02.04.07

Fire in the Kitchen!

Posted in The Story, Greatest Hits at 3:26 am by Chef Matt

I am as guilty as anyone else in the kitchen of letting things go on cooking until they are burned. Even Vic, the chef at Cafe Tirolo (my first chef job), would frequently become sidetracked with various tasks in the kitchen to the point where we would all suddenly notice heavy smoke coming from one of his pans where there once was a happy sauté of garlic and onions working away. And he had over 50 years of experience in the kitchen - so it can happen to anybody. But today’s debacle in the kitchen far exceeded anything I had ever imagined was even possible. I actually managed to burn… well, let me go into the story more before I reveal what I was able to “accomplish” today.

“I just HAVE to get Matt’s recipe for this…”

The problem of burning things happens to me frequently. In the job of setting up for my shifts, I often have a lot of pots working their magic, and I am carefully trying to keep track of them all so as to not ruin anything in the process. The problem arises when something unexpected comes along to get in the way of my carefully laid-out plans for making dinner. (No, they are not carefully laid-out - it is just me trying to make sure I can cook as many things at once as possible…) The fact that something ends up burning as a result of my being distracted happens pretty much all the time, as I am an easily distractible pers… oh! I need a beer!

OK, back now. So as I was saying, distractions happen all the time. In today’s particular instance, I arrived early to help set up for some catering events that we had going out the door today. With only two events to set up for, it was hardly a “pedal to the metal” situation, but all the same, I had several plates to work on at once. I had my mystery ingredient on the stove, and was working on setting up a tray of mushroom tartlets while it cooked away.

Suddenly an order slip for a split pear salad appeared where I was chopping away. Normally working on orders during the lunch hour is not my job, but I was feeling magnanimous, and hey - I had everything under control. So I took it upon myself to gather the plates, split up the pears, build the salads and generally take care of this order for Edwin (the line cook at lunch) - just because I am such a nice guy. I went back to my mushroom tartlets amazed at how well I had everything under control.

“So wait, you mean I have to watch the pan when I am sautéing gasoline?…”

It was right about this time that Edwin casually mentioned to me I needed to look at the stove. It is hard for me to really describe what I was thinking at this moment in time. What I was seeing made so little sense to me that I just couldn’t comprehend it at first. Imagine if one day you woke up, and your best friend was over at your house, and he was hovering 6 inches off the floor, acting as if it were a totally normal phenomenon. Surely for a second you would be flabbergasted. I mean, this is just plain NOT POSSIBLE… right?

The flames rising from my pan fit this description perfectly. This was an actual FIRE in the kitchen. And I want to point out that a fire in the kitchen was a first for me. I (like my ancestors many MANY generations before me) had created fire. Sure, I had used a fire to do it, so I was sort-of cheating, but what I had constructed my fire with was probably something they had not considered to use. What was this amazing ingredient which actually proved to be flammable despite everything I know pointing to the opposite?… I think I have kept you in suspense long enough. The mystery substance was:

No, really.

Yes, I was attempting to reduce about two cups of cranberry juice to syrup so I could flavor some of my very popular blue cheese/cranberry crumble tartlets, but it was the intervention of the pear salad that had thrown me off in my internal thought process that kept track of just how long that cranberry juice had been on the flame. It had reduced to pretty much nothing but sugar, and, well, sugar can burn. And burn this did. We’re talking real flames coming out of the pan.

But seriously, wouldn’t you also do a double take? I mean, if you poured cranberry juice in a glass, and it suddenly caught fire, you would sort of stop for a second and think, “Wait… what the hell?…” Similarly, this is the situation where I found myself for a second - even if it was on top of a fire at the time, the thought of cranberry juice on fire just didn’t really make sense to me at first.

Of course the instinct of: “Oh, hey wait, a fire in a kitchen is a bad thing…” kicked in shorthly thereafter, and the fire was quickly extinguished by the placing of a larger pan on top of the flaming pan. As penance, I had to clean out the pan that I had seemingly attempted to melt. Which meant lots of scrubbing. Which put me behind in my set up duties once again. But all the same, I had achieved something that I had until then thought impossible, which is kinda cool.

This is what they look like when they are done braising. And I served them with the aforementioned side salad, and I of course took the toothpicks out.

And now for the redeeming moment of the day, which I will be brief with, as this post is already long, and this part is not nearly as funny. With respect to the stuffed calamari recipe I mentioned earlier, my boss and I decided that the crab meat stuffing was just not that good with the calamari, so I was given free reign to make my own stuffing, and prepare it in my own method. I went with the mushroom and spinach stuffing that I had previously envisioned, and I braised the squid in my own tomato basil sauce. We sold out of them last night, and tonight we made the rest of the squid we had in house (and sold out again).

But one of the orders of calamari went to a table of reviewers who give out local restaurant awards who happened to be dining with us that evening. They were specifically coming in to try lots of various dishes, and to see what we had to offer. One of them ordered my recipe for stuffed calamari. I was nervous of course, but all the same, I wanted to know how it would be received. After that round of dishes came back, the server reported to me that this particular reviewer said that the stuffed calamari “exceeded all his expectations”! Sure, perhaps he was expecting it to taste like sewage, and instead he thought it merely tasted of excrement - but I still choose to believe that this meant he felt that my creation was really something special. And, well, it is just hard to have a bad night after that.

Even if I did almost burn the kitchen down with cranberry juice earlier….

And even if later that night I knocked the mop bucket over and had to clean it all up…

Sigh. It was still a great day.

Matt

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