I have a favourite cooking knife. Seriously, I am one of those women who comes into your kitchen, offers to help and then moans incessantly about how rubbish your knives are before you lose all patience, stuff a bowl of crisps and chardonnay into my hands and direct me to the dark corner of the room to play with the cat.
I can’t stand crappy knives. As much as I hate cooking there is one thing I know and that is a kitchen needs sharp knives designed for the job. I’m pretty anal about it. Ask my husband. Not only do I tut when he uses the wrong knife to slice the bread but I follow him, remove the offending knife and replace it with the correct one. He is the one tutting then at my inability to relax over a cutting implement.
But men are the same when it comes to DIY. I can use a flat head screwdriver for a philips (posi) head screw – I can! – and it works. To them it is inconceivable that someone would use the wrong screwdriver. My husband is constantly telling me that a drill bit is designed either for wood or metal and the two are not interchangeable. Well, why can’t he understand the same goes for a knife? A bread knife is different to a carving knife is different to a… actually I’m boring myself now. So we shall move on.
The one thing I am not fussy about is bowls. Usually. I can’t mix dough in a pan, it has to have a round base so you don’t lose bits at the edge. That’s just common sense. But – you knew there was one coming – a salad bowl is NOT a mixing bowl and my mixing bowl is only a salad bowl in the event of an emergency!
There, I think I’ve exhausted kitchen utensils. Now I’ll just wait for my husband to complain that a face razor can’t be used on…
