“It’s a hard kitchen,” she said, herself a recent culinary school graduate. “Trust me. You will think you’re doing your best, and they will be watching you, saying ‘That’s not good enough; you’re not fast enough.’”

Good, I thought. I need that kind of experience. I want that. I can handle that.

–

Two months later, I haven’t heard those exact words from anyone’s mouths, but Molly was right. It’s a hard kitchen.

–

“Um, think your cumin is burning there, little girl,” Michael said once as he cut celery root.

Frustrated, I scraped it out of the pan. “But I asked you how long to cook it for, and all you said was ‘Until it’s done!’”

He didn’t look up. “Yeah. Until it’s done.”

I wiped out the sauté and started again with a fresh layer of cumin, and this time, Roy watched me from start to finish, arms crossed. I grumbled the whole time, whining about Michael’s lack on instruction. It wasn’t my fault, I thought. He’s not being very constructive!

—

Another day, after curing two pork bellies, I packed them in deep hotel pans, labeled them properly and pushed them into the walk-in. I was patting myself on the back for a job well done – I’d even made extra cure for the next few times – when Tyler came bounding up the stairs, clipboard in hand.

“Did you cure the pork belly?”

“… Yes?” I said. I’ve grown wary of questions phrased as such. Whenever someone in the kitchen asks if you’ve done a certain job, you can be sure it’s not because they want to congratulate you on it.

“Okay, well you have to store it in bus tubs, not hotel pans. I actually think I’ve told you that once already.”

I didn’t remember, but he probably did tell me. My brain’s felt like a wet sponge for the past two months, soapy and filled to capacity.

Still, I found myself protesting. “I don’t remember you telling me that. But next time. Next time, I won’t! I mean, I will! Definitely. Thanks!”

–

I’ve been scolded for too-small chive tips, too-big chive tips, too-fat shiso chiffonade, too much sea lettuce, too sloppy brioche squares, too dark brioche circles, too small ficelle toasts, working slowly, poor time management, stupidity, and a general lack of competence. And the worst part is that even though every criticism was warranted, I protested them all, refusing to admit that maybe the problem was me. Michael HAD told me to make my shiso thinner, and though I tried and tried and tried, I just couldn’t seem to make mine look like Tobias’ or his or Carl’s. What kind of idiot can’t cut bread straight? What kind of moron doesn’t know that too much sea lettuce will overpower a dish with salt? But I was trying and foolishly thought that was enough.

–

Last night, I worked in pastry at FCI, a comparatively easy kitchen that’s more about learning and fun than sado-masochism. Chef A sent me to cut pineapple on the industrial slicer, and though it was occupied, the cook using it assured me she’d be done within minutes. Enjoying a moment of quiet after two days and 19 hours on my feet, I leaned against the counter and waited. Chef R walked by and scowled at me. “You’re wasting time. Go do something else.”

I began to open my mouth, but he didn’t want to hear it. “Come on, Rochelle,” he said in a tone of voice that meant I should definitely know better.

He was right; I did know better. The second I pressed my hips into the steel counter, I knew I was acting selfishly. But I was tired and thought I could maybe – just maybe – get away with it. I sliced the pineapple and dutifully wiped the machine clean, then went back to the pastry kitchen where Chef A put me to work painting rose petals with egg white and coating them in white sugar.

She watched me work and then corrected me. “Make sure you get all of the flower with the egg,” she said. I nodded and coated the petal. She frowned. “But not so much! A thin layer!” I nodded again and kept painting. I didn’t have the energy to protest or explain myself or even apologize. I just let my wrist continue to move in trance-like rhythm, stroking the brush over the flower. Inside my head, I heard a voice that sounded surprisingly like mine. Though it started as a soft hum, when I listened harder I understood that it was chanting: That’s not good enough; you’re not fast enough.

—

My first impression of him was cemented at the end of my first day at the restaurant. After a hearty and excited “Break it down, boy!” from Carl, we were all cleaning up, packing away our mise en place and scrubbing the counters.

“So I’m not going to make you clean the hoods,” Michael said, trying to find a task for me and glancing up at the grease-slicked steel over the stovetop.

“WHY NOT?” Roy said in a sort-of bellow. “She’s the perfect size to get up there!”

