Mmmm.... venison

During my shift on Friday, one of the culinary guys brought in some venison sausage on rolls with onions, peppers and whole mustard seeds. I scraped off the onion and peppers (don't judge me, I hate that crap) and damn was it good. I have no idea why they had venison to grind into sausage, because I am pretty sure venison doesn't appear anywhere on the menu. Maybe they were working on a new dish. Oh, and it was part venison and part pork -- a delicious marriage. Speaking of new dishes, the zucchini cake with goat cheese frosting is already on the menu. It's crazy how quickly stuff like that happens in a restaurant with a seasonal menu. I don't really know why, but I expected it to take longer than a week to implement something like that.

One thing that I have noticed regularly in our kitchen is a serious lack of solid knife skills. People using the wrong knife for the job, or using the right knife in the wrong way. Either way, Chef Norman would have a heart attack. (Chef Norman is a slightly cantankerous old man who loves using super cheesy puns while teaching the knife skills classes at my school.) Last week one girl was displaying VERY poor techniques and it really freaked me out. She could have easily given herself a serious injury. I even said, "Don't cut it that way" as I walked past. She didn't respond, so I am not sure if she heard me and chose to ignore me, or not.

Overall, Friday was a really good night. Even the music was pretty good. The girl who I worked with brought in her music for the CD player. The Velvet Underground is a VAST improvement over the endless stream of Counting Crows that I often have to endure. One girl on staff must REALLY love the Counting Crows (and nothing else) because she puts the CD on all the time, especially at the end of the night when we are trying to wrap up. I also think the Counting Crows CD is possessed by the devil or perhaps cursed in some way. Normally, when it gets to the last track of a CD, the player in the kitchen will just stop playing. This is not the case with Counting Crows. When that CD is in, it will automatically restart. I have no idea why. So that means I may end up listening to the entire CD multiple times in a row without realizing it, or without the ability to free myself up to change it. Oftentimes, I am so busy with something I can't step away to change the CD, and then next thing I know I have heard "Mr. Jones" three times. I didn't hate CC before (I was by no means a fan, though), but I totally hate them now.

Victory

Last night I faced some old foes and won! That's right. I came face to face with marshmallows and I successfully made a batch in..... one attempt. In your face, marshmallows! I also did well against the bar nuts. It wasn't a complete conquest, however. I'd say I won the battle but not the war on that one.

Last night was a really good night overall. Chef even told me that I was doing a good job and that she was impressed with my work and my approach to working. I got to work alone with Chef for a few hours. I asked her if "this was a normal set-up for a restaurant" since I had never worked in a restaurant and had nothing to judge it against. She laughed and said "not at all." At this point, very few restaurants have so much space, staff and money dedicated to pastry. At our restaurants the menu is prix fixe, so dessert is automatically included in the price structure. Since our restaurant is so popular, all seats are reserved well ahead of time. That means we knew in advance that about 240 people would be served for dinner last night. Since all of those people get dessert (unless they decline, which does happen sometimes) it is easier to determine how much to make every day.

I helped Chef work on a new dessert item. She had me make a zucchini cake while she made a goat cheese based filling. I got to taste and discuss the first attempt at a new dessert. Eating dessert as a part of your job = awesome.

I couldn't help noticing that we use a crazy amount of grapeseed oil in our kitchen. We stock more grapeseed oil than any other oil, by far. I was really curious about it because I knew nothing about grapeseed oil. I finally decided to ask Chef about it and I was surprised by the answer. Basically, the executive chef likes to use grapeseed oil and prefers it over canola oil. Therefore, my chef is encouraged to use it as well. Chef said that she could use canola if she wanted to but it isn't worth the bother. Some things aren't worth fighting for. As brief as the conversation was, it did remind me of what I already knew. Pastry chefs answer to another chef. The executive chef is still the captain of the ship. This is one of the reasons why a few pastry chefs have started their own dessert-centric restaurants over the past few years.

For the curious, grapeseed oil has a very high smoke point (like peanut oil) without the allergy concern and has a very light taste. It is also expensive.

Who Let a Bears Fan in Here?

