A tutorial on playing well with others, or not, when convenient.
The skills kitchen is about 1500 square feet of steel counter tops flanking a central hotline, the range tops and ovens. When it's quiet and clean, you can barely hear the circulating air from the HVAC system. On a normal day, when 22 people are hunched over boiling pots and reducing saute pans, swearing over the range hood fans, it's loud. But you rarely have everyone on the hotline at once. A few people are cutting, a few others are cleaning pots and pans as they go. It's loud, but there is space to operate, room to move, extra burners.
Today, it was midterms. Turning practice to proof became a war for burner space, brought out the hording tendencies in all of us, and generally turned the most civilized students into angry fucking assholes. I am not one of the most civilized students, so you can imagine how that prorate works out. By the end of the test, people were openly throwing elbows, launching hot pots into the dish pit, and blaming their partner for anything that went wrong, be it in skills kitchen or life.
Hollandaise, Mornay, Bordelaise, Consomme, and instead of the anticipated potato leek soup, a mushroom soup, all of it in 90 minutes. This means if your consomme raft breaks 45 minutes in, you are just about dead to rights. You abandon ship early if you have even the slightest notion that your consomme is going down. I'll get to time management, in gory detail, in a second.
I am the only student in the class that works without a partner regularly. I position myself at a smaller table for that reason. I usually work across the table from Adam; he knows his shit and he gets it done. But we aren't partners. I don't want a partner because partners get crazy ideas about how much butter the sauce should be finished with or how much salt needs to go into the soup. Yes, in a pro kitchen, I will have to work with people. But it will be my saute pan, my product, then down the line it goes. For midterms, Chef assigned us all partners.
My partner was Zach. Zach is solid. Zach gets flustered in times of stress. Zach forgets things. Zach also manages to put out consistently good product. Good. We decided on a strict division of labor: Zach wanted hollandaise and bordelaise, so I gave it to him, knowing that if either was crap I could do a great hollandaise in 15 minutes and a bordelaise in 10. No problem. I would get the consomme going since it would take the longest, get the bechamel going for the mornay, and get the soup together. Chef says mushroom soup is something by which other men can be judged. I always felt it was Springsteen.
Consomme stirred and waiting to raft, roux introduced to bechamel, piquate at the ready, onions sweated and mushrooms sliced and in the pot, Zach whisking his ass off, we are rolling. I had my job, Zach had his job.
But my consomme raft never floated. It lingered. It threatened. It sank. I am still not sure why.
30 minutes in, I nuked it, started over. In the meantime, Zach dropped off the hollandaise, I finished the mornay, and set the soup on a slow simmer. We chopped mirepoix, mixed up the clearmeat mixture (beef, mirepoix, tomato paste, egg whites) and I whisked it in to the stock. I turned up the heat, a little higher this time to get the raft up quicker, and went to puree the soup. By the time the soup was done, the raft was afloat and all was well.
Mixing clearmeat into your stock is dirty business. A dozen swipes through the muck and you'll be at the sink for 5 minutes picking fat and cartilage out of the tines. By the time I got back, the raft was at a nice roiling boil. Consomme number two, ruined, and we had 20 minutes to go. You cannot clarify stock into consomme in 20 minutes. Physical impossibility. My other tablemate, Joe, saw the whole thing and casually slid his consomme pot onto my burners. A quick glance and I dumped my consomme into the compost bin and my pot in the sink.
I cheated, folks. There was maybe a half bowl of consomme to be taken from the pot, so I diluted it with strained stock and reseasoned it. I cheated. I ladeled it, strained it, garnished it with tomato concasse and parsley, presented it to Chef.
I got a 97 of 100 on the test. The hollandaise was a little cold, the soup needed salt and the consomme was a little cloudy. A little cloudy? Chef, it had been sitting in it's own filth for 45 minutes.
Ah, friends.
Well, karmically, I did get mine this morning, . I managed to wash 3 of my chef jackets, 3 hats, 3 aprons and a basket full of towels with A SHARPEE IN THE SHOULDER POCKET. So instead of looking like a butcher, I look like a MECHANIC. I had to order new jackets from school to the tune of $75.