Up there? I was climbing on top of the stove? I timidly patted the piano with the palm of my hand. It was still quite hot, but I jumped up on it anyway, dipping a green srubbie into soapy water. As I attacked the hoods, letting oily water fall back down on me in fat droplets, Roy regaled us with stories of his old kitchen. “We used to do this every night when I worked in a real French kitchen.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Caitlin roll hers and pull her lips in to try and keep from laughing. It seemed to me that they’d all heard about Roy’s French kitchen before, but I was new and eager to please, so I listened, rapt with attention as I gingerly tiptoed from one end of the stove to another.

Later that week, as I settled into the restaurant, Roy showed me an entry-level of congeniality. As I sliced hams, he asked politely for scraps with an out-held hand. He told stories of his kitchen apprenticeship, and his second-most recent restaurant. I began to become familiar with the phrase “At Twelve Washington Square …” He started most tales like that, and went on to describe a painfully complicated and intricate recipe or procedure that proved his prowess over the rest of us. “At TWS … I turned 300 potatoes before my chef called them shit and threw them out … I worked with carrageenans all the time … I made artichoke risotto out of ARTICHOKES cut to LOOK LIKE rice.” I was at first properly impressed, then amused by his touting. Comparing kitchens has never really been my thing, mostly because I’ve only worked in two and one of them included a daily half-hour break for lunch.

As time went on, though, and Roy realized that I was to be a permanent fixture in the kitchen, the novelty of my presence wore off. I went from pleasant distraction to an outright disaster in his eyes, and he began to find fault in everything I did – that is, if he was speaking to me that day. On some mornings, I’d wave a cheery hello only to be met with stony silence. I learned quickly to ignore him right back – no sense in asking what’s wrong. On mornings that he banged around fish tubs and hotel pans, I knew I was in for a lashing.

The first one came around noon, as I breaded croquettas. It’s a messy job, what with the egg yolk, flour and panko breadcrumbs, and I was trying my best to keep it all contained in my 2-foot workspace wedged in next to Sixto, the butcher.

“I need the Cryovac,” Roy said, elbowing in next to me and inadvertently shoving me out of the way. I stood by, hovering awkwardly, debating whether or not I should elbow my way back in when he wiped a handful of ground breadcrumbs to the ground. “You’re a fucking pig,” he said. “This place is a fucking mess, you fucking pig!”

“Eh uh umm ummm errrrrrrrrr,” I mumbled before settling on a red-faced “I’m sorry.”

When he was finished with the Cryovac, I surveyed my damage. It was pretty messy; my cutting board splattered with breading mixture. But I had planned on cleaning it up afterwards! I imagined Roy’s reaction to that insistence and already knew what he’d say: “If you work clean, you won’t have to clean up your fuckin’ mess afterwards.” I supposed Roy had a point, but did he have to be so mean about it?

A few nights later, in the middle of my first time working the garde manger station alone, he sauntered over from behind the formidable meat/fish station to check out mine. He stuck a spoon in my almond milk, licked it, and threw it in my bain with an angry clatter. “Is this supposed to be gritty and disgusting?” he asked.

“Uhhhhmmm …” Trick question? “I didn’t make it; Tobias made that one. I’ve never made this … I don’t know what the texture is supposed to be like.”

“Don’t care,” he said. “The first thing you do is check your fucking mise en place. If shit’s not right, you can fucking FIX it, but now, what are you gonna do about it? Nothing. You can’t do a fucking thing about it now.”

I gulped and nodded, stirring it with a spatula in attempt to whip some creaminess into it. He wasn’t finished.

“That’s the first thing I do EVERY day I come in. I check my mise en place. Because if something’s wrong – or burnt out – I can fix it or make more. That’s just smart. How you conduct your station is stupid and makes NO sense.” And with that, he swaggered back to his post, leaving me to stir some heavy cream into the mixture, defeated and hunched-shouldered.

Roy has a special fondness for the word “stupid.” Whenever something is done without maximum efficiency in mind, it is done stupidly, and the person doing it is a stupid person. (More realistically, a fucking stupid person.) I recently took two trips down to the walk-in cooler to fetch ingredients, and when he saw me hop up the stairs for the second time, he just acknowledged it with a quiet “Well that was a waste of time, don’t you think? Are you stupid?”

I blinked away anger, exhausted by his constant stream of comments. And besides, who was HE, the man who just told me that he doesn’t read, to call me stupid! “No, I’m not, but you’re a fucking dick sometimes,” I responded and, for good measure, ran down the stairs again.

