We enter into the new kitchen apprehensively.
I belt out, "Good morning, chef!" to Paul Delarose, in my most cheery, "its 6:30 am" voice I can manage. I pull behind me about 30 packages of cauliflower, pearl onions, peas, turnips (both yellow and white), parsnips, and other orders from the stockroom, down the tiled ramp that leads into the main area of our new, K15 kitchen. My roommate Victoria follows me, pulling down more baskets of food with my other classmate. The three of us throw the items onto the shiny stainless countertop that divides the space. I check items off the list, while the other two go down to the "Meat room" to grab turkey and beef brisket. I hurry, not knowing our new chef for "Modern Banquets". This man will dictate our attitude for the next three weeks, yet we have no clue who he is. I figure, I've been in class 10 minutes, and the chef hasn't said anything yet, so I can't be going in the wrong direction all that much...
"Chef Clarke is an ass-hole. He's really old, and you won't do well in his class. He's just mean because he's been teaching for too long. I mean, 'So-and-so' got thrown out of his class because his cell phone went off..."
I listen apprehensively as my boyfriend Conner rambles on over the phone about my next day at the Culinary Institute of America. I'm about to enter "Seafood and Fish ID" class. Its July 30th, and I've entered in March. For the next one and one half weeks of my time, I'll be in a three hour lecture on fish and other fishy things. I'm good at class room stuff, as my fellow students have noted, so I know this won't be a challenge for me. The next three weeks after the lecture are all fish "fabrication"- aka making fillets (the piece of fish you eat), from whole fish as we get it into the classroom. The room is small, but entirely cold. Each morning before class I put on my grey American Apparel sweats while I brush my teeth and gel back my hair for fish class. The last thing I do before I leave my door is throw on my chef pants over my sweats, and then I head out the door. I sweat for about five minutes while I walk to class and grab coffee; its August and the weather upstate is humid. The second I walk into the Seafood room, however, I'm glad I've braved sweating, as its day 1, and I'm on ice duty with three of my classmates. "Ice duty" means you get to stand in a "walk in freezer" (think small NYC bedroom), and shovel ice from metal bins attached to the wall, into small plastic bins which you can take and melt into the sinks in the main fish fabrication room. As I move paint-can size containers of Scallops from one bin to the other, I think. "Why am I paying money to do this? I really don't need to learn about shoveling ice!" My fingers turn red and raw as I shove them into my pockets between turns shoveling. I realize I hate scallops because somehow, the metal in conjunction with the ice turns them into "instant finger freezing machines."
After an hour of shoveling ice, the cold fabrication room seems downright toasty, while we learn about fish identification. Chef Corky Clark strides in with no introduction from the lecture room, and begins straight off telling us the difference between a Pacific (King) Salmon and a Atlantic Salmon. He is a wiry, tall older man. He wears an old-fashioned, tall chef's hat which puffs a bit at the top and gives him the look of someone from another time. On the other hand though, he sports about three obvious tattoos. You can tell Chef Clark has taught this class every three weeks, for the past 20 or more years. You, too, would be a little more than cranky at the kid who thinks he has a novel question for the chef. You might give him slack when he yells at some kid about, "there really ARE stupid questions!".
I'm staring at the guts of a Wild Striped Bass.
I know I've eaten it before, but I never knew the guts of fish were so...green. And poopy. I scoop them up out of the fish, and toss them in a metal pan in the middle of the table. Dribbles of blood trail out of the fish. As I thrown the green, putrid guts into the pan, someone remarks their resemblance to cat barf. I state my concurrence.
When we leave class every day, I immediately throw my clothes in the laundry. I now know why laundry is free at the CIA. Otherwise, kids would smell like fish for three weeks and everyone would suffer.
The first day of class for seafood, we spent a few minutes fabricating fish. Chef Clark entered the Fab room from the lecture room, "Courtney!!!" I ran up,"Yes, Chef?" I expected the worst. Though, only being in the class for about 30 minutes, I figured I couldn't have really done anything that wrong.
Chef: "Courtney, Ive been teaching this class a while, and very few people get 100% on the first pop quiz, so, good job." "Thanks, Chef!" I said, and he shook my hand. About 10 minutes later, Chef Clark asked me, "Courtney, where are you from?" "Los Angeles, Chef", I replied. "That's too bad, Courtney. You seem real smart.""Uhhhh, thanks Chef?" I replied.
I'm staring at pin bones in an Atlantic Salmon.
With my pair of needle-nose pliers, I desperately pry at the nearly invisible bones in the side of my salmon. I pull out one after another in a short spree, when suddenly one gives me trouble, and I have to spend about three minutes tugging at one tiny bone that I can no longer see. Chef Clark wanders up to me, and I straighten up a little. I know I'm not doing anything wrong, so he must have something else to say to me. "Courtney, did you tell your mother what I thought about your glasses?" Chef had told me a week before that he liked my glasses. I told him they were my mother's, from the 1970's. "No, not yet Chef, though I think she'll be happy. She was excited to give them to me." " You should, I think she was glad to give them to you, because she liked that time." Chef also used it as an excuse to remind the class that they could never think of anything new, as everything in food had been already thought of. And so it was with chef Clark.
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