Day 9:

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.