Taking apart a turbot
New pics are up!
Things move so quickly in culinary school. If you don’t volunteer yourself for tasks, suddenly the day is over and you’ve missed out on valuable hands-on learning opportunities. At the same time, I’m afraid of becoming one of those irritatingly overzealous students who shoves others out of the way when the teacher asks whether one of us would like to take the reins.
For some reason, I really, really wanted to fillet a turbot in class the other day. Nobody else shared my passion, so I was presented with a medium-sized, moss-colored creature of my very own. Here he is:
In the photo, he seems surprised to learn that I will be the one to take him apart. My teacher was a bit surprised too, I think.
First you chop off the head in a circular cut to reserve as much flesh as possible. Fine. Then you cut down the center, making two halves. Here’s where I ran into problems. The center bone (I guess it was the spine?) was thick and tough. I was wielding a giant cleaver, but I wasn’t confident enough at this stage to bring the cleaver down with a resounding “THWACK!” and be sure that I wasn’t going to make a huge gash in some other, more important part of the fish, thereby ruining our planned lunch. So I was a little timid, and couldn’t get more than about halfway through the bone. I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. One of the two guys in the class stepped in, thwacked away fearlessly, shredding bits of the very flesh I was afraid to destroy, and made it through. I finished the rest (and, incidentally, screwed up by making one of the fillets too small to be a single portion. Lesson learned.). Another girl broke down the last turbot after I finished, and asked the guy to do the spine-chopping for her, too.
Ever since, I’ve been feeling pretty disappointed in myself. I don’t think of myself as a Woman Who Needs Help From Men. I’m stocky! I’m scrappy! And I like doing the dirty work. And here I was, setting a weak-woman precedent. Deep down, I am pretty sure I could have gotten through the spine if I hadn’t chickened out and been afraid of missing my mark with the cleaver. I guess that’s what’s bothering me more than anything.
All this would have been unremarkable, except that later over lunch we discussed female chefs in France. My teacher dismissed them, saying there are only two or three women at the top here because “it is a very difficult profession.” He kept saying stuff like that. “It is tough in the kitchen.” “It is a very hard life for chefs.” He never came right out and said “Women don’t make good chefs,” but the message was there, floating around in the air. We’re not strong enough, we’re not resilient enough, we’re not capable. The professional kitchen is a masculine space.
Yech. I've heard versions of this before, and this time it got me thinking. I wasn’t planning on working in a kitchen after I finish school; I’d prefer to go into culinary writing and editing. But how much of my decision has been subconsciously influenced by the fact that there are so few female chefs? My ideal work environment certainly doesn’t involve contending with macho posturing on a daily basis. What if I could work in a sedate, supportive, joyful kitchen that had equal numbers of men and women? Would the prospect of being a chef suddenly become more appealing? Do such places exist? Is that why so many women go into catering – so they can cook on their own terms?
And more importantly, why is it that the same men who think women can’t handle the kitchen usually learn how to cook from their mothers and grandmothers?
Things move so quickly in culinary school. If you don’t volunteer yourself for tasks, suddenly the day is over and you’ve missed out on valuable hands-on learning opportunities. At the same time, I’m afraid of becoming one of those irritatingly overzealous students who shoves others out of the way when the teacher asks whether one of us would like to take the reins.
For some reason, I really, really wanted to fillet a turbot in class the other day. Nobody else shared my passion, so I was presented with a medium-sized, moss-colored creature of my very own. Here he is:
In the photo, he seems surprised to learn that I will be the one to take him apart. My teacher was a bit surprised too, I think.
First you chop off the head in a circular cut to reserve as much flesh as possible. Fine. Then you cut down the center, making two halves. Here’s where I ran into problems. The center bone (I guess it was the spine?) was thick and tough. I was wielding a giant cleaver, but I wasn’t confident enough at this stage to bring the cleaver down with a resounding “THWACK!” and be sure that I wasn’t going to make a huge gash in some other, more important part of the fish, thereby ruining our planned lunch. So I was a little timid, and couldn’t get more than about halfway through the bone. I tried, but I just couldn’t do it. One of the two guys in the class stepped in, thwacked away fearlessly, shredding bits of the very flesh I was afraid to destroy, and made it through. I finished the rest (and, incidentally, screwed up by making one of the fillets too small to be a single portion. Lesson learned.). Another girl broke down the last turbot after I finished, and asked the guy to do the spine-chopping for her, too.
Ever since, I’ve been feeling pretty disappointed in myself. I don’t think of myself as a Woman Who Needs Help From Men. I’m stocky! I’m scrappy! And I like doing the dirty work. And here I was, setting a weak-woman precedent. Deep down, I am pretty sure I could have gotten through the spine if I hadn’t chickened out and been afraid of missing my mark with the cleaver. I guess that’s what’s bothering me more than anything.
All this would have been unremarkable, except that later over lunch we discussed female chefs in France. My teacher dismissed them, saying there are only two or three women at the top here because “it is a very difficult profession.” He kept saying stuff like that. “It is tough in the kitchen.” “It is a very hard life for chefs.” He never came right out and said “Women don’t make good chefs,” but the message was there, floating around in the air. We’re not strong enough, we’re not resilient enough, we’re not capable. The professional kitchen is a masculine space.
Yech. I've heard versions of this before, and this time it got me thinking. I wasn’t planning on working in a kitchen after I finish school; I’d prefer to go into culinary writing and editing. But how much of my decision has been subconsciously influenced by the fact that there are so few female chefs? My ideal work environment certainly doesn’t involve contending with macho posturing on a daily basis. What if I could work in a sedate, supportive, joyful kitchen that had equal numbers of men and women? Would the prospect of being a chef suddenly become more appealing? Do such places exist? Is that why so many women go into catering – so they can cook on their own terms?
And more importantly, why is it that the same men who think women can’t handle the kitchen usually learn how to cook from their mothers and grandmothers?
posted by cindym at 2:56 AM
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