So its Friday, the last cycling class of the week and I was so close to
giving in to the sweet sweet desire to not go at all seeing as how I am
sore as a "Tyranasoreous" (yeah that just happened). Being the mentally
ill person that I am, I decide to go. I'm new to this whole cycling
class thing and I thought it was just standard intense cycling...dead
wrong. Mike, our fitness instructor...or guide if you will is a crazy
man. He had us doing push ups on our handle bars while we peddled on
high resistance, he had us doing circuits, and towards the end
incorporated a grueling game of "Simon Says".
Its seriously sheer luck that I stumble upon the things that i do...
The evil process begins with a series of "up, downs"--alternating b/t sitting and racing positions. If Mike says up or down without doing it and one of us follows his order we all have to do a full sprint on the bike for a minute. Doesn't seem too bad right? Well after 50 nonstop minutes of challenging, muscle isolating workouts, sprinting is veal parmesan for vegans--get that shit away! We had to do two of em, followed immediately by cycling with one foot to strengthen each leg individually. Talk about being the mayor of "sucksville"....Its both physically and mentally taxing because the whole time I am saying to myself "screw this, screw this, screw this" but somehow my legs keep chugging away, conquering anything and everything instructor Mike throws my way. All the suffering from cycling and lifting each day is helping me develop that killer instinct I need both inside the kitchen and out. Life is not a sprint, its a mother f--king marathon, baby!
"This is no time for ease and comfort. It is the time to dare and endure" ~ Winston Churchhill
The best movie of all time: Bloodsport with Van Damme
Since I only have class till 9:30 every morning I decided to get back on track with eating right, and worst of all...adopting a rigorous workout plan. There is a cycling class 4 days a week I started going to, and some how I said "yes" to lifting everyday with my friend Brad (I know, what was I thinking, right?) Now, I haven't lifted weights in probably 4 years but I said enough is enough. Its been 3 days of lifting so far and I can barely lift my arms above my head--I'll have "T-rex arms" the rest of the week no doubt. Everyday in the workout room I constantly remind Brad that "he's a piece of shit, and that I hate him" for making me go through this shit. The hardest part about getting past the initial 2 weeks for me is not the weights, or the debilitating soreness; its getting over that mental barrier. That's the hardest part, telling that evil voice in your head to "cram it up his cram hole"...Somehow in the process of writing this post, the movie Bloodsport came to mind, easily one of the best movies ever filmed to this day (I'm still trying to find out what the hell a "demmack" is) so I decided to incorporate a few of the many gems this movie has to offer.
That gif shows how I feel after a day of lifting and fighting the lazy guy in my head. Enjoying the bloodsport theme? Good. Its a reality that not just here at culinary school, but out in the industry I will be exposed to food all day everyday. For a lot of chefs pulling in 80+ hours its easy to chow down on garbage and nearly impossible to find time to exercise. If I can adopt a solid foundation now, while I have ample time, I know I'll stick with it through the program. I just gotta get past these bastardly first 2 weeks. Not just with exercise or being healthy, but in all facets of life its important to find balance. With that being said, Brad, I hate you so much...
This post is titled so because it discusses the slow breakdown of my friend Kaitlin Hill, in our Meat Fabrication class. Kaitlin is a small blond-haired girl from Fairfax, Virginia who loves to bake. She entered the culinary program so she could obtain a better understanding of the culinary side of running her own business one day. I have tremendous respect for her because of that, and even more now for what she has to witness in meat class.
At one point today Chef Elia is sawing off the chine bone (part of the backbone) with a hacksaw, and cutting it off at the seam with a sharp knife. You can here the sound of bone being cut, and even worse, the sound of flesh tearing as he pry's off the "deckle" with his hands. I immediately glance in Kaitlin's direction who at this point is bug-eyed with both hands covering her mouth. Being 90% vegetarian like lots of girls are(will eat deli turkey sandwiches) it can be a horrific site to see bloody red meat hacked with a saw. There are definitely a few times this week where I thought for sure Kaitlin was going to faint in class, but she powered through it.
