Shellfish/Shellfish Stock (Woody Allen Redux)

I thought now that I got through my revulsion for eggs, nothing could stop me from doing the sketchiest things with food. I was wrong.

The morning started out pleasantly enough, with a lecture about the types of shellfish we eat: crustaceans like shrimp and lobster with their exoskeletons, bivalves like clams and oysters, the univalve like sea urchin.

The knives came out and we practiced dicing the same vegetable mix as on Friday to add to our soup -- in fact, other than the proteins, this would be the same soup. Then we worked our way into the seafood. Large 16-20 count fresh shrimp were distributed, and easily fabricated. I've been cleaning and deshelling shrimp at home for a year now. I always left the little end of the tail on, which would have to be eaten around, picked up with the hands and set aside. Why? I assumed it was just the correct way to do it, like if the tail didn't stay on, the shrimp wouldn't cook right. According to Chef M, it's purely presentation and quite inconvenient for eating. Never shall I leave the tail on my shrimp again.

A live lobster was given to each student. Chef M demonstrated how to dispatch and fabricate the crustacean. First, hold the body and the tail with firm hands and twist until the tail pops off. Quickly tear off the two big claws. Reach into the body cavity and clear out the 'guacamole,' and if you find an egg sac, hold that aside.

I took a lobster, and its many arms and 2 big claws (restrained in rubber bands) moved about. I felt a little queasy. I picked it up, put my hands around the appropriate spots, and started to twist....and it JUMPED and started flailing, and I dropped in on the cutting board. I felt like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, when he attempts to drop a lobster in a pot of boiling water and drops it on the floor instead...then hops on to the chair, hoping the lobster will just crawl its way out of the house and back to the sea.

I felt the tail start to come off, but when I got such a strong reaction from the lobster, I could not continue. I know rationally that dispatching the animal yourself is morally upstanding -- if you're going to eat animals and animal products, the closer your connection with its life and death means you're going to be eating more healthfully. Less steps, less processing, and less corporate finagling between you and your food is a wonderful thing. And yet, when I was called upon to butcher this brainless sea-bug, my fight-or-more-likely-flight response kicked into high gear. I tried to take a picture and just fumbled with my phone. I felt a little dizzy, very nauseous, and my mind raced. If I work in a restaurant and am asked to prep 20 lobsters, I can't claim that I'm too delicate for such work!

After a quick 3-minute boil, we cracked open the lobster claws, knuckles, and tails and extracted the meat. I watched as the Chef deposited the lobster shells into the pan for browning before deglazing for the stock pot. The legs were still moving. I know it's an involuntary nervous system reaction, but the queasy feeling came back. (Deglazing, by the way, is when you add a liquid to a pan where you were browning something -- the cool liquid hitting the hot pan will loosen the 'fond', the yummy brown bits that would otherwise stick to the bottom of the pan.)

Squid was actually a lot harder to look at than the lobster, but its lack of movement was comforting; if we were in Korean culinary school and it was a live squid, I surely would of freaked the f*#k out. But after coming off the lobster, pulling apart a squid was kid's play. The tubular head contained a weird quill, and chopping the eye from the tentacles allowed me to squeeze and pop the beak out. I started to relax, I got my nerve back. As I worked away at taking apart the squid, I started to think, "How will I regain my honor in class?" Though B won't be happy about it, I'm going to have to get some lobsters and dispatch them at home.

Mussels just needed a cleaning -- they would open in the cooking. Oysters look like large old corroded clams, and take some work to get a knife in to pry open. Theres a lot of liquid and boogery meat in those shells. Clams are smaller and neater looking, and a lot more work to open, unless their dead, then they're loose and need to be thrown away.

ADDENDA:
I weighed 230 pounds this morning, up another pound despite riding hard on the 5 boro bike ride yesterday -- I DID eat a lot too: a lot out, even more in. Just because I feel I'm being virtuous doesn't actually mean I'm losing weight.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, banana, .25 bowl, hunger 2/5
Tired, grumpy. Stupid scale.

AM SNACK: 9am, small piece of french bread, hunger 4/5
As I'm chewing on this, I'm thinking, hmmm, this super refined white bread is kind of like snacking on sweets -- after such a nothing breakfast, this can't be helping my weight.

LUNCH: 1pm, pint of shellfish soup, 1 homemade pizza, quart of water, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
Despite the existential angst, the soup was fantastic. You could taste the freshness in the shrimp, scallops, clams and, yes, the lobster. Shared my quart o' soup with my father-in-law, that was satisfying.

DINNER #1: 6:30pm, samosas, sesame noodles, curry sauce, 2 bowls, hunger 4/5

At work into the evening, a quick meal from Green Symphony

DINNER #2: 7:45pm, shrimp tempura, small green salad, 1.5 bowls, hunger 4/5

Food on the company dime, really didn't need it but needed to be sociable.

Fish Stock/Fish Fabrication/Simple Fish Soup (Roley Poley Fish Heads)

After yesterday's confrontation with my lifelong culinary nemesis, nothing could get me down today -- not even copious amounts of rainbow-colored fish guts and dark-red fish blood. Well, maybe it could if you made me eat that stuff...

