Favourites

One shouldn't have favourite children but it's entirely possible for chefs to have favourite knives. This little beauty is probably mine.

It's a filleting knife I bought more than 30 years ago when I was living and working in Whitby. It's a professional fisherman's knife and is still razor sharp - too sharp to leave laying around uncovered which is fine; it comes with a leather scabbard. I use it for slicing tomatoes very thinly - you can read a newspaper through them - and for scoring the skin on a pork shank before roasting it. That's part of the secret of good crackling. It's sharp the length of the blade and there is a little flex in the tip but not as much as a traditional chef's filleting knife - I have one of those too. This is the bit of kit that a trawlerman would use for cleaning fish at sea and I've done some of that when I used to go out long-lining with a guy I shared a house with. Three of us shared the house - the third guy was a chiropodist who worked at Whitby hospital. One night, after we had taken drink, we borrowed some fish boxes from the harbour and broke them down for firewood - in the living room. They stank when burning and the splinters and bits of wood were everywhere. I don't know where the chiropodist ended up but a few years ago my then neighbour came back from a fishing holiday in Whitby. We chatted for a while and it turns out that the skipper of the boat he went out on each day was my erstwhile house-mate.

All these memories come flooding back whenever I unsheathe this little baby.