Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line

by Gibney, Michael

  The only things left are the pasta and the terrine, but you trust that Stefan and Chef will take care of those dishes between the two of them, so you don’t even allow yourself to think about them.

  With the proteins covered, you can focus on the garnishes. They are relatively simple but require a fair amount of work. The “carrot” on the monk dish, for example, refers to a carrot puree. The process is less obvious than making baby food. You have to cook the carrots under a cartouche in bay-and-juniper-scented carrot juice, which means that someone has to juice some carrots and chop up others. The “endive” in that dish refers to a classically braised endive, but someone needs to halve them before they can be cooked. The beluga lentils are cooked, but they need to be inspected for quality. The tarragon needs to be picked for the compound butter, and the mise for the sapori forte needs to be cut. The potatoes need to be peeled and dressed. The potato dressing needs to be made. The boquerones sauce needs to be made. Herbs need to be picked. The line needs to be set. The carrots need to be pureed—but they’re not even cooked yet. They’re not even cut yet. There is so much to do, too much to do.

  You step outside to smoke a cigarette on the loading dock and figure out where your head is at.

  When you return, the kitchen is abuzz with activity. New sounds can be heard: the whoosh of lighted burners, the splutter of fat in pans, the clank and bonk of steel on steel. All the rest of the line cooks have arrived. And they’ve all jumped right to action.

  Raffy has gotten started on the evening’s sauces. He’s begun reducing wines, retherming bouillons, toasting spices, finessing fats into emulsion. VinDog and Warren have taken down the stocks and are now starting to set their lines, buzzing purees and turning vegetables, respectively. Catalina whips creams, rinses greens, and slices salumi in her corner on the cold side. Julio, arms bloodied, continues carving away at thick slabs of meat, slicing portions from primal cuts. Everyone has multiple projects up and running and, like worker bees, they buzz away at them, quickly and quietly, as if to some inaudible universal rhythm.

  Being surrounded by a whole crew of people hard at work is usually comforting, but today it’s only superficially so. The specials have utterly consumed you, and as a result, you and Stefan have completely neglected the regular menu. The line cooks are here to handle that problem. They’re here to work on their prep lists, which center on the everyday dishes, for which the mise en place must be done fresh daily. While they might be capable of helping you out with the specials, their focus must remain with à la carte.

  What’s more, the work that everyone else has started has eaten up valuable real estate on the stovetops and tables. It’s cat and mouse now for burners and boards. People are beginning to get keyed up.

  “Where the fuck are my third pans, Kiko?” squawks Raffy. “Every fucking day with this shit.”

  “Vete a la verga, puto. Aquí. Tomale.”

  “Whose rondeau is this on my flat-top?” says Vinny.

  “My bad, dog,” says Warren. “That’s me.”

  “Yeah, well, do me a favor and shit up your own station,” he says, shoving the rondeau onto Warren’s side of the stove. “This thing is about to explode. Pay attention.”

  “Ladies, please,” wails Julio. “Mucha blah blah blah. Ustedes ya me están dando dolor de cabeza.”

  All you can do is put your head down and cook, which is fine, because you do it well when you do it.

  You’re picking herbs for the plats du jour when out of the corner of your eye you spot Brianne. Her arrival means it’s nearing 1500, which is unsettling, but it also means you now have a second set of hands to help pull you through.

  “Yo, Brie, what up,” you say, extending your hand for the shake. “Listen, as soon as you’re ready I need you to hop right into a few special projects for me, yeah?”

  “No problem, Chef,” she says. “I’m about to change right now.”

  When she returns in her whites, you instruct her on how to cut and juice the carrots, and you tell her to bring them up in a pot when they’re ready. You’ll be able to keep an eye on them once they get on the stove, and they shouldn’t take more than half an hour. As far as pureeing them goes, well, they’ll be done when they’re done. You also show Brianne how you want the endive cut and the potatoes peeled, both of which she should be able to finish by around 1600, once she’s through with the carrots. The potato dressing will take you five minutes, so you are fine with pushing that to the bitter end. The braised endive will be a quick job, too, once the stove clears up. You can even set it to run into the beginning of service if you want, because endives don’t take very long to cook and you can store them in their liquor by the stove’s chimney once they’ve come up to temperature.

