Making the Chef

You know it's going to be a bad day ...

You know it's going to be a bad day when you walk into the kitchen and see half cooked eggwhite all over the side of the walkin door, the heatlamp and over the mise on the grill station.

That was my 4th of July morning, after I had:

1) Worked all day Sunday
2) Drove right after work down to Portland for the blues festival
3) Went to a blues party in Portland
4) Left the party at 5 in the morning to get back to work in Seattle

Ugh.

The exec, he's a laid back guy, fun to be around, but when people keep on ordering shit with EGG WHITES ONLY modifiers and you're out of a whole lotta shit that you need because the holiday weekend has fucked you, you're going to have some issues.

To add insult to injury, we did 120 covers, with 27 of them being on ONE ticket! It's supposed to be a laid back holiday weekend, based on what's happened in the past. Well, not today.

That big top ticket was about, I shit you not, a yard long.

Time to be really pissy at the servers since we told them to ring in the table as they got the orders. Because of that ticket we were in the weeds for the next hour and a half ... because they were also ringing in orders for other tables.

Thank god I had my laptop and was playing some upbeat music or I would have just collapsed.

To make up for shitty Monday, on Tuesday I did get to play with a lot of things that made me happy. First, our produce order came in and we had watermelons! I had been dreaming about watermelon sorbet for the past few weeks since melon season had started and this made me happy like you wouldn't believe. Then to add to that, I had been making duck confit this past week. Cured it on Friday, cooked it on Sunday, and made one of my favorite dishes on Tuesday - cassoulet.

For those of you not in the know, cassoulet is a wonderful rustic french dish, a white bean casserole with onion, bacon, sausage, thyme and, or course, duck confit (the traditional garnish). We didn't sell any of it as a special, but I didn't care. I took two servings of it home with me ... I had it for dinner on Wednesday and Thursday nights. About the only thing better than that is, well, I don't really know. Cassoulet, when properly done, is one of those perfect down home dishes that is just lovely.

I take a good cassoulet over bad sex any day (fie to those who would say that even bad sex is good sex ... they really haven't had bad sex then). Hell, depending on the gal, I might even take a good cassoulet over good sex.

At least I don't have to cuddle with the cassoulet.

posted by LindyChef @ 9:34 PM