[Sca-cooks] Re: Whole Fish was Christianity

[johnna holloway]

I wrote last week:

>> I went up and down a row of tables one evening at a feast, deboning
>> several platters worth, so that people could or would eat the fish
>> course.
>>
>> My feeling was that it would have gone back to the kitchen untouched had
>> someone not done it.
> 
Stefan asked: Would they not touch it? Or would it simply have gotten 
butchered in the
> process?

I don't know that butchered is the right phrase... destroyed with pieces 
of small bones scattered throughout the smaller pieces.

One has to know what to do and some practise helps. I think Jacques 
Pepin's Complete Techniques has pictures. Several of the fish books do. 
So many people never cook whole fish. They do filets and even 
restaurants do filets these days. So when one is confronted with a whole 
fish, numbers of people just sit and stare at it.

There's also something of gender bias here in that many expect men to be 
able to carve and women not to carve. Lots of women are much better than 
men at the activity. Again it's practice.

Johnnae