Recently I stretched my culinary muscles. I re-entered a large-scale commercial kitchen to help out a chef friend of mine. I’m here to tell you that my muscles got a lot more than stretched.
Day One: I am excited and nervous. Will I know how to use the equipment? Will I understand the terminology still? Can I still keep up? There’s a reason I no longer work in the restaurant industry. On the first day I am told my friend, who is the executive chef will not be there. I have to admit. I did lose a little sleep with the added pressure that I might have to prove myself. I was transported immediately to that first day at a new school and reliving the nightmares of failure and embarrassment. I was really getting myself all worked up.
Proving yourself is the nature of this industry. Unless you’re packing your James Beard award or a hefty resume (of which I have neither) then you will be watched and you will be proving yourself. So I had to administer some serious self talk. This is not my primary employment and I’m just doing a friend a favor. I have nothing to prove. I began to feel like Stuart Smalley, Al Franken’s SNL character who used to turn towards the mirror and gaze at himself saying.. “You’re good enough. You’re smart enough and dog gone it, people LIKE you.”
I ended day one without incident of blood or tears. I count that a success. I had made arrangements to meet some friends for a cocktail party that evening. Instead I took two prescription-strength Motrin and crawled into bed. I woke up 4 hours later and took two more Motrin and tried not to make eye contact with my feet as they screamed up at me.
Day Two: I tried a different pair of shoes on day two, expensive shoes. This day my friend the executive chef would be there. Don’t think that gave me a ton of comfort. He can be brutal. (But he wasn’t!) But still he can be brutal. Thankfully, the Sous Chef had given a favorable report of my progress on day one. So, I was warmly greeted and then put to work. There would be a late dinner, 9:30 PM, for 145 people. There would be several catering events, two for 50 and another for 240. The kitchen was abuzz with activity when I arrived 2 hours after most of the crew. Feeling more comfortable if not a bit stiff, I put my head down and began to work on my project.
In his book, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, Anthony Bourdain describes the very unglamorous process that is working in a restaurant kitchen.
“What most people don’t get about professional-level cooking is that it is not at all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavors and textures; that presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking- the real business of preparing the food you eat is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over again in exactly the same way. The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.”
I made several hundred crostini, debearded 10 pounds of mussels, steamed and shucked them, then I tried making a gallon of Vanilla Crème Anglaise. I made vanilla scrambled eggs and went home with my very sore shoulders slumped.
Day Three: I woke up and was sorry I hadn’t died in my sleep. I got into the car and hoped for the viaduct to collapse underneath me as I made my way back to the kitchen. Shoes just didn’t matter anymore. I’d taken two pain pills the night before. They didn’t begin to touch the pain. They just distracted my mind from caring anymore.
I walked in the kitchen and the chef looked at me and without a second’s hesitation, not “good morning”, not “good to see you” but “Make Anglaise!” I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a bit of pressure. The “real” chefs were starting to roll out the stories of a previous “retarded prep-boy” who made scrambled eggs every time he attempted Anglaise. There was no sympathy at all. I had the heat so low under that Anglaise it was warmer in the room than it was in the pot I was stirring. I had lost my best chef’s knife the night before. I had dropped it somewhere. If I knew where it wouldn’t be lost. I told the chef that if I failed on the Anglaise again I would fall on my own chef’s knife but I didn’t have one anymore … could I borrow his? That Anglaise owned me. That crummy sauce was going to determine whether or not I’d be picked on in the halls for the rest of my very short career. It turned out fine. But there was no atta-girl. No “good job”, “way to go”. I was done with that and on the next task.
Day Four: I refer back to Bourdain’s comment above. Repetition! Mindless repetition. A good friend had told me the day before that her dad used to tell her (regarding work) when she was a teenager: “Go there, put your head down and work.” Not so glamorous but that’s what I had to do for day four. I started off helping with a catering job for 670. 700 crostini later, I was in the groove and getting the hang of the flow. One thing I came away from those four grueling days with was the sense of camaraderie that hangs heavy in a commercial kitchen. No one person sees all components of a dish from beginning to end. It’s a well choreographed dance that requires precision, timing and exactness from several people. If one person misses a step the house of cards will come tumbling down. A harder working group of loyal, good-to-the-core, conscientious people I’ve never encountered before.
This was a pan of olive-oil poached tuna.
Later it became a Salad Nicoise.
Soon to be baked wild musroom tarts.
A mess of Penn Cove Mussels. 
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