Friday, November 03, 2006

Day 23 of PCA II – Oh My Cod!!

Ok let’s get this out of the way because it’s a fast episode –

~~As the Kitchen Burns~~

The issue our team had with the dishes the other night…? Well that same person, for whatever reason (but me think she doth protest too much) left the class before it got started. She stayed and watched the fabrication but that was it. Hold on to your hats kiddos – we had NO dish dropoffs yesterday! Not one. Holy cow it was so pleasant it was almost surreal. The other sink had one person they’re dealing with who drops off. But our side…oh it was wonderful!

~~

Ok so cod…what a big fish that was. We got a big lingcod but at least the head was gone and the innards were removed. We had to remove the filets on both sides and cut them down to small chunks for fish and chips. Lucky for us our ‘chips’ were already sliced for us. We got those fried up and held (I added salt and pepper to ours. 1 – my partner Eddie peppers his fries and 2 – just another flavor aspect) Now for the cod, batter is made and up we go to the fryers. We served them in the paper cones too with malt vinegar and tartar sauce. These were so good!! That batter came out so crispy and golden brown. I wish I could have brought some home. But ate it there. Besides it wouldn’t have been as good reheated. I love fish and chips.

Next we did fried calamari. Ok I knew going in I didn’t care for this dish, but I was so fascinated with the squid it didn’t matter. We had to clean these little buggers and I found it fun. (sick huh?) You have to remove the beak, the pull the head from the body. On the body part you have to skin it, pull out the cartilage and squeeze out the innards. Then you cut the tentacles from the head. I could have cleaned a lot more than I did. I wonder why something like this are more enjoyable than others? We sliced the body into rings and put them all into buttermilk for a good soak. Now comes the interesting choice of batter. I have never used this product before – phyllo dough. We unrolled the dough and put it into a 200° oven to let it dry out, but not brown. You keep taking it out and removing the part that is totally dry and put the moist pieces back in. Then you crumble them all up. (funny how it looks like fish food flakes…) So you take the squid out of the buttermilk and dredge it in flour (we added cayenne to ours) then another quick dip into the buttermilk and then they’re put into the phyllo dough flakes and immediately placed into a deep fryer till golden brown. These came out look delicious and even chef said I did a very nice job. (poor guy was deep fried out since he pulled a double shift and ended up tasting a lot of fish and chips and fried calamari) So while I knew I didn’t like this dish, I chalked it up to the fact I had a bad experience with it. Years ago I tried it and it was so rubbery I couldn’t chew it and I ended up getting sick on it as well. (or possibly something else I ate that night) So I figure if it’s good enough for chef it’s good enough for me. Here I go!! Dip into the cocktail sauce and into the mouth…cocktail sauce is great – tangy, spicy but not too spicy…oh very nice crust on these, crunchy goodness there…and there’s the squid…ok…and…nope this is not going well…and out it comes into my hand to be tossed in the trash. It’s gotta be a texture thing because there really isn’t any strong squid flavor. I guess I’ll stick to cleaning them. At least I can get some small measure of fun out of the darn things.

That’s all we did tonight. We were done by 9pm but then they found more catfish for us to fabricate. Good practice. Then Eddie and I had to change the water in the lexans that had the skate (another fish) in it. Skate is part of the ray family. And they stink. Holy cow did they stink and to think we get to cut them up and eat them…joy(?).

Well tomorrow we’re doing ..hhmm my notes are 4 pages shrunk down from 8 so it’s going to be a lot…heaven help me. Why do have us do a lot on Fridays I’ll never know. Don’t they realize we’re trying to wind down from the week? Sheesh! Hehehe that’s ok, I love a good challenge. Gets us ready for finals – NEXT WEEK!!

Until Tomorrow!...

1 Comments:

At 11:20 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

So, ..... are you saying the lazy drama queen quit?? I could only hope so for your sake! LOL

Angela

 

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