Mise en Place: Clean dry board! Clean dry fish!

Whoa...hey this blog is still alive! Yea...it's been busy around here. So I'm going to try and catch up a little bit. The next several entries will be photo heavy.

So after meat fabrication and ID, I started the 7 day class in seafood fabrication and Identification. We learned how to filet the fish, skin them, and also breaking various mollusks and shellfish.

First of all, the chef...Chef C.. This man was absitively, yes this warrants made up words, insane. Loud random exclamations, a stare that could make Freddy Krueger piss himself, and just eccentric as hell. The man had just about every Spongebob themed novelty item you could imagine. He even had a Spongebob chef toque! I didn't even know they made those! I think he also confused me for another Asian guy in my class for the first 3 days of class.

Chef C. showing us Hake

However, with that said, Chef C. was awesome. He really knew a LOT about fish and tried to teach us as much as he could within the small amount of time we had. He also had a ton of experience to pass on to us about life in general. He would frequently shout out things like "BASS SNAPPER GROUPER! BASS SNAPPER GROUPER!" when explaining the different families of fish. "LITTLE NECK, TOP NECK, CHERRYSTONE, CHOWDER!" in reference to the size of clams. And of course..."CLEAN DRY BOARD! CLEAN DRY FISH!"

Other things we did in this class was tastings. We tasted all the fish in one form or another. We also tasted the shellfish and mollusks as well. On the last day, we also tasted some caviar. Let me just say, I don't care how great caviar is normally...10 o' clock in the morning? Not so great.

In any case, to keep it short, this class was awesome. I got to filet mahi mahi, which by the way is one ugly fish but has the most amazing colors. I cut up yellow tile fish, black sea bass, flounders, cod, king salmon, and even got to fabricate some live soft shell crab. The only down side to this class was the laundry. Basically had to do a batch of laundry every night because anything and everything you take into that kitchen will smell like fish. The air you breathe for several hours after class smells like fish. Your tools, water bottles, notebooks, everything. EVERYTHING!!!