Confessions of a Stagiere: Week Thirteen

It was a Jaws kind of service. No, we weren't attacked by sharks or anything. And no, Richard Dreyfuss wasn't there either. There we were...quietly prepping for the day, thinking there were only going to be about 25 tables, when unbeknownst to us an entirely different matter was going to unfold.

Last week was the week I learned to hustle. When you end up with almost twice the number of diners you anticipated, believe me you have to get out your four inch platforms and done hustle quick.

Here's an example of what I mean: Doug only prepares a certain amount of crab for the evening. It really can only hold for one night, then whatever doesn't get eaten goes in the garbage. You can imagine how expensive it would be if he were constantly chucking out leftovers. So at every station people have learned to gauge how many of each thing they should prepare based on the number of reservations and what the chef says. Sometimes he'll ask someone to prep more of something because we have too much of it in house and he's going to try and get the servers to play it up so they can sell more. I couldn't tell you exactly how much crab we prepped, but it wasn't a ton.

This plan usually works out great. Except when about twenty people walk in unexpectedly. It was the first time we'd ever had a walk-in table of NINE. For a fine dining restaurant, this is quite unusual. Welcome, but unusual. And it's not that the kitchen can't handle this number of reservations, but dealing with twice the number of diners you expected is crazy. There's so much prep that goes into each item that you can't just make more soup or prepare more lamb shanks. What's there is pretty much there. Ideally you have some stored away in one of your lowboys (storage fridges, every station has a shelf). But some things you just can't store, like the crab.

Very quickly into the evening we ran out of crab. It's easily the most popular dish off of the garde manger station so usually it is the first thing that goes. It happens. No big deal, we still have the hamachi and terrine dish to send out.

Oh wait a minute. We barely have enough napoleons (creme anglais and prune puree, frozen into individual layers and layered on top of each other) to make it through the evening. Meanwhile, because we have this relatively new and complicated terrine dish, I am whipping sorrel leaves into the backs of the duck proscuitto wrapped plum pieces as fast as I can so the garde manger can actually assemble the 10 dishes in front of him. I used to hang back and try to stay out of the way when there was a plating frenzy. Now I jump in and do everything I know how to push them out. It feels great. Hectic, but great.

I may not love rollercoasters or jumping off cliffs, but when it comes to work I'm definetely an adrenaline junkie.

I can feel myself using all the skills I've gained over the past three months. The entremetier gets me to make a bunch of romaine lettuce "fronds" in the middle of service. They're the tips of romaine lettuce, cut so they resemble miniature trees, with rounded tops and small stems. I remember the first time I did this I was so nervous because I had to do it on the pass with everyone watching. I didn't know how everyone else could do it in twenty seconds and why it took me five minutes to shape just one.

Not anymore! I whipped through those puppies in no time.

If you look in that picture of the beef dish, the frond would be the green thing sticking out of the square potato garnish. Every item gets its own prep. They don't miss a beat.

These little victories made the otherwise incredibly busy service really satisfying. I felt the way I used to doing my chase shift in radio. Like I was a mop, having the dirty floor water wrung out of me so I was clean and ready to go again.

I have no clue how busy it's going to be tonight. But whatever comes...bring it on.

Confessions of a Stagiere -- Week Six

Normally I head into Lumiere at noon. This week I got in a bit early -- 10 am. The purpose was to learn to set up the amuse bouche station from start to finish.

By noon everyone's there, absorbed in completing their mise en place. Music's blaring, it's warm to very hot depending on where you're standing.

At 10 am, the kitchen was almost totally quiet. It was cold. Only three other people were there, working away in relative silence. Most noticeably missing was the delicious scent of food. That would come later. It was nice to come in and start the day with everyone else, rather than catching up to them.

The first thing I was supposed to learn was how to make the pea soup. Key to this, besides the actual taste, is keeping the peas as vibrantly green as possible. You achieve this by cooking them as little as possible. When it came time to cook them, I noticed the pot we were using was impossibly tiny for the massive amount of snap peas I just had to prepare.

"Is that pot going to be big enough?" I ask.
"Yeah, probably not," is the response.

Which leads to us having to use a bigger pot, with additional water being put in. That is not boiling. Meaning the peas will have to be cooking much longer than necessary. Which means they will turn an unappealing brown colour. Which leads to another cook getting a look on his face like he's just seen a particularly repulsive sexual act being performed on one of his relatives.

This is a very valuable lesson for me to absorb. Learning from other people's mistakes is just as valuable as learning from my own. And less humiliating on my part.

Luckily for everyone there is a bit of a culinary cheat, involving spinach puree. Spinach puree is the colour of Romulan/Vulcan blood. It's a beautiful, deep bright green. And it virtually has no taste. So you can put it into food you want to be greener and no one's the wiser. Well, until now anyway.

After a while the sous chef pulls me aside to make pea ravioli filling. It's a pretty simple set of ingredients: snap peas, leeks, spinach (read above), mint, shallots and fennel. Cook them (not too much) and then puree them. Then pass them through a sieve. Smooth and delicious.

I did learn how to make bacon foam for the pea soup that's part of the amuse bouche. You have to saute bacon with other delicious ingredients, boil it with milk until it splits. Then you strain and blend the milk until it comes together, then add soya lecithin, which makes it foam better.

I've noticed some of the cooks keep notebooks to write down recipes. This is a great idea that I haven't put into practice yet. I really should do that.

Slowly...I'm becoming more assertive. It's funny because in my "normal" life I have absolutely no problem with this. In fact, I'm pretty damn bossy. But when I'm in a situation where I have no authority and no knowledge I keep my mouth shut. When it came time to plating the beef dish, however, I spoke up. I pretty much told the entremetier to give me the garnish I needed, much to the amusement of everyone who was seeing me act authoritatively for the first time. When the expediter tried to take it away before I'd added it, I all but grabbed him and said, "Stop". Finished the dish. "Go".

The sous chef said to me afterwards, "Be like that all the time".

Ha. Just give it time.

On another note, I finally told my boss at CBC about what I've been up to on Fridays after she kept trying to rearrange my work schedules to work Fridays (I currently work Sunday to Thursday). She agreed to try and keep my Fridays clear. It's been very weird trying to explain to my other co-workers what I'm doing. Either they think it's great or they look at me like I'm an alien. I don't really blame them. But hey, when you can't afford to go to culinary school and you want to follow a dream...you do what you have to do.

I already can't wait for next Friday.