Time to Sharpen the Knives

We could feel our knives weren't sharp, but had lacked the time to fix them up until this weekend. Ah, what a difference: slicing lemons paper thin, the vesicles as transparent as glass.

Once a year or so I have to grind a bit of metal to restore the edges, then usually I can give them a tune up throughout the year. I've gotten lazy, now using an electric Chef's Choice 1520: I've ground all my blades down to a Japanese-style 15 degree angle, except the beefy Porsche in the top center which I keep at a European 20 degree angle for meats. It takes maybe an hour.

I started sharpening my blades with water stones but never developed the discipline I needed to maintain a 20 degree angle, let alone 15. I then got an Edge Pro Apex which is a jig that holds the blade and stone at just the right angle, but it would probably take me 2-3 hours to do all these blades.

We've also got a couple bread knives, and a whole flock of nearly-disposable paring and birds beak knifes we get from a restaurant supply store for about $5 each. My favorite above is the 10-inch Miyabi Japanese knife in the top left: thin, sharp, and light for its size, with beautiful construction including a rounded-over spine which is nicer in the hands -- a real pleasure to use.

Jacque Pepin's deboned chicken, lollipops

I discovered this video of Jacque Pepin fully deboning a chicken and it blew me away: so fast, so efficient. We did this for a ballotine (chicken stuffed with duck and pheasant) and it took us a long time boning the birds -- tons of detailed knife-work. When Jacques said,  "it should not take you much more than a minute to bone out a chicken" I new we had to try it; I really like that he said, "the biggest mistake is to use the knife very much".

We don't have any photos of the boning process. It took us considerably more than a minute. But the technique is great and we'll get faster as we practice. The chicken wing "lollipops" were a fun by-product.

Below is the chicken, stuffed, and trussed with butcher's twine ready for the oven.

We roasted it until the internal temperature was about 145F/63C, rotating it a couple times near the end to ensure the skin was crispy all around.

We sliced it and had a fairly well behaved roll of chicken enclosing stuffing, and crispy skin.  Next time we might try adding some intensely flavored sausage to the filling.

I'll have to update this post when we do this again to show the deboning and stuffing, and the finished slices.

We saved the chicken wing lollipops (do watch the video, it's right at the beginning) and then dusted them with flour, fried them in oil until crisp, then briefly draining them.

We served it for breakfast with some migas (a southwestern hash of crisp tortilla chips with scrambled eggs)  garnished with pomegranates.