Ah, fucking pens.
The skills kitchen is about 1500 square feet of steel counter tops flanking a central hotline, the range tops and ovens. When it's quiet and clean, you can barely hear the circulating air from the HVAC system. On a normal day, when 22 people are hunched over boiling pots and reducing saute pans, swearing over the range hood fans, it's loud. But you rarely have everyone on the hotline at once. A few people are cutting, a few others are cleaning pots and pans as they go. It's loud, but there is space to operate, room to move, extra burners.
Today, it was midterms. Turning practice to proof became a war for burner space, brought out the hording tendencies in all of us, and generally turned the most civilized students into angry fucking assholes. I am not one of the most civilized students, so you can imagine how that prorate works out. By the end of the test, people were openly throwing elbows, launching hot pots into the dish pit, and blaming their partner for anything that went wrong, be it in skills kitchen or life.
Hollandaise, Mornay, Bordelaise, Consomme, and instead of the anticipated potato leek soup, a mushroom soup, all of it in 90 minutes. This means if your consomme raft breaks 45 minutes in, you are just about dead to rights. You abandon ship early if you have even the slightest notion that your consomme is going down. I'll get to time management, in gory detail, in a second.
I am the only student in the class that works without a partner regularly. I position myself at a smaller table for that reason. I usually work across the table from Adam; he knows his shit and he gets it done. But we aren't partners. I don't want a partner because partners get crazy ideas about how much butter the sauce should be finished with or how much salt needs to go into the soup. Yes, in a pro kitchen, I will have to work with people. But it will be my saute pan, my product, then down the line it goes. For midterms, Chef assigned us all partners.
My partner was Zach. Zach is solid. Zach gets flustered in times of stress. Zach forgets things. Zach also manages to put out consistently good product. Good. We decided on a strict division of labor: Zach wanted hollandaise and bordelaise, so I gave it to him, knowing that if either was crap I could do a great hollandaise in 15 minutes and a bordelaise in 10. No problem. I would get the consomme going since it would take the longest, get the bechamel going for the mornay, and get the soup together. Chef says mushroom soup is something by which other men can be judged. I always felt it was Springsteen.
Consomme stirred and waiting to raft, roux introduced to bechamel, piquate at the ready, onions sweated and mushrooms sliced and in the pot, Zach whisking his ass off, we are rolling. I had my job, Zach had his job.
But my consomme raft never floated. It lingered. It threatened. It sank. I am still not sure why.
30 minutes in, I nuked it, started over. In the meantime, Zach dropped off the hollandaise, I finished the mornay, and set the soup on a slow simmer. We chopped mirepoix, mixed up the clearmeat mixture (beef, mirepoix, tomato paste, egg whites) and I whisked it in to the stock. I turned up the heat, a little higher this time to get the raft up quicker, and went to puree the soup. By the time the soup was done, the raft was afloat and all was well.
Mixing clearmeat into your stock is dirty business. A dozen swipes through the muck and you'll be at the sink for 5 minutes picking fat and cartilage out of the tines. By the time I got back, the raft was at a nice roiling boil. Consomme number two, ruined, and we had 20 minutes to go. You cannot clarify stock into consomme in 20 minutes. Physical impossibility. My other tablemate, Joe, saw the whole thing and casually slid his consomme pot onto my burners. A quick glance and I dumped my consomme into the compost bin and my pot in the sink.
I cheated, folks. There was maybe a half bowl of consomme to be taken from the pot, so I diluted it with strained stock and reseasoned it. I cheated. I ladeled it, strained it, garnished it with tomato concasse and parsley, presented it to Chef.
I got a 97 of 100 on the test. The hollandaise was a little cold, the soup needed salt and the consomme was a little cloudy. A little cloudy? Chef, it had been sitting in it's own filth for 45 minutes.
Ah, friends.
Well, karmically, I did get mine this morning, . I managed to wash 3 of my chef jackets, 3 hats, 3 aprons and a basket full of towels with A SHARPEE IN THE SHOULDER POCKET. So instead of looking like a butcher, I look like a MECHANIC. I had to order new jackets from school to the tune of $75.
Ah, fucking pens.
