Carrie and I just set up a knife magnet in our kitchen. I put all my knives up there and it was just really beautiful. Each of these knives has a little story.
From left to right:
- A Bunmei tako-hiki, a wedding present.
- On of my grandfather’s Sabatiers, which he gave to my dad. I’ve got another one that needs work that’s not here.
- A $10 Chinese cleaver. This one didn’t have a story until I started making dinner tonight. See below.
- My Mac Superior santoku. This was a housewarming present from my friend Jeff, who’d damaged a knife of mine in college, like 9 years ago. It was really touching. Also, it’s a bitchin’ knife. It’s great for making many teeny tiny slices of garlic or mushrooms.
- The other of my grandfather’s Sabatiers. Note the nicks in the spine. That’s because my grampa used to whang it through mutton bones with a hammer. They know how to make a knife over at Sabatier.
So, the picture below. I was making cannelini con polpetti (“little octopuses”. We usually make this with squid and call it “squiddybeans” but with octopus, we were calling it “pussybeans”) tonight and I didn’t want to use all of them. So I decided to chop off a hunk to defrost for dinner. See how there are two cuts? The first one, the blade kind of twisted in my hand. I also noticed that it wasn’t where I expected the strike to be. Then I remembered that sensei often tells me that I turn my hips too far. I lined myself up like he’s always telling me to, and…
Can I have your recipe for squiddy/pussy beans?
Nice knives, too. You should be a on Ginsu knife commercial.
Recipy for Pussybeans:
Sautée in a saucepan:
• One shitload of olive oil. Like, maybe 3mm of oil or so.
• Three cloves of garlic. Four is fine. Five might be fine, too, depending on the garlic and how tired of crushing garlic you get.
• Throw in a couple of chopped scalions.
• Deglace with as much wine as you can — don’t get it all liquidy in there; make sure it’s still bubbling hard, above boiling temp.
• When the temperature gets really high again and the wine is going to caramelize, deglace again.
• Throw in three cans of drained cannelini. If you don’t drain it, you get just that superfarty bean juice in there.
• Let it simmer. It’ll take a while for the beans to absorb maximum goodness from the oil and garlic.
• While that’s going on, do what you need to do to get the squid/octopus ready. Octopus should be in smaller pieces because it’s tougher. It also has a stronger flavor so you might want to use less. The amount in the picture above is about the right amount. Like a baseball’s volume.
• When the beans don’t just taste like canned beans anymore, when they’re not crumbly inside and there’s substantial liquid that’s come out of them as they cook (this is maybe 10 minutes), throw in the squid/octopus. It cooks fast, so the next part will have to be fast.
• Throw in a big handful of baby spinach. If you don’t have any, parsley’s good too, but it’s not as fluffy so you don’t have to use quite as much.
• Stir it around until the exact moment that the spinach is cooked. Maybe a moment earlier. You don’t want to overcook the cephalopodia.
I find that the amount of beans often requires salt to bring out the flavor. You’ll need less if you’re using octopus because it’s a little salty already.
Ta daaa! Pussybeans!
Oh, and Ginsu knives… they’re serrated. What do you take me for?
Yum! Thanks!
Ginsu knives are serrated???? WTF? No way! How do you cut a ripe tomato with a serrated knife?
The next thing you’ll tell me is that sea monsters don’t exist
Yep. Serrated. Wikipedia tells me that they’re from my own home state, even, which I didn’t know. They’re also constructed with genuine Ohio technology. They‘re as Japanese as my Gramma.
(For the record, there’s apocryphal evidence that some of my family is Native American. There is no evidence that my family is Japanese.)
By the bye, that’s white wine in them thar recipe.