THE CHRONICLER OF THE KITCHEN September 2011
Mike Campbell
ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME? (Kitchen)
“There’s a corner;
lets cut it”
Fill a sheet pan with chicken breasts coated in flour, add all the oil BP didn’t capture from The Gulf Of Mexico and toss in the oven. DO NOT turn the chicken over! Add sauce and you have a banquet meal! Do not worry about raw flour being exposed on top of the chicken. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? A manager used this method and would scold his staff for wasting time if they practiced the proper technique.
I am working a two-man line and stare at my motionless partner ten feet away. He is standing at a cutting board, knife in hand. His head is bent slightly forward but nothing moves. This looks ridiculous since he is wearing a nine-inch paper toque. I examine him for a minute, time seems to stop, nothing is happening! Is this man asleep standing up? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? His chin drops to his chest, his head bounces up and he starts cutting. He is an elderly gentleman, working two jobs and sleeps only three to four hours per night. He is sleep deprived and out of necessity develops the skill of sleeping on his feet.
I had seen something like this in culinary school. One guy worked the graveyard shift and attended classes during the day. He would invariably fall asleep in any afternoon lecture class. The major difference being the student was sitting and his head would roll backwards. He was quiet and you would not notice his eyes shut, but when his head started to slide back, you knew the game was on. The next step was snoring. He didn’t always snore, but when he did, it was loud. The neck snapping to full extension was the “wake button” for both!
At one place the Chef, Sous Chef, and one cook handled dinner on the hot side. These three worked every dinner shift. The Chef insisted he was not understaffed! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? He would be right if nothing went wrong but this is the restaurant business and something goes wrong every five minutes! He also invested a good amount of time schmoozing the guests. Therefore, he was often “off the line” resulting in a thirty three percent staff reduction. Can anything good happen when a business removes one third of its work force? What happens when someone is sick? If a lunch guy couldn’t work a double, the other two worked harder! Twice as much work for twice as much pay? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This same chef employed only one pantry man. When he was sick a dishwasher did his job!
The Spanish speaking Puerto Rican émigré is teaching me German! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? He tells me a German-speaking co-worker at another job is teaching him German and I would be receiving second hand lessons. This man is a dishwasher and starts saying “sonka” every time I hand him a dirty pot. I was clueless about this word's meaning and since he was also teaching me Spanish I did not make the connection to German. After many a blank stare he tells me: “Sonka” means thank you. My Spanish is only slightly better than non-existent, so I had learned something new, or so I thought. Finally, I remember gracias and ask, “Do you mean DANKA? That’s right “SONKA”!
One Sous chef was unable to find the definition of “work” in the dictionary. After all, she was a culinary school graduate and “work” was not one of her classes! She was on hand during the morning and was to ensure that lunch service went smoothly. She understood these instructions did not involve physically doing anything. However, it did involve sitting on a five gallon “E Z” brand pickle barrel in the corner! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? If things got really busy, she would get off her barrel and observe from the end of the line. Ever after, the standard method of commenting on a person’s lack of effort was to turn over an “E Z” barrel and offer them a throne.
A customer may request steamed vegetables but they are usually cooked in butter or oil, salt and pepper. How about adding some ink and synthetic rubber? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? One guy would never remove the rubber bands before cooking vegetables, asparagus being the most common. When questioned about this method being sanitary he intoned, “I have been doing this for years”. The water is boiling and that will kill the germs! I thought this was one guy’s bad habit, until years later at another place I heard the Sous Chef scream, “don’t cook the rubber bands”.
One cook had a bad habit of “talking with his hands”. The problem was he also talked this way when holding a knife. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The knife would flash around the air while the holder was oblivious to its danger. When confronted he said, “what? I’m a professional”.
What does an environmentally conscience restaurateur do when fish starts to smell? WASH IT OFF! ARE YOU KIDDING ME! If the fish still smells too bad to serve? MARINATE IT! ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME?
One club hired a highly regarded Executive Chef to impress the membership. He would explain the ingredients and cooking techniques used on the nightly specials to the servers. The wait staff was mostly college students, with little interest or knowledge of food. Meanwhile, the cooks were working! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The cooks who wanted and could appreciate the skill of the Chef were not included! I will include this technique in my book on INSPIRATION and TEAMBUILDING.
Chicken wings are usually portioned in bags prior to service. All you have to do is get them out of the bag and into the fryer. Most people untie the knot or cut the bag open. One guy held the bag in the grease until the plastic melted and the wings fell in. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? He was highly upset when chastised. “I do this all the time”. You know you have an educated palette when you appreciate liquefied plastic!
Sauces are kept warm in hot water during a meal service. Over time the sauce will become thick and some will burn on the sides of the pots. At one place the chef, or sous chef stood in front of the marinara and plated every dinner. They were dumbfounded when customers complained about the burnt tasting marinara! How could that be? They were the only ones who touched the marinara all night. Is it possible that the sauce burnt on to the sides of the pot during service? Did liquid evaporate and the sauce thicken? Could management have ignored this all night? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? They don’t use a double boiler, they don’t add liquid, and they don’t change the pot. They just can’t understand what is wrong!
The chef, of Italian heritage, is then told to use sauce from a can! ARE YOU F***ING KIDDING ME? This same person is also fond of telling his Irish-American cook that he uses too much garlic!
Place five pounds of butter in a pot and melt. Did I mention anything about removing the wrappers? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? As I watched a cook do this, he told me “I know lots of tricks”. He would let the wrappers cook with the butter and remove them after the butter had melted! He never did tell me if the customers appreciated the taste of wax paper with their butter.
A cook walks off the line and an order comes in for beef stew. This cook made the stew and had been plating it all night. I fill a bowl and see a layer of grease! I start to remove the fat and get screamed at for removing “flavor”. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
A cook pulls turkey out of the freezer and places them in an oven to cook. Later he wonders why they are dried out and burnt. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? That’s right, the meat went directly from the freezer to the oven. The outside of the bird has to be burnt by the time the inside is fully cooked! This became standard procedure since management could not think far enough ahead to ensure that the turkey was thawed before cooking! They then wondered why the meat fell apart when someone tried to make a sandwich!
Golf Clubs usually have a “half way house” to sell snacks to the golfers. One spring day I saw someone unloading last years “half way house” inventory to the main dry storage area. This product was out of date and not fit to be sold. It remained in storage for months. A few weeks later on a hot day, the chef gives me a cold drink. My stomach starts churning and doesn’t settle for hours. I find out I have consumed old inventory. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This stuff was not trashed until a few others got sick.
To those who practice their craft half heartily I quote a culinary school chef:
“GET OUT OF MY PROFESSION”
I owe, I owe, its off to work I go.
Into THE CAULDRON!
“The difficult we do,
The impossible takes a little longer!”
Is tuisce deoch na sceal
