A cook’s tale Chapter-1″All Abuzz”
After some half-baked, self-inflicted delusional attempts to escape from the sweltering confines of the professional kitchen, here I am again, back on the butcher’s block after a year in the “real” world. I recently scored a gig at a trendy new jazzy-artsy joint in Boston’s south end. At first glance it seemed to fit my personality, unpretentious, bohemian food blessedly missing ten different garnishes and nary a foam nor molding ring in sight. The people seemed pretty cool, too, the sous chef seemed to be a tough nut, but hey, a woman in a kitchen usually is (not to be sexist, but this is a male-dominated industry), and I reasoned that some of the kindest, most loyal people I’ve known have worn a gruff exterior (damn romantic in me, I guess, sometimes a spade’s a spade). After doing ‘stages at a couple of other Boston venues, I decided that this particular place offered the most opportunity for growth and eventual creative expression. Game on, Baby. Let’s go.
My first day I’m placed in her hands to begin "training". Cut this, chop that, slice these. No problem. I get a little lost in the walk-in because there are five different parsleys with different dates in different states of decomposition, of course in different places… hmmm. Figuring these are probably someone else’s mise, I settle for two bunches of flat leaf, that hasn’t been cleaned yet. I finally locate enough product to fulfill my meager prep list and return to the kitchen, ready to go. I rinse the parsley and set it aside to dry while I rough chop some sage and mint. When I start to pick the parsley I’m informed that there’s some clean in the reach-in and that I don’t have to pick any. OK, cool. This stuff is sopping wet and half broken down already, it probably took me more time sorting through the slimy blobs of leaf to find the good stuff than it would’ve to pick my own. The whole time I can feel her eyes on me, like a nun waiting for the kid in the back to peek at someone else’s paper so she can administer a swift slap with a ruler. I attempt some small talk about the weekend, but the conversation ball only gets passed a couple times before it falls to the floor. I finish off producing a six-pan of herb mix, a nine-pan of parsley and a nine of mint. Slice, slice, slice went the red onion, “Hold on.” I hear, but it’s one of those exaggerated Hoowld on’s with sarcasm drooping around its’ edges like a wet blanket.
“ Oh, crap.” I think, “How do I fxxx up an onion??”
“ Do it like this.” She says, grabbing my knife, "not only is it less damaging to the food, more importantly its faster." and proceeds to slice the onion in a weird backwards motion. “OK.” Dripping with pretentious malice.
“OK.” I agree, trying to keep the cloud of confusion off my face. Did she just call me slow and intone that I had no respect for food, nor knife skills? I think she did!
I try, with little success, to mimic this motion, but my left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing and there are Danger!!! alarms going off in my brain warning of impending injury. Ten years with a knife in my hands, my extension now feels very dangerous. To imagine, try walking to the bathroom backwards, no fxxx it, run. Faster! Run, Bxxxh! After struggling through half an onion (I would’ve been done already) I asked for another demonstration, because I’m the new guy and I wanted to get everything right, (fng, runs through my mind) and this was the first time I got the eye roll (yeah, you know the one). "Uh-oh, “ I thought, "that can’t be good." This is only the beginning, I had been there all of an hour, maybe. My next demo comes with more instruction, but an undertone that said “Why the fxxx don’t you know this already?! What the fxxx is your problem!?”
“See. The knife never leaves the board, just move it in a back and forth motion.” I want to hold her hand wrapped around the hilt of my knife, like a novice pool player, but felt this might be inappropriate. So I watch, she produces some paper-thin slivers and some julienne, but I figure we’re shooting for paper-thin. So I go back to it, feeling all thumbs and produce a nine of shaved red onion with my newfound technique, it’s slower for me, but I get the hang of it. My prep list is done, and she has no new assignments for me so I help out a couple of the other guys and round up some backups from the walk-in, starting to get ready for service. Set-up goes without incident or conversation; let the good times roll! The first dish of the night, she burns me. Whoa. Now normally I wouldn’t burn someone unless they were seriously in my way and had been unresponsive to a couple of hip checks, or I really, really didn’t like them. It does happen, you burn yourself, you burn others, accidentally or on purpose it happens. I worked with one chef who was a big fan of what he called “hotfoot” he would take a ladleful of hot liquid and drop it into the offending cook’s clog. That shxx got their axxes moving! I start to open my mouth to protest this unwarranted assault, but decide to pay attention to the dish being prepared instead. I get this one and another two “down” before service goes into full swing. Then, my job is just these couple of dishes, one of which made me cringe every time I served it. A pre-grilled and held for service in oil shrimp app that, while a good dish in concept, after a half-hour or so the flesh becomes mealy. Who wants to eat mealy shrimp? It feels not only contradictory to the “philosophy” of what I had already seen, it’s just fxxxing wrong. Shrimp takes a matter of minutes to dance across the grill! I would rather have a perfect dish in six minutes than this atrocity in four. Throughout the night, it seems I can get nothing right, two components on one round plate and I would somehow manage to fxxx them up, and let’s not talk about sauces…yet. I slink home at the end of the night, wondering what I have been doing my whole life and feeling pretty sub-par myself.
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