07.31.07
Posted in 1. The Story at 9:56 am by Chef Matt
A kitchen is a place - as I’m sure you all can guess by now - where there is a lot of work to be done. We need to bring in more staff all the time to cover for those who have gone along their merry way as well as just to cover the expanding amount of work that comes with more business coming in through our door.
Another type of help that is common to kitchens are culinary students performing their externships. I’m familiar with this practice, as I used my first job at Tirolo as an externship for culinary school. And so it came to pass that we brought in a stage to help us out with the prep at Rustico on Saturday for what was sure to be a busy night.
Ahhh, culinary school students. So young, full of dreams and ideas, and such CLEAN uniforms! |
A stage (pronounced “stahj”) is a culinary student who is going around to different restaurants to work for a day to see in which restaurant s/he wants to perform his/her externship. It is basically a trial period for both the student and the head chef, to see if the chemistry works out. So chef asked me to come up with a list of tasks for the stage to perform on his day in our kitchen.
Coming up with a series of tasks for a low-level employee to handle was one of the easier things I’ve done in my culinary career. The only difficult thing was figuring out which jobs not to give him.
Our stage’s name was Bradley, he was in his mid-30’s I would say, and judging by the relatively low number of stains on his culinary school jacket, he was about half way through his schooling at L’Academie de Cuisine. (My student jackets are now a permanent shade of off-white since they have gone through the moral equivalent of taking a long soaking bath in tomato sauce…) Bradley has been in the culinary industry as a front of the house guy for about 15 years now, and when I asked him why he wanted to make the journey to the back of the house, his answer rung a bell for me:
“Just needed a change, but I loved the industry too much to leave it behind.”
A kindred soul on some level.
Fresh live lobsters. Thankfully their claws are banded and their lips are sealed. |
I started him off on ripping lobsters apart (gruesome work that we’re only so cavalier about because lobsters can’t scream) and when he was done scraping out their gills, I had him move on to making a batch of our ginger-andouille gremolata. I was giving him real tasks and real work to do, but nothing of super-high importance as I was not sure what his skill-set entailed as of yet. So while he had to rip up the lobsters, I was the one who then had the honor of making lobster béchamel with the bodies.
It was while he was making the gremolata, which involves lots and LOTS of fine cutting that I realized what I was seeing. I was seeing myself on my first few days of being a chef. He was S-L-O-W. So incredibly slow. Glaciers entered the kitchen and retreated again in the time it took him to make the gremolata. And yet I totally understood why. He was making “culinary school” gremolata. Each cut had to be perfect, each piece of minced parsley had to be of equal size. The lemon had to be zested completely and evenly. Everything had to be measured out exactly. He was cooking as if this were the only dish he had to prepare for his chef instructor that evening - which is often the case in culinary school.
And this is where culinary school often fails its students. I have mentioned before how culinary schools are not going to tell you what it is really like in kitchens, nor are they going to make their schools into environments that do justice to the pressures of a professional kitchen. If they did, there would be too many dropouts. They try to teach you the basics of what it is you are expected to do in a kitchen, but they don’t put the pressure on you to pick up the pace. I would say that a full culinary degree only half-prepares you for life in a professional kitchen.
If I was able to complete 3 dishes in my 4 hour night at culinary school, I would consider that a crazed night for me back then. The way I look at it now, if I’m cooking 3 dishes at once in the morning as part of my prep - that only means I’m cooking 2 dishes too few. Every morning I usually have 4 or 5 different items in some degree of preparation within a half hour of my walking in the door. It is what is expected and required. Back at Tirolo, I had to heat the three soups and the two tomato sauces, pre-cook the potatoes, cook the green beans, pre-cook all the pasta, cook the meatballs and set up my mis en place - all within the first hour of my arrival. Culinary school does not, and simply cannot prepare you for this level of activity.
And Bradley isn’t ready yet either. This is not to say he’s a bad cook. He was cutting a small dice on his vegetables that put mine to shame (and I was really good at that back in the day…) He just doesn’t yet have the sense of how fast he has to move now that he is in the back of the house. And all I could think of as I watched him was “Wow, so this is what I looked like when prepping vegetables at Tirolo. No wonder Vic was always up my ass about how slow I was!”
This was just the garlic he had to peel and chop. You should’ve seen the pile of herbs! |
Since Bradley was doing the less important tasks by-in-large, it was not too much of an issue for us. With one exception. We needed a batch of Buttermilk Icebox Dressing, and it is a simple enough recipe, so we gave it to Bradley. The problem is, we make it 2 gallons at a time, so there is quite a bit of prep work needed to get all the ingredients ready. (Lots of garlic to mince, herbs to chop, etc…) I was working on a batch of gluten-free pizza crusts when chef came over to me and in a hushed yet urgent tone said to me, “I have three orders for that dressing, I need it now. See if you can…help him get it ready.”