The morning lecture reviewed stock, that magical stuff you get from simmering bones and vegetables until it becomes enriched with intense nutritive yumminess. Stock is a foundation of good sauces, soups and braises, and is full of gelatin from bones -- all the boney soft stuff and cartilage is actually all protein. The fish stock we were to make typically only takes 90 minutes (whereas a stock with big ol' bones, like cow, can simmer and reduce away for a few days).

Chef M drew typical 'flat' and 'round' fish on the board to discuss their physiology. Flat fish like sole and flounder tend to be on the small and mildly un-fishy flavor side, while round fish like salmon, cod, tuna, and bass are all sorts of sizes, colors, and flavors. The basics of checking for quality (good smell, clear eyes, firm flesh, etc.) were bandied about, the differences in wild vs. farmed (wild will always be tastier) and the proper way to store in ice (standing on its belly with packed ice on all sides, with drainage so the fish is never sitting in water) were discussed...and then out came the fish.

All 14 of us got to "fabricate" 3 fish apiece -- a bass, a sole, and a mackerel. Chef M gave us pretty detailed demos, then let us at them. Funny, the second I got that first fish in front of me, my mind went blank. Its corpus wasn't abstract anymore, like a picture or a demo; it was right in front of me to be dealt with right now. I put on the plastic gloves, then paused to take a picture with the camera phone. I looked to see what everyone else was doing -- oh yeah, that's why I forgot. (Vegans, hungry or otherwise, might want to skip down to the addenda about now.) I ran the blade of the boning knife in one long stroke along the belly and out flopped the guts. I stuck my fingers in to pull out whatever bits I missed and a few fleshy sacks popped eggs and blood over my hand. Kind of gross but cool. I almost reached into my pocket to take a picture but thought it better not to stand around for the next three hours with a pocketful of fish guts and an unpleasantly fishy phone.

I followed the Chef's direction from memory: Slice from the dorsal (front) fin to the top of the head at an angle, then peel off the fillets with the long thin boning knife. Cleave off head and tail, but the meaty bones into the stock pot. Clean up fillets, pluck out pin bones with pliers, wipe down, and check for scales and more bones. Cut into three portions each, stack flesh to flesh, skin to skin.

For the mackerel, the fabrication was a little different: Saw away from the top of the head to the dorsal fin at an angle. Then you put down your knife, grab the head with one hand and the body with another, and yank them apart -- all the guts come out, attached cleanly to the head. It definitely called for a karate-like "HeeeeeYAA!" as I tore the fish head off.

After cleaning up, we fried up some garlic, onion, parsnip, and leeks; diced up potatoes in olive oil; added salt, fish stock, and crushed tomatoes; and then set to boil. Brought down to a simmer, we placed out fish fillets on top of the liquid for 5 minutes and viola, our simple fish soup arrived into this world, ready for the eating.

While we were finishing the soup, four beautifully plated desserts appeared; the pastry class just finished practicing, and their labors were our pleasure. In return, Chef M sent thema gallon of fresh fish soup. We all ate well.

After class, I stopped in on the Dean of Student Affairs to discuss volunteer opportunities and career trajectory. There is a lot of stuff out there, and I have a short stack of organizations to read up on before I start making calls and setting up visits. Next week should be interesting.

ADDENDA:
After having my ice cream keep me up all night, I decided to try it for breakfast. Now that it's set, the coffee flavor is much stronger than the chocolate flavor. In the 20 minutes after eating it, B mentioned that I was buzzing around the apartment -- I was totally caffeinated. I hopped on the bicycle and made it school in record speed. I felt like I should have pulled my shirt over my head and proclaimed, "I AM THE GREAT CORNOLIO!!" Caffeine, it's a hell of a drug.

At the end of the yoga class I attended today, there was about 5 minutes of meditation. The teacher asked to internalize a mantra to repeat in our heads or under our breath, and suggested we take one of the Sanskrit chants from the distributed guide if we liked. Very quietly I chanted, "Not my mother's scramble. Not my mother's scramble." Not peace, bliss and happiness, but something like it.

BREAKFAST: 6:30am, apple, small cup of chocolate espresso ice cream, 1 bowl, hunger 3/5

AM SNACK: 9:30am, small piece of french bread, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

AM TASTING: 11:30am, bites of various gourmet creamy desserts, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5
A pastry class sent up some beautiful tasty desserts for us to snarf down at the end of class.

LUNCH: 12:45, 3/4 of a quart of fresh fish soup, piece of french bread, 2.5 bowls, hunger 4/5
In Madison Square Park. B came and visited me, then the HVS did a run-through. Very satisfying to eat a fresh self-made meal made at a higher level of skill while surrounded by people scarfing crappy Shake Shack burgers. They think they're eating great stuff, but I got the real thing...

PM SNACK: 5pm, superhippy grilled cheese sandwich with morbier and onions, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Another cheese introduced to me in class -- it has a line of vegetable ash through the middle, a softer firm texture and a stinky rind. Because of its excellent melting ability and strong flavor, used less cheese than usual and still was great.

PM SNACK: 6:15pm, 1 slice streetza, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 9:45pm, stone rice bowl with bulgogi, assorted appetizers including radish kimchi, fermented fish, mungbean pancake, pickled nuts, water 2.5 bowl, hunger 4/5
Danny & I caught a quick dinner after a movie, at a Korean place in Koreatown. Oddly enough, they closed at 10pm, turning away several patrons -- what kind of place closes early on Friday night when there is a demand? Must be family-run or something.