Saturday, May 31, 2008

I need to catch up, I haven't written in a week.  There is a reason for that.  I have test at the minimum three times a week and papers to write.  By the time I get home and get acclimated with family, I throw in a load of laundry and find a spot on the couch to study and write.  When I look up at the clock again, it is somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00.  It is time to get my husband out the door with coffee in his belly (he is a night shifter) and a packed lunch.  He has been taking some great lunches from the food I bring home. This past week, we cooked prime cuts of beef, fresh red fish (round fish), flounder (flat fish) and lobster (oh my God) , scallops (top of the line), soft shell crab (you can have those, not much meat), mussels (found out I liked those) and shrimp. 

Yesterday, Friday, was a day I will never forget.  Ever.  Our menu included, Lobster, mussels, scallops, oysters on the half shell, Asian salad, goat cheese grits (yummy).   Assorted sauces, the best was the scallop sauce.  These scallops are hand picked my divers.  Top of the line, honey.

The lobsters were alive in a box.  There were two of them.  One of my fellow students and I were talking to them like pets and apologizing for having to boil them.  Yea, I thought they would be killed by boiling.  Oh no, our chef teacher took out one of the two lobsters out of the box and proceeded to show us how to kill a lobster with our chef knife while it is alive and laying on our cutting board.  I should have known when he went to my station and used my cutting board to kill this innocent lobster that I was going to definitely have to do in the other one.  He had already told me that I would do the lobster and mussel recipe but my wishful thinking had me to believe I wasn't going to be the killer.  WRONG.  I knew it wasn't going to be good when I started squealing at the sight of him picking up the first lobster.  I just kept thinking, it looked like a big crunchy bug.  He stabbed the dumb lobster in the head ( supposedly their brain is no bigger than the head of a pin) and came down across his face right between his beady little yes and he proceeded to slice his back in half down to it's tail.  All the while this lobster is still squirming.  Supposedly, they are dead when you stab them in the head and the rest of the movement is nerve endings.  Tell that to the lobster.  You can't tell me.  Well, then it was my turn, still thinking he was joking and I wasn't really going to have to kill a lobster.  I would have welcomed putting it in boiling water at this point, although I never wanted to have to do that either.  After he finally convinced me that yes, I was going to have to go to the box and get the other lobster and kill it at my station, it is kind of blurry from there.  I remember grabbing him out of the box, screaming, yelling at the chef about where to put my knife on the head, closing my eyes, screaming, stabbing, looking up and seeing the French chef teacher from the other class, and some of his students, at the glass window, laughing their asses off.  My teacher laughing and yelling instructions to me as I cut and scream.  All the while, a fellow student, the older gentleman, has his cell phone camera in front of me.  I hear laughter, crunching sounds from the lobster, I think I am still screaming, feeling lobsters tail curling under, crunching, feeling me struggle to finish slicing last part of tail.  Oh yea, and some young kid from the other class had the balls to come into our class and put his phone literally in my face, saying something about YouTube.  Part of the liver ended up on my reading glasses.  For some reason that part didn't gross me out.  I don't remember  having them on but I have to use them when I am reading recipes.  I was exhausted after that ordeal.  I felt so drained, all I really wanted to do was go home at that point.  But, I kept on because I am paying big bucks for these classes.  Digging out the liver and sauteing it with shallots and butter was a cinch, once he was cut in half.  I was not creeped out digging into it once it was already dead.  I guess because it looked familiar to me sitting there in half like it does when I order it out.  Jesus Christ, I am still feeling the trauma of it all, just thinking back.

I broiled the lobster tails after stuffing with bread crumbs, livers and shallots.  They went into the oven for the last five minutes.  I served with clarified melted butter.  They were yummy and I ate the hell out of them.  I killed that lobster, by God, I was going to eat one of them.  I talked one of my fellow students into trying one.  She had never tasted lobster, can you believe it?  She liked it so much that I had to fight with her to take home the tails to my husband.  I was glad she found something new that she liked.  I even got her to try the scallops, (she didn't like those).  She doesn't like or try many of our dishes.  I on the other hand will try everything.  It is not everyday a woman kills her dinner, cooks it and brings it home to her family.  In fact, how many women in the 21st century can say they have killed their dinner?  Probably not that many.  I like having different experiences, but jeez, I think I will leave the lobster killing to somebody else from now on.