"I wish I could go through the kitchens of amateur cooks everywhere just throwing knives out from their drawers," Bourdain wrote in his 2000 memoir, Kitchen Confidential. "All those medium-size utility knives, those useless serrated things . . . those ineptly designed slicers - not one of the damn things could cut a tomato."
Weinstein's book also comes with a nifty DVD, but there's nothing like hands-on learning. So I signed on for a two-hour, $39 Knife Skills class at Foster's Homeware. Similar classes are offered at the Marketplace at East Falls, Sur La Table, Williams-Sonoma, La Cucina in the Reading Terminal Market, and a long list of area cooking schools such as Charlotte Albertson's. You want a hands-on class, not a demonstration.
At Foster's, I don an apron along with seven like-minded amateurs. We assemble at an island where places are set with a cutting board, a forged stainless steel chef's knife, and a hand towel for each of us.
Among my classmates is Jeri Behrman, 33, an attorney who admits to cooking precious little at home.
"If I make brownies, that's a big deal," she says. Still, she says, everybody needs to know proper knife skills and this is her moment.
Another lawyer, Leanne Litwin, 49, from Society Hill, confesses her love of cooking.
"I've always had it in my head that in my next career I'd be a pastry chef," she says, adding that she hopes that opportunity arises sooner rather than later.
Instructor Betty Kaplan notes that professional training centers such as the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College might devote weeks or months to knife skills. Still, we can and will learn much in these two hours.
She starts with equipment and its care.
