Confessions of a Stagiere -- Week Twenty

I have missed a couple of entries here, and I figured it's better to be accurate about what week I'm talking about rather than having them all sequential.

This week was my last week at Lumiere -- at least, my last week going consistently. I've had an incredible six month run. When I first started I was working just to become familiar with my surroundings. In the last few weeks, I finally nailed down the art of forming a quenelle of cream with one spoon.

I've been referring to my final day at Lumiere as my "final exam". It's very appropriate. The minute I walked into the kitchen the meat cook says, "you know today's the Steve Nash dinner right"?

The Steve Nash dinner he is referring to is the fundraiser for Steve Nash's foundation. A $1500 a plate dinner. I had gotten multiple emails about this through work via press releases, but for some reason it hadn't sunk in that if I showed up that day, I would in fact be working for the dinner.

It also hadn't sunk in that executive chef and restaurateur extraordinaire Daniel Boulud was also going to be there.

"I assumed that's why you were here".

Noooooo, no no no. I had been so glad I wasn't there on another weekend Daniel had come to town because I specifically wanted to avoid having anything I was doing scrutinized by this legendary chef.

So the dinner involved prepping for a yet unspecified number of guests ("thirty to sixty people" is what I heard). The dinner was happening at db Bistro -- they closed down the restaurant for the event. The only dishes coming out of the Lumiere side was the crab dish from the garde manger section. Keeping in mind that when I say "only" I mean we ended up prepping enough crab for about 100 dishes...on top of the regular prep for dinner service.

That's ten pounds of crab that needs to be picked over, then mixed with half a litre of chopped herbs among other things. I don't even know how many mangoes they went through, slicing them with a mandoline and cutting strips to wrap the crab with. Then preparing half a litre of mango bruinoise and piquillo peppers. Then forming and wrapping all the crab. Then wrapping over eighty crab rolls with rice paper wrappers.

It was go time.

In the midst of all this, as I'm squeezing a dozen grapefruits into juice, I hear a deep rich voice calling out behind me. I know it's Daniel. The Vancouver Sun was there to film Daniel and Dale making the scallop dish with corn succotash. I didn't dare turn around to watch, but listening to Daniel direct the action was amazing. He's a producer's dream. He knows what angles are the best, what to shoot, when to shoot it, what to say, how long to talk...considering he does this kind of thing all the time I'm not surprised. But I am in awe.

What's Daniel like in the kitchen? A pro. He doesn't have time to waste, he knows what he needs to get done and gets it done. I got to see that first hand during "the" dinner service. We had set out 87 plates on tables in the narrow hallway that joins the two kitchens. I had been tasked with plating the bruinoise of mango and piquillo peppers onto all the plates. The staff at db were tasked with building the crab stacks, slicing the rolls and plating all the rest.

We were right in the middle of Lumiere's dinner service and I we've run out of the coriander sticks we're using in the crab stacks. The rest of them are all in the db kitchen. I go out into the hallway and everyone is right in the middle of trying to get these 87 plates of crab out of the hallway and to the tables. Because it's so narrow nobody can fit around each other. The servers are on one end, the chefs are at another, the chefs are yelling for people to take certain plates away. Not all the plates have the same design on them so a lot of juggling is involved. Add to this the fact that the crab stacks are plated on top of mango puree which is making the stacks slide around and you can imagine the pressure.

Of course, I know better than to actually try to get anything from the other kitchen during all this. I head back and wait for the rush to subside.

The dinner was supposed to run from 7 to 8 pm. That was going to work out perfectly because the Lumiere dinner reservations had a gap between 7 to 8. There would be free hands available. At least, that was the theory. The dinner got pushed back to 8:15...when a bunch of reservations would have just arrived. It's amazing what you can do when you have no other choice.

And that's what really divides people who work in kitchens and others who don't. There's a breed of people that thrive on adrenaline and stress. The thrill of getting it all done and knowing you can do it.

I got called over to the db kitchen for the main course plating. Picture two lines of cooks on either side of a massive stainless steel prep table. db's chef, Stephane, yells out instructions. I end up near the end of the line, plating the beef and adding a romaine garnish to the plate just before Stephane sauced them. We probably plated everything in five minutes or less. I loved being part of that.

In the middle of everything Dale comes over and asks me if I want to take a picture with Daniel Boulud. Note: you do NOT say no to a picture with Daniel. I'm pretty sure that's a law somewhere. I was thrust into a corridor with him. He has no idea who am I or why I'm there but takes the picture anyway, which you can see to the left. Yes, I'm planning to print that out and hang it somewhere in my house. I don't even have pictures of my family hanging in my house yet, but you can be damn sure there'll be one of Daniel.

