Archive for January 11th, 2018

Knife porn.

Thursday, January 11th, 2018

Neat profile in the HouChron of Dr. Stephen Pustilnik, who is:

  • a forensic pathologist
  • an amateur chef, and
  • a custom knife maker, who specializes in knives for chefs and forensic pathologists.

As he cooked his way through medical school at Washington University in St. Louis, he realized that his success in both the kitchen and the lab depended on knife quality. His stiff steel chef knives severed animal flesh with ease, but the dull, flexible blades used in the morgue slipped against human organs and made dissections difficult.

Pustilnik, after spending years examining human bodies, speaks easily of the particular mechanics of the hands. He measures his customers’ palms and observes where the metacarpophalangeal joints – the hinges at the knuckles – rest on a knife handle.
The goal, he said, is for the chef to focus solely on the food, not the way the knife feels.
“When the hand and the blade come together in an ergonomic way, it’s seamless,” he said. “It’s just the chef executing his vision.”