Finally. Eleven weeks into the semester. We did something I’ve never done before in my life. We scaled and filleted a whole fish. I was on cloud nine, ten and eleven.

The menu:
Potato and Leek Soup (pureed soup, thickening method)
Salmon en Papillote with vegetables julienne and couscous (parchment technique, filleting, knife skills)

Some students had to leave - they were thoroughly disgusted, gagging. But the fish guts didn’t seem to bother me. I was more interested in how this beautiful thing was about to be deconstructed. 

Chef went over signs of freshness (and decomposition) — more nuggets of knowledge I had been craving for weeks. And showed us how to scale, fillet, skin, and portion the fish — salmon in this case.

Sigh. I wish every class could be this exciting and full of great information.

And three seems to be the magic number. We’ve experienced the group without Cool Girl, and we’ve experienced the group without Know-it-All Girl. It didn’t matter who was absent; our group functioned better with three rather than four in each case. We had more room, and less opinions.

Next week we focus on stocks and sauces. I’m hoping we go deeper into the mother sauces and small sauces — we’ve only briefly touched on a few.

Only five weeks left to the semester. I’m torn about what to focus on for spring term. I’m only able to take one or two classes each semester…I’m thinking about Classical Cuisine, along with the competition class, where Chef will kick my butt into honing my cooking skills.