Kitchen injuries

Cuts, electrocution and the mild inconvenience of a broken leg

I have wanted to introduce you to the world of kitchen injuries for a while now. This essay might not be those those of you who get queasy.

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Of course, we didn’t have any plasters.

I remember wrapping my hand in a tea towel as I was sent out to the local shop to see if indeed they might have some. I was a commis and this was my first proper wound. The shop didn't have any plasters either, so with what was to become a regular thing, I wrapped my oozing finger in blue paper and taped it up with sellotape. I’d been expecting my first serious knife cut for a while at that point early in my career. Telling myself I would always be careful and would most likely be able to avoid a nasty injury I finally ran my finger down the length of a wet forty-centimetre slicing knife whilst drying it, believing the cloth was against the blade, though it was indeed my finger sliding down the blade.

Between your knuckles, the skin is constantly moving It is not a place that heals easily. If for instance, you manage to splash it with searing hot lamb fat one day, not able to take care of it as any normal person might, letting it get slightly infected, knocking the scab off the top of it then for good measure splashing it again in foaming foie gras fat and butter as you baste a chunk of goose liver in a pan, that deep ache that throbs somewhere inside your hand, you know it will likely turn infected again and you’ll be in pain for a week, watching out for the telltale trace of a red line that begins to thread its way down the vein signalling that a course of antibiotics might be best.

Shucking oysters with a screwdriver once went wrong (yes I know what you’re going to say, but we’d lost the oyster knife), I managed to slip the point into the base of my little finger, the tip embedding itself under the thick silver ring that I have worn on my pinkie finger since before the turn of the millennium. I remember the pain firstly, then the realisation I should quickly get the ring off, or an ER medic might have to remove it for me, and now it was very likely that it would turn septic as I had just managed to puncture myself with raw oyster juice and seawater. Looking at the strange subcutaneous fat, thick and yellow as it sort of flopped out of the tear in my finger I’ll admit I felt queasy.

It was deep that one.

Or the time that Henry, a colleague with scant regard for pleasantries, passed me a saucepan of garnish that I’d asked for, the bare metal handle of the pan having rested over a flame for what was likely to have been the last few minutes.