Revenge of the Fish

Fish have a way of getting back at us humans for plucking them from the lovely ocean in which they live. First of all, their gills and fins are still dangerous weapons well after having gone "belly up." Why is it that a tiny little fin can make a tiny, yet sharp little cut on your finger and it hurts worse than, oh, I don't know, breaking a leg or perhaps getting guillotined? It's through those small, painful cuts that fish get revenge, especially when you later have to salt the water you are poaching them in and then squeeze lemon over them, inevitably getting both the salt and the lemon in the miniscule wound. They LOVE it in fish revenge heaven when that happens.

The other thing I have learned is that fish love to make you smell. Today is the first day of "fish week" and, well, I smell like a rotten, old fish. It doesn't really help that the fish we had today was just that - rotten and old. (Please take note of this and NEVER eat fish at a restaurant on Monday - it's usually not very fresh).

I have washed my hands more times than the CDC and Obama mandate you to in order to avoid the Swine Flu emergency. I have showered for 15 minutes in hot water and just for good measure washed my hands again. But to no avail. I should just give up. My husband is essentially living with fish woman and will be doing so for at least the next week.

So, fish, my beret is off to you. You've won at the revenge game, and quite frankly I'm ok with that. It's day one, and I already have battle wounds on my hands and smell horrendous. Could you maybe take pity on me the rest of the week? At least for the sake of my husband and anyone walking within a 3 foot radius of me on the street. Thanks.


They just look like they're out to get you, don't they?



I chose this lovely specimen to take on today.



And here is what was left of him when I was finished.

Sorry, fishy, but I had to take your eyes out so I can use your head in my court bouillon.

Garniture aromatique. Check. Smelly fish head sans eyes. Check. This just needs some white wine, water and seasoning and I will have something in which to poach the fish later.

In the meantime, we made rice pilaf.

Chef demonstrating how the French make hollandaise. Water bath? Double boiler? Puhlease, people, Chef seemed to sigh as he put his egg yolks in a copper pot and right onto the gas fired flat top. We were stunned as you can tell by the expressions of those in the photo. Later we were impressed when he didn't need a cheesecloth or a china cap/strainer because he was that confident that there were no pieces of cooked eggs in his sauce. Wow.

There he goes, just whisking the sauce into submission.

Then comes the bucket of clarified butter.

Which Chef ladles into the sauce. And with a quick hand clap, tells us to "Allez." Time for us to try.

I finish my sauce, not entirely confident that I shouldn't have passed it through a strainer, but confident enough to go ahead and plate and leave it up to the food gods. Good thing they were easy on me today.

The first fish, poached in the court bouillon looks like this. What's sad is that it is supposed to look like that. Now, don't everyone email me for the recipe of this one all at one time.

Moving on the the Skate.

Watch where you grab the Skate. It's a spiky little fellow.

And a slimy one at that!

After being poached, it comes out looking like this. Not too bad looking once the top layer is lightly scraped off.

However, when you take it off the wing/bone, it looks like this, which is just wrong. I mean, really. This looks like something you would find at a halloween haunted house party.

At least the day wasn't a complete bust. I took the ridiculous amount of rice pilaf we made at school and turned it into as good a version of beef fried rice as I could muster in my "little kitchen that could" for dinner tonight for B. He at least deserves a good meal if I'm going to be smelling like this all week!