Knife drills

Introduction to shellfish & shellfish fabrication.

Nothing too new for me here besides the fabrication of squid into calamari.  We were called to the center work station to find two lobsters crawling around in hotel trays.  I think everyone knew what was happening next unfortunately.  We learned how to identify a male and female lobster, the female is more desirable because of the roe.  The proper way to “prepare” a lobster for cooking is cutting its head in half severing the brain.  We were told that this is the most humane way, the lobster apparently does not feel a thing.  I’m pretty sure I had the first lobster kill in class. I had the lobster split, tail and claws off ready to go.  Killing a living creature isn’t the most pleasurable thing to do. I didn’t get any satisfaction or joy by killing that little crustacean. If you do eat animals you should be able to handle knowing how your food made it to your plate.  I’m not sure what percentage of the class has worked with lobster before, it was obvious that this was an unpleasant experience for some.  It also doesn’t help that after the lobster is killed it squirms around for some time due to involuntary muscle spasms.

All this lobsTAH talk reminds me of a great book I read a few years ago, “The Secret Life of Lobsters.”

We moved on to oysters.  I saw a bottle of Tabasco on the counter and got excited in anticipation of an oyster tasting.  Our chef spoke of a few different regional varieties, I was disappointed that the Wellfleet wasn’t mentioned.  Don’t quote me but I think we were working with some monster farm raised Bluepoints from Long Island.  Lets get to the point, “where are the shucking knives already!” No problems with oyster shucking 101, I slurped down my 4 and a few others that people didn’t want.  The Bluepoints were missing that sweet brininess that Wellfleets have.  I’m not a huge fan of oysters the size of silver dollar pancakes, I may also be completely biased and obsessed with Wellfleet and Cape Cod.

It was my first time cleaning squid for calamari sized rings, it was actually kind of fun.  The inner skeletal structure looks like man made plastic.

So all this shellfish went into a delicious soup with stock we made at the beginning of the class with a basic mirepoix and a quart of shrimp shells.

Day 10:

Knife drills

Chicken and duck fabrication.  Breaking down birds, frenching the bones (exposing the bone for presentation purposes), and trussing.  These birds were slippery, the duck was super fatty and kind of hard to work with.

Day 11:

Knife drills

Chicken stock

Beef fabrication.  Learning to fabricate PRIMAL cuts of beef.  Taking a side or leg of cattle and breaking it down into edible portions of steaks, ribs, or tenderloins etc. A lot of trimming needed to be done, lots of fat, lots of silver skin removal.  Gloves needed to be worn, knives were getting slippery with all the fat.  Trim, trim, trim.

Day 12:

Knife drills

Veal fabrication.  Same procedures, techniques for veal as beef.

Day 13: I actually missed day 13, more details on that day to come…

Day 14:

Knife drills

Lamb Fabrication.  At this point I’m pretty sick of butchering and looking at legs and primal cuts of meat.  I don’t eat much meat to begin with and now I’m just getting tired of all this silver skin removal.

“Aren’t there robots that can do this?”

I did break down a hotel rack of lamb into double chops, it came of pretty darn good.

I’m glad butchering ended on a high note because I’m exhausted with it for now.

]]> http://www.thesaltedcod.com/week-3-4/feed/ 0 http://www.thesaltedcod.com/chippers-and-blue/ http://www.thesaltedcod.com/chippers-and-blue/#comments Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:59:00 +0000 Trevor http://thesaltedcod.wordpress.com/2008/09/13/chippers-and-blue/ A slightly higher brow approach to Wellfleet’s bastard fish.

I can still remember getting pushed out of bed by my dad before the sun was even up. We would make it from Dennis to Wellfleet before the sun eventually pushed through on those grey Cape Cod mornings. My grandfather had an old center console boat at the town landing in Wellfleet. He fished for blues & stripers for a while.

me & a striper: circa 1990-something off Cape Cod

I was pretty young when they went out, but it still is of my best memories. I can remember leaving the harbor and trucking out to sea at full speed for what seemed like forever. Eventually there was no land in sight, the water was deep and choppy. This was the point of no return, it’s time to show your sea legs or you’ll be turning green and praying for shore. Luckily I stood strong, as I think most Adams’ were born with sea legs.

The outboard finally slowed down. The fish finder, the active birds, “boiling water” and the strange faint smell of watermelon all pointed to a feeding frenzy. We dropped our lines and started reeling them in, they kept coming. We had all sorts of lines, rod and rigs out. I know we had some reels set up with lead line and jigs, you needed a glove to fish this one. I can’t recall how many we caught on this particular trip but it seemed like a hell of a lot. Those bastard bluefish liked to fight too, they didn’t come in easily. The blues weren’t afraid to take one last look at you in the eye before trying to bite some of your flesh off while you’re lazily removing a hook.

On the way back in to Wellfleet we went around the tip of Provincetown, I got to do some diving and swimming near some sand bars. Back to business at the pier as it was time to sell the days catch before stopping at the Beachcomber. They must have known a guy because I was way too young to be in there…Anyway I guess you can say I have a soft spot for the bastard so here it is.

Chippers and Blue: Old Blighty style fried bluefish, mixed rosemary oven chippers and a fresh corn & tomato salad.

Mixed rosemary oven chippers

• Sweet potatoes & baby new’s tossed in olive oil, chopped fresh rosemary, sea salt and pepper roasted at 450 for a half hour. These are our new favorite chips or “chippers.”

Fresh corn & tomato salad

• 3 ears of corn, kernals sliced.
• 3 roma tomatoes diced.
• Quarter of an onion diced
• Chopped basil
• Toss with sea salt, pepper and olive oil and bring up to heat on the stovetop. You don’t really want to cook this, I just wanted it warm with a nice “raw” bite.

Old Blighty style fried bluefish

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup seltzer water (unshaken next time please…)
• 1 egg
• sea salt and pepper
• bluefish (or fish of choice)

Stir the batter up, get rid of those lumps. (It’s probably not too late to turn this batter into pancakes.) The seltzer is suppose to give the crust a nice airy lift and a good bite which it did. Cut your FRESH bluefish into serving size pieces and dip into your batter before frying in medium high oil. The fish took around 8 minutes per side. When I’m frying battered fish I always cook by color. You’re looking for a nice dark golden brown.

Plate & enjoy.

Have you seen the video yet?…

This is the first of hopefully many more video’s to come for The Salted Cod. We’re still working on a few things, but keep a look out for more.

You can also subscribe to our video feed on BLIP!

A big thanks to Oats for making our video dreams come true.

“Chippers and blue, chippers and blue!” God I couldn’t stop saying that for a few days.

Go with a friend and for $5 a piece you get to taste all 10 wines Cape Cod’s only vineyard has to offer. Sara Hutchings the local vineyard guru was more than happy to pour us a few before the lunch hour. Sara was extremely knowledgeable and super friendly explaining everything from the vineyards landscape to the buttery effect oak barrels bring to wine. I have to admit this was my first time doing a tasting and it was damn fun. We got to hang out in the warm Cape Cod sun analyzing each variety the vineyard offers. Sara was good at keeping me on my toes by helping me pinpoint flavors and attributes of each wine.