So the dinner went off successfully, as did the dinner service we did. Lots of momentary panic but it all got done as it always does.

I've had a bizarrely circular relationship with Lumiere over the past year. When I ate there the first time it reopened last November I met Daniel, as a patron. I gushed about it profusely in this blog posting. Now I've met him as a pseudo-employee. I won a chance to eat and work in the restaurant and ended up staying for six months. I don't know how it all worked out so seamlessly, but I know this has all been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

People ask me what I've learned. Everyone thinks I'm hosting these incredible dinner parties now but the truth is that the most thrilling experience I've had is getting to be around people who genuinely love food. It's an egalitarian love. You can love ham and cheese sandwiches just as much as duck confit. I could talk about wanting baked Alaska and have a roomful of people talk about their awesome baked Alaska experiences with no hint of snootiness, just a pure love for food. I got to be a part of the monumental task of putting a fine dining meal together. I found out what lengths people will go to work with food just because they love it. Oh yeah, and I finally nailed one-spoon quenelle making!

My time at Lumiere has been absolutely incredible. I am so lucky that chef Dale Mackay and everyone in the kitchen not only allowed me to be there but took their time to work with a total novice. I used their tools, I made mistakes but I hauled ass as best I could. Thanks so much to those who've stayed and those who've moved on: Dale Mackay, Nathan Guggenheimer, Doug King, Alex Amos, Brad Hendrickson, Jesse Zuber, Rhys Jones, Suyin Wong, Celeste Mah, Tony Chang, Trevor Bird and all the people at db Bistro as well for making me part of the team. I'm going to miss working with you but I know I'll be seeing you all around.

Confessions of a Stagiere -- Week Five

From May 1

Business is slowing down quite a bit. After Daniel Boulud's hectic visit, weekdays have been slow. Very slow. One night only six people came in for dinner. Today there are only fifteen. They've now opened up a patio for people to dine outdoors. So far no one's actually done it but at least it's getting people's attention. Slowly.

I get an update on Daniel's visit. Apparently he gets filmed just about everywhere he goes, and this trip was no exception. At least one cook was startled when Daniel Boulud appeared out of nowhere and shook his hand in front of a camera. "It was really weird". Having been on both sides, I agree. It IS really weird. This is why I love radio. No lenses.

After the visit also comes an announcement: they're closing the restaurant on Tuesdays from now on -- in addition to the usual Mondays. The recession rears its ugly head yet again. No workplace I'm at seems to be immune.

On the upside, I'm getting to learn how different elements are put together every week. This week: potato lyonnaise. They are delicious coin sized rolls of thinly sliced potato. It's part of the sous vide char dish. I never knew just HOW much was involved in making them until now.

First, you use a hand-cranked machine to spin out very thin strips of potato. Spread them out on a counter. Season with salt and pepper. Layer very thinly with a garlic puree and then a shallot mixture. Then you roll them up nice and tight and wrap them in cling film. Then poke a bunch of holes in the rolls and gently cook them in duck fat for about twenty minutes. Then unroll and rewrap. Saute the ones you'll use for service, then rewrap AGAIN. If you ever wondered where the "fine dining" line lies, it's somewhere in the midst of all that rolling.

Some cooks are hesitant to give me tasks I've already learned, whereas I welcome it. As much as I love learning new things, I at least feel comfortable doing things repeatedly. Seeing as my skill set is very limited, it gives me a feeling of great accomplishment to be able to take something on without a lengthy explanation. I can prepare the micro radishes for the terrine dish. I feel satisfied being able to write that.

Especially because my biggest challenge -- which I have yet to overcome -- is learning where everything is. Here is the typical scenario:

Cook: Joan, get me a pot about *measures with hands* this big, fill it with water and bring it to the boil
Me: Ok. *Goes to where pots are, search frantically, realize there is no pot there of that kind or if it's there I can't see it* Uh...I can't find the one you're talking about.
Cook: Ok. *Goes off, finds the exact pot they need and do the really simple thing I could'nt manage to do*
Me: *feels stupid*

Here's another one

Cook 1: Go get a bowl of ice from the other kitchen (at db Bistro).
Me: Ok. *goes off with bowl* Uhh...where's the ice?
Cook 2: Over there.
Me: OK. *goes off to corner.* uhh...how do you get the ice out of this thing?
Cook 3: *opens lid*
Me: Oh. *feels stupid*

You get the picture. The next time I do something when I DON'T have to ask feels fantastic.

