'Knives & Ink'

Twixmas—noun—the time period between Christmas and New Year’s. To be honest, I think I just use it as an excuse to eat all the things, lie in bed, and not know what day it is. I hope you’ve had a great Twixmas—but I know that the festive season is not all it’s cracked up to be for many people, so I hope that it’s been as good as it can be.

This year, instead of getting myself yet another cookbook, I dallied towards a slightly more ethnographic book about chefs. Knives & Ink is a hardback, coffee table type of book, which takes the stories behind chefs and their tattoos, complete with beautiful illustrations. The reason I bought it for myself is twofold—last year (when I was meant to be concentrating on an essay) I was sat in my university library listening to a food-y podcast. It must’ve been a Christmas edition as they were running down the best food-related books of the year, and Knives & Ink cropped up. I don’t think I’d ever heard of a book that was about chefs and their tattoos, so I filed away its existence for later. I then promptly forgot about it, so a couple of weeks ago when I was sitting chatting with one of my friends (she still works in the industry and I love to hear her stories), she mentioned that a couple of chefs she had been working with had beautiful tats—mostly knives and carving forks. This conversation sparked my memory of the book, and after having forgotten about it for a year, I thought that perhaps I should buy it, so as not to forget again! Plus, I can totally get myself a Christmas present, right?

The layout of the book is great; each chef has a page (or two) with the details of their tattoo story, and then an intricate illustration of their tattoo. I recall in the podcast that was centered on the book there had been a discussion about the choice between photography and pen and ink, and I believe the latter was chosen because there was a parity in what the chefs did with food and Wendy MacNaughton’s illustrations. Even if that’s not the case, it’s how I’d like to envision it! I’m not for a moment saying that photography isn’t art, but I think putting pen to paper and knives on a chopping board is a similar creative process.

There’s not much text—other than a brief passage describing the story, I think the main purpose of this book was collecting and curating. However, there’s a line that I’m going to pull off the preface—it’s about how tattoos (particularly obvious ones that indicate a lack of wishing to have/return to a desk job again) show a demarcation with the mainstream and dedication to the craft. Now, my inner anthropologist is screaming about tattoos, rites of passage, separation from the tribe, etc., and I have to hand it to her, she might have a point. In my own experiences, and those of my aforementioned friend, chefs exist in a twilight world at odds with a lot of the population—when you enter that world, it can become all-encompassing (if you and your brigade mates are the only ones to have finished work at 1 AM, they’re the people that’ll you’ll go and get a drink with). Therefore, the demarcation of that particular “tribe” can be very important, it adds to the camaraderie and sense of family, and tattoos are one way of physically showing this. Chefs, by and large, like to think of themselves as badasses (they play with knives and fire so there’s possibly a grain of truth in that) and if you created a Venn diagram of people who think they’re badasses, people who have alternative lifestyles, and people who have tattoos, I think chefs might be in the middle! Therefore, as the book points out, it's hard to find a chef that doesn’t sport some ink.

Taking that one step further, there are chefs that happen to have tattoos, and tattoos that are very much related to the art. The book delves into both ideas and I’d like to pick up on two stories that provide brilliant examples. The first is a chef that happens to have a tattoo—the tattoo he’s got is modeled after a ring that he got from his grandfather. His grandfather received the ring from his best friend, who died in the trenches, and then passed it down to his grandson. Whilst it’s not at all related to the culinary arts, the tattoo is imbued with meaning, respect and love, and encapsulates the feeling behind other tattoos that have an industry focus. The second tattoo that I’d like to focus on is something that I consider to be a very traditional chef tattoo, that of a pig with the cuts of meat displayed (usually in the form of a dotted/dashed line). When I was at culinary college, I had a techniques textbook that had all the cuts of meat and the animals they come from in it, and I expect that all fledgling chefs have something similar to memorise. Therefore, it’s quite “cheffy” to have that tattooed on you, but the pig is special (I apologise now to any vegetarian readers), as you can use most, if not all, of it in the cooking process. I think tattoos like this, including any other cuts of meat, cooking instruments (e.g. whisks) and full dishes (e.g. pies), show a love of the lifestyle. A lot of people who turn to cooking and being a chef are drawn to it because it represents something “other” but still respectable—the craft elements in particular—which I would liken to the demarcation of the subset of the tribe. It’s almost as if getting a tattoo is part of the acceptance ritual that makes you a “chef."

Housekeeping: I’ve given up on really academic referencing because my online referencing tool has decided not to work (it got updated and then went funky)—I think I need really techy friends to help. One of my New Year’s resolutions (that is pertinent here) is to become more of a Cork Dork, so expect more posts about wine! Finally, have a great New Year!