Anatomy and Physiology

I have always wanted to take an anatomy class and although I missed out on my opportunity while I was in college, the last week of culinary school has felt like a crash course. The first day of meat fabrication wasn't too bad because we were working with poultry and having an entire chicken or duck on your cutting board makes identifying anatomy easier. Unfortunately, growing up as a vegetarian has resulted in me having incredibly limited knowledge and experience when it comes to working with meat. When we moved on to working with primal cuts of beef, veal, pork, and lamb, I was quickly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of raw meat on my cutting board. It's also a lot more difficult to identify an animals anatomy when you're only given the loin or a Boston Butt (which it turns out, actually comes from a pigs shoulder).

Knowing where on an animal each cut of meat is coming from is important because it determines both the type of flesh and the type of cooking method that would best enhance its texture and flavor. For example, from the loin primal cut of beef you get the short loin, the tenderloin, the round, and the flank. The tenderloin comes from a muscle called psoas major which sits beneath the ribs right next to the backbone. It does almost no work and is probably the most tender piece of meat you can find on a cow. The fact that the tenderloin doesn't do much for the cow means that a cut such as filet mignon, which comes from the small forward end of the tenderloin, has very little flavor. Mario Batali says, "Filet mignon is the Paris Hilton of meats. There's nothing there...everyone wants a piece of it but no one knows why".* In contrast, the flank has more flavor because it is part of the cows abdominal muscles which are used more often. Achieving good texture from a flank steak requires a moist heat cooking method such as braising.

The day we were working with veal was a little scary because Chef Chris was constantly reminding us that if we screwed up we would ruin $180 worth of meat. I learned how to prepare a rack from the foresaddle and then cut some massive veal chops which we will be stuffing with fontina cheese and porcini mushrooms in a later lesson.

All of the trimming and bones that we collected from our meat fabrication was used to make stocks. Tomorrow we are straining the last of our stocks and on Thursday we will be using them as we start our unit on sauces.

*Chewing the Fat: Batali and Bourdain on Paris Hilton