Knife for Life

I admit I spend far too much time in the kitchen, a byproduct of my innate gluttony and mortal addiction to food in all its variegated glory. Yes, that's me mixing masa flour and pressing my own tortillas with a cast-iron tortilla press. My Caesar salad is made from scratch, right down to the La Brea Bakery croutons I fashion from day-old baguettes. And, okay, I admit to smoking tri-tip for a dozen hours before assembling a three-alarm chile con carne.

Suffice it to say my kitchen is full of high-and-low tech gadgets I will discuss further sometime soon, but for now let's turn our attentions to my latest obsession: ceramic kitchen knives. I know, you think ceramic and you picture some vase crashing to the floor during an earthquake, exploding into a million shards.

(I can't resist an etymological digression here: the Greek word for a broken piece of pottery is ostrakon, which those recycling-minded folks in the Age of Pericles used as scratch paper, e.g., to inscribe the name of a politician they disliked to be deposited in a container in the town center. If enough of these ostrakoi were collected, the politician was ousted, or ostracized!)

Ahem, well, it turns out that advanced ceramics, the kind that Kyocera uses for its knives, are second only to diamonds in hardness, and thus are used for bone replacement procedures, race-car brake pads and, honed razor sharp, kitchen cutlery.

I recently replaced my heavier steel knives with these crazy-looking white blades and was an instant convert. All you have to do is set one of these instruments of mass destruction next to a brisket and it slices itself into carpaccio-thin strips out of fear while you sit watching the Food Network and reading Ellery Queen. Seriously, no cabbage, no pork loin, no slightly over-ripe tomato stands a chance against these lethal blades.

Am I beginning to sound a little bit too much like Ron Popeil here? Heart, be still! Now, there's a great American.....

Try one and forevermore hold your peace, or your finger in pieces! WARNING: do be careful with these things, unless your dinner guests have cannibalistic urges you are desperate to help fulfill.