Week 22: The Slimiest Fish Known to Man

Nature is beautiful but twisted.

Mar 02, 2024

I think Mother Nature was devastatingly bored when she sketched out the monkfish. I firmly believe she pushed her first draft across the finish line with no outside input, no QA, no final approval. If anyone else had weighed in, I can only hope some red flags would have been identified. She paired a face taken directly from your average under-the-bed monster with the body of an overgrown salamander and gave it the texture of a slug lathered in melted butter. She created a total freak, in other words.

This could be a rather niche reference, but does anyone remember from when they were a kid those things (toys? sections? puzzles?) at playgrounds where you could create different animals by spinning those cylindrical pieces? Like you’d end up with the head of a dog, the body of a cow, and the backside of a dragon or something. Is this ringing bells for folks? Anyway, the monkfish looks like it was created on one of those. Close your eyes and spin away, in other words.

Its spine is also its body’s only bone. Floppy slime ball freakazoid 9000 if you ask me.

Here’s what one looks like:

Why! Does this exist! And why is its freak mouth agape like that! Unfortunately, I do think this fish does a rather spot-on impression of me enjoying a weekend afternoon on the couch. This was a humbling realization to arrive at.

Anyway, my rant about this sea monster aside, the fact of the matter is I was asked to fillet and clean a couple of these bad boys in Caterina this week. I have never known such a test of my mettle.

Maybe it’s some sort of post mortem defense mechanism, but these slippery suckers were Impossible to get a grip on. I was impressed that by the time I’d finished fabricating each filet, none had shot across the kitchen at an ungodly speed as I was trying with all my might to pin them down and trim away the skin. As chef was demo-ing the fabrication for me, he took particular pleasure in slam-dunking the sloppy skin into a bowl for maximum squelch. Hilarious decision.

But after battling through so much gloop and glub, buried beneath was a delightful, springy, pristine white filet. Something oddly satisfying about something delicious and prized being tucked under so much unpleasantness. Although, a la oyster discovery, I question the first person to give such a striking beast a taste. Brave? Certainly. Troubled? Undoubtedly.

On a completely separate note, I think one of the areas where I feel the most improvement this semester is in station organization. In the fall, as I prepared for basically every task, it felt like I always forgot one or two containers and would end up running back and forth between my station and the pot room, chaos abounding. Or I would begin a task with seemingly everything I need and slowly realize the containers I’d chosen were far too big or embarrassingly small – cue trip back to the pot room. As I ran through this frustrating cycle, containers, dishes, pots, and pans would slowly accumulate on my station. And the more clutter, the worse a day you end up having.

I was never a catastrophically messy station owner, but the miscues in equipment management always disrupted my rhythm which would compound into more and more frantic energy. Working in Caterina every morning has helped me become far more efficient in my space and has honed my instinct for planning out tasks. Now, I find myself making just one trip to the pot room, one trip to the pantry, one trip to the walk-in, and I’m ready to go for whatever’s on my agenda. Feels good! Tickles a very specific part of my brain to have exactly everything I need and nothing more and to finish a task cleanly from start to finish. What a dream to have found a profession where I get to organize and clean and get everything ~just so~ every day. Such satisfying work. I’ll try and remember to take a couple pictures of my station setup. I may forget! Forgive me.

Returning to our regularly scheduled programming (slime), we made sausage and fabricated chickens in meat ID this week:

Sound up for slippery sausage sounds and my emphatic approval.

Sausage day was a blast. We trimmed, seasoned, ground, and filled close to 200 sausages that day, and the process was as hilarious as you would expect. I challenge anyone to watch meat shoot out of a tube into its own little translucent jacket and not chuckle. It can’t be done! There’s nothing you can do!

Also, once the sausage is filled, you’re left with this hypnotic coil that schloops and slides across the wet table. It’s like meat air hockey.

Stare into the eye of Italian sausage for too long and the room will begin to spin while ‘O Sole Mio’ plays softly in the background.

To complement the hilarity of sausage stuffing, once chef had the meat ground, he portioned out the biggest sausage patty I’ve ever seen in all my days to cook up for us to taste. He pressed it all the way to the rim of a large saucepan. It came out the size of your average pizza. It was a stunning creation.

After sausage day, we fabricated some chickens. We’d had some practice with chickens in our previous classes, so as a fun challenge chef timed our skills. We each had three chickens, two of which were practice. On the third, chef took note of when we began breaking the chicken down and started the clock. The final chicken would be the one we’d receive a grade for.

For each chicken, we needed to remove the wishbone, cut away the wings and “French”, or clean off, the remaining bone, remove the breasts skin-on, remove both legs, one kept whole, one boned out, and trim one wing flat into a drumette.

Here is my finished chicken! Please scroll on by if meaty meat ain’t for you:

Some major serial killer vibes happening here if taken out of context. An argument could be made those vibes are preserved in context as well, but that’s neither here nor there.

In all, I finished my chicken in 17 minutes. Not too shabby but definitely room for improvement. I was hampered by how slick my chickadee was (the slime theme continues). Also, my wishbone was shattered upon arrival, so digging around for that bad boy certainly took some time. Super pleased with my yield though! Left almost no breast or leg meat on the carcass. Max utilization babe!

A couple more snapshots from the week: