How to Cook Like the Pros

Last summer I read Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential. Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly. Ever since, I have been dying to become the proud owner of a GLOBAL knife, which he recommends in chapter How to cook like the pros.

Of course, I will never be a pro and I am not even aspiring to become one, because, as Tony puts it: "Unless you're one of us already, you'll probably never cook like a professional. And thats okay". 

But, later on in the chapter he also writes for all the amateur cooks out there: "So, what do you absolutely need? You need, for God's sake, a decent chef's knife. No con foisted on the general public is so atrocious, so wrongheaded, or so widely believed as the one that tells you you need a full set of specialized cutlery in various sizes. I wish sometimes I could go through the kitchens of amateur cooks everywhere just throwing knives out from their drawers - all those medium-size 'utility' knives, those useless serrated things you see advertised on TV, all that hard-to-sharpen stainless-steel garbage, those ineptly designed slicers - not one of the damn things could cut a tomato. Please believe me, here's all you will ever need in the knife department: ONE good chef's knife, as large as is comfortable for your hand. Brand name? Okay, most talented amateurs get a boner buying one of the old-school professional high-carbon stainless knives from Germany or Austria, like a Henkel or Wusthof, and those are fine knives, if heavy. [...] But do you really need something so heavy? So expensive? So difficult to maintain (which you probably won't)? Unless you are really and truly going to spend fifteen minutes every couple of days working that blade on an oiled carborundum stone, followed by careful honing on a diamond steel, I'd forgo the Germans. 

Most of the professionals I know have for years been retiring their Wusthofs and replacing them with the lightweight, easy-to-sharpen and relatively inexpensive vanadium steel Global knives, a very good Japanese product which has - in addition to its many other fine qualities - the added attraction of looking really cool. 


Global makes a lot of knives in different sizes, so what do you need? One chef's knife. This should cut just about anything you might work with, from a shallot to a watermelon, an onion to a sirloin strip. Like a pro, you should use the tip of the knife for the small stuff, and the area nearer the heel for the larger. This isn't difficult; buy a few rutabagas or onions - they're cheap - and practice on them. Nothing will set you apart from the herd quicker than the ability to handle a chef's knife properly."

So I got my GLOBAL knife and I am not afraid to use it (okay, maybe a little...).

While I was out buying the knife I could not resist these super cute and handy serving hands from the Nigella Lawson Collection.

"These really do feel like hands not serving spoons or forks, letting you be at one with the food, so you can get stuck straight in."

Palm-sized Beech servers for salads, pasta, vegetables etc.