Hear me out…
I was raised, as my family does, to fearfully respect our kitchen knives. Respect their productivity, respect their sharpness, but overall respect their ruthlessness. Even the mildest of disrespect for my family’s knives would earn you a nick of you were merely neglectful, and grievous harm if you spoke ill of their aptness.
Of course, when I moved out and set up my own kitchens I acquired my own knives and tried to teach them better. How I was the master, and I was the steel wright. I lavished them with hand baths and fresh oils. I used only the gentlest of hardwoods on their blades and protected them from the hrllscape of the dishwasher. We lived in serene peace, an harmonic existence of a mealwright and his band of merry Riveners.
And then one day, the Inheritance came. Grand Father had died, and his boning knives were my bequest. I was elated, but I would learn.
My friends, that old knife had a soul. Not an evil soul, but a soul that had goals. It was hard steel that took a keen, harsh edge. Bright and tense, like a silver bell on a crisp winter morning. Not Solingen steel, so pliable and yielding as it is fickle in use. Grandfather’s knives told you where to cut and if you hesitated, they would cut you instead in frustration. Impertinent things. Not evil, I would say. More, businesslike.
My mistake was to lay them with my other knives. Did you know knives talk? They do! They whisper to each other in their blocks at night when you are asleep. They whisper and they.learn from each other. A good papa hopes they learn the Art of their chef, but when you have a Bad Knife in the block? They learn that too.
Now, all of my knives are angry knives. Not angry at me, necessarily, but angry at their lot in my kitchen, to suffer my children’s abusive cooking lessons, my in-laws’ insistent prep work degradations, and (occasionally) my neglect.
They bit my wife tonight. Its a Message…
Okay somebody please explain the joke/reference I’m not understanding. Or is OP just schizophrenic?
Properly sharp knives are indifferent to that which they cut. Be that your steak, or you, their job is to cut.
A properly shaperned knife is a wicked, angry, thing. It must be treated with respect, deffarence, and no small part of care. However, they must not be feared; like a wild predator they can sense fear.
Suffice it to say OP was just using some artistic license to show that they got a new old knife and nicked themselves.
A true professional can do amazing things with the situation provided. A sharp knife would make things convenient but a real professional would be able to do something special even with dull knives. If op wants to do something special, then they need to forget the idea that the knife makes the difference and ask the questions about what they can do to show what they did to the food made that thing great. My greatest acknowledgment from cooking is when people notice that my effort is top tier. The inside didn’t have to be razor sharp to show that my cuts were intentional.
Coooking is about knowing the secret to success. It’s not the secret ingredient it’s the secret knowledge to do the task the best way. If the knife is sharp it should be done a certain way and if the circumstances are different then it should be done differently. But if you want to know how to do something the best way in a specific situation, the question shouldn’t be about the tool specifically but rather the technique for the situation considering the variables. I can tell you how to cut things with a dull knit but if the knife is sharp, my advice would be different