Multitasking ... and my greatest fear
Although kitchen help is relatively cheap compared to most salaried jobs, nothing is more valuable in a kitchen than a cook's time. Not only must you work quickly, you must work smart and multitask. When I first posted about this idea in my post on Kitchen Speed I was feeling lost and confused ... a little more time in, and, well, things are starting to fall into place.Today was a good example. We had a banquet where I had to put out 50 molten chocolate cakes with bruleed Swiss meringue in a span of about 20 minutes. Of course, I had been doing prep for a bunch of other stuff (getting my station ready, a pasta salad, a fruit platter, helping another cook get his station ready, making a last minute dash up to Pike's Place Market to grab some lump crab, etc) so I had to get everything out. Now.
Oh, and I didn't have enough meringue.
1st things 1st. Smores go into the oven. That'll take about 5 minutes or so for them to warm up. In the meantime, make the Swiss meringue. That takes 1 lb of sugar and 8 egg whites in a saucier, whisking them constantly over an open flame until the top of the mixture starts to bubble (this is one of those moments that I love working in a real kitchen over school. No bothering with a bain marie and a probe thermometer ... just real cooking). This is done in about two minutes.
Take the Swiss and put it in a kitchenaid mixer to whip up and cool down. Run back to the oven grab the cakes and start plating ... halfway through, realizing that some aren't hot enough and need to go back into the oven. So they go back in and it's back to dabbing meringue on the warm cakes. While I'm doing this, part of me is thinking about the fact that after this, I've got to start on making a huge ass batch of smoothies.
Cakes in the oven are done. Pull them out, plate, brulee the meringue, then cleanup and grab the smoothie stuff. And while I'm doing that, I think about what else needs to get done to finish my station. Not too shabby :D
Through all of this transition, my greatest fear has been that I wouldn't cut it. One of my friends once told me that there are three types of cooks: the mercenaries (the ones that do it for the money), the ones that do it for the love of food, and the ones that do it for the love of food but don't have the chops and just wash out. In the past two months there have been days where I have come home, laid down on my couch and questioned my sanity. I wasn't working fast enough, I wasn't getting it, I was burning stuff (and myself) and I ended up questioning my skill and my self worth. I was absolutely dreading going to sleep because it would mean the beginning of the next day.
After days like today? I'm exhausted, nursing a beer, watching a movie and smiling. I'm getting it ...
2 Comments:
It sounds like learning to dance. There is a point where we forget the separate counts, then the phrases become expressive parcels of time in the music. Now we can fiddle with the smaller divisions of the rhythm, rolling count, whatever. If you can dance, you can cook, it seems...
Yeah, but learning to dance ... well, let's just say I spent a month regularly at night with music going "step-step-triple step" ;)
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