Day 6 & 7

It's funny how at other colleges the classes are measured in semesters and broken down further into weeks. Here, classes are broken down into days. Meat was 7 Days, Fish was 7 days. So its appropriate when the lectures online are labeled Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, etc. because that is the best way to keep track of the class. But I am still struck by how odd it is that I know what day of the class it is. Like I could just say, "Oh! Today is Day 5!" Never before in my life have I ever kept track of what "Day" class I'm in. It's always been measured by quarters (9 weeks) or semesters (1/2 a year), so its funny to me that when I'm trying to think back to last Thursday and Friday the first thing that comes to mind is that it was Day 6 & 7.

Thursday (Day 6) was Crustacean Day. Crustaceans are animals with exoskeletons and jointed legs. There are four major families: Shrimp, crabs, lobsters, and crayfish. They are also the tastiest of seafood families in my opinion. We prepared soft shell crabs, peeled and deviened shrimp, and filleted haddock (which didn't fit in out crustacean themed day, it just provided extra cutting practice). The process for preparing soft shell crabs is as follows:

1. Cut off the Face, a little graphic but just make a cut right behind the eyes and cut straight down. You can then gently squeeze out the inner parts of the crab which includes the "mustard". The mustard actually works to filter the impurities out of the crab, very similar to a liver. People advise not to eat it because it has a higher level of contaminants than is generally advisable to consume. However, my chef brought up a good point. We eat foie gras which is liver, it filters contaminants and nobody complains about that, we drink alcohol which in excess can pickle your liver, we smoke cigarettes which contaminate our lungs. He loves the mustard and thinks its the most flavorful part of the crab. His advice: "Pick your poison."
   
2. Remove the apron, located on the underside of the crab, it is joined at the rear of the crab and extends toward the front, and is either long and slender shaped indicating a male or rounded indicating a female... the two respective shapes are often compared to the male's apron looking like the Washington Monument and the female's apron looking like the dome on the Capitol Building. It just peels right off.
3. Remove the gills, pick up the edges of the crabs shell on the sides and pull off the little ruffled gills.

We also peeled and deveined shrimp. He told us to cut along the back of the raw shrimp up to the tail and then pinch the opposite side (where the spiny little legs are located) and pull the skin off. It worked so well! I was very excited because I love new tricks.

At the end of class we did a tasting of different shrimps and we tasted two white shrimp. One was peeled and the other was not. The white shrimp with its peel on was sweeter and cleaner tasting, it was awesome. It tasted like a totally different shrimp and all because it was cooked with the shell on. Try it sometime if you have shrimp with the peels on, peel one and cook it, then leave the peel on another one and cook it. Taste the two side by side and see if you can tell the difference. We also tasted pan fried soft shell crabs, and they were so delicious. The little claws filled up with the butter they were fried in and just burst warm, salty butter in your mouth when you chewed them. They were seasoned with Old Bay which to me is one of the most perfect blends of spices and we always have Old Bay in our spice cabinet at home so whenever I eat it I think of home.

Friday (Day 7) was our final exam day which included an Identification portion (looking at fish and telling what they are) and then a written exam. We also shucked 30 oysters a piece. And we had a caviar tasting.

I actually like shucking oysters because you can so obviously see your progress when you reveal that tender, little oyster inside its dark, gnarly shell. One of the things I love about cooking is that it's very easy to see results, good or bad. I like the honesty of that. There is also a wonderful sense of pride in your work and the ability of your hands when you're shucking oysters.

I am so glad I don't like caviar because gosh darnit that would be one expensive habit. Bleh. I honestly didn't like a single one I tried. They all had very different flavors and interesting textures, if I had liked them I would have a lot of fun trying to find applications for them because they are all so unique. The picture at the top is of our caviar tasting plate, clockwise from the top we tasted Tobiko (3 kinds: orange which was flavored with soy sauce, red flavored with fish sauce, and green flavored with wasabi) ($1.10/oz), Trout ($4.98/oz), Salmon ($2.50/oz), Whitefish ($5.50/oz), Pike ($14.40/oz), California Ossetra($43.48/oz), Iranian Ossetra($89.50/oz), Israeli Ossetra($62.97/oz), Russian Sevruga($99.71/oz), and Paddlefish($14.36/oz). In order for caviar to be labeled just caviar it must be from the sturgeon fish, if not it must labeled with what kind of fish the eggs came from. If I were to eat any of them again I would eat either the orange or green Tobiko because they were really crunchy which made for a cool texture, and they had pretty good flavor. They tasted like salty soy sauce and bitey wasabi. We also tasted a cucumber lime grav lax (11:00 on the plate) that one of the T.A.'s made and it was deliciously fresh and cucumber scented, chef remarked that you can make fish taste like anything and I agree. We also tasted uni (right center, orange blob) which is the reproductive organs of sea urchins and I did not like that either, it was sweet but weird. There's a flavor in uni that tastes like it shouldn't be there but I think that is its characteristic flavor, it was not a nice taste. I did seriously love the smoked shrimp (left center) we tasted though. It was brined (in salt, sugar, and water) for 5 minutes and then pan smoked, which is when a pan is heated really hot with wood or burning flavorings, closed, and the food inside is smoked quickly on the stove top. That was one good little shrimp.