I went through my daily kitchen motions for the next few weeks, silently cursing him and avoiding him whenever possible (not the easiest thing in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp) until one day, as I tied my apron at the bottom of the basement stairs, I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around and there he was, arms outstretched and reaching around my waist.

“I’m sorry for being a jerk,” he said. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh! Uhm, err, meeeehhhhhlrmmmm,” I said, once again at a loss for how to respond. “Really? Thank you. I don’t hate you, either.” I let go of his embrace and waited to see if there was more. There wasn’t; he was done, so I just gave a salute and took the stairs two at a time.

Later that afternoon, as I performed my weekly flour-panko ritual, he appeared behind me, vying for the Cryovac.

He looked at my various tubs and opened his mouth, then paused. “Can I … show you a better way to do that?”

I looked at him and smiled, big and wide. “Yes, I’d like that,” I said. In my head, I added the words “… you big jerk,” but I didn’t mean it. Not really.

Oh my god, I thought. I’m in trouble. What did I do? I’m in trouble. He is so scary. He’s going to hit me! No, he’s not. He’s totally going to reprimand me strongly in his typically intimidating, authoritative manner. I’m totally in trouble. I’m totally in trouble.

I shuffled over and raised my eyebrows. Pleeease be nice, my wide eyes and slightly open mouth said.

He didn’t look at me or acknowledge my silent plea. Instead, he pointed to the fish. “C’mere, look at the scales. See how they pop up when it’s cooked?” He was speaking softly, just to me, and to anyone else in the kitchen it might’ve looked like I was getting reprimanded for a broken aioli.

I leaned closer and touched the skin-side with my index and middle fingers. It was bumpy, like braille. “Oh!” I said.

“Yeah, it’s so cool. You can’t tell by looking at it, but when you feel it compared with a part that has no scales, you see the difference.” His attention was still focused on the fish.

“It is cool,” I said. “I like that we leave the scales on.”

He smiled and his cheeks rounded up like Seckel pears. “They’re like fuckin’ popcorn.”

“Hee-hee,” I said, giving the tilefish one last stroke before walking back to my station.

I took a long drink of my quart container of water. “Hmm!” I said to myself, laughing at my perpetual surprise by both cooking and people.

A few minutes earlier, Tobias had sent me to work in the basement prep area while he manned our station during service. Roy was, apparently, extremely displeased with this turn of events.

“You wanna work down here?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. And in my head: Yes. Maybe. I don’t really care.

“You wanna work service?”

“Yes.” (No. Maybe. Whatever, really …)

He lost it. “So get the FUCK up there! Don’t let him push you around; this is YOUR station too, and you have to take RESPONSIBILITY and AUTHORITY for it. Don’t be a little PUSSY and let HIM do all the WORK. If you have to do prep, then you BRING IT UP to your station and chop onions or WHATEVER THE FUCK it is you’re DOING down here, at your CUTTING BOARD in between ORDERS.”

I let his words wash over me. They’d bathe most new cooks in shame, but I was pretty much just thrilled to be getting yelled at in a walk-in cooler. Probably not the reaction he’d hoped to shake out of me. I blinked my eyes, looking at him in earnest. Yes, yes, tell me more …

He left the cooler in a huff, and I stood there for a few seconds more, thinking about how awesome it was that I just got reprimanded next to a dead chicken. Somewhere along the 55 hours I’d worked that week, I forgot why I signed up for an externship at the restaurant. I didn’t love to cook, and as my burned toast proved, I wasn’t very good at it. What had I expected to get out of this experience? Roy’s red face flashed in my mind and I giggled. All of a sudden, I couldn’t wait for service to be over so I could rush home and write. The thought propelled me through the night, and I didn’t even mind when Tyler banished me back downstairs so Tobias could work the station.

Who cares if I’m not allowed to play with the big boys? I thought. Roy might’ve yelled at me in a refrigerator, but I thought it was funny, and that made me the baddest-ass cook in the kitchen.

“CONSTANTINE?” I said, almost spitting out the piece of dehydrated ham I was munching on. “Yeah, it’s cool,” he said.

