"Have you cut yourself with it yet?" my stepmother asked on the phone the other day. For Christmas she gave everyone santoku knives with white blades and pink handles (part of the sales proceeds goes to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation). It's one of those ceramic deals from Japan that I'd vaguely heard about but had never taken seriously. The pink plastic handle and plastic-looking blade didn't beg me to reconsider.

Then I used it to slice the skin off an orange for a salad I was making (Suzanne Goin's delicious blood orange, date and Parmesan salad with almond oil from her book, "Sunday Suppers at Lucques: Seasonal Recipes from Market to Table"). After that, I sliced the naked orange into thin rounds. The knife didn't mush up the orange, and juice didn’t go squirting all over the place. The rounds were clean and beautiful. Ever since, I've been looking for things to slice with that knife -- lemons, radishes, apples, peppers. We had chopped salad for dinner last night.

Kyocera, the Japanese company and market leader that makes the knife, and my stepmother, who's had her knife for some time, say the blade might start show signs of dulling in about a year. At that time, I can send it to the company for free sharpening. But they both swear it won't break, snap apart or chip to destruction. It's ceramic, yes, but it's not a plate.

The blade is made of a ceramic called zirconium oxide, or zirconia, a substance found in abundance in the Australian mountains, which, when applied with heat and pressure, becomes very hard and dense. Kyocera, which has been manufacturing medical and semiconductor parts with it for more than 50 years, added cutlery to its offerings 25 years ago. The company's kitchen tools line now includes all shapes and sizes of knives, vegetable peelers, mandolines, graters and grinders.

Ceramic knives: pros and cons

Sur la Table, the kitchenware chain, started carrying the brand, which its buyers consider the best, in 2002, and has noticed gradually increasing sales. While some top German and Japanese knives sell in the $300 and $400 range, ceramic knives mostly hover under the $100 mark. (A premium line of Kyocera knives that get a second firing, making them denser and longer wearing, sells for up to nearly $300.) And you can't get away from steel completely: None of the ceramic knives are recommended for carving or chopping through bones, which may chip the blade, and they shouldn't be used for slicing through frozen foods or hard cheeses because there's no "give" in the hard blade, which could crack if twisted.

The ceramic blades are chemically inert (they won't turn your apple slices brown the way steel does), lightweight and super sharp. They can't be sharpened at home because the ceramic blades are harder than steel rods or the materials in other home knife sharpeners. "You need to use something harder than they are," says Rich Weber, the resharpening manager at Kyocera. "We use a diamond stone." If you try to sharpen them at home, he says, they will dull. While having to have a knife sharpened only once in a long while is a selling point for many, it's a major drawback for others.

"A knife is an intimate purchase," says Eve Felder, an associate dean at the Culinary Institute of America, who won't be purchasing a ceramic knife in the near future. "I'll stick with steel knives," she says. "There's an intimacy in sharpening your knife, that stone against the knife, that you don't get with ceramic knives." Most teachers and students at the CIA use steel knives and sharpen them themselves. "I'm a traditionalist," Felder says. But, she adds, "If I could sharpen it myself, I'd be open to it."

The knives haven't pushed traditional knives out of restaurant kitchens, either. Josiah Citrin, chef-owner of the celebrated Melisse restaurant in Santa Monica, Calif., admits he has no interest in them. "I like what I use, Japanese carbon or stainless knives." They were an expensive investment, he says, and he doesn't see himself buying any new knives for a while. Plus, he adds, "I like sharpening my knives. It's one of those things."

I don't like sharpening my knives, and neither does my husband. It's just one of those things. We've ordered up some new ceramic additions -- a mandoline, a paring knife and a vegetable cleaver. They may not be what the pros use, but they'll suit us just fine.

(Oh, and yes, I've already nicked myself with my Christmas present. Thanks, Vicki.)

Photos: Kyocera ceramic knife, top, by Robin Rauzi. Santoku ceramic knife cutting orange by Christy Hobart.

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