I'll Be Doing the Lemon Thing

You know, the lemon thing that Susan Sarandon does in Atlantic City? I'm afraid even my steering wheel will smell like fish. Today, without delay, we jumped into production and though I was glad not to be on the Poultry Team (they had to cut up 100 chickens. Literally, 100 chickens), I had to fabricate the most difficult fish ever. Twice.

We started on rock fish: I filleted and skinned two. Then I scaled and filleted a salmon — we were providing it with skin on. (To scale, put the fish inside a large food-safe plastic bag, preferably clear, and scrape the hell out of it with a curry comb. (This is an off-label use for this horse-grooming tool.)) Then, a relatively easy Atlantic char, a small salmon cousin. Then on to the barramundi. Mine were each about 25 pounds, and about 30 inches long. These round fish have amazing scales — about an inch long and translucent, they look like Howard Hughes' fingernails. First you cut around a stiff jaw bone, then slit up one side, using so much pressure to get through and past the scales that you're sure a knife mishap is immiment. The inside bones are stiff and pokey, and all in all I felt like I was really butchering, in the worst sense of the word ("to botch, to bungle").

We had a mid-morning break, fortunately: duck sausages made yesterday, with homemade biscuits from Dava and some gravy provided by Chef Allen ("Aunt Bootsie's Buttermilk Gravy for Chicken Fried Steak.")

Before we could proceed with pork during the lecture part of our program, we backtracked to beef again, so Chef could elaborate on Kobe beef (only from Japan) and "Kobe style" beef (grown just about anywhere, from the Wagyu breed). I swear, there are people in our class who ask questions just to keep the Chef talking, and to prevent any forward motion. Do you remember them from high school? In the student dining mezzanine, before class, Tashana and Andy and I reviewed the lecture syllabus, all of which will apparently be on Friday's final. We have yet to cover Lamb, Charcuterie, Offal, Veal, and Seafood, and we have only two days of class before the test, with a visitor (a wholesale meat purveyor) coming in on Thursday. While we're getting plenty of "knife time," as the Chef calls it, I'm looking for more academic rigor.

And for the smell of fish to dissipate.