Day twenty: Did the culinary school student dispatch the lobster or not?

Posted on | February 11, 2010

In my Day Nineteen post I talked about watching the Chef dispatch (culinary speak for kill) a lobster.

This was a prelude to our killing a lobster in the next class.

The next class is today.

5, 4 . . .
Before we were allowed anywhere near any lobsters, we had to do our mise en place. See, the plan was, we would each dispatch a lobster, make a stock from it, and make a lobster risotto with the stock and the lobster meat.

And, to get started on our mise, we needed our recipes. More than half of the students didn’t have the recipes the Chef had given us the day before, so the Chef, totally pissed, told them not to bother to come into the kitchen until they found them.

Myself included, there were only four students in the kitchen. Four students doing our mise.

Now, we were doing everything individually (no group stock, for example) so we all needed, say, a tablespoon of brandy and two cups of wine and half a small dice carrot and so on. I started measuring out ingredients for Mama and myself, then realized it was very little extra work to just go ahead and measure out for the other two students. So I did. But then I realized that while I was busily measuring out for everyone else, no one was busily dicing any mirepoix for me.

Screw that.

So I went back to only measuring out ingredients for Mama and myself, then we divvied up the mirepoix: She had already done carrots for both of us, so I did the celery and she did the onions.

This class has never come together as a team, and that is a real shame.

But we did come together as a group because, by now, the other students had found their recipes and had joined us in the kitchen. As they were preparing their mise, we sweated our mirepoix, got our stock started, cleaned our stations, and got our lobsters.

It was time to dispatch them.

. . . 3, 2 . . .
Last class, I was, well, a bit shocked when I saw the Chef dispatch his lobster. I knew it was part of our agenda. And I had seen people throw lobsters into boiling water. But I had never seen anyone put the tip of a sharp, sharp chef’s knife to the head of a struggling lobster, push down, then pull the knife forward to split the head into two. It was disturbing.

But it wasn’t as disturbing as seeing it try to escape, legs scrambling for purchase, eyes frantically searching right and left and right, tail stretching and contracting and stretching.

And, bad as that was, the worst part is that it continued long after the poor thing had been dismembered.

Still, as I watched the Chef, I had managed to keep my cool, saying nothing, and reacting only on the inside. And I had calmed down by the time we left the kitchen and went into the classroom. And I had almost forgot about it by the time I had come home, writing my blog, catching up on email, doing three loads of laundry, emptying the dishwasher, and making the bed I had been too rushed to make that morning.

Then my husband and I went out for dinner. And I told him everything about my day except for the lobster. And he told me about his day. And we left the restaurant, crossed the street, and I dragged him into a back alley to tell him about the lobster.

And I promptly burst into tears and he had to hold me and hold me as I told him about her (for it was a female) and how she tried so hard to escape and how it was horrifying to see and how everyone had to do that in the next class which meant I had to do that and I didn’t know if I could do that or even wanted to do that.

And my husband, who is a kind and patient person, just held me as I, finally, cried it all out of my system. Then we went for a nice, long walk through some back streets so I could calm down and he told me I didn’t have to do it if I didn’t want to.

I know. But, then, here I am, with a live lobster on my cutting board and the decision time is now.

. . . 1
If my math is correct, this is my 100th day at school. For the last 99 days, I have cut up, cooked, and eaten my way through land, sea, and air. This is why I am at culinary school. It would be hypocritical for me, after all that, to not kill that lobster.

So I, carefully, put the tip of my chef’s knife in exactly the right spot, inhaled sharply, then as quickly and gently as I could, I pushed down with all my might. Then, leaving the tip of my knife on the board, I swung the handle forward, cutting the head into two.

Then I exhaled.

And I twisted the still-moving tail off the body and dropped it into a bowl. And I pulled the still-twitching legs off the torso and dropped them, one by one, into the bowl. And I wrenched the claws off the body. These I cracked before I added them to the other body parts. And, finally, I split the body, cleaned it out, and added the shells to my overflowing bowl.

Then I poured these into my stock pot to make the lobster stock I would use to make my risotto.

Once the stock was made, I made a risotto using every drop of this incredibly flavorful liquid. And, when the risotto was nearly done, I stirred in the cooked meat from the body and claws of my lobster.

Then I plated my risotto. And it was the sweetest, most succulent risotto I had ever tasted.

The end of the semester
And so ended kitchen production at culinary school, fittingly, by killing and cooking my own lunch

Afterward, we had our last classroom instruction. This consisted solely of a beer-tasting. It was fascinating stuff. But it was also brief, Chef Pigtails letting us go so early I was home before class usually ends.

And an interesting thing happened on the ride home. These two, older woman, clearly out for a good time, struck up a conversation with me.

“Hey, what’s that bag?”

“This? This is my knife kit.”

“Yeah, look, she must be a real Chef; she’s got a knife kit and everything. Hey, you’re a real Chef, aren’t you?”

“Naaaw. Not yet. I’m still at culinary school.”

“So what’d'ya need to be a real Chef?”

“Well, for starters, I have to at least be working in a real restaurant!”

“So when you gonna go start working in a restaurant?”

“Me? Tomorrow.”

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