Friday, May 15, 2009

you dont know nothin, you aint been nowhere, and you aint done nothin, how can you have a big ego already?

Our Chef was in today, so we had the pleasure of having Chef Clark as our fish instructor for the first day, and it was entertaining to say the least. My role as group leader was well defined today, everyone looking to me for leadership and coming to me when their filets turned out nice, I felt like a proud mom. (I know, lame) It was a long day but we learned how to filet multiple fish, I did several flat fish and some round fish as well. Chef Clark is hilarious to listen to, here are some colorful quotes by him: 

"there is nothing new in cooking. you dont create new things. those people who say 'i created'--well  you didn't create shit"

"all of you have already decided shit about things you dont know nothin about"

"you came here to listen to what i think, i dont give a shit what you thought you did, its about what i think"

"they're trying to make me wear these black pants-- makes me look like one of those assholes-- excuse me, i mean, one of those deans..."

"i love my motorcycle, children, and wife... and probably in that order"

"im bilingual, i speak a little english, and a whole lot of country"

"you are always gonna ask dumb shit- i can speak for the men, you will continue to ask dumb shit all day. like in the morning i wake up next to my wife who's sleeping, and i say 'hi honey, how are you' and she yells 'shut up im sleeping!'... thats saying dumb shit"

"i learned a new word from the class before you- tramp stamp. i was laughing forever"


As you can see, Chef Clark is quite the character, and that made for quite an eventful day both in fabrication and lecture. Its been a long week so I won't write much and instead let you look at some pictures.


This is one of the bins in the cooler, these are all the tilefish (they're really pretty):
I tried to take a close up of the fins because theyre gorgeous, but it's dangerous because they have toxins in their dorsal fins that will make your finger balloon up if you cut yourself:

And this is a cod fish, really ugly:
The TA did a demo of a Dover Sole Colbert, which is a classical presentation of Dover Sole, quite an expensive dish. After the demo, I cut off those two filets and two more from the other side:


I'm sure many of you like eating Halibut. Well know you know what it looks like. It's a huge flat fish (whose bones are great for stock) and though it barely fit on my cutting board, it fileted rather easily off the rib bones.

There's the right side before I filleted it: (One side of the fish has color, called the pigmented side, and the side thats flat against the ocean floor is stark white, like this in this photo.)

And here is the filet:


Here are some other pictures of fish we saw today.

This is the pigmented side of the Halibut:


This is a skate filet, it looks like thin fingers:

This flat fish is called Turbot, both of its eyes are on the left side, because if you pick it up and face it swimming away from  you, the pigmented side is on the left, hence where the eyes are:
The fish with outstretched fins is a Robin fish and the ugly one behind it is Monkfish or "poor man's lobster"

I know I always say I hate weekends because it means no CIA, but thank God for friday today. It has been quite an exhausting week. I learned a ton and was very busy, I need to store up some sleep for next week... Have a great weekend everyone!

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