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Discard Undercooked Things

First, read this.

Now, read the following. This is what it felt like everyday when I cooked at the restaurant (I understand that cooking professionally isn’t like this for everyone. But when you’re the type to tape your knives pink and rely on a smile to pull you out of the weeds, things become exponentially stickier.)

 

Okay. 9:45 a.m. Arriving at the restaurant. I hope there are small jackets. Probably won’t be. I hate wearing the mediums; I swim in them. Check the hangers. No smalls. Oh well. Put on pants, jacket, tie apron, grab two side towels. Pull hair into bun. I hate wearing my hair up. Maybe that’s why I was never a real dancer; couldn’t stomach the bun. Or, because the ballet fueled my anorexia as a teenager. Good god, what am I doing here?

Say hello to Sixto, open the walk-in door, grab arugula, romaine, foie terrine, quart of sunchokes, chives. Bring everything upstairs, attempt to place on station. Can’t; there’re four bags of bread on station. Move bread to server station. Put lettuce, etc. on mine. Go to dish pit and grab nine pans for my mise en place. Arrange nine pans in low boy. Knock elbow into one; watch them all fall down on top of the pint containers. Try again. Stay, please. I need coffee. I want a cocktail.

Pour coffee, set it down. Realize I forgot the pork paté. Run downstairs to grab it, remember shallots too.

Back upstairs. What do I do first? Look at your prep list, dummy. Tobias left it in the lowboy.

Oh. That’s a huge prep list. NO! HE HAS ME MAKING CROQUETTAS TODAY. I HATE MAKING CROQUETTAS. Okay, well, lunch first. Or maybe try to do those before lunch? We’ll see …

Fill nine pans with stuff for lolla rossa: marinated beets, pomegranate seeds, cheese, sunchoke vinaigrette, apples, pears. Fill nine pans with stuff for paté: muscat gelée. Fill nine pans with stuff for uni sandwich: tomatoes, sea lettuce. Fill nine pans with stuff for shrimp salad: chives, shallots. Well, first shave chives. Roll eyes at Roy when he comes over and tells me my chives look terrible. Dice shallots. Fill nine pans with stuff for pear-arugula salad: mozzarella, dehydrated ham, candied hazelnuts. Oh, great. No hazelnuts. Check recipe book. Start making hazelnuts. Halfway through, realize I didn’t let them caramelize well enough. Attempt to save them. Call Tyler over. Call Claire, the pastry chef, over. General consensus: hazelnuts are screwed. I’m screwed.

Need to cut bread for uni sandwich. Last time, Chef told me I cut it too small, so I make sure not to do that again. It looks bigger to me. Hope Chef thinks so too.

Remember coffee. It’s cold. Pour new cup, forget about that one too.

Need to do sunchokes. I love sunchokes. Cut into chunks (chunks are too small; get new sunchokes, cut again). Dry off, put in hot pan with oil, sauté, get color, cook, add butter, add thyme, drain on paper towel. Give one to Tyler to try. Watch Tyler go to trash and spit it out. “Sorry,” he says, “but that’s disgusting.”

Disgusting? I thought they were pretty good. He tells me they’re undercooked and I have to start over. I eat one and it still tastes fine to me, but then again I love raw vegetables so maybe I’m just weird. Discard undercooked shit. Maybe, as I’ve suspected all along, I’m a bad cook. Start over on sunchokes, do a better job.

Lunchtime. Guess croquettas aren’t happening yet. Order in: two pear-arugula, one lolla rossa with no cheese. I make, put on the pass. Chef critiques: too much dressing on the pear-arugula, not enough dressing on the lolla. “Is there dressing on this?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, handing him the squeeze bottle of vinaigrette, knowing that my affirmative response means little.

Order in: one foie, two pear-arugula with no ham. Who would order that salad without ham? Dehydrated serrano ham is probably the best thing in the entire world. Ooh, except for coffee. I need some. Chef repeats the order to get my attention. I call it back. Slice foie. Am told that foie slice is too large. Cut a new one. Put brioche under salamander. Burn brioche (of course). Put new brioche in. Warm pears. Am told that pears don’t have enough color. Place pears directly on the plancha. THE BRIOCHE! Flip brioche just in time. Retrieve pears. Plate. My quenelle of pear puree is too contrived, Chef says.

