Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Monday, 2/1/10 – Fish Day #1

As you know, my first experience butchering fish was warewolfy. (I hate when that happens.) Imagine my hesitation entering our first fish session, in which we would be learning how to properly break down a whole fish, as opposed to my prior experience of just hacking mindlessly.

I was borderline squeamish, which really surprises me. Perhaps I made the right decision to leave the veterinary field, because something about cutting a head off of a body gives me the willie nillies. I take that back - I’m not an expert, considering I never actually made it to vet school, but I’m not sure they teach you how to remove a lot of heads from bodies at Purdue.

I digress. We had a lot of “fun” dismembering our striped bass and trout and learned how to break them down into usable fillets. We used the bass fillets to make poisson en papillote, a yummy dish of sautéed mushrooms (duxelles), light tomato fondue with some carrots, leeks and celery, julienned, all wrapped in a pouch of parchment paper and baked until puffed. It’s meant to be served immediately, still sealed, so that the diner can open the pouch before eating and reap the benefit of the aroma. I would think this would be tricky, though – “Sure, I’ll pay $32.99 to hover over a steaming sack of fish vapor at the moment its cut open. My tears will aid the flavor of the fish!”

We then floured the trout fillets and fried them in clarified butter, topping them with a nice brown butter sauce with capers and lemon. The star of the show, however, were the handmade croutons, extremely buttery yet still crunchy. Hopefully you’re picking out the trend here: butter + butter = buttery butter.

So let’s review. Tearing the organs out of a poor little creature’s body as their lifeless eyes judge your soul can prove to be delicious, fun is subjective, and butter is like oxygen to a French cook – they need it to survive.

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