Because there are fifteen people for dinner, the chef asks several of the staff to take a night off once their prep is finished. He will work the garde manger station. And I'll be working next to him. Gulp. At this point I haven't spent any prolonged time working with the chef and frankly it's a bit daunting. It's like having to produce Peter Mansbridge. Intimidating.

In reality, I actually got to learn more because there was more time to teach me. Like how to plate the crab dish. You have to shape the circlet of crab with your hands so that it's just the same height as the pieces of mango you have to wrap around it. Then you have to oh-so-carefully insert two pieces of tuille in a sort of v-shape to give it some height. Then you take a triangular piece of pickled papaya and arrange it against the tuille. Then you add fingerfuls of herbs, a celery leaf and a parsley leaf. Then you squirt some mango puree onto the plate and smack the bottom a few times to even it out. I haven't mastered this yet, having visions of the plate flying through the air into the nearby induction burner. Then you place the crab on top of that. Arrange two ricepaper rolls (that were conveniently precut for me), each facing a different direction. Then take a squeeze bottle of piquillo pepper puree and randomly dot the plate. You can do this all fairly far in advance. Just before it gets taken out you dot the plate with a green herb oil.

And this is just one dish. There's a lot to remember.

I was also reminded of how it's all a matter of practice. Watching everyone doing stations they're not familiar with was revealing. It also gives me hope that I CAN eventually figure some of this out.

I can now identify which actual plate goes with which dish for the items that are the most popular, like the beef and the duck and the char. I can anticipate which garnishes the chef is going to need from the garde manger station so I have them ready when I see the plates come out. I know which elements are going to come off which station. I'm no longer shy about (politely) calling for what I need. I'm learning the system. So I'm going to push myself even more. Next Friday I'm going in a couple hours earlier to learn how to set up the amuse bouche station from start to finish. One tiny step in the culinary world...one giant leap for me.

Confessions of a Stagiere -- Weeks Three and Four

I've combined two entries into one...from April 17th and 24th

This week I felt a nervous excited energy in the kitchen. Daniel Boulud was coming in a couple days. I mean, you'd be nervous if he was coming to visit in any case but if he's actually your boss...well...that's a whole other story. Apparently he's coming from Sunday to Thursday. I breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing would make me more anxious than having to do anything around him in a kitchen setting. As amazing as it would be to watch him in action, I'm just not ready for that kind of scrutiny.

Because they all spend so much time together, the cooks know just about everything about each other...in excrutiatingly minute and descriptive detail. I, however, remain monolithic enigma. So they've taken to asking me questions like, "what do you like to eat?" "where do you go to eat?" "what do you make at home?" etc. etc.

I keep giving these cryptic answers, stuff like, "oh, nothing really..." only because I don't know how to tell a room full of talented chefs that my favourite meal is a giant bowl of mashed potatoes, sitting on the couch, preferably with no pants on (the waistline gets in the way). My brain freezes up as I try to think of something more intelligent to say than "fried rice". It's these rare times I find myself at a loss for words. And it pains me because I feel like I come off as an incoherent moron. Which I'm not. I'm just a glutton who'll eat anything. I cook simple food because I usually eat alone anyway.

It doesn't help that their conversations about home cooking centre around their sour dough starters and litres and litres of stock that they apparently keep stashed away. Of course, this is all par for the course for them and they work on average about 14 to 16 hours a day.

I don't know a single non-chef who does these things. It could also be a Chinese thing where we don't tend to use stock in a ton of dishes. Whatever. The point is: no homemade stock or sour dough starter at my house. Which makes the whole mashed-potatoes-with-no-pants-on thing even more shameful on my part.

I'm also starting to get asked a lot of questions that I don't have answers for...but they are answers I'd like to have. "What's the best thing you learned today?" I spend so much of my time just trying to focus and learn the next task that I don't fully process anything until I go home and write it down. But if I had thought of it, here's what I would've said:

-how to avoid cutting yourself while peeling shrimp
-which way a piece of leek should be facing when you're trying to scrape off the membrane
-that you can control how you split a snap pea in half, but you can't control how many peas there are inside (damn you, nature)
-men gossip just as much as women do and they're just as bitchy about it too
-hazelnuts can burn really fast in butter

I'm also discovering some of my own talents. Apparently I'm pretty handy when it comes to forming ravioli. I guess a lifetime spent helping my mom make dumplings and folding origami shapes was useful after all.

