is used for spreads and butter, and the Cheese Knife. A knife is not made to do this: There is no knife in the kitchen specially made to haul bread out of the recesses of toasters. There is also no knife to scrape dried omelette from the surfaces of "non-stick" pans. And as everyone knows these pans are covered in a toxic substance, Teflon, which may cause cancer if you flake it into the air with your sharp knife! So put down that steak knife pretty-lady-with-two-lungs! And no kitchen knife is specially made for self defence. One may argue that a self-defence knife is unnecessary, a sandwich knife will do perfectly (see doctors' proposition to ban long pointy knives). But it won’t do, because my sandwich knife is to cut ham, not for stabbing the late night assassin. I know that a bread knife won’t cut chicken as well as a chef's knife, why? Because I've learned it that way. So how would I know which knife to reach for during an attack? Maybe the cleaver would be better. But I never use the Cleaver. Or the skinny Boning Knife. But hell, I don't know which, so I'll reach for the phone. Now let's study common and uncommon MOTIONS in the application of knives. Kitchen knives are used to deal with food and even occasionally its packaging. Let's start with the packaging first: a knife can pierce a soft plastic container, pop twine, slice through a waxy seal and cut off a tenacious label. As far as food is concerned, the primary purposes of a knife is naturally to cut, cutting includes: slicing, dicing, halving, shredding, incising, chopping and mincing. Knives can also be used for: gorging, squeezing, crushing, scraping, spreading, pounding, and tasting. Uncommon knife technique: Stabbing. Stabbing involves a brisk application of a horizontal force with the tip of the knife pointing in the direction of the force. As it's unlikely you are ever going to want a deep sliver of a hole in your food, the practiced motion is to apply a downward force in the direction of the blade's edge, as in slicing. The only time you would cut something by applying a horizontal force is when sawing with a blunt-pointed Serrated Knife. So stabbing - unusual, you might say, in the kitchen. In fact, any fast action directed at a body not lying at the height of your elbows is rare. Since the meat's not going anywhere, there is no reason to come at it with any sort of speed. That’s why we don't swing at our food, attempt to pin it down, or try to maul it with brisk swiping motions. No, we approach our future dinner in an experienced and methodical manner.
Which brings us to PRACTICING SAFETY: Our kitchens, these lively centers for nourishment are packed chock-full of dangerous devices: toasters, blenders, graters, electric beaters, the stove and anything that's on it when its hot. Not least among these are knives, the most commonly used of all dangerous kitchen devices. Without quoting any actual statistics, anyone who spends time at the cutting board knows the high incidence of minor self-mutilations that these little culprits easily inflict. But with practice, we learn to avoid the nips and punctures. In the kitchen, we practice safety. For example, when cutting small and slippery foods, like cloves of garlic, we use small knives. We don't hack at most things also out of safety, because the more force and the greater the distance between the blade and the object to be parried, the higher the chance of an accident. I mean, when was the last time you used a Cleaver?
PRACTICING DANGER: To a kitchen user, each knife has a special purpose and a well practiced gesture. The muscles of a cook remember to use restraint when wielding this object. There is a limited range of applicable behaviors and objects with which the knife comes in contact. So - is it a weapon? I mean, a weapon isn't just something one can inflict harm with. By that definition, a hair dryer is a weapon, if I throw it in your bathtub. Or I could come at someone with a hot frying pan or a rolling pin. But we don't think of those as weapons. There is a whole separate section of weapon-knives: those hidden in pockets, foldables, whose practiced motions (if they have been practiced) are of the hacking & stabbing category. So where does the kitchen knife figure into this? Martha Rosler, in her 1975 video "The Semiotics of the Kitchen" crosses the barrier between kitchen-utensil and kitchen-weapon sometime around the letter "I" for "ice-pick." From A to Z, she names her kitchen implements: apron, bowl, chopper, dish... As she calls out each name, she lifts the object and demonstrates the gesture with which each is associated. At first, she demonstrates each item in a calculatedly careless manner, but as she works her way down the alphabet, her motions become increasingly forceful, threatening and violent. The easy transformation between her well-stocked kitchen and a well-stocked arsenal suggests the vulnerability in our society to a massive uprising fueled by our own kitchens, much like our current vulnerability to biological warfare is possible with specimens from our own labs. Historically, the possibility of a kitchen utensil being suddenly used a weapon has been occasionally feared, for example leading to King Louis XIV's 1669 decree to ban pointy knives at the table. But why are there not more examples of women being banned from access to kitchen utensils? Is the necessity of a woman to cook more important than the ensuring man's safety? Or would that sort of intervention never be relevant? For a woman who spends her days fixing meals in the kitchen, is the psychological barrier between kitchen knife as a utilitarian object of practiced application and safety and knife as weapon such different concepts that the sameness of the object is barely discernible?