Of fore shanks, trim loins and jowls

Butchery is as big a part of professional cooking as pots and pans.

We dove into it today, beginning to learn what comes from where for beef and pork. Chef Dan Fluharty got us off to a good start, and then we took knives in hand to trim, bone and cut our own pieces of pork shoulder for roasting on Thursday.

A good bit of what Chef showed us was vaguely familiar to me, going back many years to my gofer work in my uncles' meat market in Tucson. The closest I got to breaking down any large pieces of meat was breaking down and cleaning the band saws and scraping the butcher blocks.

So we're practically at square one. Learning the psrts and the cuts from them will come in time. Meanwhile, we're getting ready for roast pork.

Oh, and fish, specificaly rock cod. Chef demonstrated the fillet, and then each of us was issued
got a whole rock cod to scale, skin and fillet, also for cooking on Thursday.

Tune in then for more details on the two plates we will have to prep, cook and assemble for grading.