—

I may not think him the coolest cook in the kitchen, but I know with certainty that when I look back on my time at Aldea, I will consider Carl to be my greatest teacher. He was the first person to work with me on the Garde Manger station and he has been the most firm, consistent instructor I’ve encountered in my entire culinary career (and yes, that includes the French Culinary Institute.) I will always remember, with terrifying chill and excitement, the first time he yelled at me: I was slicing an apple with a Japanese mandoline, ignoring the cutting board for a more convenient spot on the counter.. “YOU DON’T WORK LIKE THAT,” he said in a tone of voice that implied extreme anger without raising a decibel. I blanched and blushed, moving a passing tray underneath the falling apple slices. I was embarrassed, but he was right. He is most usually right.

Carl is only 24 years old, but he is more accomplished than I ever hope to be in that he is married and actually goes home after work. (I, along with our other coworkers, drink myself into oblivion before stumbling into bed at 3:30 AM with a bag of pistachios.)

But Carl is different.  He bounds in every morning, swinging a bottle of Vitamin Water, ready to work. He’s well-rested, despite insisting he didn’t go to sleep until 4, and he is unfailingly smiling. He gets angry when production goes awry and he sometimes lets his cheeks turn a pinkish-red under the stress of service, but he never berates or belittles his coworkers. He just puts his nose down and pulls through. For Carl, working at the restaurant is somehow both just a job and his entire life.

Carl is from Chile, and though his English is not perfect, it is beautiful. I adore listening to him speak and always find myself wishing he didn’t shoo me off to make a vinaigrette or bake croutons in the oven or some other equally impossible task. Carl is the kind of person who lends himself to the term “character.”

On Friday, I arrived at the restaurant mad as all hell, ready to throw in the towel. After being greeted by Tyler, the sous chef, with a stern reprimand over my flailing, failing kitchen behavior, I began banging around pots and pans, throwing large legs of cured hams to the counter with unnecessary but impressive force.

“What’s wrong?” Carl asked, buttoning his whites.

“NOTHING,” I said, and in the same breath, more truthfully: “I don’t know. Everything. I’m breaking up with Aldea.”

“What, why?” he asked.

I didn’t know where to start, how to complain about the struggle each day was, how unbelievably tired I had become, how much I missed having clean fingernails. I just focused my attention on the presunto, unwrapping the plastic from around it.

He pressed a little further, but when I offered no details, he relented. “Oh, you should have seen me at my first job,” he said. “I was getting yelled at all the time.”

I, in classic fashion, ignored his generous outreach and chose to whine about the state of my affairs. “I feel like I fuck up everything I touch here,” I said, positioning the ham on the slicer.

“Well that’s okay,” he said. And after a short pause: “It’s when you fuck things up three, four times, that it’s a problem.”

I paused too: did he mean to accuse me with the pronoun “you,” or was he speaking in general terms? I’d grown so paranoid in my month at the restaurant that every comment made by my coworkers seemed to be dripping with disgust and frustration over my incompetence. “Besides,” he said, “our generation wants instant, instant … and we forget that this, that cooking is a craft.  It isn’t instant! It can’t be!” Carl looked at me and didn’t exactly smile, but his face was lacking the severe lines that everyone else in the business seemed to wear. I wanted to sit and talk more, to probe about his early falters and feel comforted by his stories but with the slightest wave he had bounded up the stairs and vanished into the main kitchen.

I began to slice the presunto into thin sheets, arranging them on parchment, portioned for individual orders. I tried to make my mind focus on performing the task as fast as possible, but a half-hour later, I was still unwrapping and slicing pork product. Carl came back down the stairs, in need of mirepoix. I use the slicer a lot, and it is stationed on a table directly above the onions and shallots. When my coworkers need one, they’ll ask me to move in varying degrees of politeness (Michael lets a hand brush the back pockets of my pants and grins widely, Roy will bark “BEHIND” and Chef simply stands stoically until I piddle on the floor and side-step to the right). But that day, Carl just reached underneath me. As his hand wrapped around his vegetable, he cozied the side of his face into the crook of my arm, smiling up into my face like a cat in sunlight.

He held the pose for mere seconds – he had work to do, after all – but I knew that it would be enough to brighten my spirits for the remainder of the 13 hours spent in the shits.

