AROUND HOME : On the Cutting Edge

EVER WONDER WHAT sort of culinary luggage the peripatetic new chefs are carrying as they hop around the country cooking benefit dinners, hyping their latest books and carousing in each other’s kitchens? Some take special sauces. Others carry condiments. One or two might lug along a favorite pot or two. But one thing never varies: Any chef worth his salt carries a case filled with knives.

These knives are razor-sharp. They are what gives the professional chef an edge over the amateur. Watch a professional chef, and you will see that he is constantly honing his blades, sliding them up and down a sharpening steel with extraordinary grace. It is a knack so few amateurs have mastered that you can walk into almost any home kitchen in America--even that of the most accomplished cook--and discover nothing but dull knives.

However, this no longer needs to be the case. You may never have figured out the right angle on a butcher’s steel, you may not be fully informed on the oil to use in the sharpening process, and you may not have the patience for a sharpening stone. Your knives may be so dull that they can’t cut butter, but none of this matters anymore. The Chef’s Choice Diamond Hone Sharpener will put you on the cutting edge.

Don’t be put off by the accompanying booklet, which makes the contraption seem complicated. It is remarkably simple. You just plug in the machine, pick up your knife and slide the blade through a series of slots. Do it in the right order, and in less than a minute you end up with a knife so sharp you may be tempted to pack it up and take it along the next time you travel.

Chef’s Choice Diamond Hone Sharpener costs about $80 at Williams-Sonoma stores in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Woodland Hills, Pasadena, Costa Mesa, Santa Barbara and San Diego, and at other cookware stores.