Fish

Sun 10/13/2013
We barely had time to change out of our muddy clothes from the truffle hunt and have our delicious truffle containing breakfast when it was time to get our aprons on for our fish class. Giorgio, the chef, was our instructor and he was tough! First, the octopus needed to go into the pot since it takes a long cooking time to get tender.

Next, we had to debeard and clean mussels and then open them and stuff them with a bread crumb mixture for a mussels gratin.  We also left some of the mussels to just be steamed. Next up was the cleaning of squid. Definitely a task I'd never tried before and will likely avoid in the future despite my new hands on knowledge though it was an interesting exercise. I have a new understanding of squid anatomy!

There were elements of squid preparation that were less than appetizing though the ultimate outcome was a success.

Next up: scaling, cleaning and fileting a dorato, a type of sea bass. These were whole fish that had not been gutted. Again, Giorgio was a tough task master making sure that the inside of the fish was spic and span, no scales were left, the filets were thorough and the pin bones were all tweezed out.

                   

The clams were clean and required no preparation on our part, just a demonstration by Giorgio of the proper way to make spaghetti vongole. And also how to cook scampi.....giant prawn/tiny lobster variety. While he made the spaghetti vongole, Giorgio gave us a glass of wine and the now cooked mussels and scampi so that we wouldn't perish from starvation. And then we were sent to the dining room to sit down for our lunch of fileted dorato and spaghetti vongole along with a squid and octopus salad.

Squid and octopus salad

And that's how fish is cooked in Abruzzo!