My hands
There's a certain romanticism in blue collar work ... I think it stems from the fact that 1) you're actually doing something, and 2) at the end of the day, you've done something tangible, something that you can be proud of. And one of the proofs of this kind of work is a blue collar worker's hands.
My hands are getting more and more messed up every day. I'm usually pretty happy when I can go a week without getting a new burn or cut on my hands. I've already got so many scars, cuts, nicks and burns that it's hard to keep track of what came form where. A burn on my left wrist from making stock. A burn on my left middle finger from a hot pot. Nicks on the sides of my thumbs from hotel pans. A almost healed fingertip, sliced off from a very sharp veggie slicer. Small bumps everywhere on my hands due to dermatitis ... I'm not keeping my hands moisturized enough, causing irritation ... so now I moisturize three times a day. And the biggest callus on my body is right above the joint between my right index finger and my hand. It's where the pressure of your knife is ... work it enough, you get a blister. Keep working it, you get a callus.
The skin right underneath my nails and my cuticles are stained from basalmic vinegar dressing, but there's not much under my nails to be stained. I am constantly trimming my nails as far back as they can go. The condition of my fingers is absolutely horrible. Any manicurist would be shocked ... and personally, I'd rather get a massage (you'd be amazed how much tension I carry in my forearms).
I don't mind that I'm getting injured. It's part of the job. About the only time that I do mind it is when I'm working with seafood (lots of bacteria in it, which finds its way into your injuries and irritates them) and when I'm working with acids (citrus juice tends to really sting).
But pain is something you just don't think about. You maybe shout, bitch, but you always keep your wits. You keep on holding the pot that's burning your hand and put it down gently. You take your sliced finger, put down your knife calmly, and then walk over to the first aid station. Put on a bandaid, a finger cot (think finger-sized condom), and keep on working, checking every so often to make sure it's not full of blood.
It's funny, sometimes I find myself sitting somewhere and just looking at my hands, admiring how fucked up they are. I'm reminded of dating a gal who, as a hint to tell me that my hands were too ... ahem ... rough, gave me a bottle of hand cream to help with the situation. Glad I'm not dating her now.
Stage ... or I'm a whore
Okay, so first of all, you pronounce it the French way, with an "ahh" sound. St-ah-ge.
What is it? As I've posted before, a stage is something where you're basically doing an unpaid internship. It's basically an opportunity to see another kitchen and how it works and to learn. A few weeks ago I basically walked into one of the best restaurants in town (from a foodie perspective, at least) and asked if I could stage there on my days off. The chef agreed and yesterday I worked the garde mange station.
For those not in the know, a garde mange is someone who serves the cold apps and salads, basically using the leftovers in the kitchen to make some of their meals, making sure that there is no waste. That, of course, is the textbook application of garde mange, but in reality, things aren't as recycled as much in most restaurants nowadays than they used to be.
It was nice to be in a different kitchen, seeing how things were run. In this case, my stage had a very small kitchen, in reality, not much larger than my apartment living room, and 7 people were working there. Surprisingly enough, it worked well. Only one person was working on the saute station, the chef expedited and handled desserts, one person handled plating of the hot dishes, one person was doing prep, one was washing dishes, and two of us were on garde mange.
So what did I notice?
1) Cool ingredients. I was picking arugula off of the stem, saving the leaves for salad and using the flowers for a special dish. The flowers were incredibly sweet, filled with nectar, yet they still had the peppery bite of the arugula. Not to mention the fact that I was picking the arugula on the back porch enjoying the warm spring sun.
2) The way ordering is done. Only the expediter has the tickets in hand. He calls out the tickets, the station acknowledges, and you keep a mental checklist of what's going on until you bring them back out. It might seem daunting, but it forces you to keep mentally sharp.
3) The way people work. These people work extremely clean, they are focused. There is no waste and they are fastidious about how they work. Why? Because there is no night porter to take care of the cleanup. You do it.
4) Beautiful plates with simple, clean, delish food. Thinks like tartare, beef tongue, and other classic ingredients are presented simply and cleanly.
5) Family meal rocked.
6) The GM brings you a stiff drink after the shifts are over. A small thing, but not to be overlooked. After all, mice go for cheese at the end of the maze. But more importantly, it's a small, but meaningful way of saying "thank you" at the end of the night.
My heart was totally invested in being there and I was surprised at how well I did. Of course, I was taking notes as things went along, but a salad is a salad is a salad. All that mattered was remembering the ingredients that go into it. Everything else was on autopilot, and in some cases the plating was a lot easier because of the types of ingredients they were using for their salads. I was making some tall, beautiful salads :D
I've been asked to come back next week. The phrase, "We'll let you know when it gets to the point when we need you to be there to work," i.e. we want to train you to work our line.
Kickass. I'll be there.
