Kitchen knife Safety

Check out this chef's knife training video from Melbourne



If you love cooking, your kitchen knife is one of the most important tools in your kitchen.
After I read cooking basics books and internet what other chefs tell about using kitchen knives, I found 6 safety tips which are common sense but are useful in addition to watching my fingers and my knife.

1. Keep your kitchen knife sharp.
Dull knife slips and cut something else than what you want to cut. You can test if your knife is sharp by moving back and forth on the cutting board. If your knife cut into the board and is hard to move, your knife is sharp. If your knife moves easily, your knife is dull and need to be sharpened. Some Sushi chef tests his/her knife on his/her thumb nail. Please don’t try it.
2. Do not walk around with your knife. When you need to carry your knife, hold it by your side.
When Japanese chef carries his sharp knife, He will put his hand o over the knife and tell people around him that he is coming with his knife.
3. Never point at your knife every one
4. Do not try to catch a knife when you drop it.
Blade is heavier than the handle and goes down first and dangerous. From old book of “Cutting-up in the kitchen. The butcher’s guide to saving money on meat & Poultry by Merle Ellis”, if you drop a knife or it gets knocked off the counter, throw your hands in the air, as if somebody had a gun in your ribs, and let it fall…..
5. Never leave your knife in soapy water or a sink full of water.
Someone wash dishes and may cut his/her hand. Knife need to be kept at the location where everyone can see.
6. When you pass a knife to someone, put it on a cutting board and let another person pick it up.
Kitchen knife need to stay on the cutting board unless it is washed or put away.


YouTube video Above is from Melbourne production and I used some tips from it. I liked it the best among many knife skill videos.

The arm of a Tempura cook

This photo of my arm shows oil spattered burn spots. Hajime at Mashiko joked about an earlier time in his career, when his arm had burned marks which were cause from making Tempura. John said he had a similar experience and made his arm protection by cutting his long sock.
I often make Tempura at home in a regular frying pan, and I hardly ever burn my arm. The pan used at home is shallow, where as at Mashiko, I use a deep fryer. I dropped vegetables with Tempura batter a bit too high above the oil in the fryer from my nervous unsteady hand. This caused the oil to splash burn spots on my arm.
My husband told me that he had seen people’s arms like mine. He thought that the people were drug addicts, as they had burn marks on their arm similar to the ones on my arm. He was surprised to learn that maybe those people where really cooks working at a deep fryer instead of drug addicts like he thought.
I didn’t know that people with drug addiction problem had skin problems. I found some image of arms badly spotted by drug addiction. Hopefully soon I am able to fry Tempura without splashing oil. I should wear long sleeve shirts or cover my arm.
When you see someone with small blisters on one of his/her arms, it may be caused from splash from the deep fryer not from drug addiction.
<----The photo shows my potential arm protection. Left: Japanese farmer's arm cover, Right: Leg warmer

Japanese Home-style cooking for Seattleites?

People who are not familiar with Japanese cuisines may think Japanese food is expensive and Japanese people often eat Sushi , Teriyaki, Tempura and Sukiyaki. People in Japan eat fancy Sushi with fresh fish only special occasions. Japanese love variety of food. They eat not only Japanese but more international meals like people in Seattle. Chinese, Korean, and Italian food are popular and have evolved to meet taste of Japanese. For example, you may find pasta cooked with fish eggs, Shiso(Japanese herb) and Soy source at restaurants specialized pasta in Japan. Japanese people love Chinese dishes and pot stickers are one of Japanese favorite. I bought a Japanese cookbook about various Pot sticker recipes. In Japan, most wives stay home and one of their jobs is to cook for her family within the budget. The family eats at home most of the time and family meals at home are different from ones at the restaurants. My mother used to be very creative to cook supper for her family of four when she didn’t have much money on the day before her husband’s pay-day. Once she cooked Tempura made of dried anchovies (usually used for Japanese soup stock) with vegetables whatever she found in the fridge or her garden. It was tasty and nutritious although it was made of leftovers and didn’t make me feel poor.
It may be hard for someone from foreign country to experience Japanese home cooked meal unless you have Japanese friend who invites you to their home or their parents’ home in Japan. I love to introduce Seattleite how to make inexpensive home style Japanese food and incorporate into their home cooking. Other day, I visited to a community center nearby my house asked if I can teach Japanese home-style cooking class. Two of employees at the center were very interested in the class. I was asked to create and send proposal include budget, my fee and recipes for the class. He suggested series of classes instead of one. I considered relatively easy to make, inexpensive and/or well know Japanese dishes. Also I consider nutritiously balanced menus. Here are menus which I proposed:
Proposed menu
Class1 Rice, Miso soup, Chicken Teriyaki, and salad
Class2 Chicken Donburi and Sunomono(Sweet and sour vegetables)
Class3 Japanese Curried Rice using curry sauce
Class4 Sushi rolls (Possible Vegetalian)
Class5 Rice balls and baked Chicken
Class6 Chicken Udon Noodle soup
Class7 Tempura(some Vegetarian)
Class8 Delicious Vegetarian Japanese dishes
I proposed to buy common ingredients before starting the first class to be used throughout classes include Calrose rice, Soy source, Rice vinegar and sea salt. The estimate budget of these costs $75. Then buy fresh ingredients for the each class at the day of the class. The estimate budget of these costs $35/class. It will serve 6-8 people.
I was going to include Sukiyaki and Katsu. I eliminated Sukiyaki because it requires so many ingredients and beef will use up most of the budget. Katsu will be OK but I include Tempura over Katsu.
I am going to bring this idea to various community centers and senior centers. Hopefully I start sharing my knowledge of Japanese cooking to Seattleites who love to cook soon.