Day 2 she was cleaning up her station with a sanitation rag after we cut a large piece of meat into cubes. I walked by to see if she was okay only to find her with a blank emotionless face staring off into space as she mopped up pools of blood and meat fragments with a bloodied sanitation rag. She looked like she was in a daze similar to Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan when an explosion on the beach leaves him in a momentary daze while a soldier is looking to him for orders. He picks up his blood-filled helmet, shakes himself off and presses on. That is in essence, what Kaitlin looked like on that day.
Its a day-by-day process for her, being exposed to some of the horrors of meat fabrication but she is still showing up each day. Something I know she will continue to do for the duration of this class and in our eventual transition into fish fabrication (even more gruesome since we will be gutting some of the fish we fabricate). I tease her from time to time...ok a lot because this class is a complete 180 from her always sunny outlook on life. Kaitlin acquired the nickname "sunshine" for a reason, and I can tell meat fabrication is her krytonite, but I know she will prevail with the rest of us, and become a stronger person because of it. So Kaitlin, don't say you never got your own post, girl. Be good people.
First off, I don't wanna toot my horn or anything, but clearly I am doing God's work when it comes to my wizardry with Microsoft Paint...or as I like to call it, "the poor man's photoshop"...so its day three of my 14 day Meat Fabrication class, and although we didn't get to break anything down per say, we did watch a bunch of demos by Chef Elia. Today, Chef demoed how to breakdown a primal rib, with the plate still attached to it (a major and minor primal respectively).
Leah is hungry
Chef talks to the class about the Orange muscle on top called: "the twitch muscle". Its a muscle that twitches without the cow having to move to get the flies off its body/
I could probably drive my car under there...
Chef
Chef broke down this hunk-o-meat into export style ribs (used for prime rib/beef back ribs), shortribs, and the plate section, which is ground for burgers.
removing the "deckle"--can be used for slicing steaks in stir fries, fajitas, etc
the removed "deckle"
shortribs
side view of the short ribs
"Plate"--minor primal section fabricated to make burger meat.
The next chunk of meat Chef demoed was the drop loin which includes the primal loin, flank/sirloin steaks, and the tenderloin
drop loin with backbone view
all the fat trimmings
Ladies, if you ever wondered where your makeup, eye shadow, lip stick, and soap comes from...
It's 9am and I'm covered in blood. Day two and we're already breaking down beef shanks, and large shoulder clods (semi-primals cuts from the primal round and chuck respectively).
shank
The shank has a large bone running along the side of it as seen here: so what do we do? We have to remove it with a sharp boning knife. Once the bone is removed Chef comes over to check the amount of meat left on it and deems it acceptable or not, along with evaluating your piles of both usable trim, and unusable trim. Now that the bone is removed you begin to denute the shank--esentially you just remove the fat and the silver skin from the meat. To remove the silver skin you cut a "tab" underneath it and pull that tab over the blade of your knife. With the blade angled upwards you glide the knife under the silver skin to strip it off the meat in strips. Lastly, we sliced and cubed the shank into 1 inch cubes before putting them in a vacuum sealed bag for storage.
Another demo and my group and I are set to break down a shoulder clod segments of: top blade, teres major, no-name (seriously its called the no-name), and heart of the clod.
Shoulder clod
Truss me, I know what I'm doing...
I cut off the pieces and my team and I got to work fabricating and trimming down their own cut from the shoulder before trussing (tying) each piece with kitchen string. If you don't know what I mean when I say trussing basically it looks like this photo on the right:
Yesterday was my first day of Meat Fabrication and it was a radical change from the more laid back approach adopted by our CMC Chef Speckamp. My new chef, Chef Elia implements a more militaristic teaching style, which was apparent right from the get go. After our class had failed to set up part of the meat room the way he wanted it for lecture we already were setting a poor first impression. It took all of 30 seconds for everyone in my class to display the wide-eyed "oh shit this guy is serious" look. Once we sat down, he asks in a calm but stern voice, "does anyone have a cellphone?" no one raises their hand. At this point where all scared shitless. I couldn't help but relive a scene in my head from on of my favorite movies of all time: Inside man....