  You’ve elbowed out some space on the flat-top for an evasée in which you’ve set some white wine and sweated shallots to reduce for the boquerones sauce, and you brought out some heavy cream, the butter, and the anchovies so you can toss them in directly when the wine has come down à sec. You’ve inspected the beluga lentils and certified that they are fit to be served, and you’ve located some good duck fat, which will be used to pick them up. You showed Julio the rig for the tarragon butter and he’s agreed to take care of it before service starts.

  “So do you think you can get it done by four-thirty?” you say.

  “Do I look like an octopus?” he says.

  “The butter’s out, the tarragon’s picked. It’ll take you two seconds.”

  “It’ll take you two seconds,” he says.

  “I’m not asking.”

  The only major project left is the mise for the sapori forte. There is plenty of time for you to set up a board and get it done. You’ve moved your station to the pass, where you can observe both sides of the line. It is cleaner there, and you adjust your setup to fit the atmosphere. Your fish blades have been replaced by a lone ten-inch Gyutou—“Excalibur,” an old favorite—and your cutting board is smaller now. A quartet of two-quart Cambros flanks the board, and whole carrots and cornichons breeze beneath your knife from left to right, as with smooth strokes you convert the raw ingredients into usable food.

  The afternoon is finally beginning to coalesce. You’ve pushed through the chaos, established a sense of control over it. You’ve hit your rhythm. You are getting it done. You’ve been so efficient, in fact, that you’ve even found time to throw in a quick pan of filberts to toast for Chef—garnish for the terrine, which he said he would take care of, from A to Z—assuming that he would appreciate your contribution to the dish. Your eyes still dart here and there every now and again, but you feel for once as if you are going to make it out in time. A feeling of comfort comes over you.

  All of a sudden Chef’s meaty hands come thundering down on your shoulders and the comfort goes to smash. Your knife slips a bit, nearly snipping a pinky tip.

  “Talk to me, papi,” he says. “Where are we at?”

  “Looking good, Chef,” you say.

  “Ready by four-thirty?” he says.

  “Oui, Chef,” you say. “Always ready.”

  GETTING THERE

  BEING THERE MEANS BEING READY. WHEN IT COMES TO SERVICE, being ready means having everything in its place by the time the first order comes in. On days like today, when you have a hefty prep list to contend with, getting there can be difficult. The only way to do it is to get a good rhythm going.

  A good rhythm is any method of working that promotes maximum productivity. The specific method will vary from task to task, but it always comprises some specific succession of steps—(a) followed by (b) followed by (c), etcetera—which you repeat over and over again.

  For simple jobs, this might be how you use your hands:

  (a) Left hand picks up pear

  (b) Right hand peels pear

  (c) Left hand places pear in acidulated water

  For something like whole animal butchery, the rhythm might be the way you choreograph your cuts:

  (a) Head

  (b) Feet


  (c) Wings

  (d) Legs

  (e) Thighs

  (f) Oysters

  (g) Breasts

  (h) Tenders

  (i) Pope’s nose

  For more complicated jobs, like pommes fondant, let’s say, it’s all about how you approach the project as a whole:

  (a) Peel all potatoes

  (b) Cut all potatoes into 5 × 25 mm coins

  (c) Sear all potatoes on one side in rondeau

  (d) Flip all potatoes

  (e) Deglaze rondeau with veal stock

  (f) Mount veal stock with butter

  (g) Season with salt, pepper, and aromatics

  (h) Remove all potatoes from rondeau

  (i) Cool all potatoes in prechilled hotel pan

  In all cases, you follow the sequence with precision. Not only does the repetition yield consistency, it also works to encourage speed. As your body acclimates to the motion, you naturally do it more quickly. You begin to move like a machine, without even having to think about it. And the less you have to think about it, the more brain space you have to look into the future. Like a skilled billiards player, you begin anticipating your next move and the one after that, so that when one task is done, you don’t waste time trying to figure out what follows. You move seamlessly between activities, shaving precious seconds off the overall time it takes to complete your mise en place. Before you know it, you’re scratching items off your prep list in droves.

