Boiled and Burned

Torture 101

If I ever get recruited to be in the CIA or Al Qaeda I have a leg up. Yesterday and today was all about how to torture a chicken.

Yesterday the assignment was to poach a chicken. Sounds nice doesn’t it? Poaching sounds gentle, like warm water heating up slowly until it’s too late and you are cooked. But no. The poaching of the chicken began with, of course, the entire chicken, looking still surprised that he was dead, complete with head, legs, feet and entrails. The lesson began with how to prepare this unfortunate soul for his ultimate demise-which turned out to be mine as well.

We began with holding up the poor chicken by his neck and turning a flame torch on him to flambé the skin and burn off any remaining feathers. After, we dipped his feet in boiling water till he promised to give up everyone he knew and then peeled the scales off his legs. He was then turned over and a deep slit was cut at his achilles so the legs would fold up nicely for the trussing. Finally, a long cut from his spine to his head was executed so we could pull out his esophagus and digestive tract. For the final coup de grace he was beheaded and his internal organs removed. Sounds like torture right?

When these humiliations were complete he was tied up and put in a pot of water to boil. Basically, we made boiled chicken. They can call it poaching all they want but that guy was boiled—for 50 minutes.

There were some sides to be prepared to accompany his final appearance— the usual carrots, celery and leeks and he was placed upon a bed of rice with a nice sauce but it was not the eternal resting place I am sure he imagined.

This may not sound all that difficult but if you have never taken a whole chicken with all its parts and done all of this you would find it time consuming and strange. I cook whole chickens all the time but they never have the head nor the legs still attached. And that is because you can’t eat them. Duh. It was hard. Not gonna lie.

At the end Chef was quite infuriated with us as it had taken more than the allotted time and he (Chef) was boiling. He gave us a long lecture about how we were not using our time wisely and that we were not really trying and being respectful of the deadline he had given us. I was the first one to complete the exercise and he looked at my chicken and said, “the rice doesn’t look cooked enough”. I was super annoyed. Some of the students had not even had time to prepare the rice and I had done all of the tasks and was the first one finished. He gave me threes on everything and a two for organization and preparation. I do not like him anymore.

Today, we roasted another pour soul with the same prep, complete with boiling his feet, beheading, pulling out the entrails etc. Of course roasted chicken smells a lot better than boiled chicken but I am not sure it matters to the chicken. The side for this chicken was potatoes cut in a half moon and then pared to look like bananas. Whatever. Mine were more like bananas with uneven bites taken out but I was not going to go over the time limit. My grade has not come out yet, but I am now boiling as well and may make my new knife paring skills more widely known. Like when I apply for the CIA.

Poached Chicken

Roast Chicken

The only happiness in the last two days came today when, in another class, the same boiled chicken Chef prepared a seminar on cuts of beef. He spoke French for the presentation and the translator was not able to completely keep up with him. So after a long diatribe on how humane the manner of the French slaughter of animals, he ended with animals in France are killed only when already unconscious. Well, the translator announced deadpan, that animals in France are only killed when already dead. I don’t know why, but that gave me and the man-boy next to me the giggles so bad. It was so seriously spoken and people were taking notes and it just made me cough and sputter into my hand which encouraged my neighbor and by the end we had garnered serious looks of disapproval from Chef and the bad translator. Que será será. I might have been burned by him but I got the last laugh and perhaps a job with the CIA when they realize I have skills.