2010 August: Meat and FIsh Butchery and ID ~ C Block at the CIA.

C Block is the first class where students get to get out those knives and cut stuff.  It is divided into two 7 day classes. 

Meat Id and Butchery: Chef Elia, is a great teacher for this class he is an old school butcher by trade and has his own butcher shop.  His lessons are not only concise and practical but his skill with a knife is that of a craftsman.  The class went by fast.  Seven days of lecture and them cutting of meat.  We processed, almost a whole side of beef, a whole veal carcass, a pig carcass, a lamb carcass, chickens and more.  I made sure to take lots of phots, videos and notes for this class as there was so much information in such a short time I wanted to remember it.

 I created my first power point study guide. Although I have since made one for each class.   On sausage day we all ground and stuffed sausages.  WE tasted several types and then the chef made his secret recipe.  It was super.  I ate the crusty scraping out of the cast iron skillet that had been left behind. It is hard to explain how delicious that was. MMMMMMM!!!

Seafood and Fish ID and Butchery:  The fish room is located in the basement section of Roth Hall.  It has that smelly fish odor that is typical of a New England dock.  The Chef recommended that we shower each day after leaving class before associating with others due to the fact that the smell attaches itself to you.  He was right.  That fact aside, this class was another in a line of great classes. 

The fish we butchered were broken into catagories and laid out before us whole.  We were able to examine each class and species of fish before filleting them. We tasted them all doing comparisons of the various salmon family, the bass family, the cod family, the flatfish family and so on.  We tried oysters from the East, West and South, We had a fish egg tasting from decent caviar, tobikko, salmon eggs and so on to see the textural and taste variations.  Then we cut fish.  We scaled fish, we weighed fish and iced fish.   Round Fish, flat fish, skinny fish and fat fish.  The one thing I learned to appreciate in this class was that the CIA gets FRESH fish and that I would make every opportunity to eat more fish while I was here.  Skate by the way is excellent.  It became one of my favorites.