My experience working at a commercial kitchen

I had an opportunity working at a restaurant kitchen for three days by volunteering food preparation for Washington Middle School’s fund raising auction. The restaurant was St. clouds(1). I was very excited working in the commercial kitchen for the first time. John Platt, who is owner and the chef at St. clouds, was very nice to let us use his kitchen and gave us cooking instructions. Our job was mainly peeling, cutting, chopping, and mixing vegetables and other ingredients. Some people may think it is boring and tiring. But I love cooking and loved this task. I brought my Japanese knife and tried it out then borrowed the restaurant's knife. I learned while my Japanese knife may be good to cut large pieces or slicing vegetables, I liked using the restaurant’s knife which was more efficient chopping vegetables into very small pieces than my knife.

One of dishes which I helped cooking was bread pudding. It is interesting coincidence that I helped making the bread pudding after I wrote about the pudding in the British food. I asked JohnP if this pudding was British. He told me we were preparing French pudding not British. According to him, French loved bread and made pudding using day old bread.

At my first day at St. clouds, my job was peeling and slicing onions. Two of us tackled many onions. Amazingly we had no tears in our eyes. Next I chopped and minced fresh thyme. All chopped onions were placed into huge metal pans with melted butter and oil on the bottom and spices and minced fresh thyme and other spices were added to it. I mixed these onions with all sort of spices with my rubber-gloved hands. Onions were ready to be cooked to be caramelized in the oven. Meanwhile, other volunteers were cutting the crust off from day-old bread which the head of food preparation volunteers got free from Essential baking Co.(2). Essential baking Co. is one of the best bakeries in Seattle. The day-old bread was still tasted delicious. I helped cutting crust off bread and non crust part into smaller pieces while I snacked delicious crust which would go to composed bin soon.

At the second day, onions were already caramelized and ready to be used. I spread one layer of chopped bead into 8 large metal pans. Other volunteers were chopping pears into small pieces and cooked them with caramelized onion in a large frying pan. The pears looked like red potatoes. Two of us spread onion-pear mix in the pans. We added another layer of bread pieces. Meanwhile, two ladies were mixing eggs, milk, cream, and blue cheese with spices in the large container. We got this egg and milk mixture and mixed well and pour into the eight pans. Our final task for pudding was pushing bread down to soak into the liquid to prevent being dry. JohnP told me push floating bread pieces down every 20 minutes. While I waited to press bread pieces into liquid, I helped chopping a lot of pickled green olives into paper corn size to prepare Olive Tapanade.

Final day at the restaurant kitchen, I chopped chives for the Tapanade. I washed many pans, knifes, pots, spoons and everything. I was surprised that dish washing machine was not like one at my house. I scrubbed and rinsed to remove any food waste on the pans. The dish washing machine rinses dishes or anything inside twice and sanitizes them. It only took about 5 minutes. The restaurant doesn’t need many plates using this machine. Only it need person pre-washed dishes and insert it to dish washer. The last task was to help rotating 6 bread pudding pans clockwise from bottom to top, left to right every 20 minutes. This will help cooking pudding in the pans evenly. The pan was very heavy. The chef has to have muscle.

These were my three days’ experience working at restaurant’s commercial kitchen.

I enjoyed meeting and talking other volunteers at St. clouds. I was excited going to auction to help final preparation for 2 hours in advance. And I will be the guest to try out the final meal after 3 days of our hard work. Please read my next blog article to find out the meal at the WMS auction night.

References
(1)St. Clouds restaurant website. http://www.stclouds.com/
(2) Essential Baking CO. website: http://www.essentialbaking.com/