A Real Rock Star?

Demo today: Striped bass (a small round fish, as opposed to a large round fish, like salmon); a whole New York strip ("This is the ugliest piece of meat I've ever seen," was Chef's reaction to it, "but I'll cut it for you anyway"); and tunnel boning on a chicken. Basically, this means removing the skin and meat off the chicken, starting at the tail end, trimming with the boning knife, bit by bit, around and around, until you've pretty much taken off the chicken's clothes, as it were, leaving a naked skeleton. Then you have a neat package of chicken skin and meat that you can stuff with... whatever. "You should learn how to do this so that you can assure your parents that their money is being well spent."

No time for tunnel boning today. Since it's Friday, the cases and cases of product in the walk-in refrigerator needs to be fabricated and repackaged, so production was heavy. I was on Sausage again. First project was pork shoulder, deboned; half is tied into a nice pork roast (another competency completed), and the rest gets trimmed and ground up — between three of us, we ended up with three roasts and 12 pounds of ground meat. Then we put the brined sausages into the smoker — just a matter of laying the sausages on racks, filling the chip bin with soaked wood chips, and pushing a button. I cut six chickens into boneless breasts and legs/thighs, then spent lots of time packaging meat and fish. (It's a really, really great machine!)

Much of what we prepared was headed to "The Crypt," the butchery walk-in freezer. It's a room about eight feet square, with metal racks on three sides, and it's clear that somebody once intended it to be orderly. There are some taped labels on some shelves, but mostly, it's packed full of big packages of what looks like mystery meat, along with boxes (3 cases of rabbit, for example) and sheet pans wrapped in plastic. We weren't able to find a "pork" shelf so defaulted to "veal," and we clearly weren't the first visitors to stray from the rules. Midway through the morning, after several trips into The Crypt, I mentioned it to the Chef: "Someone needs to organize the freezer." He smiled at me, his eyes twinkling, and said, "Someone will." I hope I didn't just make it my job.

We often have visitors to our classrooms, usually placement counselors giving prospective students the school tour. Aaron and I had a good sideways look at today's guest, who chatted for a while with the Chef while we attacked the business at hand. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with carefully bed-tousled hair, wearing a long blue cotton coat with buttons up the front — like a florist (or a butcher?). A camel-colored scarf was carelessly, carefully draped around his neck. I couldn't see his shoes. "What do you think?" I asked Aaron. "I think he's looking to spend his music fortune on culinary school, then he'll be opening a restaurant." Aaron burst into laughter. "I can totally see it!" Rock on, dude.

When I emptied my locker, Derrick was alongside, changing into his sneakers. He always has fancy ones, always looking new. Today's were especially sweet. "Do you have a lot of shoes?" I asked. "Well, I guess you could say I'm a collector," he said, a bit sheepish. "I know all about that," I said. "My son got two pair of shoes for Christmas, the ones he asked for." Adam has a sole mate.

Sorry. It's Friday.