First day at fabrication.. I'm the sous chef again.. -.-" Overall I think my group did quite well.. We fabricate the chicken and fishes quite fast, considering its our first day.. I think everybody is fast except me :(
1st thing to do, go to freezer collect chicken. We had a demo on how to truss chicken then truss them ourselves.. Trussing them is easy, the task is completed quickly.. Then I was assigned to make the marinate powder for the chickie.. After marinating, we send 3 to the sugarloaf side and keep the rest.. Then we have another demo on how to cut a supreme cut from the chicken and quarter it..
It definitely looks easier than it seems.. The 1st chicken I fabricate had pules on its feet. So disgusting. Cut the feet, trim nails, cut wings, then make a slit that look like a Y at the back and cut drums and thigh, next is the breast meat.. For me, I think I'm slow because sometimes I can't really find the joint.. And I don't dare to cut fast cause I scare I cut myself or the meat become too ugly -.-" Tomorrow or Wednesday, I'm going to try harder :)
All these cutting took us all the time till lunch time.. We clean up the whole area, send chicken to chiller and bring the fruits (honey drew, watermelon & pineapples) leftovers to lunch :P Lunch is not worth talking about as usual.. Cause its at that same old canteen without any good food. I'm deprived of quality food. Haha.. Missed the pork chop at design!!!
Back from lunch, we had a talk inside the freezer don't know why while waiting for the fishies to arrive.. Then we washed them.. Its kinda scary.. With all the eyes staring at your every move.. I'm talking about fish eyes here by the way.. We washed at least 40 fishes, red mullet and sea bass and salmon.. Then we had a demo on how to portion the salmon..
Removing the pin bones are quite entertaining but can be painful when being poked. They say only have 27 bones but I found more than 29?? Weird.. We have to portion the salmon in pache (straight cut) and tranche (45 degrees cut).. Before that, we have to trim off excess fats and remove the skin.. Both salmon fillets that I handle.. Sad to say.. Its a disaster.. I angled the knife correctly but don't know why halfway through the skin keep breaking.. -.-" I had a hard time removing the skin.. Portioning, the only problem is getting the right weight.. So you have to keep measuring.. But once you get it in the range, you sort of know what you'll get without measuring..
After salmon is done, we move on to seabass.. We had a demo on how to cut using up and around method and another method which I forgot the name.. Anyway, we saw the demo and went to frabricate the fishies.. Its so much easier compared to chicken.. For me anyway.. I did quite fast.. The fish bone poked me, I saw blood on my finger then I thought I was bleeding.. Its only at the end of the day then I realised its actually the fish blood not mine.. -.-" As there's many fishes, we completed the tasks only at around 3.40pm? Oh yes, we also have the opportunity to taste a food made using tortilla dough.. Taste like roti prata! Haha..
Everyday its a new thing to learn.. Things like this you can never get enough of.. However, there's one thing that I really had enough of. The whole day I stinks of fish. No matter how many times I sanitise my hands using the dentol and school detergent, and spraying myself with the dove spray.. I still smell of fish! -.-" And I still have 4 more days to smell like that.. I'm sure I'm not looking forward to that at all..
