The Class With the Quiz and the Loins

Interesting Fact: Meat browns when cooked because 1% of the composition is carbohydrates that carmelizes when heated.

Class on Thursday began with our first quiz. 15 questions on sanitation in the kitchen and 10 herbs we had to identify. Does anyone else think that marjoram and oregano taste very similar to each other? I'll let you know tomorrow if I got them right or not. After we put our pencils down we began what the school likes to refer to as "Beef Fabrication." We took notes on yield grades, how to age meat (dry aging which takes 3 weeks, fast aging which is done in 6-8 days, and wet aging by placing in a cryovac. We looked at a diagram of a cow and talked about how its slaughtered in Quarters, what parts come from those quarters and what meats come from where. Who knew that a filet mignon and a chateaubriand were almost exactly the same thing and that a delmonico and a rib-eye were the same thing. We then learned the proper cooking times for meat (and the French names for each):

Rare (au bleu) - 140 degrees
Medium Rare (saignuat) - 145 degrees
Medium (a point) - 150 degrees
Well Done (bleu cuit) - 165 degrees

After the lecture was finished we paired up and each got our own full tenderloin of beef to fabricate steaks out of. In order to properly cut filets, tournedos and the chateaubriand from the tenderloin, you must first remove the membrane, cut off the silver skin (really tough elastin on the topside of the loin) and cut away a whole lot of fat. Then the chain, which is tough sinewy meat needs to be removed. When slicing a steak from the loin, the knife should go through forward on an angle and then back towards your body, cutting through the whole piece of meat in one forward/back slice. This is difficult to do. After we cut our filets, we tied them and weighed them. We then moved on to the sirloin, which is a huge chunk o' meat, weighing in at approximately 22 lbs. We were now three to a side of meat, and my group had a little trouble getting the side out of the cryovac, so blood went everywhere. Sam the butcher would not have approved of our technique. From the sirloin, you have to again trim away the membrane and get rid of the backstrap which, besides hiding under about 3 inches of pure fat, is exactly like the silver skin, and very difficult to remove. Because the sirloin is such a huge piece of meat, chef suggests not using a chefs/french knife to cut it but instead a scimitar. This blade is no joke. We cut our steaks, weighed them and put them aside.

As we were working on making even steaks out of the loins, Chef had added salt pepper and a little oil to the filets we had made earlier and grilled them up. We had a salad brought up and after we all did our chores (we're all broken up into groups and have different cleaning tasks - this week I'm on floors and side-towels) we sat down and ate together. Not a bad way to spend four hours if you ask me.

Tonight we have our introduction to stocks, and we "fabricate" veal. I wonder if we're going to make sweetbreads.