Out On a (Chicken) Limb

Dinner 01-05-10 ($75/person)

Warm endive salad with artichoke, farm egg, and Parmesan cheese House-made spaghetti with clams, pancetta, and green garlic
Grilled Dexter beef with marrow butter, potato and black olive puree, and winter greens
Pink Lady apple puff pastry tartlet with vanilla bean ice cream

Warm endive salad with artichoke, farm egg, Parmesan cheese

House-made spaghetti with clams, pancetta, and green garlic

Grilled Dexter beef with marrow butter, potato and black olive puree, winter greens

Pink Lady apple tartlet with vanilla bean ice cream

Well...yesterday marked my first week at Chez Panisse. Granted, I was off for three days of that week, but I worked enough to make up for them. :D

Coming back after days off is never easy...as I write this, I am struggling to wake up and get it together (aided by a nice, big, strong mug of Irish Breakfast tea). I woke up with everything aching and it was all I could do to just lay in bed like a beached fish. *sigh*

(note to self: pop some Tylenol)

Yesterday was more artichokes *sigh*, and peeling potatoes, carrots, and vast and sundry other vegetables. There was a lot of stock-making going on, so I did a lot of mirepoix (a specific trinity of carrots, celery, and onions used to make stocks; it adds flavor), with the addition of fennel (a member of the onion family that smells like licorice) and sometimes leeks.

Of course, there was the daily butchering: duck breasts for tomorrow's (now today's) menu, and chickens for stock. The duck wasn't that bad, but the main thing was to get rid of excess fat. In case you didn't know, duck is an extremely fatty bird and we had to get up under the skin and scrape off whole plugs of fat. This fat is saved and later melted down to use in other dishes (ever had potatoes fried in duck fat? GLORY!!)

The chickens, though...usually, we make stock from any bones that are still around. However, since chicken (or any poultry) bones have been used up by now, we had to get some from the source: the whole chicken. We saved the legs, thighs, and breasts for later use, and the carcasses and feet were used for stock. I think we butchered about 20 or so chickens. It was while doing so that I began to think that maybe I was in over my head at Chez Panisse. I am not a butcher, never wanted to be a butcher, preferring to get my meats nicely wrapped in plastic wrap (or wrapped in butcher paper) and stored in a refrigerated, glass-enclosed case. :D GEtting up close and personal with dead, refrigerated animals is...an experience. It's also a bit daunting because the previous two interns LOVED to butcher. Oh well...I've always been different, so why should now be anything new? :D I am learning to butcher well, though it will take me longer than them because I don't have that passion for butchering. Still, I feel like I'm that kid on the short yellow school bus.

It's at this point that I do express some disappointment in my culinary education to date. We have to take a meat identification and fabrication course; it's a 7-day course, and we take it early in our curriculum. The class fabricates meat for the production kitchens of the school...which means that by the time you get to those kitchens, you don't really have to do anything to meat because it's already done...including trussing roasts. So unlike those who work meat on a regular basis, I haven't broken down a pork loin or deboned a chicken since JUNE 2009. It's a classic case of use it or lose it, and I'm praying my "it" will find its way home soon, or else I'm SOL. I'm not so bad with poultry, but red meat is more of a struggle (at least I can see the different parts of a chicken; all red meat looks pretty much the same to me, once it's opened up).

Anyway...I'll cut this post fairly short so that I can get ready to go. Thanks for stopping by, and see you later.

T.