He left and the slicer whirred. A chunk of fat from the serrano went flying, landing just under my ear. It was then that I remembered Carl’s words a week earlier: always sharpen the blade before slicing the hams. I sighed, annoyed that I’d forgotten something so simple. I was already behind schedule and reluctant to eat any more time, but I removed the ham and adjusted the apparatus. It was what Carl would have done, and if I can’t yet tell him how much I respect him, I can, in the interim, try to make him proud.

I stopped what I was doing to think about that (Carl glared at me, and I quickly resumed cutting leeks into squares). Did we call everything guys? I guess I hadn’t noticed. But as the night wore on, I caught myself uttering the word again and again. “I’m gonna bring these guys to the walk-in,” I said, stacking three quart containers of chestnut soup and balancing them under my chin. “Can you hand me one of those guys?” I asked as I reached for a pile of lemons. Tobias noted it. “You’re right!” I gasped, suddenly recalling the thousands of times my coworkers had referred to various objects as such.  In fact, on my first day, hadn’t Michael instructed me to clean the grease trap of the plancha by “taking a guy, wrapping him up and sticking him in the hole?” (To be fair, he meant no innuendo, but it was kind of hard to ignore.)

On and on it went, and I thought nothing of it until last night, when I told Tobias I was going to “put this guy in the lowboy.” Except “this guy” wasn’t masculine at all – it was cod roe!

Let me be clear: I don’t think that our usage of the word “guy” is anything more than a slightly annoying verbal tick – and I definitely don’t think that our kitchen is a bad place to be a woman. I’m happy to be treated like one of the boys, and appreciate the fact that no one offers to carry heavy bus tubs or do the dirty jobs (actually, they’re a little too eager to shove those things my way.) I rarely feel feminine there – frequently incompetent and spastic – but not feminine.

That is, until yesterday, as I breaded salt cod croquettas in panko. “Yo, I’mma show you a trick for doing those better,” Tobias said, putting on a pair of gloves and separating each piece before transferring it from the egg to the breadcrumbs. “You gotta show them some love.” I nodded; it was a good idea to deal with them individually so they didn’t become clumps of sticky egg and flour. “Yeah,” Tobias said, shaking the pan to coat them evenly with panko, “Maybe you should think about treating them like you treat your hair.”

My hair? I glowered. My hair? The lion’s mane that’s lucky if it gets a comb in the morning, let alone a flat iron or styling cream?  My HAIR?  DID I LOOK LIKE THAT GODDAMN KIND OF GIRL? After all of the burns weathered from cleaning the plancha, all of the beers consumed after-hours, after all of the dirty jokes made at other people’s expense, I was still reduced to my motherfucking hair? Down the counter, Michael was laughing.

“Shut up. I hate you. I’m mad at you.”

“I’m sorry for the incon-vee-nience,” Tobias said, drawing out the word with a schoolboy’s smirk.

“He has a point,” Michael said, a taunt rising in his voice.

I just bit my lip and focused my eyes down on the tubs of flour, eggs and crumbs. “Please stop talking; I’m trying to do these guys,” I said.  I wasn’t mad – not really – but I did fume a little longer as I breaded the last of the croquettas. As I moved them from bin to bin I picked each one up gingerly and gave it a lot of love, because it was food, and I treat food like some people treat their hair.

Instead, I’d like to start fresh – with the story of my first day. I’d like you to meet my coworkers as I met them, so you can grow to know and love them as I do.

—

I’m supposed to begin my trail at 2 PM, so naturally I arrive in the neighborhood by 12:45. Nerves have set me on edge and while I’m relieved that I won’t be late, even neurotic me knows that 12:45 isn’t a smart time to walk into any restaurant – not during the lunch push. I swing into a bookstore and hide in a stack of personal essay collections. I thumb through them mindlessly, thinking about how much I’d rather spend the day here than there.

But at 1:40, I find myself hoisting my duffel bag over my shoulder and making the two-block trek to the restaurant. I say hello to the hostess and tell her that I’m trailing today. “Oh!” she says. “Well, then, you can just go on right back.” I walk straight into the kitchen, wondering if the diners lingering over lunch know why I’m there. Wondering if the staff knows I’m coming. The kitchen is heavy with the activity that I will later understand as the combination of service and dinner prep, but right now it just looks intimidating.

A tall twenty-something with a good amount of facial scruff acknowledges me and I introduce myself. He says his name is Michael and then just looks at me and smiles uncomfortably, so I look at the dining room and say “Sooo … restaurant week. How’s … that going?”

