Free Beaten, Seared, and Sauced by Jonathan Dixon Page B

station. We were to remove the bone.
    We wanted long, even cuts—as few as possible—using the tip of the knife. If our cuts were efficient, the membrane holding the meat to the bone could be easily scraped away. Adam, who as group leader was stationed up at the instructor’s table, got the bone out pretty quickly. Others did not. Josh was stationed to my left and I watched him for a few moments as he hacked and stabbed at the shank. A young woman named Alyssa who stood off to my right had even less finesse. I’d like to say I was right on with my own cutting, but I wasn’t. In my fantasy, the bone popped out with a single stroke of the knife. I clung to this for a few seconds until I had to physically start cutting. I found the shallowest spot on the meat, where the bone was nearest to the surface, went in with my boning knife, and cut in a sharp curve—not even close to straight—without meaning to. I tried again and then again, but the blade went where it wanted. I put the knife down and looked at Adam. He glanced up at me and I shrugged. He came over.
    “Oh, dude—” He ran his finger down the cut. “So you got your revenge on this thing, huh? It must have done something pretty awful to deserve this. Here …” He took my knife and started a cut. “Like this … now, you go ahead.”
    I picked the knife up and was about to continue. Sebald was suddenly at my elbow. “You’re doing this wrong. That’s not how I showed you to hold a knife. Where did I say to put your fingers? Yes, there, that’s right. Now, long and even, long and even. Go ahead. No, no—that’s not right. No, stop, stop. Now we can’t serve this meat. If you were the owner of a restaurant, would you serve this? No, you wouldn’t. We’re wasting money. Again. Try again. Okay, no. Here,give me your knife. I don’t want the blade, I want the handle.
Danke
. Like this—” Two or three strokes and the bone sat beside the meat, almost entirely clean. I looked back up front and the bin was empty.
    “Is there another one I can do?”
    Sebald shook his head. “One per student. On another day, perhaps, you can try again. Clean up here, and I’ll be demoing how to tie a roast in a few minutes.”
    I began to suspect that I was encountering the first of the CIA’s educational flaws. I remembered this much from playing guitar as a kid and from taking martial arts lessons over the years: anything you do with your hands needs to be done over and over and over before you can get it into your DNA. One attempt at deboning a piece of beef was just not sufficient. I did a quick cleanup and started following Sebald and Adam around, just so I could see what others were doing, what they did right, and how Sebald was correcting them.
    I was quiet for the rest of class and for lunch. I was pissed at my hands for not doing what I had told them to do. The beef I’d cut was destined for use in the student kitchens; later on, we’d see the mistakes and gaffes of meat students when their handiwork came to our classes. Some people would get contemptuous over their work, but I never would. I understood.
    Sometimes I drove the scenic route home, which took me past a pair of farms. There were some beautiful steer and sheep with dazzling white coats. I connected the animals grazing on the green slopes along the road home and what I tried to make yield to my knife in class. They deserved better. After I’d see the animals, the drives took on a melancholy tone. At first I thought it was because I was sorry that the animals had died. But then I realized I was sorry because everything had to.
    O NE DAY , I DEBONED a leg of lamb, successfully, and was trussing it with butcher’s twine. I’d put my knife down on my cutting board with the blade facing me. At one point, I felt a sting in my fingers andrealized I’d pulled them along the knife’s edge. Blood was seeping down, over my knuckles and dripping on the table.
    “Ohhhh, the lamb fights back,” Adam