Learning the Cuts...Part 2

Part DEUCE!

We went over veal, which are very young calves that could range from just a few days old to around 35 weeks old. Know anyone that's against eating veal? Next time you can tell them that the average broiler chicken is taken to slaughter at about 6 weeks. Lawyered.

Veal....I think the top round, bottom round and knuckle?

Look we fabricated a bat!

First one to guess what this is gets a prize!

Here's an untrimmed Tenderloin PSMO.

Costco sells these things for about $50 a pop. We can get roughly 8 to 9 4-oz portions that would sell for at least $20 bucks in the restaurant. Oddly enough, this is the cut that makes the least amount of money in the restaurant. In any case, steak night anyone?

My buddy Sabatino on the left posing, thanks for the photos!
Chef E. on the right wondering what the hell Sab is doing.
And oh yes....that's the carcass of a headless, skinless
lamb hanging out on the demo table.

Chef E: (Chuckles) "Mary had a little lamb...I slit the b----'s throat."
Yep...butcher's have a unique sense of humor.

Reaching in to pull out some unusable trim.

Look we found a jelly bean!

Just kidding...it was an adrenal gland.

Yes...that is a hacksaw.
How else are we supposed to cut through  the spine?
 >=]

Preparing the lamb rack for Frenching.

Frenched Rack of Lamb. Fancypants!

Frenched Lamb...knuckle?

On day 4 of 7, Chef E. pulled me aside and told me he wanted to talk to me after class. I was thinking oh crap, I must've been doing something wrong or maybe I was going too slow or something. I was rather anxious for the rest of the day. On top of that, day 4 was pork day and it also happened to be our practical skill assessment day on meat fabrication so I was already nervous. Lucky I did pretty well and got high marks for the day. w00t! Still, the talk after class was weighing heavily on my mind. After our little break, cleaned up the room, and got ready to head out for the day, I stayed behind to see what the deal was. Chef E. motioned me over to his desk/podium and said, "I rarely do this with pre-extern students but there's an event in a few weeks, catering for 250 people. If you want to, I'd like you to come work it with me. I don't know what it is you got, but you got it. You're shining in this class and I want to see what you can do." HOLY FRICK ON A STICK! I was blown away. I immediately said yes and left class with a big ol' smile on my face. It was awesome. 

So this happened a little over a month ago and I've been working with Chef E. and the team every weekend and a few times during the week for prep. We've worked car shows, weddings, birthdays, graduation parties, etc, serving Texas style BBQ, in-house made hot dogs (Jalepeno Cheddar Hot dogs....freaking religious experience), burgers, and sausages. The food is simple and delicious. The other recruited students that have been working with ETC (Elia's Texas Connection) are really chill. All in all, its a pretty sweet gig. I did however get a nice new burn scar on my arm from the smoking rig though but that's another story.