Tips & Tricks

When I went out and got my knives sharpened recently, I had to solve the question of how to transport them safely, and my intuitive idea was to roll them up in a kitchen towel.

When the guy at the shop handed them back to me to take home a week later, I was pleased to hear him say that this was the best method. I also noticed his fold was a lot neater than mine, so I thought I would share it with you.

Learning how to transport your knives

Naturally, if you’re a traveling cook who has to carry knives around frequently*, it might make sense to buy a special carrying case such as this knife roll, but if you’re only transporting them a few times a year to cook at a friend’s house or to get your blades sharpened, you can definitely save the money and use a simple kitchen towel.

The trick, as you’ll see in the animation below, is to pick one of your thicker kitchen towels, and to fold it so that the tips of the blades push against a double layer of fabric, so they won’t just slice through.

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When I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago, I met up with my long-time friend and fellow blogger Elise, who very kindly showed up with homemade chocolate biscotti, and a few pieces of fruit from her garden.

Among them was a pomegranate, and I had to pick my jaw up from the floor. To a Parisian kid, pomegranates (grenades in French) are super exotic, the kind of fruit that must grow in some faraway tropical forest with multicolored birds and monkeys flying around, the kind of fruit that should also (once the kid is all grown up and environmentally conscious) be eaten in moderation because of the carbon footprint.

Pomegranate juice is a gorgeous ruby pink color, yes, but do you want it polka-dotting your clothes?

Yet I adore pomegranates. I love biting into their little seeds bursting with tart juice, and I love sprinkling them on stewed vegetables and on salads, especially the raw kale salad with avocado and cilantro that I made a few times in San Francisco.

Showing you how to open a pomegranate

So I received this local pomegranate with great joy, and as I was about to cut it open and harvest the seeds — standing at Heidi‘s beautiful marble counter — I thought I’d take a few quick pictures to share the technique with you in case you’re new to this whole pomegranate opening thing.

(I have only just heard about this wooden-spoon whacking technique, and will have to try that next time, though I have yet to be convinced it saves that much time. Also: the violence of it!)

0. Before you begin, put on an apron and roll up your sleeves; pomegranate juice is a gorgeous ruby pink color, yes, but do you want it polka-dotting your clothes?

1. Using a sharp knife, cut a slice off the top and the bottom of the fruit, just to uncover the seeds. Make four vertical cuts all around the fruit, cutting through the rind just until you reach the seeds but not slicing into them.

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One of the reasons why I love to cook is one I have in common with people who knit: it is involving enough to keep your mind off world peace issues, but leaves enough mental space that you can wander, hold imaginary conversations, turn sentences around in your mind (everyone does that, right?), and generally putter about in the coziness of your own head.

Prepping vegetables launches me into such inner monologues, and in recent months they have been dominated by this nagging question: why does food stick to my knife, and how do I make it stop?

You know the phenomenon, I’m sure, but let me describe it for you: whenever I slice something (say, an onion or a zucchini), the pieces I’ve just cut tend to stick to the right side of the blade (I’m right-handed), so that when I’m cutting the next slice, the pieces that are stuck on there get pushed up and off by the new slice, and fall either to the right of my blade (unruly, but fine), or tumble off the cutting board and possibly onto the floor (messy), or fall to the left side of my blade, in which case I’m likely to cut into them again moments later (extra annoying).

After composing an imaginary email in my head over a few zucchini-slicing sessions (I eat a lot of zucchini), I finally sat down and wrote to Peter Hertzmann, the spectacularly knowledgeable creator of the à la carte website and associated blog, cooking instructor, and author of the must-own Knife Skills Illustrated, of which he kindly offered me a copy when we met in San Francisco a few years ago (more details about the book)*. And naturally Peter had answers, which I’m sharing below, mixed in with a few more tips I gathered in my research.

So, why does food stick to my knife?

The main reason is surface tension, a physical phenomenon that makes the surface of liquids resist an external force. In this case, it means that foods with a high water content (and many vegetables are more than 90% water) create slices with a moist surface that clings to the flat of the blade.

And how do I make it stop?

You could decide to subsist on low-water foods — I’m sure a diet of beef jerky and rice crackers will do you a world of good — or you could adopt one or more of these three strategies:

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Few nuts are as notably improved by roasting as the hazelnut.

Most raw hazelnuts you find at the store are, in truth, a little chewy and a little bland, like a draft version of themselves. But a healthy roasting fixes that, boosting the flavor and allowing the excess water to evaporate, thereby leaving you with wonderfully crisp nuggets of pure nuttiness.

The bonus advantage when you roast hazelnuts is that it gives you the opportunity to skin them while you’re at it, rubbing them in a kitchen towel as the bitter husk easily detaches into a million little flakes you do not want to accidentally spill on your kitchen floor, trust me.

How to roast hazelnuts, and what to do with them?

I confess that most of the hazelnuts I roast and skin in this fashion, I end up snacking on with dried fruit such as prunes, figs, pears, or dates, as mentioned in this post about food gifts. But I also love to eat them on Roasted Cauliflower à la Mary Celeste, use them for a Hazelnut and Nectarine Gratin, or grind them to make Dukkah, this fantastic spice mix from Egypt. (More hazelnut recipes?)

Join the conversation!

Do you usually roast and skin the nuts you cook and bake with? And what’s your favorite way to enjoy hazelnuts?

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