Nowhere to hide on hotline.
Hurt is a little burn that stings when you flex your hand or when your jacket rubs against it. Injured is leaving half the skin of your palm on a blazing pot handle. Hurt is a slice across a finger that stings when you are cutting something acidic, despite wearing a bandage and a finger cot. Injured is when you pull your hand away from the cutting board, but leaving a finger behind. Hurt is to ignore and and continue on, clock ticking away on your plate. Injured is someone else finishing the entree you were busting your ass to get right by throwing it in the compost bin.
On the hotline, there are a million ways to get hurt or injured. Keep in mind that there are a gang of novice chefs over blistering saute pans, 450 degree ovens, boiling stock pots, all carrying 9 inch knives that could evicerate you with a flick of a careless wrist.
Most of my conversations with other students in skills go like this:
"Behind."
"Hot pot.
"Corner."
"Knife."
"Wow. Fucked that up pretty good, huh?"
Cuts and burns are as much a part of the uniform as the jacket and apron. If you are playing 100% healthy, you simply aren't involved enough. True, many of us will get to a point where we work cleaner, safer and without pain, but for now we are a ragged bunch decorated in blood, oil and burns.
I won't say it has been an easy week, as there is too much week ahead to be decided, but it has been a good week. We started with eggs benedict, blanched/sauteed vegetables and European style omelets. Everything turned out fine. Not the best I've produced, but good. Following the splendid performance in sauce and soup, Zach wanted to partner up. I gave in. Test or not, Zach gets frantic around the stove.
Today was deep fried everything: beer-battered onion rings with aioli of your choice (I went with garlic, red pepper and a generous spoonful of cayenne), french fries and vegetable tempura with three different dipping sauces. With a little batter experimentation, the tempura was good. The onion rings with the aioli, however, might have been the best I'd ever had. I was Zach free, instead partnering with Joe, the one that slipped me the consomme. Joe and I worked well together, calm and efficient, and the product demonstrated that.
Tomorrow is pasta and sauce. While I have never made pasta, I've seen it done. Sauce, on the other hand, I have tons of experience with and maybe the best teacher anyone could hope for: Ma.
The herd is starting to thin. We haven't yet lost anyone entirely, but there are individuals that spend the first hour of skills out in the weeds, hoping someone can show them how to start, how to manage time, how to work more than one pot or pan at a go. These days, you simply don't have time to do recipes step by step, one after another, until each is done. Today, for instance, as I mentioned, we did french fries, onion rings, an aioli, vegetable tempura and three dipping sauces. Fried food doesn't hold at all, and two of the tempura dipping sauces have to served warm. You simply cannot do these one at a time. All at once or you just won't get there and your product will be crap.
And this is kid stuff. Not long and we'll be turning over a dozen plates with sauces and a vegetable. I'm guessing then is when students that don't have the chops will start mailing it in.
I'm not yet prepared to say a student either has it or does not, but there is a certain amount of innate judgement that goes into cooking. One student put nine eggs into a tempura batter that is meant to coat 4-6 servings of vegetables. Once into the oil, it was glue. If you see nine eggs in that recipe and aren't immediately calling it typo, you've got work to do. I could understand if it was the first day, or the first time we'd combined an egg white with some other ingredient. But we've made all sorts of egg mixtures so far.
I wonder if Chef considers us humorous, stupid or hacks that can bankroll a fat tuition.
Hurt is a little burn that stings when you flex your hand or when your jacket rubs against it. Injured is leaving half the skin of your palm on a blazing pot handle. Hurt is a slice across a finger that stings when you are cutting something acidic, despite wearing a bandage and a finger cot. Injured is when you pull your hand away from the cutting board, but leaving a finger behind. Hurt is to ignore and and continue on, clock ticking away on your plate. Injured is someone else finishing the entree you were busting your ass to get right by throwing it in the compost bin.
On the hotline, there are a million ways to get hurt or injured. Keep in mind that there are a gang of novice chefs over blistering saute pans, 450 degree ovens, boiling stock pots, all carrying 9 inch knives that could evicerate you with a flick of a careless wrist.
Most of my conversations with other students in skills go like this:
"Behind."
"Hot pot.
"Corner."
"Knife."
"Wow. Fucked that up pretty good, huh?"
Cuts and burns are as much a part of the uniform as the jacket and apron. If you are playing 100% healthy, you simply aren't involved enough. True, many of us will get to a point where we work cleaner, safer and without pain, but for now we are a ragged bunch decorated in blood, oil and burns.
I won't say it has been an easy week, as there is too much week ahead to be decided, but it has been a good week. We started with eggs benedict, blanched/sauteed vegetables and European style omelets. Everything turned out fine. Not the best I've produced, but good. Following the splendid performance in sauce and soup, Zach wanted to partner up. I gave in. Test or not, Zach gets frantic around the stove.
Today was deep fried everything: beer-battered onion rings with aioli of your choice (I went with garlic, red pepper and a generous spoonful of cayenne), french fries and vegetable tempura with three different dipping sauces. With a little batter experimentation, the tempura was good. The onion rings with the aioli, however, might have been the best I'd ever had. I was Zach free, instead partnering with Joe, the one that slipped me the consomme. Joe and I worked well together, calm and efficient, and the product demonstrated that.
Tomorrow is pasta and sauce. While I have never made pasta, I've seen it done. Sauce, on the other hand, I have tons of experience with and maybe the best teacher anyone could hope for: Ma.
The herd is starting to thin. We haven't yet lost anyone entirely, but there are individuals that spend the first hour of skills out in the weeds, hoping someone can show them how to start, how to manage time, how to work more than one pot or pan at a go. These days, you simply don't have time to do recipes step by step, one after another, until each is done. Today, for instance, as I mentioned, we did french fries, onion rings, an aioli, vegetable tempura and three dipping sauces. Fried food doesn't hold at all, and two of the tempura dipping sauces have to served warm. You simply cannot do these one at a time. All at once or you just won't get there and your product will be crap.
And this is kid stuff. Not long and we'll be turning over a dozen plates with sauces and a vegetable. I'm guessing then is when students that don't have the chops will start mailing it in.
I'm not yet prepared to say a student either has it or does not, but there is a certain amount of innate judgement that goes into cooking. One student put nine eggs into a tempura batter that is meant to coat 4-6 servings of vegetables. Once into the oil, it was glue. If you see nine eggs in that recipe and aren't immediately calling it typo, you've got work to do. I could understand if it was the first day, or the first time we'd combined an egg white with some other ingredient. But we've made all sorts of egg mixtures so far.
I wonder if Chef considers us humorous, stupid or hacks that can bankroll a fat tuition.