  Today your rhythm has been brilliant; you’ve been a paragon of efficiency. Chef threw a vicious curveball at you with all these complicated specials, but you’ve knocked it out of the park. It’s 1600 now—an hour before service starts—and you are already almost there. You take a moment to recap what you’ve accomplished.

  The carrots are done. After you pureed them you passed the substance through a tamis sieve and it came out smooth as silk, bright orange, absolutely scrumptious. It is the essence of carrot. The mustard dressing for the potatoes is done. You shaved just enough truffle into it. Truffle can be dangerous. Too much can be pungently overwhelming, but just enough can give the right dish an ineffable warmth. The boquerones sauce is done. It is not overly fishy, not overly creamy, not overly salty. The monkfish roulades are done. They are wrapped and sitting in the fish box. The endive is done. It is sitting in a hotel pan on the stove’s piano, steeping in its braising liquid. The sapori forte is done. All its ingredients have been incorporated, with the exception of the tarragon butter, with which it will be mounted, à la minute, on the pickup. The agnolotti are done. The turnips are done. Basically everything is done. And you still have half an hour before the premeal staff meeting.

  It’s important to use this time wisely. All the food might be ready, but it still needs to be organized among the stations. Typically, a line cook won’t fuss over mise en place for a special, because technically it’s not his responsibility to do so, it’s yours. You need to break the food down into a manageable storage format—quart containers and third pans are often best, because they don’t take up much space on the station—and deliver it to him. Plates, too, need to be collected. Catalina will definitely be picking up the terrine off the garde manger station on a wooden board, Chef’s standard approach to charcuterie. VinDog will pick up the agnolotti off meat entremet (which tends to double as the pasta station), and you can’t imagine it would go in anything other than a bowl. Raffy will pick up the sardines and the monk off fish roast, probably on an oval and a large round respectively. Julio’s got the pork, probably on large round as well.

  When it comes time to pick up the show plates, Chef will demonstrate how everything is to be plated. He will not, however, give you much direction in the way of descriptions for the floor. You are expected to gather that information yourself. And since he hates talking to the people out front, you are expected to dispense it to the waitstaff as well.

  Every new dish will prompt certain questions from the front of the house. You need to anticipate these questions and provide good answers.

