Baby Animals are the Tastiest

If you are one of those people who prefer to think that meat is a tidy little item that comes from the grocery store de-boned and wrapped in plastic you may wish to skip the first half of this post.

Yesterday we had a special seminar on butchery.  We got to butcher and de-bone whole lamb.  Now THIS is the fun stuff I was waiting for.

Larger mammals, whether they walk on four legs or two, are pretty similar in bone structure, so butchering a lamb is pretty good practice for any other mammal – pigs, cows, goats, deer, etc. It actually helps to picture human anatomy while you are doing it – well, maybe don’t dwell on that too much.

The only tools you need are a boning knife, a cleaver, a hacksaw, and a trussing needle.   You might also be well advised to strap on a chainmail apron – putting a knife into your femoral artery is a good way to make a terrible mess and bleed to death in about seven minutes.

The Chef, with characteristic humour, began the class saying “Ok, so they are still alive.  We’ll have to kill them.”  Haha.  Very funny.  Slaughtering animals is not on the curriculum.

The Chef demonstrated how to separate the shoulder, saw off the neck, separate the coffre (ribcage structure) from the saddle, and separate the legs.  We were then let loose on a few more carcasses.

I was surprised at how easy it was.  Butchery seems to be about understanding the anatomy/bone structure and learning how not to waste or otherwise destroy perfectly good meat.  Almost every part can be used in some way, right down to the bones for making stocks and sauces.  And lamb is such a tasty meat – nothing at all like mutton, its adult counterpart which I think smells like wet wool mittens drying on a baseboard heater.  If you don’t like lamb, you’ve likely been eating older lamb/mutton.

Today’s demo was by the “other Chef” (I think I’ll just call him Chef 2 for now).  This is the same Chef who supervised our “Travail de L’Entremetier” workshop last week. He, like all the other Chefs, is VERY French.  His English isn’t as fluent as some of the others, but he has a wicked sense of humour.  He even swore a couple of times when he realized that the oven wasn’t on at one point.

The dish for today was Côtelette d’agneau Maintenon, essentially lamb chops with a mushroom, onion, breadcrumb and Sauce Béchamel mixture on top.   In and of itself it’s not very difficult, so to spice it up we had to prepare three sides – Carottes Vichy (Vichy-style carrots), Gratin de Chou-fleurs (Cauliflower gratin) and Pommes Boulangère (an unremarkable potato dish with onions and chicken stock).   And, of course, because it’s the Cordon Bleu, you’ve gotta have a sauce – in this case Sauce Périgueux (lamb bones/Madeira/veal stock/black truffle).

I didn’t find this practical overly difficult.  I did have a minor panic attack when I realized I was confusing the Sauce Soubise for the cauliflower with the sauce to go in with the breadcrumbs.  I realized I’d made them in the wrong order and was about to pour the wrong one over the cauliflower.  My brain completely froze, so I set everything down and washed my hands.  I’ve discovered that this is a very good way to take a few seconds to get my mind back on track and hey, it’s never wrong to give the hands another scrubbing.

Chef 2 seemed quite happy with my efforts.  Like in the workshop, I was a little weirded out by the lack of criticisms.  I even mentioned that I have a tendency to over-reduce and over-salt my sauces and asked if there was any sign of that today.  Nope.  Trés bon travail.  In fact, Chef 2 wrote on my Student Evaluation Journal “Bonne étudiante.  Trés serieuse.”   Not sure how to take the “very serious” part – perhaps it’s Chef-code for “She didn’t smile once during the whole class.”

So as I’m writing this, I’m gnawing on lamb bones.  This was a good dish.  Baby animals are the tastiest.