Every cook has this rolled up arsenal of knives at their disposal. I do not. I used to be really concerned that I don't have any knives to bring in with me. I still kind of am. But I never realized how important it was going to be to have a spoon with me at all times. They look just like your regular spoons at home but ideally it's fairly flat, wide enough and a bit shallow. You use it to taste, plate, mix, etc. After a few weeks of never having one, the sous chef finally assigned me one of his spoons. There's actually an "x" on it. I now bring it in every week. It stays in my pocket. I just love the idea that the utensil I use the most when eating is also one of the best tools I can have for cooking as well.

A foodie nerd wet dream

Who's got a blog and had the greatest dinner EVER last night? THIS GAL!

We finally got to eat at the brand spanking Lumiere redux. Now with Daniel Boulud and Dale Mackay at the helm.

Let's go right to the food. We had a three course dinner. First we were presented with an amuse bouche of broccoli done three ways. I know it sounds weird but it was fantastic. Among the items was an oyster with some kind of broccoli puree served on a bed of sea salt. Fantastic. Also a shot glass with a broccoli soup and a crouton wrapped in prosciutto.

Appetizer: venison with celeriac done two ways. It was so beautiful and detailed. Ever since I got to spend time with Canada's Bocuse Team I've been blown away by how much detail work goes into really great food.

Then my main course: arctic char with leeks. I think the char was done en souvide. It was topped with a cloud of crispy potato. Again, clean, beautiful, stunning. People say the way food looks doesn't matter...well...it REALLY REALLY makes a difference when you make this kind of effort. It's also an interesting juxtaposition between the formality of the way it's presented and the way it tastes, because to me the flavours always seem so warm and enveloping.

Dessert was chocolate fondant with pistachio ice cream. Anytime you pair warm, gooey chocolate with ice cream is just fine by me.

Then came the REAL highlight of the evening. As if the meal wasn't amazing enough. The maitre d' came over and asked us if we'd been over to db Bistro. I said yes, we had just been there a couple days ago (see below). THEN he asked if we'd spoken with Daniel Boulud yet.

Then I think my brain exploded.

We were asked if we wanted him to come over to the table. I was like, "ABSOLUTELY!" Probably scaring the poor guy half to death. So we waited. And then he was there. The whole time in my brain I kept thinking, "do not make an ass of yourself" because sadly, I have a history of making an ass in front of people I admire, including Sarah McLachlan and Wendy Mesley.

Luckily, thanks to the wine I was totally coherent. I think. I told him what a thrill it was to meet him and he took it like a champ who's heard that a million times. He's excellent at self-promotion. He knows exactly how to make you feel like he's interested in you, whether or not he really is. He actually spent quite some time chatting with us (when Fernando was talking about his newspaper I thought to myself, my god, one of the world's most celebrated chefs is listening to my husband drone on about newspapers). He also talked about his displeasure with the service ("not so smooth yet" was his opinion although we could scarcely complain).

THEN........then he asked if we had met Dale yet. As in Dale Mackay, the head chef of Lumiere. My brain exploded again. He led us, oh so gracefully, to the kitchen where the entire staff seemed to stop and stare at us. Dale was totally open to all my prying questions about how he was finding the Vancouver market and how he was adjusting to the opening. I remember the first time I saw Dale in an interview. It was probably the day after he got the job at Lumiere and he arrived at The Early Edition. I was there for the first time watching them put the show on air. He was quite nervous and intense. Talking to him in the kitchen, he was a completely different person, able to laugh and talk freely about his experiences. I think it's a combination of intense media training and the fact that I didn't have a microphone in front of me.

AND THEN.............Daniel escorted us next door to db Bistro to meet THEIR head chef, Stephane Istel. We walked past BC's Attorney General Wally Oppal on the way. Love him.

db Bistro's kitchen was bustling, so we couldn't stay long. We did schmooze long enough for me to figure out that Stephane's charm was going to carry him a long way in this town.

All the while, Daniel was the most charming host. You'd think we were his family members and not some loser journalists barging in during dinner service.

That evening could NOT have gotten any better. I waited an appropriate amount of time after walking out the door before squealing and jumping up and down. Only in Vancouver do you have the chance to hob nob with the likes of Daniel Boulud and his homies. Only in Vancouver. I think I'm starting to like it here!