Mario Batali is coming to town
I'm so frickin' excited ... one of the new Iron Chefs is going to be coming to town to promote his new book,
Molto Italiano. He's doing a signing with a tasting at his father's cured meat shop, Salumi, a place that I've been meaning to check out in town. Time to kill two birds with one stone.
You know, I would like to hang out with Mario ... I've got an idea on how to do that, but in order to do that, I'll need to stop by Salumi ... looks like I'll be heading there tomorrow instead :)
Honestly, I've never purchased any of his cookbooks before, but I've always been a fan of his, watching him on TV and visiting Babbo in NYC. On TV he always came across as enthusiastic, genuinely interested in educating people about food. At Babbo, it was amazing to see how well he had setup his restaurant and how well it was run, even though he wasn't there. And he had hearty, traditional dishes that foodies would love ... pig's foot milanese, lamb's brain ravioli. Sure I'm classically French trained, but I'll appreciate any cuisine that takes offal to that level.
You do what has to be done
Today was a hell of a day.
Last night there were a couple of huge banquets. The kitchen and the prep kitchen were left as utter messes because some of the banquet staff didn't finish cleaning them. To top it off, the dishwashing machine was broken. So, when I came downstairs after getting my prep list done, first order of business was instead helping the dishwasher get the dishes done.
I had to do them in the two sink in the prep kitchen. I did a good number of dishes by hand, making the sink pretty dirty, but all in all, the dishwasher was having a much better day with my help. So I delivered the dishes for him upstairs as he finished off the last load, then I came back down to empty the sink.
Here's where things get worse.
In professional kitchens, the drains for the sink, for various health code reasons, empty into a drain in the floor. There is a trap in the floor designed to catch food particulates before they clog up the drain. Well guess what. There was so much food in the dishwater that the drain clogged, flooding the prep kitchen. Another mess to clean up.
And here I was, an hour and a half into my shift with a wet floor and no prep to show for it. Time to get a shop vac from maintenance and slop up all of the dishwater. After vac-ing and mopping, finally, I was going to be able to start my prep.
But no. Breakfast cook calls downstairs. He's getting slammed. I go up and help him out as much as I can, until he's back out of the weeds. That done, I go back down, slam out my prep as fast as possible, and start loading up my mise en place on the dumbwaiter. And looking around, I see that I only have two hamburgers. I'm working grill, there are no deliveries until tomorrow morning, and I need burgers (and so does the night cook). I go upstairs and talk it over with the other cook and the manager on duty. No purveyor can deliver the food on time, so someone has to run up to Pike Place Market to grab some ground beef.
That's me.
It's my little marathon to see how fast I can get up there and back in time for service. When I finally get up there, winded from running, I see that the usual meat purveyor is CLOSED. After all it is a Sunday (to which I think, hey, it's Wednesday for me). So I run all over the market trying to find another purveyor. I finally find one, get 10 lbs of ground beef, and then run back to the restaurant, handing the meat to the dishwasher to have him make hamburgesa for service.
I get upstairs, panting at my station, and slam down a Red Bull from the reach-in to jumpstart service.
It's funny because service is supposed to be your busiest time ... in the case of today, it was my chance to relax, work on some other projects in the meantime while waiting for other orders to come in, and to just joke around with the staff that was coming in and out.
Some people would just have looked at today, and given up (I don't wash dishes, just 86 the burgers, I'm not cleaning up after the banquet crew - they need to do their own work, etc). Oddly enough, I was having a very fun day ... laughing my ass off at having to do the dishes, timing myself in getting my ass up to the market and humping it back, and actually relaxing a bit when I would have four tickets in the window ... but it all goes to show that, in a job like this, you do what has to be done and do it with a smile, otherwise you're going to be lamenting the unfairness of it all and are going to be wondering why you hate your life so much.
There is no job below you in the kitchen. Even if that means doing the dishes at 8 in the morning when you're a line cook. The best you can do is look at the normal dishwasher, give a wry grin, say
pinche mierda trabajo and share a laugh.
Why you work clean ...
There are many reasons that you work clean ... to me, cleanliness reflects your state of mind ... what's on your cutting board represents what's going on in your head. When things get dirty, and you don't clean up, you start to get behind, start to panic. A small mess becomes a larger mess and it slowly starts to contaminate everything you touch. It becomes impossible to do things right.
And that's a good reason for working clean. I buy into the principle and I make sure to work clean, keeping my mind at ease, focused, and making sure that I'm not cross contaminating when I work. You don't throw stuff on the floor, you sweep it into your hand and throw it away. You minimize the number of bowls you use. It's more efficient and less messy.
But there's a more important reason to work clean.
In my current kitchen, the night porter, the guy who cleans the floors, who empties the grease traps, who washes the floor mats, comes in every night from 10 PM to 1 AM, seven days a week to clean. Now that's not so bad unless you consider the fact that the night porter is also the same guy who does the dishes 5 days a week, working from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM. He busts his ass working those 11 hour split shifts, in addition to coming in on his days off to clean out the kitchen.
