She Teaches Me To Cut Meat

I have watched her make food all the time, all my life, after coming home from school.

Taking her small brown hands and mix flour, water, butter, baking powder, and salt together to make Roti. Oil Roti is my favorite! It must be mixed with butter and ghee in corn oil... I think. Having a kitchen tissue drenched in the oily mixture to smear and smooth the oil onto the roti that has been cut up, rolled up, rolled out, and laid out to cook on a flat pan. I would prattle in her ear about school as a child and argue bitterly about things in life I thought I knew better, what a hotheaded fool I was! 

What I treasure the most is the unique knowledge of spices she has had for years and how to blend them together to make Masala, which I only remember seeing once. Five enormous silver bowls with spices in each one of them. The first bowl held small black spices... 

Years later, I grabbed her knife coming into her kitchen determined not to be completely useless as a lady, she lets me peel the Butternut Squash, I was not that bad. At all. Then I learned to cut the vegetable eggplant her way. I nearly perfected it! Then she showed me how to cut onions, tomatoes, and scallions. I seem to like them cut chunky but she prefers them to be a bit tinier. 

She is one of the best cooks in our family because she knows the spaces in between the kitchen to which spice to which kind of meat or fish-based on intention to the kind of vegetable is needed. A kitchen witch in her own right, I hope to learn from her, to inherit her wisdom!  

Scaling fish seems to be an art in itself as well. Not a lot of people can do it or even do it right, she had explained. First, buying a fish that has a deep red color underneath its gills says it's fresh, and make sure their scales are bright and shiny when you buy them in a fish part of the grocery store.

Then, she takes the chopper and cuts the fish in half and sometimes, uses a tiny knife to help do that job although I am still unclear as to why the tiny knife makes it easier. Now, it looks easier to chop because watching her use the chopper and cut the tail and head from its body reminds me of her cutting a whole roasted chicken.   

Now here comes the really interesting part, washing and scaling the fish. She put it in a large sliver with water and some flour to take out both the slime and the fishy smell of the fish itself. She takes a pair of scissors and cuts the fins off, then she takes her knife and it seems to me, she holds the knife at an angle and drags it down, way a woman would shave her legs but obviously, a lot quicker.

According to her, scaling fish hurts because its scales are sharp and can cut your hands a bit- ouch! The tail is the easiest part of the fish to scale but the head is a bit more complicated because its head has scales that are hidden and the gills got to be taken out and it's terrible to do so because it is not easy to grab onto to pull out and it must be held under a running facet so the inedible parts can be taken out and fish can be cleaned. 

The middle part of the fish- yes- the stomach- is a bit confusing to me. She takes the knife and takes out the scales on the outside as usual but on the inside, there is some type of thin tissue that seems to separate the middle part from the eggs if the fish is female.

She cuts it open and takes out again all the things in the fish that can not be eaten and then she washes all the pieces in the mixture of water and flour. She drains the water out and puts fresh water back in the large silver bowl and washes the pieces of fish again. She tells me that I can wear plastic gloves to scale fish if I wanted to try.

The skill I really want to master is cutting a whole roasted chicken. No encouragement was given because this skill needed arm strength and precision because the impact of the pressure of the knife hitting the bone that is attached to the meat is painful to the body: the shoulders, the neck, and back were not considered award-worthy.

It just seems so primitive when she knows which parts of the chicken, duck, goat, or lamb are delicious or useless. I still want to learn how to cut chicken so when I volunteer to cut the carrots, I imagine cutting the meat.