“Get me a new plate.” I do, and he shows me how he wants it done. I make a mental note not to muck it up next time. Make two pear-arugulas with no ham.

There’s a lull, so I start on the daunting dinner prep list: aioli is something I can easily do at my station, so I grab eggs, oil, garlic, truffles. That, and I’m trying to avoid the croquettas. Maybe when Jimmy gets here I can make him do them. I begin to make the aioli, and as soon as my knife and board are covered in chopped garlic, the machine spits out another ticket. Of course. One paté, one soup. Soup’s not my department – Michael’s on entremet – so I wipe down my board and get to work on the paté. It makes it all the way to the diner without intervention, so I pat myself on the back. Good job, me.

Aioli. Laugh, thinking about Carl; he always calls it alioli. No clue why, but now I do too. Taste, add more salt, strain through cheesecloth, add chopped black truffle. Ha-ha, who would have thought I’d be cooking with truffles on a daily basis? Certainly not me. I want coffee. I’m tired. I wish I hadn’t screwed up the hazelnuts. I wish I was famous, I wish I was at home, I wish home was on Fifth Ave. I wish I was a good cook.

It’s noon, so Jimmy’s here. Wave hi madly. He laughs. I am really glad he’s working the station with me tonight. I’d be in huge trouble if I had to do this alone.

Go over prep list with Jimmy: we have to toast ficelle for the uni dish, toast circles of brioche for the bacon-egg dish, make croquettas, bread croquettas, roll croquettas, slice hams, make tomato “stuff,” cut the pork belly. And some other things. But Michael has tomato confit in the oven; how are we supposed to cook toast? He says he’ll be out in two hours. We’ll wait. Jimmy goes downstairs to cut the belly and bread croquettas (ha-ha, thank god, I am so sick of panko) and I stay upstairs to finish out lunch service and start the fresh batch of croquettas. No. I’ll have to make a béchamel, hard-boil eggs and poach salt cod in oil, so I start gathering my ingredients.

No pots. How are there no pots? WHY IS LIFE SO HARD? I need at least three. At least! I see a few dirty ones in the dish pit, but Gustavo is nowhere to be found, so I wash them out myself. Carl comes in, laughs at the sight of me running the machine. “Oooh, new job for youuuu!” I laugh and tell him to shut up.

I start on the béchamel, put the eggs on the stove. Is there cod oil leftover from last time? Nope. I make some new oil, infusing it with herbs. Put cod in oil. Remember to stir béchamel. Where’s the wooden spoon? Spend five minutes (waste five minutes) searching for it. Find it. Use it.

I want to sit down.

While béchamel thickens, cook the eggs. Cook the cod. Ask Michael when he’s going to be done with the tomato confit. No response. “Michael? Tomato confit? Done?” No response. I hit his butt with my towel and he gives me a look. Well, sorry, but I need to know. 45 minutes, he says.

I’m beginning to get really nervous, per usual, at this time. The lull between lunch and dinner isn’t really a lull at all, but it is the most important part of the day. Two hours – 2 to 4 – to get all your prep work done. Can you do it? I rarely can, because I suck. Because I am a horrible cook. Because I don’t belong in a restaurant. Because I’m a failure. No one has outwardly said that, of course, but I feel it seeping through their tightly-closed lips. Or maybe I’m just paranoid.

Calm down. I’m stressed, so I start eating. I pick at a sunchoke, a slice of apple. STOP EATING YOUR MISE EN PLACE. That is my worst habit. Stop eating your mise en place.

Take a break.

Go to the bathroom for the first time that day. Stand at the sink, splash water on face. THE BÉCHAMEL! Run out of the bathroom and to the stove. Michael’s taken it off the heat. Thank him sheepishly. He looks at me with slight disappointment. Cheeks are red. Oh my god, is he mad at me? I hope not. He’s way too cute to be mad at me. Don’t be mad at me.

Start setting up station for dinner service, pulling out quarts and pints. Only half a pint of cauliflower cream. Will that be enough for service? Probably, but I don’t want to risk it. Roy wouldn’t risk it. Run downstairs to get head of cauliflower. Begin cutting it into chunks while béchamel cools.

“Hey, little girl, I need artichokes.”

“For today?” I ask Michael.