While we work we must have something covering our hair. I have opted for my Chicago Bears hat because it allows me to show my pride in the navy blue and burnt orange while meeting sanitation standards. Some guy came into the pastry room and exclaimed, "Who let a Bears fan in here?" I had some retort that was so witty I cannot even recall it. Basically, the guy ends up being a Buffalo Bills fan. BUFFALO BILLS. This man clearly is not a football fan, let alone a Bills fan. If you are a Bills fan you do not care about the Bears. Perhaps you are jealous that we have the greatest player currently in the NFL -- Devin Hester. Perhaps you are just jealous of our awesome D. Whatever the case may be, sir, you are no Bills fan. The Bills aren't even in the same conference. We have no rivalry. All you have proven is that you can successfully identify the Chicago Bears "C". Leave me alone.

Relief

Last night was exciting because I didn't screw anything up. Yay! I will ignore the fact that I didn't have to do anything new or terribly complicated.

I didn't have time during the week to search for new shoes so I decided to wear my uniform shoes sans orthotic inserts. Good news: the bunions didn't hurt at all. Slightly bad news: my heels started hurting. The heel pain was nothing compared to the old bunion pain. However, I know I can't keep using the uniform shoes because the heel stuff will intensify over time. The heel pain relates to the plantar fasciitis crap, so if I continue working without the inserts I will start walking like igor whenever I am not wearing shoes. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being "normal" and 10 being "full on igor", I was at a 5 when I woke up today. Don't get me wrong, it is a good temporary fix for now.

Last night I got to talk a lot more with the pastry sous chef. The way she speaks really reminds me of my old roommate Jane. She also went through the same culinary program I went through, so it was nice to talk to her about its instructors and how well it prepares students for a work environment.

I have a little experiment you can conduct in your home. Using your thumb, pointer finger and index finger, take a pinch of something ground up (for example, ground nuts) and in a controlled manner release the pinch so that only 4 or 5 pieces come out. Repeat for at least half an hour. How does your hand feel? Weird, huh? Yeah, me too.

Day Two - Bunion Attack

Day 1 ended with some very sore bunionettes. Basically, I have horrible feet. I have plantar fasciitis, which is an arch issue which is exacerbated by walking flat footed and doing high impact aerobic stuff without proper arch support. I also have crazy big bunions and bunionettes. (Bunionettes are bunions that develop at the pinky toe.) I got myself fancy expensive shoe insert orthotics for the plantar fasciitis from my podiatrist. They made a mold of my foot and designed the inserts from that. The stupid inserts take up so much room in my shoes that my bunions are left with no breathing room. By the end of my first day the baby bunionettes were screaming at me.

Day 2 was waaaaay worse. Oh my god was it worse! The bunion pain was so bad that I took my shoes off and stood on them. Remember the perpetually wet floors? I couldn't just stand on the floor in socks, so I resorted to standing on my shoes. Thankfully, I was alone most of the night so no one would notice. Of course there is a lot of movement in a pastry kitchen, so I couldn't go shoeless for very long. By the time my shift was done, the pain was so bad that I wasn't sure if I could get to the subway station without puking or crying. In even took my shoes off when I was on the train. By that point, however, the pain wouldn't subside even when shoeless. I plan on bitching to my podiatrist regarding the side effects of the orthotics. I also need to go replacement shoe shopping stat!

The only other item of note was my battle with the seasoned nuts. I sort of over baked the seasoned nuts. 6 full sheet pans of 'em. Oops! The directions said bake until they no longer look wet. Well, the still looked wet. Anyway, when you over bake seasoned nuts the sugar in the seasoning hardens so much that it becomes ridiculously hard to remove the nuts from the pan. I attacked the pans with a bench scraper (kinda like a wall scraper) and eventually had to put the pans back in the oven to soften the sugar a little. I had to attack the pans with my hands as well and I literally shredded my latex gloves. Who knows how long I was ripping at the stuck nuts with shredded gloves. I eventually looked down and saw that my skin was exposed along every single finger of the gloves. Between the nuts and and the perpetual hand washing with harsh soaps my hands were a mess at the end of the night.