  Foreign words and obscure ingredients will come up straightaway. You need to know that boudin blanc is a white sausage made of ground pork, whole eggs, liver, milk, and pig hearts. You need to know that a squab is a pigeon. You need to know that confit means “preserve,” and that the standard method of confiting savory foods is to slowly poach them in fat. You need to know that verjus means essentially “green juice,” and that it is made from the juice of unripe grapes, and that even though it is very acidic, it is not technically a vinegar because it hasn’t undergone the fermentation process that vinegar undergoes. You need to know that a filbert is a hazelnut. You need to know that rocket is arugula. You need to know that quince, also known as marmelo or membrillo, is a fruit not unlike an apple. You need to know that herring are native to the North Atlantic, and that they are small oily fish with immense nutritional value. They are rich in protein, vitamins D and B12, and omega-3 fatty acids, and, unlike their larger relatives, their heavy metal and contaminant toxicities are infinitesimal at best. You need to know that ramps are wild onions of incredible robustness from the Appalachian region of North America, which are available only in limited quantities for a very short amount of time beginning at the end of April, which is why we pickle them. You need to know that boquerones are white anchovies cured in oil with garlic, parsley, and vinegar, and that they are far more palatable than their salty brown counterparts. You need to know that agnolotti are a sort of oblong ravioli originally from the Piedmont region of Italy, which are filled, in this case, with a mousse made of braised veal tongue, lemon thyme, and garlic confit. You need to know that the “winter” mushrooms in this pasta dish are girolles and velvet foots. You need to know that preserved lemon is lemon rind that has been pickled in lemon juice, salt, and sugar. You need to know that monkfish is an anglerfish from the northwest Atlantic. You need to know that foie gras, in this case, is the liver of a duck that has been specially fattened by way of the unlovely cornmeal gavage process. You need to know that beluga lentils are small, shiny black legumes. You need to know that endive, or chicory, is a bitter leaf vegetable from the daisy family. You need to know that black heritage pork is the meat of a large black European hog that is known for its special tenderness. You need to know that sous vide means “under vacuum” and describes the process of vacuum-sealing food in boilable plastic bags and slowly cooking them in a circulating water bath until they reach a highly specific internal temperature, so as to maximize texture and liquid retention. You need to know that the current law stipulates that pork must reach 145°F in order to destroy all vegetative forms of bacteria that might be naturally present in the meat. Cooking it sous vide allows you to regulate this with precision. You need to know that Tokyo turnips are baby turnips, similar in appearance to snow belle radishes. You need to know that guanciale is cured pig jowl from Umbria. You need to know that sapori forte means “strong flavors,” and that the name refers to the piquancy of the ingredients—the cornichons, the mustard, the raisins, the tarragon—which, in combination, work to balance one another with strong results. You need to know about allergens. Gluten, lactose, tree nut, shellfish, and garlic intolerances are extremely common, but there are other sensitivities to bear in mind: orange, strawberry, persimmon, apple, pear, jackfruit, eggplant, corn, red meat, eggs, caffeine, alcohol, sulfites, sugar, salt, pepper. There are also religious restrictions, most commonly kosher and halal dietary law. You need to know everything about everything that’s in every dish, and you must be able to identify which items may conflict with which dietary guidelines.

  After you’ve figured out answers to the standard questions, you need to decide how to endow your premeal note with some degree of panache. Servers are osmotic. The excitement you put into your presentation will drift into their presentations, which will in turn excite the diners and increase the likelihood that they will order one of the specials. Not only are specials a way to make money on in-house products that might otherwise have no outlet on t
he regular menu and therefore eventually become garbage, but they are also a way to develop new menu ideas and keep the atmosphere in the kitchen fresh and forward-looking. So you take care to include certain anecdotal material when explaining them.

  For example, you might mention that quince is believed to have been the “golden apple” in the mythical garden of the Hesperides, known to grant its eaters eternal life; or that herring, one of the most salubrious fishes in the sea, has been part of human culture as long as written language, its consumption dating back to at least 3000 B.C.; or that the Cosby Ramp Festival, in Cosby, Tennessee—which takes place on the first weekend in May—invites thousands of people from all over the world to come and forage the “little stinkers” by hand; or that beluga lentils borrow their name from the beluga sturgeon, whose hard roe—the familiar beluga caviar—are similar in appearance to the legume; or that a girolle is a French chanterelle (which you’d think is a French term itself) and that velvet foots are wild enokitake mushrooms found on tree stumps in mulberry groves. You might share as much of this information as possible, so that the waitstaff can learn something. For the better of our servers, like Devon and Candice—the true professionals—this gesture will go a long way. They will absorb what you say and the energy with which you say it, and they will use it to sell more specials. For stooges like Rupert—the teenaged bungler who just came on board last week—your efforts may be in vain. But regardless of the extent to which they use or desire your presentation, it’s important to give them all the information they could possibly need.

  This is how you approach the last half hour before the premeal meeting, getting things in order, pondering. Once the mise en place is set, each dish can be prepared in five or ten minutes, sometimes even less, which means that you need to be on the line at 1620. It’s quarter past now. Feeling confident about the shape you’re in, you step outside to smoke a quick cigarette and rehearse your presentation.