the smell of the ocean and the taste of crab

Today when I leaned down to smell my chef whites in class, I closed my eyes and actually smelled the ocean. To the untrained nose I smelled like stinky fish, but to me it was July, the windows were down and I was driving towards that salty, briny, fresh smell that unmistakably indicates the ocean.

We did our first cutting of fish today. We each got three fish and two were cut into 1/4 fillets and the third was cut into whole fillets. Fish are so much easier to understand than meat because there's flesh and there's bone. There are a couple different methods for cutting fish, but they all have basically the same simple, beautiful anatomy.

We also had our first fish tasting where we tasted 5 different kinds of fish: Flounder, Dover Sole, Turbot, Halibut, and Skate. They were all lovely fish but each had distinct differences. The texture of the Halibut was chewy like Salmon, which can be attributed to the fact that it has the highest oil content of the low activity fish that we were tasting today. The activity level of a fish directly correlates with the oil content of a fish, high activity=high oil. Salmon are highly active and therefore oily, which give them that characteristic chewy, rich, mouth feel that the Halibut was reminiscent of today.The flounder was classic fishy flavored (in a very nice way). The Skate tasted like corn on the cob, and had a really cool texture with ridges in it. The one that stuck out to me most was the Dover Sole. If I had been blind tasting, I would have thought it was crab meat. I was shocked at how sweet it tasted and how silky the texture was. It was an awesome little piece of fish.

Food for thought: Yesterday my chef said that a vegetarian cook is better than any other cook because animal fat instinctively tastes good to us, but making a vegetable taste good takes so much more skill.