“Yeah … is that bad?”

“Yeah. It’s bad,” I say, throwing the cauliflower into a cryovac bag and running downstairs with a huge bain to collect artichokes.

Bring up 14 artichokes, lemons. Set on station. There’s too much stuff on station. I hate wearing this hat. I can’t think with all of these pots and bowls in my line of vision. Okay. Combine cod, eggs, béchamel. Cover with plastic, run downstairs and shove in walk-in. Start on artichokes.

The toasts! What about the toasts!

Michael’s out of the oven. Must get in oven. Line baking sheet with slices of ficelle, coat with olive oil, salt. Cover with parchment, another tray. Put in oven. Set timer for 9 minutes. The recipe says 13, but Tobias always does 9, and then 7, so let’s go with that. What if I burn them? Maybe I should check them after 8 minutes. Roy got mad once because I opened the oven door too many times, but I’d rather make him mad than burn the toasts.

Continue turning artichokes. They don’t look as pretty as they should, but I’m trying.

Timer.

Switch toasts. Burn arm a little bit on tray. Keep going. It doesn’t matter. Do the toasts. Do the artichokes. Don’t mess up. That matters.

Almost done with artichokes. Tyler asks how I’m doing. “You guys gonna … be ready for tonight?”

Odd question. We’ll have to be. “We’ll have to be!” Don’t think he likes that response. “Yes,” I change my answer. “Yes, we’ll be fine. We’re fine.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Michael cooking rice for family meal. Um, family meal. Right.

Jimmy comes up to talk about our prep list.

“Hey, do you think you guys can make something that doesn’t … stink for family?” Michael asks.

Hey! “Hey!”

He just grins and fiddles with the strap on his apron, so Jimmy and I continue to compare notes. He’ll make the family salad if I do hams. Oh thank god. Hams are boring as all get-out, but I KNOW HOW TO DO THEM and it’s pretty hard to screw them up. YES I’LL DO THE HAMS!

Run downstairs. Realize I can’t do hams if Roy’s using the cryovac machine and Sixto’s chopping bones all over the countertop. I hate when he chops bones. I swear, someday he’s going to sever his fingers off. Run back upstairs to check on the cauliflower cream. It’s done (I think) so I puree it in the vita-prep. Tyler takes a look, proclaims it grainy. “Did you pass this through the chinois?”

I’m silent. Err … no?

I should pass this, he says, I should always be passing this. Duly noted. I pass it. It looks better.

I go back downstairs. I forgot the trays for the hams. I go back upstairs. I get the trays. I go back downstairs. I realize I need to cook the artichokes. I go back upstairs. I get the artichokes. I go back downstairs with them to cryovac. I go back upstairs and throw them at Jimmy. “COOK THESE PLEASE MICHAEL NEEDS THEM THANK YOU I LOVE YOU,” I say. I go back downstairs.

I set up my station. I put the softest leg of ham in the freezer to firm it up. I set the trays to my left. Sixto moves them, imploring me to “organize myself better.” I sharpen the blade. I clean the slicer. I start on the first variety, slicing 8 orders worth of ham. This takes me 12 minutes. I’m trying to make each order perfect, but it’s hard when you get down to the stub of the leg. Claire’s told me that my orders aren’t really a full order, but more like 75% of one. I make sure to put more ham on each sheet of parchment. It’s 4:27.

I start on the next ham. Carl calls me up for family meal. I put the ham down and wrap it gently in plastic. I run upstairs. I shove salad that doesn’t stink and bread into a quart container and run downstairs to finish the hams. My legs are tired. I’m thirsty. I’m sleepy. Maybe Jonathan will make me an espresso if I ask nicely.

I should change my apron; it’s dirty. I change my apron. I should not suck at cooking. I try to not suck at cooking.

Continue slicing hams. At 5:30, I finish and bring them upstairs. I punch Jimmy’s arm to say hello. He’s slicing shiso, as “thin as an angel’s hair.” Well, that’s how Michael described it to me. I can’t seem to cut it that finely. My shiso looks more like fettuccine pasta. So, good thing Jimmy’s doing it. Too bad I’m a total, miserable failure in the kitchen. Tyler points to his head and motions to mine, reminding me to put my hat back on. I put my hat back on and breathe in deeply: dinner service is about to start.