Pedantry, foodie ramblings, and video-blogging…

Last night, I did something in bed that I’ve not done before (OK – you can stop that right now!) – I bought a Kindle book via my phone being, as I was, bored and plagued by insomnia and, at that point, not yet had my cottage cheese.

The book I got was The Pedant in the Kitchen, by Julian Barnes, in which Barnes, clearly not a natural cook (which he freely admits), bemoans – among much else – vagueness by chefs who have the temerity to write cookery books. How very dare they!

Now my view, as I’ve said in these pages, is that it’s not the job of a cook-book writer to lead you by the hand through Cookery 101. It’s perfectly reasonable for a professional chef to expect someone who buys their books(s) to have, at least, mastered the basic techniques.

Missing the point…

A designer, John Cornock, who seems seriously out of touch with reality, has designed a kitchen knife which, he says – and bafflingly, the Home Office are backing him in this assertion – has no point, so is safer than a knife with which one can stab. Which is the most unutterable bollocks. Any blade, pointed or not, can kill and maim – just ask a Rwandan about machetes.  Think, too, about a lino knife – you can’t stab anyone with one of them, either, but the hooked blade can be lethal.

Blowing up the photo until it matched my 8” chef’s knife, showed that the vestigial point is still capable of doing a substantial amount of damage, (while being useless in the kitchen), as, of course, is the edge. The inability to

Pages: 1 2 3