I read chef’s tone perfectly. The slight pause before and then emphasis on the word “help” meant only one thing: “This is taking too long, get your ass in there and finish that dressing in the next 30 seconds.” Which is exactly what I did. With fast measurements, the occasional eyeballing of seasoning, and whisking like a madman I had a squeeze bottle of the dressing over to chef in about a minute. Chef took it, dressed the salads and had them out the door in significantly less time than that.
I don’t know if Bradley noticed what had happened, or if he knew why. And I’m not saying he failed here. He’s just new, and speed will come with time. He looked just the same as I did a year ago. But now I’m one of the people chef comes to when he needs speed. Chef asked me to bail him out, and he didn’t even taste the dressing before he put it on the salads and out the door.
The incredible magnitude of trust chef put in me by making me his go-to guy, and assuming the product I would produce was fit for public consumption was truly astounding. And it did not go unnoticed by me. I mentioned before what a difference a year makes in the kitchen, but it is not often one gets a chance to see first-hand exactly how far you’ve come. I looked at Bradley after the dressing went out and gave him a line – a sort-of kitchen mantra - that he will surely hear many more times in the coming year:
“Good work. What’s next on your list?”
Chef Matt
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07.27.07
Posted in 6. Reviews, 7. Other Fun at 9:56 pm by Chef Matt
A great film with loveable characters. Aren’t they just so cute? |
Of course I have seen Ratatouille. As a lover of cooking, movies and cartoons, there is no way I was not going to see this movie. On my way home from work last week, I dropped a call to my wife and asked her if she wanted to go see the movie. She was down for a movie date with her husband, so we trotted off to the late showing (9-something) at our local theater.
We were the only ones watching the movie in there with the exception of one other lady who sat in the back and yelled out the answers to all the movie trivia questions that showed on the screen before the previews started. That is, she yelled out the answers to the ones she knew - which was only about half of them. Was she trying to impress us, or did she think that she was going to win a million dollars if she got the “secret question” right? Pathetic. Another reminder of why I usually wait for videos to come out before I see movies.
Anyway, the film itself was of course highly entertaining, as most of the Disney/Pixar films are. (It is a well-kept secret that despite all the hype it received, Shrek was actually nowhere near as good a film as Monsters Inc, which came out the same year…) The animation was nothing short of sublime. The action sequences were not only exhilarating and captivating, but you really felt like you were a part of the action thanks to close “filming” and randomly switching perspectives. The scenes are “shot” low, dark and close-up. Basically it was like NYPD Blue, only without the coarse language or Dennis Franz.
The chef as madman. Hmmm… does this pose of chef and small animal seem familiar to anyone else? (scroll up if you don’t see what I am talking about…) |
The only bone that I guess I have to pick with Disney is their obvious hatred of those in the chef profession. Since the dawn of the “modern era” of Disney cartoons, which began with The Little Mermaid back in 1989, chefs have been given a bad image. How can anyone forget the fish-killing French freak in that movie who sang the incredibly silly song “Le Poisson” while performing a pas de deux with Sebastian?
After that, I guess it is fair to say that chefs have been mostly ignored in the movies until now. When the best chef in the world is - according to them - a rat…
Sigh.
So while perhaps one could be honored to have a whole movie about cooking and the glorification of the love people feel about sharing the wonderful world of culinary experiences with others, I will just have to continue wondering why it is that Disney thinks that cooking is a profession that could best be done by kitchen pests.
No, of course I don’t take myself that seriously. It is a great film, go see it and enjoy it. And if you want to know what to get me for Christmas, I would love a copy on DVD. (hint hint)
Chef Matt
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07.24.07
Posted in 1. The Story at 11:41 am by Chef Matt
Some of you out there I’m sure have seen The Shawshank Redemption. There are many memorable scenes in there, but I’m not here to recap them all with you since that isn’t really the point of this blog. There is one line in the movie though that came to me this morning that I think describes how the kitchen life is starting to take hold of me.
If you’ve not seen the movie, you really should. |
Red (Morgan Freeman) is describing how life in prison takes hold of you:
“These [prison] walls are funny. First you hate ‘em, then you get used to ‘em. After long enough, you get so you depend on ‘em. That’s ‘institutionalized.’”
It’s funny how my kitchen career seems to have followed this pattern. When I first started out, it was really nothing more than just another job - and a rough one at that. I couldn’t do anything right on any given day, and all my instincts were for shit. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated being a chef, but it was incredibly difficult, My daily collection of failures made it such that I was not always looking forward to the next day’s collection of burns, cuts and scoldings.
