Your Least Favorite Prep Task

[Peachcreek]

Peeling or handling raw shrimp. After a few minutes of cleaning they make my hands break out and itch. I don't do that task anymore and haven't in a long time but every now and then I do have to handle them. Funny thing is I'm not allergic to them if I eat them. Maybe the cooking process does something. Who knows.

[Chefanna]

When I worked at Jardinière in SF they made me shove a wooden skewer from the tail to the "brain" while they were alive! This kept the tail really straight. (we could have just tied the tail to a carrot, and gotten the same effect)
I had tears streaming down my face and that was the moment the chef de cuisine nicknamed me "Red Lobster" . YUCK

On the topic of Pomegranates- I learned this from Jacque Pepin- Cut one in half. Hold it cut side down over a big bowl of water, then whack the back of it with a wooden spoon. All the seeds fall into the water, it is so easy.

[Svadhisthana]

I have to agree with the shrimp prep-yuck yuck double yuck. I wear gloves and it's still gross. I'm not a meat/poultry/seafood eater but DH is. Meat and poultry I can handle but seafood-look, smell(when cooking), texture, etc. is yucky.

[Chef David Simpson]

"if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen"

[panini]

Peachcreek, I enjoy the same kind of break out and itch. I also get if from kiwi. I've learned to peel the kiwi with a spoon(no waste) slice asap, this way I only touch it with fingertips. The shrimp, I just have someone else do it. Like you I enjoy eating both.

[Shimmer]

- Peeling shallots. Let's face it, shallots are not the most romantic smell to come home with. I tried wearing gloves and the shallots would jump across the room out of my hands.

- Pitting green olives. They start to smell like vomit after a while.

- Chopping parsley for garnish- depending on how the kitchen manager felt about me for the day determined how long, how finely chopped, and how much parsley would be chopped.



~~Shimmer~~

[chefboy2160]

Cleaning and panning lobsters was one of my worst memories . I used to be a restraunt chef at a hotel casino coffee shop which sold steak and lobster for $ 6.95 a plate . We used to sell 4 to 6 hundred a night on the weekends and an average of 3 hundred a night on the weekdays . We used Main tails 5 to 6 oz each and you talk about some rough hands . I had no prep cook so the job fell to me if I wanted my line to run smoothly and yes I got realy fast at cleaning lobsters . By the way lobster is for dinner tomarrow at my house , come over if you are hungry .

[kuan]

Heh Chefanna, you wouldn't like the task of fishing crabs out of the tank and killing them then

Kuan

[shroomgirl]

Yep killing lobsters with something other than hot water.....live soft shell crabs are funky to work with, I can remember getting a jumbo softy and then reading up on how to prep it.....was wonderful to eat but I was skiddish on handling it.
Cutting hard shelled squash....spaghetti squash is a pain, or trying to peel acorn squash<gave them up for butternuts>
Getting a bad batch of fillo and having to work with broken dry leaves.....nothing like it when your teaching.
Or that one time I made kumquate marmalade.....what a nightmare....so little and sooooo many seeds.
Got it....peeling boiled crawfish they are cooked in Cayenne and there is a definate burn after a while, there are sharp shells and man oh man it takes an outrageous amount of whole to make a small pile of peeled.....Don't get me wrong crawfish boils are a blast and I can consume them all afternoon, but when the party is over and the remainders need to be peeled that's when it becomes not fun.

[monkeymay]

Funny lobster story - my friend was doing Italian Christmas Eve dinner for 100 and lobster was one of the courses. He gave his sous the job of killing and cooking them for presentation at 8:30. At 7 :30 he walked in to find only a third of the lobsters prepped- it seems the sous was a Buddhist and was personally apologizing to each lobster before he killed it, thanking it for it's contribution to the meal! Being the practical and sensitive Neapolitan that he is, my friend suggested a group apology to the lobsters so that they could get the *#@%#* FOOD to the customers - Pronto!!!

[Suzanne]

What a story! Guess I'm just a blood-thirsy heathen -- when I was doing my externship at a fish restaurant, one night we ran out of prepped lobsters. So the tournant and I had to rip those poor (live) buggers apart. Only problem was that we did it in front of the window from the kitchen onto the hallway to the restrooms. Dressed-up ladies were NOT amused!

BTW: a sushi chef in another place where I worked apologized to the lobsters, too. But as a group.

[Matthew357]

Heh, I know a guy, that when he is cooking lobsters at home will hold them over the boiling water and say in a very formal voice, "I find you guilty....of being DELICIOUS!!" and then popping them into the water.

Matt

[RitaFajita]

Removing silver skin is obnoxious.

Matthew357, do you wear contact lenses? When I have mine in, onions don't bother me. But if I am wearing glasses instead, ouch.

RF

[Matthew357]

Yup, I do, maybe that's it.

Matt

[Chefanna]

"I find you guilty....of being DELICIOUS!!"

That made me burst out laughing ( and I was in a bad mood)
thanks so much for that little gem of a phrase!
I don't think I will ever be the same.