He's a great guy, hard working, with a large family back in Mexico, and I don't want to make his life any more difficult than it already is. Every bit of mess that I leave behind, he has to clean up.
My thoughtlessness results in him wasting a small part of his life.
And that applies to anything you do. If I throw away some unused vegetables, I'm wasting part of someone's life. Someone spent their time and energy growing and harvesting those vegetables. Most people wouldn't even give a second thought to wasting a bit of vegetable, but when you start thinking about it, everything in the kitchen is sacred.
Burn a piece of meat? Do you even think about the fact that an animal died to provide that meat for you? I guarantee if you had to kill that animal yourself, to understand on a visceral level that to get that piece of meat on the table, you have to take a life, you'd have a greater respect for your product and be damned sure not to waste it.
It's a sin to waste anything in a kitchen. That's why you work clean. That's why you work smart. That's why you don't waste a bit of anything.
Limoncello
Right now in my cabinet I am currently making some of the best damned homemade limoncello that any of you will ever get to taste. Of course, it's going to take about three months (at least) before anyone's going to be able to taste it, but hey, no biggie. I'm patitent and anything good is worth its time (simmered stock as opposed to boiled stock, a low temp cooked barbecue as opposed to a fiery, chargrilled one).
And why is my limoncello better than your homemade limoncello?
I do have my secrets. Sure, I'm using organic lemons ... why wouldn't I? The lack of pesticides is a no brainer when I'm using the skin to infuse the booze. No, I'm not using Meyer lemons ... although nice and mellow, they don't have the lemony bite that I like that makes limoncello such a lovely sweet and sour affair.
It's not the booze. Trust me. I went out and made sure to pick the cheapest booze I could possibly find ... quality is not what I was looking for. If I could have gotten my hand on simple pure alcohol, I would have used it (and trust me, I looked ... they don't sell it in Washington state ... I even considered my knowledge of basic chem lab and eventually dismissed the idea of making my own still to distill vodka into pure alcohol ... just would take too much time and money and there are better ways to do things, as I discovered).
And water hasn't even entered the equation yet ... and then, it will be simple, plain filtered water ... and, well, when I make the simple syrup, sugar is sugar.
As in any real display of cooking, it's not in the ingredients. Anyone can do something nice with the best ingredients ... it's all in the technique. And I have a few tricks up my sleeve that are going to make this limoncello magical, without any bitterness and a smooth, clean, crisp finish that any boozehound will absolutely love.
I think I'll end up bottling half of it and giving it away as Christmas gifts (if you get one, it'll be better in a nice warm spring evening ... trust me, aging will work even more magic).
Oh, and yes, in case you're wondering, in the spirit of the subject matter, I am drunk posting ... after all, it's Friday. Well, for me at least.
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 ...
Diversity in a Seattle kitchen
The one thing that truly stood out to me when I was searching for a job here in Seattle was how diverse the kitchens are. Usually you expect a kitchen to be dominated by white males with some latinos doing minor prep work. Although latinos are seemingly a universal feature in all kitchens, Seattle is very distinctly not the bastion of the typical white male.
The diversity mostly shows up in the amount of women in the kitchen. It seems like every place I visited there was at least one, if not more, female cooks in the kitchen. And the cursory survey couldn't let me know how many gay people are in the kitchen, but I'd say quite alot. Right now, there's one gay man where I work in a kitchen with 6 line cooks. That's pretty awesome.
And to be honest, in the end all of this diversity really doesn't matter. All that matters is, when the time comes, can you get your plates into the window, on time, as ordered and looking fabulous?
Gay, female, latino, black, asian, whatever. Just bring it.
You want some TMI?
No matter how well ventilated a kitchen is, it's always going to be a hot, humid environment. And that causes personal issues for anyone that spends time behind the line. How so? Well, let's think. What grows in hot, humid environments?
How about mold, fungus and yeast?
That's right. Besides trying to hold down dozens of tickets running at once, cooking your ass off, you've also got the ever looming specter of jock itch. It's not a pretty thing (or a pleasant thing) ... and besides, who wants to explain the smell to a potential hookup? Or have them wander across medication for a yeast infection when they rummage through your medicine cabinet (I don't trust anyone to do not do this)? Yeah, fun.
In some places, cooks deal with this by keeping corn starch in their reach in ... any time they feel like they need a bit of cool relief, they reach into the low boy, grab a bit of cold corn starch, and, as the fuzzy ewok would say, "Bam!" (Note: I do not have cornstarch in my reach in)
In reality, prevention is the best medicine. That means no briefs or boxer-briefs. Instead, you've got two options for undergarments: boxers or none at all.
Me? I go commando. Saves me the trouble of having to do a load of underwear in the wash.