He looks at me oddly. “It just started today.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” I say, shifting my bag.

“Well, you can go get changed downstairs,” he says, motioning to the stairwell hidden behind the server station.

I carefully take the steps and come face-to-face with a Guatemalan man hacking away at a pile of bones with a cleaver.”Hi!” I say, as if he knew who I was. “Where do I …?” I ask, motioning toward the checkered pants in my bag.

“Oh, over there, over there,” he says, pointing toward the stairs I just descended from.

“Oh, okay.” I walk in that direction and realize that there’s nowhere to go but underneath the stairs, so that’s where I change, quickly pulling on my French Culinary uniform and cramming my hair into a hat. I gather my knife roll in my hands and walk back upstairs.

Michael’s not surprised to see me this time, but he is amused by my hat and bag. “You don’t have to wear that for prep.  Just for service. Well, unless you want to,” he says with a wicked grin.

Nope, I don’t want to. I pull it off and tuck it into my right pocket.

“And … you’re not really gonna need that bag. Just take out your chef knife.”

“Oh,” I say, surprised that I wasn’t expected to provide my own spatulas. “Well, let me just … do that.” I run my bag back down to the stairwell and take out my paring and chef knives.

Michael’s already set up a cutting board for me along the back wall, next to the pastry station. He sets a napkin on the board and writes in black Sharpie:

Oranges

Blood (7)

Mandarin (7)

Fennel Puree

Vita Prep / OJ Water

Pass

Calderada Kit

I have no idea what any of these things mean, but before I can ask, he begins to explain. “So you know how to segment oranges, right?” I beam inwardly. YES. Yes, I know how to do that. Thank god. This is off to a good start. He goes on to explain that he’s cooked some fennel bulbs with orange peel and spices, and that I have to puree them with orange juice and water, then pass the whole thing through a chinois. I know how to do that too. The Calderada kit, he assures me, will be explained later. “Okay, good?”

“Yep!” I say cheerily. “But … where do I find oranges?”

He looks at me like he wants to start laughing. He thankfully does not. “In the walk-in,” he says.

“Okay?”  I’m clearly not convinced.

“They’re in a bus tub.”

I’m pretty sure that’s all I’m going to get, so I thank him and trust that I’ll find the walk-in and figure out what a bus tub is. I head back downstairs and ask the butcher – Sixto, is his name – where the walk-in is.

“Um, lady, it is … right there.”  He points.

“Oh!” I flush red.  I’m standing literally half an inch from the door. I yank it open and find 9 big black tubs of clearly labeled produce to my left. The oranges are thankfully at waist level, but I worry about what’ll happen if I’m asked to fetch some scallions – they’re a good three feet above my head, and the tubs look frighteningly heavy. I run back upstairs with the oranges and put them in a bowl, grabbing another bowl for the scraps and two quart containers for the segments. I’m taking up a lot of room, and in this small kitchen, I can tell that’s not really going to fly. I attempt to consolidate and end up with a small patch of workable room on my cutting board. I breathe. Roll with it. It’s okay.

“Good?” Michael asks, watching me shave the peel and pith off a blood orange.

“Yup, cool,” I answer.

“Okay, ask me or Carl if you have any questions,” he says, pointing to a blur of motion that hasn’t seemed to stand still since I entered the kitchen.

“Okay, I will,” I say with what I hope is a brilliant smile.

“Oh, and -” he’s walking away but turns his head back to me. “Work fast.”

I work as fast as I can on that given day – though in the coming weeks, I will bang out oranges with much greater speed and efficiency – and then get started on the fennel puree.  There’s just one problem. I don’t know where the Vita Prep is. I’m torn. Do I act independent and look for it myself, potentially wasting precious time, or do I swallow my pride and ask someone? I decide to flag down Carl, who’s whipping from cutting board to oven to flattop, working on what looks like eight things at once.

“Yeeeees?” he says.

“Where … can I find the blender?”

“The Vita?”

“Uhm, yes.”

“In dish!”  And just like that, he’s gone, whizzing through a pile of carrots.

In dish? Dish … washing station? I duck in and take a survey of the pots and pans. I guess I’m looking a little hopeless, because Roy, the newest hire and rough-around-the-edges but talented as all-get-out guy manning the sauté station asks me what I’m looking for. I tell him and he hands me the plastic base and top.

“The motor?” I ask tentatively.

