Day eighty five

Tuna for the day. In front is its pectoral finn.

Tuna day!

Today was tuna day. We have one tune for two people. The fish we have was albacore tuna, smaller variety with light color flesh. Even that smaller variety fish on average weight 35-40 pounds!

Tuna is usually frozen in the sea. As soon as it caught, fisherman will freeze it. They use liquid nitrogen, so freezing is a quick process. Also important part in using liquid nitrogen, is that ice crystals have no sufficient time to form, therefore there is no damage for the flesh. If you freeze slowly, the ice crystals will form and they can damage cells.

Handling tuna was not easy. The fish itself is almost round, however the structure of the fish required to  take each fillets separate and there four of them, two on each side. The flesh was really
delicate and when it was moved it tried to separate. Probably that fish was not frozen properly (that was my suggestion and the chef confirm this possibility).

I would say that tuna is not my favorite fish. It's difficult to handle and not easy to cook (you can easily overcook it and it will be rubber).

Also today we did a yield test on rock cod. We filleted it calculated cost of fillets and then cost of 6 oz portion (without actually portioning it). I was happy, as my costs were the best in the class! But indeed a great job was done, the spine bone was clear, no residual meat and I did not lost any flesh while skinned it. The reason we did not portioned rock cod is that we were shown another preparation - how to make fish and chips (only fish part). If you portioned fillets, there will be small pieces which you can not serve as is. You have to come up with a way to utilize it. You can do fish soup, fish stew, fish pie, or fish and chips. The latter is quite easy and if done well it's tasty and many people like deep fried fish (I do, with a good sauce). So that was really good example of proper utilization.

Today one more person dropped off the class. We have lost already six people in our class from the beginning. We got another two, but still... The sister group hasn't lost anybody so far.

I did find a job for the next week and for the first two weeks of june. Next week there will be boot camp for a group of chefs from Brasil. At the beginning of June there will be two boot camps, one is cuisine of Italy and another one is Mediterranean. I am going to assist with these boot camps. I like this job, I am able to learn something new every day and it is a bit easier than preparation for the dinner (and more organized).