OH! AND I FELL. I slipped on some wet floor and fell!!!! In your face, Uncool Girl! You can't judge me for my stupid questions now! Thankfully I was alone in a storage room so no one witnessed it.

First Day -- Pastry Monkey v Marshmallows

Today was the first day of my externship!

The girl who started me out was waaaaay cooler than the girl I had to work with way back on my trail. (In kitchen speak, a "trail" is when you work a shift at an establishment you are considering for a job, or in my cae an externship.) Why was this girl cooler? 1) She was not bitter about her job. 2) She didn't seem to misinform me about pastry basics. 3) She had sturdy wrists. (The uncool girl had sore wrists or something and complained about it when I shook her hand 'hello'. And she continued to whine about the wrists the rest of the day.)

I am currently assigned the "swing shift" which means I work the night shift doing various prep work while the rest of the staff does service (plating desserts as they are ordered for dinner.) Tonight I got to learn a number of things I will be doing everyday: making the daily giant batch of coffee cake batter (to put "big" in perspective, it calls for 5 pounds of butter and 10 pounds of sour cream), making various petit fours (marshmallows and tiny lemon cakes), making seasoned mixed nuts, etc. All of it is pretty straight forward and things were going fairly well until I met my nemesis -- the marshmallow.

I've made marshmallows twice in culinary school without a problem, so it was really frustrating that it took multiple attempts to make 1 batch today. I actually lost count of my attempt. I think there were 4, but I am not totally certain. Marshmallows are simple enough. You add cooked sugar and gelatin to egg whites as they are whipping. Then you add any flavorings. Pow! Instant marshmallows. How could something so simple get fucked up by me a bunch of times? Well, first Chef told me that usually you are supposed to add 30% of the sugar's weight in water to the pot of sugar, but that you can actually put less. You just need to make sure it is wet like sand. Here is the main source of failed attempts 1 and 2. Chef's definition of "wet sand" vastly differs from mine. When I think wet sand, I think of the sand that is near the water and is sort of wet, but not totally. Chef thinks wet sand is the sand that is still totally covered in water. In the end, I wasn't putting enough water in AT ALL, which resulted in the cooked sugar to heat up too quickly and to crystallize. What about the other failed attampts? Cleaning guys were spraying down the floors and I had to move. Even though I truned down the heat, the sugar had overcooked by the time I could get back. The other failed attempts? Who knows. All that matters is that EVENTUALLY (literally hours later) I successfully made 2 whole batches of marshallows. Yay!

Now on to those guys spraying the water. The thing that irks me a bit about this restaurant is the fact that it is constantly wet. They are constantly mopping, which is great, but they are also pouring giant buckets of soapy water everywhere. And the process to clear out the soapy water involves letting the soap water sit for a long time, eventually spraying the soap away, letting the remaining water sit a while, squeegeeing the water away and finally mopping again. It turns the place into one giant puddle of water. I am always worried that I will slip and fall, especially when carrying something bulky or heavy. I had asked the uncool girl from way back if anyone had ever fallen because of the water. She acted like it was the most ridculous notion that someone would slip and fall with all the SOAPY WATER on the tile floors. Grrrrr.

Despite the battle with marshmallows, things went well. I like my chef a lot. She is a shorty like me and I enjoy her personality. She drops the f-bomb with ease and gets her energy up at the end of the night by playing some Guns N Roses. I heart Chef! Sure, she also rocks out to that song Fancy by Reba McIntyre, but no one is perfect. (Remember when Kellie Pickler butchered that song in American Idol?)

A Little Background

I recently finished culinary school and am about to start working at a top New York City restaurant for my externship. I decided to create this blog as a way to monitor my experiences and progress. I have never worked in food service, let alone in a restaurant, so I do not know what to expect. I am somewhat not looking forward to it. Being on your feet for over 11 hours at a time with no break and no place to sit = suck. Hey. At least I am realistic about it, right?

You don't have to read this blog, and I certainly won't pester you about it. If you are bored or curious to read about my kitchen failings and (hopefully) successes, then pop by every so often. I will try to post regularly, but I suspect I will start to slack off after a few weeks.

I apologize in advance for any long or dull entries. Like I said before, you don't have to read them.