"I'll ask again, does ANYONE HAVE A CELL PHONE ON THEM RIGHT NOW??"slowly one or two brave souls raise their hand (mine included) and he holds out a bin to put them in, telling us we would get them back later. That was it. No penalty. We were safe. He looks up and smiles, "Now, does anyone ELSE have a cellphone?" (the whole class raises their hand) This is my first impression of Chef Elia.
We get a tour of our meat class, and the surrounding meat room. Our MIT (manager in training), a short red-headed girl named Lena shows us the dish station and the walk-in coolers. Once we get back to the classroom, Chef dives into lecture. It is here where he starts to loosen up a bit, making a joke here an there, telling us about his catering gig, all the while explaining the ins an outs of the meat industry. A wave of relaxation wafts over me when I realize the man ain't so bad. Chef Elia never went to college, because he graduated from the "school of hard knocks". He lectures us on the importance of education since that lack of paper limits how far he can rise (to an extent) in his field. Elia comes off ultra intimidating only because he has an old school attitude. Everything he has he had to earn for himself, and the hard way. Once you start to understand the man behind the iron mask so to speak, you can see the much awesomer (no way that's a word), more passionate side of Chef. Blah, blah, blah you want pictures, I know I know...
The first 4 days we are learning almost everything there is to learn about beef. This mega chunk is called the primal round. There are 4 major primal sections of the cow--round, lion, rib, chuck with 3 minor primal sections--plate, foreshank, and brisket. Each primal has sections called semi-primals (that's a for a later post). The primal round is basically the back leg of the animal...the ass check if you will.
Chef Elia breaking down the huge primal round
When demo started he issued out our phones and encouraged everyone to take as many pictures as we wanted (while also remembering to pay attention). This was refreshing because in fundamentals I had to sneak pics of Chef Speckamp's demos (I'm very sneaky when I need to be. Ask my mom).
I believe this is the top round--a semi-primal cut from the big primal round Chef Elia broke down
The semi-primal cuts from the primal round: top round, bottom round, eye round, knuckle, heel, and shank
I know you won't really understand what all these cuts of the animal are but IDing them also helps me study so the learning process goes both ways here.
Alright that's all folks! Stay tuned for part II of my pleased to "Meat" You XIV part series
When faced with the dilemma of tackling the mountain of laundry on my bed or blogging to you folks I clearly chose the latter of the two...the things that I do for you people! This post is all about new beginnings, because today is the start of a semester! I am officially on the block schedule (they grow up so darn fast don't they). Being the young scholar that I am, I was able to X out of both writing and business mgmt for the next 9 weeks; leaving me with only meat fabrication followed by fish fabrication for the next six weeks. The train don't stop there either (pardon my broken English). Since I have to pry myself out of bed promptly at 5am Monday through Friday, this also means I am done with class at 9:30 am. That's right, while all my friends are waiting around to go to mgmt at 3:30 I'll be exercised up with hw completed, and maybe even a nap in there for shits and giggles before they even go to class (suckas).
Now that I have all this free time on my hands (most of it will be dictated towards finding a job in the area and landing an externship for the summer), I have ample time to fool around with this blog a little bit. In laments terms: you get to reap all the benefits of my new focus and direction.
I was thinking about documenting each of my days in meat fab (14 total) so that my readers can get a sense of what I actually do here. Keep a lookout for Pleased to "Meat" You parts I through XIV...oh yeah its a series....
PLUS:
EQUALS:
What I'll be doing for the next three weeks...stay tuned.
