Le canif français

I've been sitting on this one for a while, ever since a friend told me that his small sons have French knives. It's traditional. It's what you use to whittle yourself a walking stick, for example. I have long been intrigued by the French knife because it is called a "canif".

Anyway here we have three French canifs and one Swiss army knife. The canif has a blade about 4" long and would almost certainly be illegal in Britain under the Offensive Weapons Act.

Banned from schools, of course, but jolly useful when mushrooming or if your meat is a bit hard to cut and you have been given plastic cutlery.
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Comments

Anonymous said…
For some obscure reason best known to themselves, my daughter and son-in-law use something akin to the one at the bottom left as do, I believe, many other French people, at least in the southern areas of France. Personally, I far prefer a traditional table knife, though some French/Continental made knives have been known to bend under heavy usage, e.g. steaks.
1:25 am
PGDH said…
Perhaps that says more about the quality of the steak than than of the know? Do the French eat fillet mignon, or is that only the Americans? And is the main course called an entrée in France?
12:12 pm
Alan said…
I've always found the meat to be very tender. As for the other questions, I wouldn't know about that. You'd need to ask someone with more experience of restaurants than I have.

Now then, about McDo and Quicks...
12:32 pm
Anonymous said…
Well Phil may have a point there, I am learning to stay well clear of anything that French restaurants call 'entrecote' because, even if it purports to be Charolais, it always seems to be stringy and if it is described as 'steak', it almost always seems to be tough.

And please Phil, don't cast nasturtiums on the durability of my gums!

By the way, the denigration of French meat does not extend to French beef rolled for roasting, it's bred and cut differently for the French market and always turns out to be delicious, whether 'blue' or 'well done' - which to many Brits is still 'blue'.
11:11 pm
Alan said…
Pat and I ate out with the kids the other evening at a Carrefour cafeteria (Crescendo)and in a fit of scientific self-sacrifice I ate a pavé of Limousin beef. (I have no idea what a pavé is, but it was quite a big thick chunk). The chappie grilled it à point for me. In English this means medium, though here the meat à point is always red inside. And I can testify that it was certainly tender.
8:14 pm
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