“Server station,” he says before tossing his rondeau under the sink with a clatter.

I find it there and set up at my corner, working the fennel and orange to a pulpy mess. I add the liquid and then slop it into a chinois set over a large bain. It’s thick and definitely won’t pass without the help of a ladle and a little elbow grease. I pick a ladle that is, I learn later, way too big for the job, and proceed to spend the next eleven minutes trying to pass the puree with it. Eleven minutes! It feels like a lifetime, and I imagine my coworkers agree.

“Come on, muscles,” Michael says on a trip past me to grab a stack of nine pans. I look up, my bangs in my eyes.

“Hey, I’m wicked strong,” I say with a bit of sass and keep pumping.

By 4:30 I’m working on the Calderada kit – which amounts, basically, to cutting mirepoix and measuring spices.

“Hey, familia,” Roy says to me over his shoulder.

“Okay,” I say, not knowing exactly what he means.

I keep slicing onions, my back to the counter where family meal is set up until Carl takes pity on me and taps my shoulder with his whole palm. “Family meal timeeee!” he says, somehow drawing out the last, silent syllable of the word.

“Oh, okay!” I say, but keep chopping because I don’t want to leave a half-finished onion on my board. “Yo, done son? Take a break,” Michael says, carrying a plate full of stew and salad back to his.

“Yeah, get there before the servers,” Caitlin, the sous chef, says with a quietly naughty grin.

“Ha-ha!” I laugh, unsure of whether or not to make fun of the waitstaff in order to endear myself to the cooks.

I stuff some salad and stew in a quart and take a few large bites before continuing to work. And just as I’m cleaning my board of debris, Chef appears, looking calm and unsullied in a sea of frenzied workers.

“Hi Rochelle,” he says.

“Hi!” I answer, adjusting the ties on my apron.

“How are you doing?  We’ll talk a few minutes before service,” he says.

“Good.  Okay, we’ll talk,” I answer, relieved of the promise to do something that I’m confident at – something that doesn’t require so much precision and intricacy as it does banter and well-placed grins.

In the meantime, though, Carl calls me over with a yell and a hooked index finger.

“You are working with me tonight,” he says, “here, on garde manger station.”

“I’m your bitch tonight?” I say with a smile.

“Heh, heh, yes, you are my gato.”

He explains what goes into each of the 18 nine-pans at the station, then moves on to talk about the contents of the eight squeeze bottles. I should be taking notes, but I’m flustered and foolishly try to commit it all to memory. (A week later, he will grow tired of my questions and mandate that I draw labeled diagrams of the entire kitchen.) “Uh huh, okay, yep, okay,” I just keep murmuring, trying to repeat his words in my head: seabeans, wasabi, pickled mustard, cauliflower cream, apples, diced apples with skin, pears, cooked pears without skin …

“Rochelle?” Chef calls me and then bounds up the stairs to the second dining room.

“Do I?” I ask Michael, pointing above.

He nods vigorously, so I run up after Chef.

We’re seated at a table across each other, and he leans over.  ”So,” he says. “What do you know about this place?” I know a lot – the entire menu, a good chunk of the wine list, Adam Platt’s praise, the GQ honor, Bruni’s 2-star review, but of course I instead mumble some incoherent mess about having eaten there and REALLY, REALLY liking the foie gras.

We chat as amicably as possible – he’s warm and friendly but I’m nervous and making it uncomfortable for the both of us – before he sends me down to the kitchen. “Just jump in there,” he says, giving some last-ditch advice. “The last thing I want to see is you standing with your arms crossed.”

“That’s the last thing I want to be doing,” I promise. And with that, I walk back into the ethereal glow of Aldea at dinnertime, where I’ve made many a mistake but have not once stood still.

I thought wrong.

During a fleeting quiet moment between orders, Tobias walked to the sink to rinse out his bain of tools. “You doing okay, man?” Michael asked, manning the entremetier station.

“Oh yeah,” Tobias said, shutting off the water with a nod in my direction. “I got homegirl over there … helping … me.”

Michael raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes spoke a mouthful: I get it.  I’m sorry you have to work with her. She’s useless. She fucked up a béchamel once. She’s not one of us. The two of them shared a knowing snort and glanced at me, turning red around the ears when they saw I was watching.

I just raised my arms in anger that was real but guised as false. “Dude,” I said.

