Allotments 4 All

- but SO much quicker & more efficient!

Providing the knife is sharp ! I have just acquired a new diamond stick, yet to be tried on the kitchen knives.

Seeing some baby leeks/garlic chives/garlic/spring onion in the foreground, what was the orange destined for?

Salad!

Please DON'T cane your knives with a diamond until honing with the Chantry can't cope?

And then, can you guarantee your angle??

Preaching to the converted??

The diamond is only really a shaping stick, not for honing, and yes I am comfortable with angles. I used to have a plain stainless steel rod, which was great for 'wiping' the edges on a blade, alas I have mislaid it.

Salad. Simple but so effective. Pasta for me tonight. Again simple, rustic food, but the best in my book. :)

One joy about Global knives is that you get an angle guide.

Spring onion and orange, what are you making tim? :o

Both mum & son of sprout have our own sharpeners, used wet. We do it regularly, like flossing.



If we didn't already have knives, I would be very tempted by these: http://www.nipponkitchen.com/ourknives.htm

An interesting article on sharpening ...

http://knifeoutlet.com/sharpening.htm

Sprout - just salad! And is that a chisel-edge Global, or V edge? They say the chisel ones are for fish, but I don't see it?

Curry - great info - and how many brands now claim 'never need sharpening'? And folk believe it!!

Tis a v-shaped one tim, and the sharpener is for v shaped blades.
Sushi chefs do use chisel edged ones, available for both left and right handed people

Yes I only use V blades because of the left handed problem. I have learned to work with the tools I have available. The biggest problem I face is that we have a glass work surface, which my wife insists is a chopping board ...

Now an interesting thing there is that my oval mountcutter blade works onto a glass base - mount after mount!!

Good grief curry, a GLASS cutting board :o :-X :'(
I recently read that wooden chopping boards actually protect better against bacterial infection than the plastic ones. I can't quite bring myself to go back to them - yet.
Can you 'accidentally' drop it?

Gave ours to No2 daughter.

Yes ss, it's apparently true, the bacterial thing about wood chopping boards. Trouble is, even the expensive ones are made from strips of wood glued together which don't appreciate the constant scalding after chopping meat. I was dead lucky a few years ago, buying some ash from a tree surgeon for another job, I just happened to ask if he'd any sycamore and I came away with a two inch thick slice of tree - still with the bark on, about 2ft wide and 3ft long - for £2.50, so I've got chopping boards for life.  ;D

I'm drifting again aren't I?


Geoff.

Supersprout, I think it is meant to be a cheese board, or perhaps for pastry, I don't know, but it kills the knives when they get exposed to it! In my opinion it is the proverbial chocolate teapot, but I dont have the heart to break it. Perhaps give it to a charity shop, so someone else uses it to kill their knives ...

End grain as well eh euronerd ... I am jealous.

Of course, they don't claim that it's a cutting board.

Eagle eyes tim ;)
Curry, if you chicken out of Doing the Deed 8), I understand grandchildren are good for this sort of thing ;D ;D ;D

Glass boards can be useful when making pastry, so just shove it in a cupboard somewhere untill a cold surface is needed then shove the board in the fridge for a few hours beforehand. This is provided it's a smooth surface, not one of those nobbly ones.

Wooden boards ideally should be laminated (lots of blocks stuck together with end on grain) as the very tip of the blade slips between the grain and doesn't blunt.  The plank of wood board presents the knife with a cross grain which can dull the blades. 

I have a variety of boards; metal for cold stuff, white polyproplene (I think that's what it's called) for meat and aliums, a bread board with grooves in to try and deal with OH's propensity for crumb scattering - and my clearing it up... :() and a laminated board for everything else if I can be bothered to muck up another one.  They tend to live in a big pile.

Oh, forgot the wedding gift of a 2ft x 2ft x 4" thick laminated block that we use for cheese only.  Oh, and the one that came with the kitchen sink.

I have a simmilar tale about potato peelers...

Talking of glass chopping boards as you are (up above)....thought I'd mention a very scarey tale!....I was at a friends and our meal (a fish dish) was almost ready......she'd been cooking various bits & pieces on the burners and one had been left on very low.....her chopping board was 'resting' to one side of her worksurface, very close to the hob & the burner.....as she went to pick up the board.....it exploded/shattered into smitherines!!.....we were terrified....glass flew everywhere including into the fish dish which was some distance away but we didn't dare take any chances....

Now I know she should never have left the board so close to the hob ....but it just goes to show how easy it is (when you're talking or not concentrating) to make an error like this that could have had the most awful consequences.....she never wants another glass board!

I've got one but use it rarely - can't stand the noise when the knife 'hits' the glass....must find another use for it and think the pastry idea a good one.

From what i can tell you are on about the virtues of sharping knifes  ??

My father who was a butcher all his life swore by 2 things, the best quality knife you can afford and a "steel", which he used  for all his knifes, and has his son i was "schooled" (by him) in the art of honing my knife properly.

When used the right way you get a razor sharp edge.

I will admit that for ease of use and modern living stile's more modern methods are easer and that the way i was shown  may be old "hat" for some people.

I for one would not use any thing else for my knifes, and have passed this "skill" on to my son's and would hope that they in turn will pass it on to their's.

Digaround