This is a question we took quite a few years to answer.
For many years we had made knives based on Japanese Culture. We had used Japanese steel to start with, we designed knives following the wonderful Japanese style and we used steel finishes like Damascus and hammered to honour all the history of what we had learnt (from Japan). Japanese Knives are wonderful. They are the best in the world. That said, after making numerous Japanese knives, we still had an itch.
I think the reason we had an itch is that we are different.
In Australia we prepare different types of food. We cut and slice different ingredients. Just like the Japanese, here in Australia we have our own way.
One of the first things we had noticed is that Japanese knives are styled mainly to fish, vegetables and rice.
In Australia we typically are cutting different things. In Japan they use their BBQ (Yakiniku) which is about 1/4 the size of we have in our back yards. They target fish or much smaller pieces of beef or pork.
We tend to use larger pieces of beef or lamb. We tend to chop bigger things. When are chopping we also chop and slice differently. Bigger heavier ingredients leads to one thing - larger and heftier knives.
Our Australian knives is a collection of knives made to suit Australian life and cuisine. Whether it's an Australian BBQ on Sunday afternoon, Australian cooking in our home kitchen (again larger than kitchen found in Tokyo) or knives used at our dinner table we tried to make knives that suit the way we live.
In building our Australian knife collections we started with two types, two sets of Australian knives. Despite our love of Australian BBQ's we commenced with the place where we are most commonly cooking. The kitchen.
Australian Kitchen Knife Collection
Our Australian kitchen knife collection was based on the cuisine we create. Like any kitchen in the world these days we started with tools used on common ingredients like onions, tomatoes, chicken and bread (Japanese eat more rice than bread). We begun with a large chefs knife (the big red knife) a smaller petty knife (the Joey) and a bread knife (the croc). We then build a large and powerful vegetable cutter (the wombat) and more intricate chopper and slicer (the koala) and lastly an all purpose blade with a K-Tip edge (the Dingo). If you only want 6 knives these knives will do everything an Australian kitchen needs.
Australian BBQ Knife Collection
Australian knife collections are not Australian without knives that conquer the BBQ. Weekend focused many Australian's are blessed with weather good enough to spend much of their time cooking outside - on the BBQ.
In making this collection we begun with knives that had been requested for a long time - the filleting knife (the Barramundi), the Brolga Knife (a butcher cimeter) and the boning knife (the Tassie devil). We then added the vicious all purpose Great white knife (all purpose and similar to a Deba knife), the Platypus (the perfect BBQ vegetable chopper for corn, capsicum etc) and lastly the kookaburra for intricate BBQ duties.
We will never stop tweaking and improving but we are proud to have made (and are currently using) a collection of blades that perfect matches the Australian way of life - the Australian knife collection.