But soon I got my rhythm together. I could make a dish on the fly with no problems, and with my second job at Vero, I was actually inventing dishes for the menu. (And of course let’s not forget that one of my inventions was actually well-reviewed…)
So we come to the next step, where I find myself depending on the “walls.” Do I need them? I’m not sure if that’s what you’d call it yet, but here I am, on my day off, and I should just be relaxing and taking the time to unwind. But instead I found my thoughts running back to the kitchen, and how much I want to be there.
Don’t get me wrong, I like having two days off - my tired old body needs the rest after 5 straight days on my feet. But my mind is there in the kitchen - working hard along side my friends. Learning new techniques and flavor combinations. Inventing new ways to create our sauces and dressings in a way that saves time. Joking around with the dishwashers. It’s all a rich collection that makes for a fun place to work. Sure, the reprimands still exist, and I still make mistakes. I even cut and burn myself occasionally as well. But I find myself in a place where I’m used to all that. It’s all part of the job - a job that is now more than “just another job” to me.
I spend my free time reading books and magazines on cooking and thinking about how I can bring those flavor combinations into the kitchen when I finally get back in there. And of course my wife usually comes home to all sorts of new creations of mine on my days off since I need my cooking “fix.” Two whole days with no cooking - it’s almost impossible.
Nothing a like a good beat-down to get me back in line… |
So yeah, I would say that I now find myself in a place that can only be described as “institutionalized.” My old life has been left behind and I’m now a chef through and through. From here it is only a question making myself into a better chef with more experience and improved technique. And that’s why the scoldings keep coming.
God, am I actually saying I’m looking forward to being scolded?… I guess I didn’t know how serious this being institutionalized was…
Chef Matt
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07.20.07
Posted in 1. The Story at 12:05 am by Chef Matt
Tomorrow is my one year anniversary of being a chef!
I won’t be able to post tomorrow on the actual anniversary due to a friend being in town for a funeral and what not, so I figured I would use today as the actual anniversary.
Clip art or not, this is about how I felt my first day. Only I was not a baker. And we had no robotic arms. But you get the point… |
It was interesting to look at today in the light of what is was like walking into to Tirolo that first day a year ago. I remember walking in not knowing what I was in for - only knowing that I knew how to cook - or at least that I thought I did. Looking back on it, I really knew nothing of how to compose myself in a professional kitchen; I spent most of the day trying not to get in the way of those who knew what they were doing. And of course, there is the infamous incident of how I cut myself with the back of a knife that day.
And yet today, I came in to work running the show in the morning, and making all the decisions that influenced how the restaurant would run for the rest of the day. I’m the one who determined who would do which tasks, and how we would deal with any ingredient shortages. In just one year I’ve gone from the guy who wasn’t allowed to do anything without asking first to the guy who everybody else asked questions of before doing anything.
Yes, this was me today, only less ridiculously stereotypical. |
Of course, that only lasted until lunch actually started today. Erik, my lunchtime pizza chef, is out of town this week, so I’m filling in on his station for him. I have a rough idea of how to work that station, but not when the first three orders slam my station with 11 pizzas all at once. Soon I had more on order as well, and I was in over my head to be sure. Erik would have been able to handle this in his sleep I’m sure, but this station is not my specialty.
Yet all I could think of all the time I was trying to clear my line through the never-ending onslaught of pizza orders (why can’t you people order burgers for lunch?!?) was my original boss, Vic, telling me how to make a perfect pizza. My hands were on autopilot, shaping crusts the way Vic taught me and rolling out pie after pie as fast as I could.
But the real difference that stunned me was how my other line mates - Oscar and Wendy - ran to my aid when they saw how deep in the weeds I was. The result of everyone in creation ordering pizzas at once meant that there was almost no work for them to do. But instead of them just hanging around and watching me flounder, they instantly chipped in and started pulling crusts and helping cook the pizzas in the oven.
A year later, and I’m not just the head of a kitchen, but I’m part of a team. And it’s a great feeling to know that I’m part of a team that wants nothing more than to make sure I’m OK on the line.
Indeed, what a difference a year makes, huh?
Chef Matt
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07.17.07
Posted in 7. Other Fun at 11:08 am by Chef Matt
Well, thanks to all your votes, we have a very clear winner in the poll for which pants were to be my new chef’s pants. You overwhelmingly voted for “Pacific Rim” as the pants of choice which means that some of you were probably able to read what the writing said, and it says something along the lines of “This chef can’t cook toast,” or “This man is the face of erectile dysfunction.”
Here are the results of how you voted:
| Which pair of pants will Chef Matt be buying next?
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Votes |
| Hot Tomatoes |
 16% |
10 |
| Carrot Fish |
28% |
17 |
| Pacific |