Day 12: In which the gruesome murder of a fish is committed

Lab day. We were to execute and submit the following items:

Tilapia
* de-scaled
* finned and gutted
* 1 side skinned
* 1 side skin on
* bones and head removed intact, then cut into 4

Shrimp
* tempura
* butterfly
* ball

Oyster
* shucked
* in the half-shell

Mussels
* de-bearded
* cleaned shell
* meat removed cut from shell, then replaced

Squid
* cut into rings
* scored
* head without eyes
* beak only

After doing all the lab work, we were to compute for the weight and price of all the usable parts we could obtain from the tilapia, a process known as butcher's yield. This time, the math was the easy part.

I started with cleaning and shucking the mussels. On lab days, my strategy is to start with the easy tasks to get them out of the way, reserving the better part of my time and energy for the head-down stuff. I had to wash, pare off the barnacles and debeard the four mussels on my tray. The trick with shucking mussels, I discovered, was to insert the shucker near the hinge connecting the shells, slowly twisting the tool until the slit grew wider.

That done, I wrestled with the oyster. Opening an oyster's shell is about as easy as trying to dig your way to China with a penknife. Try as I might, I could not make, pardon the expression, heads or tails of the gnarly shell and where to insert the shucker. My oyster looked like a lump of sand and concrete hastily put together by a starving carpenter as he hears the lunch bell. All I managed to do was break off bits of the shell. I wasn't sure if points were to be deducted for damaging the shell but with each calciferous fleck that came off, I imagined points from my GPA crumbling away.

I decided to put the darn thing down and do the shrimp, a task which passed without incident. The squid also gave me great joy, their skins coming off easily like worn out socks. The beak, tiny and burr-like, was easy to coax out of the head, and the flesh easily yielded to my knife.

Now it was the tilapia's turn. As early as the first step, de-scaling, the blundering clod that I am sprang into action. My classmates expertly scaled their fish, while I sent the scales flying mostly into my face as I artlessly grappled with the scaling tool. This, by the way, was the first time I'd ever used one, thank you.

The fun part was removing the bright red gills and eviscerating the fish, letting the red-yellow viscera drip out. Yum!

I started sweating when it was time to fillet. As I cut away I felt the pressure of trying to make the fillets as whole and perfect as possible. I tried to cut as carefully and as close to the bone as I could, but my cuts were still not close enough. I also failed to take out some bones in my fillet. The chef spotted them instantly (why are you so wise, sir?)

I made other blunders. While making the fillet without skin - this involves peeling off the skin near the tail until you have a flap of flesh big enough to grasp with your hand - I was terrified the meat would break off. Thankfully it didn't, but Chef Vic later told me I needed to cut closer to the skin. How does one do that without tearing it, I wonder? I dread to think of the filleting horrors awaiting me on Finals Day.

Now, back to my briny friend. After futile eternities prodding at the tightly closed shell, I finally managed to weasel the shucker into the sucker (sorry, could not resist. The oyster gave me a hard time; I deserve the relief of a corny one-liner or two!). I had never been so happy to see mollusk meat as I was that night.

I think I did a much better job here than with the vegetables. More importantly, no one in class got cut. It seems we've all grown more comfortable with our knives. I think I flubbed my vegetable cuts because I was sometimes more afraid of getting injured.

We ended the evening with a meal of squid and shrimp. Our victims were simmered in some parsley and spices and spooned over rice, and they were good.