I've had a lot of other stuff going on lately so the blog has been a little disjointed but it's time to get back to the food. I've worked grill several times now and am feeling more confidant all the time. I've got my first official night-time garde manger shift this Saturday and I'm very excited about that. This week some of the items I cooked included: braised pork shoulder sandwich with smoked paprika mayonnaise and fennell-red onion slaw on a kaiser bun; laughing bird shrimp and red mule polenta with tomato broth, piquillo peppers and wilted chard; hangar steak with roasted potatoes, radishes, arugula and avocado crema. As always we have our "power lunch," a healthy but filling option that currently includes: sauteed chickpeas and spinach; shaved beets with pumpkin seeds, herbs and pomegranate; spicy seared broccoli rabe; red quinoa salad with cucumbers, edamame, feta and a citrus-vin dressing.
Also this week I learned to "dress" or butcher a side of fish, specifically a striped bass. It is an interesting and satisfying process to bring something that is still, at least for the most part, a recognizable animal down to beautiful little 6 oz portions. As always I am intrigued by the steps that go unnoticed by the general public in the trail from the sea or field to the table or supermarket. Processes which were once common knowledge to nearly all people have become specialized to a very small section of the populace. This isn't inherently a good or bad thing, however I do think that if more people were involved in the growing, hunting, butchering, etc of their foods things would likely be done in a much more humane, environmentally friendly, healthy and tasteful way. It's also more time consuming to get our food this way and would thus perhaps cause us to consume less, especially meat. Butchering the fish involved cutting away the pin bones, which in this particular cut of fish were too secure to be removed with pliers as is often possible. Then the blood channel is removed and the skin is scored so that, when cooked, the skin does not tighten and, thus cause the fish to curl up in the pan. The most difficult part for me was gauging the weight of each cut by sight. Of course I weighed the whole piece and, with my pathetic math skills painstakingly made an approximation of how many fillets I could cut from the whole however visually guessing where to cut when the center is nearly an inch thicker than the ends was a daunting task and I won't lie, a few fillets were more like 4.2 or 7.9 than 6.0. I'm sure that, as with all things, practice will make perfect (or better at least!)
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