Day 12 at FCI and Learning that Filleting Fish Isn't So Scary After All

I actually wrote the post below quite some time ago.  I can't help but laugh a little as I read this over again now.  At the time I'm sure it did seem like the time was flying.  If life was still going according to that time scale, I'm moving at warp speed now.  But, it's all relative.  In my last post about FCI I talked about my first exam...I passed with flying colors.  While I continued along much the same path through Level 1, it's gotten much more intense and a little harder since then. 

Here's a flashback to the 12th day of Level 1, May 28, 2011.....

The time has been flying by!  I knew the time in school was bound to go by fairly quickly, but it feels like we're going at warp speed.  I didn't quite expect that.  Two classes ago marked the halfway point for Level 1.  I feel like I was just at orientation, picking up my uniforms and getting my photo taken for a school I.D.  If the first few weeks have gone by this fast, I'm a little nervous about the pace at which the next 8 months will fly by. 

I was nervous going in to tonight's class.  It was the first of 2 lessons focusing on various methods of preparing and cooking fish.  In reviewing the lesson before class, there was a good portion focused on cleaning & filleting fish.  Hmmm.  Now, I love fish....I eat fish fairly often, and I've cooked fish in a variety of ways but never, ever have I attempted to fillet a fish.  Going into class, I hoped & prayed we wouldn't have to fillet fish ourselves.  It wasn't cutting up a dead fish that bothered me.  The flesh of the fish seems so delicate, and I had awful visions of myself mangling the fillets.  Even as Chef demo'd his technique for filleting fish, I kept my fingers crossed our fish would already be filleted.  They weren't.  Clearly!

I stood at my station with a shiny, glassy-eyed trout staring up at me from the cutting board, took a deep breath and got to work.  I cut off the fins, pushed off the scales, removed the head, starting slicing open the body, and before I knew it, I had produced 2 perfect-looking, unmangled trout fillets.  Not only was filleting easier than I ever expected, it was fun! 

 

My new partner, filleted our second fish for the evening, a black bass.  Ahhh, the black bass.  This was the highlight of my night....my week...and maybe my first month of school.  With the bass we made Poisson en Papillote...that's Fish in Parchment, and it was absolutely, completely delicious (nearly halfway through school, this still remains one of my favorites)!  The bass fillets sit on a bed of tomato fondue and mushrooms duxelles, and are topped with a lightly cooked julienne of carrots, celery and leeks, and a splash of white wine & fish fumet.  The whole mixture is wrapped in parchment and sealed tight, then placed in the oven, where the parchments inflates like a balloon.  The best part of all is cutting through the still-puffed up parchments after removing the package from the oven....the warm, aroma that wafts out is wonderful!  The fish is cooked through a combination of baking in the oven and steaming from the liquids sealed inside the parchments, and the result is absolutely delicious!