Tobias mumbled something, backtracking without much effort, and I turned around, opening the lowboy to refresh our mise en place for the next wave of diners.

—

*Names have been changed.

For roughly 16 Servings:

• 6 egg yolks
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/5 cup whole milk
• 3 cups heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon cloves
• 1 teaspoon allspice
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 2 cups pumpkin purée
• 3 cups graham cracker crumbs, very finely ground
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 8 tablespoons butter, melted

First, make the pie crust with the last three ingredients.  Toss together the graham cracker crumbs and cocoa powder to evenly coat.  Mix the melted butter in, firmly press into a sheet pan lined with parchment paper and freeze until set.

Meanwhile, whisk together all of the sugar and egg yolks. Set aside.  In a medium-ish pot, bring the milk, cream and spices to a boil.  Remove from heat and temper slowly with the yolk/sugar mixture.  Once the eggs have tempered, add the rest of the dairy mixture and stir with a rubber spatula – do not whisk! Return the mixture to the pan and stir over low heat until slightly thickened. You’ll know it’s ready if you follow this trick:  dip a spoon in the pot, coating it with the cream.  Holding the utensil horizontally, draw a line in the cream with your finger.  If the line holds its shape – and doesn’t run down in drips – it’s ready!  Take it off the heat and strain it through a chinois or sieve into a bowl over an ice bath.  Add the pumpkin purée and mix in.  Cool, stirring occasionally.

Once cooled, process in an ice cream machine.

Once the ice cream is made, place it in a work bowl.  Take the graham cracker pie crust out of the freezer and break it into bite-size chunks.  Add it to the ice cream and, using a spatula, fold it in.

Caramel sauce would also be a delicious addition to this dessert, for as the L’Ecole pastry chef says, “Too much?  With ice cream, there is never too much.”

The point raised is that culinary school is expensive – really expensive.  The bachelor’s program at CIA costs over $100,000, and a typical career training course at my flagship, FCI, costs about $42,000 (there are deals, though, at FCI – check out night classes starting in early summer, and you can easily save over $10,000.  My guess is that the sweltering July kitchens are the reason for the discount.)

It’s absolutely true that one doesn’t need a culinary degree to succeed as a cook, or even a chef.  And a culinary degree is certainly not an adequate substitute for hours logged peeling potatoes and mumbling “Yes, Chef” to a red-faced and screaming sous.  No one graduates from culinary school and lands a position running their very own restaurant.  So why go?  Well, besides the fact that it’s fun – I’ve made some of the best friends of my life there – I’m thankful for the nurturing environment.  I realize that there are about a billion adjectives one can use to describe a professional kitchen and none of them are “nurturing,” but for a cook as green as me, a little coddling isn’t such a bad way to start out. Or maybe it’s just the fact that I wanted to test out my skills in the comfort of a classroom setting before subjecting diners – real people! – to rubbery scallops and salty hollandaise.

There are some incredible chefs running restaurants these days, and I would love to learn from any one of them.  But incredible skill doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with instructional ability and that’s where chef-instructors come in.  The teachers I’ve worked with at FCI aren’t just talented, they have a knack for explaining, demonstrating and, well, teaching.  And I don’t get to learn from just one teacher!  Where would I be without Chef X’s screaming and no-nonsense policy?  I can’t imagine going through school without Chef Tim’s jokes, and I definitely wouldn’t have learned about timing and multi-tasking without Chef Vero’s steady stream of gentle yet firm constructive criticisms.

I realize that some chefs have a personal vendetta against culinary school graduates.  I’ve heard it said that although the styles are remarkably different in CIA and FCI grads (they’re annoying know-it-alls; we’re rude troublemakers), C-school students can be spotted a mile away.  Anthony Bourdain is no fan of culinary schools, despite having attended one himself.  (Perhaps that’s why he was so unamused by me when we met this summer?)  I understand why they feel this way – there’s nothing worse than a stubborn student unwilling to adapt to a new chef’s style.  But I’ll tell you right now that culinary schools – or at least the good ones – try to instill that flexibility into their students.

At the end of the day, though, I look at it this way: who’d you want to perform open-heart surgery on you?  A doctor who apprenticed for a few years, or one who spent the money on medical school?  Got your answer?  Now apply it to really important matters – like lamb chops and pots de creme.

Hope to see you at my graduation.