Sharpening Your Cooking Knives

Are your good cooking knifes getting dull?

Make sure you "hone" your knives with a "steel" regularly....   Here's a good link on how to "hone" your knife and keep the edge sharp.
http://culinaryarts.about.com/od/culinarytools/ht/honing.htm




and sharpen your knives once in a while with a knife sharpener.  Honing ensures the micro-edge of the knife is sharp/not folded on itself (unfolded).  Periodic sharpening removes a weak edge and shapes a new, stronger, edge.



Some people prefer to use an electric sharpener like this highly-rated Chef's Choice sharpener.  However, we don't like the amount of metal that these machines remove from our good knives.



Note that knives that never need sharpening (often serrated knives) -- do, in fact, need to be sharpened.

Here is some good information on knives:
http://www.edgecraft.com/tips_myth_all.html

Recipe: Swedish Coffee

Want some nice, deep, rich-tasting coffee?  No coffee maker?  Or all of the above?  This recipe for Swedish Coffee can make "okay-to-good" coffee: "great" -- and make "great" coffee just a bit richer/less bitter.



Swedish Coffee Recipe

Ingredients:

1 egg

1 cup cold water, divided

1 cup regular grind coffee

6 cups boiling water

Directions:

1. Use a Graniteware (enamel) coffee pot.

2. Wash egg, break it into a smal bowl (reserving shell), and beat slightly.

3. Add 1/2 cup cold water, the 1 cup ground coffee, and the reserved (crushed) egg shell, and mix thoroughly.

4. Turn into coffee pot, pour on boiling water, and stir.

5. Place on front of range and boil for 3 minutes. (If not boiled, coffee is cloudy. If boiled too long, too much tannic acid is developed.)

6. Add remaining 1/2 cup cold water, which perfects clearing. (Cold water, which is heavier than hot, sinks to the bottom and carries the grounds with it.)

7. After coffee has settled, serve at once.

Read more here:
https://sites.google.com/site/juliarosechin/cooking