There are many things in my kitchen. I have glass bowls, freezer- and oven-proof. I have wooden spoons, warped by heat and damp over many years. I have pots and pans, all non-stick. I have a silicon whisk, which I enjoy using with non-stick pans, and a stainless steel whisk, which if I ever buy a non-non-stick pan I will use with similar enthusiasm. And perhaps the most unpretentious of the tools in my kitchen arsenal is the cheese grater.
My cheese grater, like most cheese graters with whom I have been acquainted, has four faces, each dedicated to a different version of the same purpose. Most used in my house is the standard face, well-suited for the kind of medium grate you expect of cheeses like cheddar or mozzarella. If you’re making a cheese sauce, for example, or a fajita, the standard face will serve you well. It’s your everyman.
Next in line comes the fine grate, a godsend when one needs a triangular cheese like parmesan or pecorino or gran padano to sprinkle atop a pasta. The fine grate feels fancier, though perhaps that is solely because the cheeses on which it is used are more expensive. I feel quite comfortable telling you this, because we are such good friends; if ever I was served parmesan that had been submitted to the standard grate, I would be forced to indulge in the sort of violence only seen otherwise in the last ten minutes of a Tarantino film.
And then we get to the large grate. In many ways, this is gross. Like heterosexuality, I have only ever tried it as an experiment, and found that it was decidedly not my vibe. But I assume someone out there wants their cheese rough-chopped and broken, and that is their prerogative. So long as they don’t rub it in my face, these large-graters are more than welcome to do their thing. Cheese is cheese is cheese.
But there is a fourth side to the grater. Where the other sides have upward-facing orifices, sharp enough to tear cheese from block and form a beautiful sort of orange snow, this ugly duckling consists solely of outward-punched protrusions, sharp and imposing and, as best as I can tell, utterly unsuited for cheese of any sort. The only thing it seems to be any good for is tearing the shit out of my sponges. The green scour of many a sponge has got caught on these daggers, amidst the chaotic vigour of my scrub, and is then torn to pieces.
What is its intended purpose? Why, when all the needed shades of grate are already catered for on a normal grater, has every manufacturer on the planet conspired to add this absolutely useless functionality to their stock? It’s unthinkable, unknowable. Sinister. Disgusting. I will not Google it. I will not give it the time of day, nor (after I am finished writing this) will I give it any thought. On every grater I buy, from now till death, I will find this utterly useless feature and treat it like an outcast, like an unwelcome houseguest, like a nuisance and an interloper. I urge you to do the same.
PS. I actually did Google it, and it turns out it’s used for fine powders or pastes. Which actually sounds quite useful. Sorry.
Matthew Weldon's Dangerous Thoughts 