A kitchen is all about adaptation. When my arms are full, and I have to open the walk-in door there is a slim to none chance that someone will be there to help me out. I take on the flamingo stance using my leg to balance whatever I'm carrying while I open the door with the hand I just freed up.
Some people aren't terribly good at adapting. When the smoked salmon is too delicate they start tearing at it, ruining half of the pieces. When there is a stack of dishes too heavy to take back to the dishroom, they start asking for someone else to take it back instead of just dividing the stack in half or carrying the whole thing and not being a wimp. Those who aren't good at adapting tend to not last very long in the kitchen. It's easier to do the job and not listen to them complain and ask for help.
Yesterday me and the sous chef Rob were in the kitchen alone doing a party for a 100 people. It was supposed to be a cookout and Rob was supposed to stand at the grill in his finest country club attire so all of the lady golfers could feel like they were at a typical cookout (because typical cookouts normally involve a chef in a white coat, black pants, at a country club). Anyway Rob and I were ready for a quiet 4 hours of getting stuff and making sure everyone left happy. At 1:30 one of the waitstaff comes running in singing about how it's raining. The singing part was less on purpose and more of the way he speaks when he gets excited. It was amusing, but Rob was not sure whether he was going to have to move the whole proceeding inside or whether the ladies were going to want to eat immediately. The second option was rather scary, because none of the food was ready, and it shouldn't take 15 minutes to get food for 100 people together.
In all reality we would have had more than 15 minutes to get the stuff together, but the front of the house people putzed around a little and by the time we found out that we needed to do the food inside it was 2 and we had 15 minutes. Rob threw some burgers on the flat top(kind of like a giant skillet and by giant I mean bigger than the top of your oven). My job was to flip the burgers and as Rob said "mark them." Basically I threw 100 burgers on the flat top, made sure both sides looked done and ran them back to Rob so he could throw them in the oven till they were done.
Next to me was the grill. Rob was marking the chicken on the grill. He yelled back about 5 minutes into the process asking me if I knew how to put diamonds on the chicken. What a silly question; of course I didn't. I went to school for baking and pastry arts for goodness sake. I yelled yes, because like I said kitchens are about adapting and no is not a reasonable answer, and he said turn it a quarter turn. Unfortunately by the time he had yelled back the chicken was already over done and the marks weren't made, but the second time around I got it.
In 15 minutes time the people were eating. They ate quite a bit and we ran around like mad people trying to find the extra potato salad and some extra tuna salad. 40 minutes or so after we started the mad dash to get the food ready we were cleaning up.
There is nothing more satisfying than a job well done. All of the ladies were happy and fed and the fact that we did it in 15 minutes made me (I can't speak for Rob)feel like the magicians that people think everyone back in the kitchen are.
In other news my mom's garden is gorgeous. The zucchini are coming in and the cucumbers and beans. I can't tell you how excited I am to get my hands on the cucumbers and make some pickles. Some chocolate chip zucchini bread might be in order too; we will have to see. I'll be sure to add a recipe for that in the next post.
Happy Eating!!!
Emily
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