ANOTHER SERIES? - KITCHEN UTENSILS?

Well it's past the middle of January already in 2020. Time is flying.
I note that I've been a bit slack in the posting game recently so thought that another of those very popular 'series' is long overdue.

You've enjoyed in the past series on:

• Windows
• Light switches
• Nicest people I've met
• Fences
• Truth or lies
• Gardening
• Weirdest people I've ever met
• Coats
• Jackets
• Cars
• Silliest things I've done
• Kitchen appliances
• Connections
• Christmas
• Life lessons for Richard
• Doorstops
• Regrets
• American history
• Strange kids
• Fatherly advice
• and others

I was just pre-preparing tonights dinner (stir fry vegetables with shrimp for me and scallops from our bay for The Old Girl) and was using one of the last two remaining knives we have from a set of four.

Sanelli breadknife and chopping knife

These are magnificent knives from Sanelli the Italian chef knife provider.

I was given these as a company Christmas present from Allied Liquor Merchants (ALM) back in about 1990.

Good friend Tom and occasional reader of this blog was working with me at ALM at the time also received a set of these knives and I know that he still has at least one of them.

The sets were made up of 4 knives:

• Breadknife
• Butcher's knife
• Chopping knife
• Sticking knife

Given that this was now 30 years ago it's amazing that we still have two out of the four knives not only in our possession but in daily usage. It definitely is a testament to the quality of the knives that Sanelli make and also the quality of this corporate gift given that most corporate gifts are crap.

I don't know where the sticking (or paring knife has gone, it's been lost in our various household moves. Its shape was like this:

I remember that this was great for slicing tomatoes and small vegetables and fruit.

The butchers knife was broken by The Old Girl which was unusual as it's normally me who is careless and breaks things. This happened about 10 years ago (we had owned the knife for 20 years by then and used it regularly). She was crushing and chopping garlic using the knife - see:
CRUSHING GARLIC WITH A KNIFE

- but the knife broke as she should have been using the shorter chopping knife (see first image above). As a consequence the knife snapped in two. Bummer!

The broken Sanelli knife looked like this:

Still, we have two out of the original four and I find that the chopping knife, which I regularly sharpen is the best knife in the kitchen.
The breadknife, which has never been sharpened in the 30 years that we've owned it still slices bread (and meats) perfectly. As I use a bread-maker to make my own bread a good and reliable breadknife is a must.

Thank you Allied Liquor Merchants.


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