Culinary School: Week 9

Can I just admit something? This is a safe place, right? I don't really like fish. Maybe it's because I don't live by the ocean and can't get it fresh, maybe it's because of the weird texture, maybe it's because it smells awful. Whatever the reason is it's just not my thing. You can imagine my dismay when I showed up to class on Wednesday and the fishy stench was filling the kitchen. I put on my big girl pants and got my hands dirty (literally). We learned to fillet trout, sole and salmon. For the most part it was as bad as I was anticipating. I went home from class every night smelling like...well fish. I even found scales stuck to my fingers and arms the following days, it was hilarious (but not really). The salmon, in my opinion was definitely the best of all the fish we tried this week. Probably because it is the most familiar to me, I grew up forcing down salmon (haha hi mom :)!)  On a more positive note I cooked salmon en papillote and I didn't hate it! I actually loved it! It was moist and flavorful! The dish is cooked by placing a piece of salmon, lemon slices, a bit of butter and parsley in a piece of parchment paper folded and sealed and cooked (steamed) in the oven for 10 minutes. I had never seen salmon (or any fish for that matter) cooked using that method. It was so simple but so delicious.  In baking this week we had a written midterm, it was not fun. In fact I hated it. I would have rather filleted 20 fish. Unfortunately that wasn't an option. I took the test and won't know what my score is until next week. Question: why is there so much math in cooking? Why? WHY? Anyway enough of the dramatics, after the midterm we made biscotti, lady fingers, butter tea cookies and a few others. The last two weeks working on cookies and quick breads has been really fun. Possibly my favorite part of baking so far. Next week we're onto pies and pate a choux, you could say I'm excited but that might be an understatement. :)