M...is for MORE MEAT!

A note to my readers: The below contains some icky pictures and gross descriptions. If you are lame and weaksauce (or my pregnant sister) maybe you shouldn't read it, maybe just skim the pictures to get the drift. But if you are awesome, and tough and want to see what culinary school is REALLY like, check it out. But don't say I didn't warn you.

Well, the dreaded day arrived when I had to begin my Meat Fabrication. It is certainly the most feared class on campus and definitely the grossest. The chef is how do you say.....strict (I'm being polite). But, I survived. I didn't blog because I just couldn't bear it. Not in the middle of the chaos. Somehow that class just seemed so much more intense. I would come home everyday and have to take a 2 hour nap just to function! And a shower, because I smelled. Imagine me, Miss Neiman Marcus, coming home covered in blood and guts. Jose wouldn't even let me put my towels and uniforms in the same room, let alone load, as his dirty clothes. That bad. Apparently worse than stinky mens gym clothes. Anywho...

Most days consisted of either actual meat fabrication (or butchering of meat), making stocks and sauces, or making "family meal" (aka fancy school lunch). Everything in this class was really ramped up. In basics for example we would make a gallon of stock at a time with 8 lbs of bones. In meat fab, we made 10 gallons of stock at a time, with 80 pounds of bones! That's a lot of dead chickens and baby cows, respectively. The meat we fabricated is served in the restaurant at school. Some days it was red meat (beef tenderloin, NY strips, filet mignon, etc), others it was fish (halibut, monkfish, snapper, etc.) or sometimes shellfish like lobster. And we usually did a few chickens a day in preparation for our chicken fab test.

For the chicken fab test, we had to take a whole chicken and cut it down into it's parts and "french" them in 5 minutes to get an A. The very first time I did it took about 30 minutes. Frenching the leg takes some practice. Basically, imagine taking your leg (or a chickens) and cutting it off at the hip socket, then scraping all of the meat off towards your ankle in one piece so it is entirely inside-out and boneless by the time you finish. Getting around the "knee" is a killer. Did you even know that chickens have kneecaps? They do. Then you break the bones apart at the knee, cut all the cartilage out, and flip it back right-side out and stuff the bottom leg bone back in. This is a typical french preparation and often the legs are stuffed with filling, wrapped in caul fat (pig stomach lining) and cooked. Anyway, the pressure was on and I practiced really hard and was able to do it in 4:52. I was pretty proud until my girlfriend at school did it an entire minute faster and kicked my butt. But I'm still proud anyway.

One of the more fun things I got to do was to fabricate an entire hind quarter of a veal (baby cow, 3 months at slaughter) all by myself! It is the image on the right in the above diagram. Be thankful I gave you one of those instead of a picture. It was enormous, almost 75 pounds and cost the school over $700. I know it sounds crazy that I thought it was fun, but it was sort of relaxing. You cut all of the fat off and then find the natural separation between the muscle groups and cut. Pretty amazing. It really was neat to see how their bodies are made up, and really ours. Because they have almost identical anatomy in this part of the body. Chef said maybe I should have been a surgeon. Ha! Anyway, these are what I was left with when I was done....

I wrapped them up because they were quite bloody. Did you know that even after a cow is dead it has arteries and veins that still have blood in them? When you cut them, they bleed like they were alive. It's super weird. Pretty big bones though, huh? Especially for a three month old! (That is the Femur on the right and the Hip Socket on the left, fyi.)

But by FAR the grossest thing I had to do was to fab a monkfish....ICK (see photo above - and that is not a joke, it is what it looks like). Basically it is the worlds ugliest fish. It also smells worse than anything I have ever smelled. And it has a layer of blubber you have rip off before you can get to the meat, which coincidentally tastes just like lobster! A lot of nastiness to get to some good flavor. But I was so grossed out, I couldn't even eat it. In fact, cutting up fish is so gross to me that I haven't had a single piece of fish since I started school. I don't know how long it will be until I can eat it again. Because things like how I know that Halibut has both of its eyes on the same side of its head like here...

Umm - creepy. (I spared you another photo - you're welcome!)

I would like to now officially state that anyone who ever thought I was a sissy, or whiny girl, or baby, or not tough, or "weaksauce" was officially, for the record, WRONG. I survived meat fab, you cannot gross me out now. And I even got an A...which makes me really hardcore.

S....is for Survival!

Well, you may think my absence since the dreaded fish post meant I didn't make it. Perhaps you thought the blood, guts, offal, and bones were just too much for me. Well you were wrong. I did it. Actually twice. Once a flat fish (yellowtail flounder) and then a round fish (hybrid striped sea bass). Not to mention the famed lobster.
I have to say, it probably is one of the grossest things I have ever done. Period. The smell alone. A flounder is a flat fish and actually has both of it's eyes on the same side of it's head...very creepy. I actually felt like it was watching me. Gross.
The roundfish I cut up with surprising efficiency and accuracy. Luckily this one came eviscerated (already gutted). Who knew? 2nd try and I did really well. But don't worry there is a not a career throwing fish at Pike Place anywhere in my future!! There will be a 4 week break before I have to touch a fish again......Do we think that is sufficient time for me to recover???
Oh and the lobster as always was excellent. We cooked them three ways and did a blind taste test of which was best: grilled, steamed, or boiled. Mine one the test (it was steamed over a court bouillon) so I felt proud. We also threw back some raw oysters on the half shell and clams. Shucking is sure fun!
Well I hope I didn't gross you out too much. My pregnant sister said reading the last one almost made her throw up so she had to stop reading. Just think, even grosser than reading about it is doing it. YUCK!

F...is for Fear & Fish

Today is the day. The day I have been dreading has officially arrived. I thought I had at least another 2 months, but it snuck right up on me. In fact it is one of the things I knew would come, and really made me think about NOT going to cooking school. Today is the day I have to butcher a fish...
See I've always been disgusted by raw/alive fish. I don't even like them in the aquarium all that well. I have to be dragged into the ocean and I absolutely detest their smell. In fact I won't even make tuna fish sandwiches because I get so grossed out - ask my husband. The odd part is that I do like eat some fish. A little salmon or john dorry....yum. I just don't want to be the person who has to cut it's head off and then rip its guts out. But today I have to be that person.
Chef told me I'll need to carry the fish like a baby, as to not injure it. It made me want to injure him. Seriously, a stinky dead fish and he wants me to carry it like a baby? Maybe like I'd carry a baby animal with rabies. Ew.
Oh yeah and tomorrow I've got to stick a knife in a LIVE lobster's head.
I'll let you know how it goes.