Monthly Archives: September 2008

Sometimes I have to remind myself that all of those early mornings (in the winter, especially!) were worth it. I’ve definitely learned a lot in the two-and-a-half years I’ve been back at school — while everyone else I know is sleeping in, meeting up for breakfast, and generally enjoying their weekends. I thought I might start journaling these things so I remember just why I spent all that time and money.

Tonight, I decided we’d have fish for dinner — it seemed like a good, healthy dinner after a weekend of general debauchery. I stopped at Whole Foods (sigh, I do have an unhealthy love of that store) and got some haddock that was on sale. When I got home, I realized I’d have to take the skin off. I flashed back to my first ever class at Johnson and Wales.

In this first class, I was generally like a deer in headlights. I was thrown into the fire, so to speak, and all of my other classmates had been in at least one other class before this. Everything was new to me! I didn’t realize that we didn’t dry the dishes, we let them air dry for sanitation purposes. I didn’t realize that we put wet paper towels under our cutting boards to keep them from wiggling on the stainless steel work tables. I didn’t know how to put my knives away in the knife kit I was issued. I didn’t even know I was supposed to be wearing white socks rather than the black socks I wore that day (lucky for my, my first chef didn’t give inspections!) So, when the chef put my “team” on the fish station and later said we needed to take the skin off of the fish before cooking it and then walked away, I was very perplexed.

Truth is, I’d never been good at that — I usually just cooked fish with the skin on and ate around it when I cooked at home. It peels off so much better when it’s cooked! I spent the next 15 minutes basically sawing the skin off in little pieces taking a lot of the fish with it. I finally asked the chef for help and, of course, he showed me how it was done…and I still didn’t get it. It was a good thing that fish was battered and fried because I had really made a mess of it.

Over the course of many more classes, I’ve finally figured out the trick. By cutting into the fish and holding a sharp chef’s knife at about a 45 degree angle with the blade up against the skin, you can easily get the skin off by wiggling it at the same time you are moving the knife along the skin.

Tonight I showed that haddock fillet who was boss and that skin came off in just a few seconds. It was a real reminder that I have learned a skill — one skill of many that has helped me become a much better cook. I suppose that was worth waking up at least one cold, snowy, winter morning at 5:30 a.m.