Just when it seemed like an ordinary day, I walked into the after-school tutoring lab at Le Cordon Bleu. I feel like it should be called the tutoring lab, but it’s actually a super important kitchen classroom. Students are allowed to walk into this room and request help from a real live teacher. This help is free, which means people do not have to beg, whimper, or whine.
I was absent the day my chef instructor instructed our class on exactly how to correctly perform a tourné cut. Properly transforming food into an evenly cut, seven sided tourné is not simple. My tutoring chef instructor made me feel like no potato was the limit, even letting me use his extra special curved knife for cutting. In some ways, this cut is painful. Mental anguish occurs, as well as signs of red finger pressure pain. This is how I feel, so it must be true.
When chef began explaining the cut, all I could think about was the future. What if I forget? What if I can’t hear him because there is a pig at the very same table I’m standing. This pig is distracting, even though paying attention to directions is a top priority. People with pig phobia have no control over pigs controlling all potential concentration. Paying attention to how a tourné is created seemed even more impossible once I realized the pig on the table had none other than… pig nipples.
What is up with that? I mean, I’m not saying this is something one might consider extra terrestrial, but it is a bit strange. I have never looked at a deceased pig, so assuming only Wilbur’s mom would have pig nipples is reasonable. Pig nipples should exist to help piglets receive milk. Does this mean there is a mom pig on the table? Does she need to be with her piglets? Are her piglets somewhere playing in the mud while their mom is on a table at Le Cordon Bleu? How can I focus on tourné knife cutting skills with all of these unanswered pig nipple questions? It’s like a concentration catastrophe. Yes, I took a picture of the pig nipples in question. This picture has since been deleted out of respect for the pig mom’s piglets. It’s a violation of her pig privacy.
Five Minutes Later: People that are afraid to touch the carcass of a pig need to calm down. Those same people should relax while reflecting on the fun times the pig probably had before being placed on a table for stuffing. Times have changed around here. Days spent crying over dead pigs are a part of the past. The time to touch a pig is now. Chef instructors do not have time for wimpy students being afraid to touch pigs.
My tutor chef began rolling the pork belly up into a roll. Without warning, chef invited me to take part in tying the pork belly. There is no way to tie a pig without touching it. At that moment, something inside my head passed the point of being afraid. While not wanting to further violate this particular pig’s privacy, I managed to tie the end without touching the pig’s privates.
After pork belly tying and tourné tutoring, chef handed me a fork with a tiny cut of lamb attached to it. Gulp. I made a deal with myself the day I enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu. I will never say no to food a chef offers to taste. Never. Under no circumstances is this going to happen while on this journey to culinary success.
Since the chef said something about lamb, this meant some kind of baby lamb’s body was on a fork heading toward my face. As the fork became closer and closer, I decided getting dizzy would not be an attractive look during lab. Lamb sounds consumed my head as I began to chew.
Chewing this baby lamb was smooth. It wasn’t at all the way I’d assumed carcass chewing would play out. After swallowing the baby lamb bite, I managed to somehow feel life is still worth living. This day is a turning point in my potential meat-eating life. Maybe my 4th grade teacher showing scary videos of cows didn’t do permanent damage after all. Curtsy.
Well played and nicely tied I might add.
Ten thousand thanks, chef!