I actually had to stop myself to think about why I went to school.
All the way down to southern Oregon last weekend, I had to stop feeling guilty about not wanting to line cook in some fast-paced boutique restaurant, setting up a thousand identical plates at one time or even slogging in the pit that is Denny’s. They all have their place, their usefulness and their purpose. Mine is totally different, and I thankfully have not lost my ability to see it through all the pop-star filters that are now masking what used to be an intimate expereince between chef and food. Television has simultaneously popularized and ruined cooking in a lot of ways, and the population sees all white jacketed folks as cutthroat adrenalin junkies with huge egos and foul mouths…or the other extreme, like some annoyingly unskilled and untalented brunette sellout on a network I do not watch. I really am not like that deep inside and all kidding aside, I prefer not to be seen like that. All except for the foul mouth part, which comes fitted as a factory standard.
I am a person who has a very spiffy grocery-getter market bag on wheels just because A) Any old bag or cart just won’t do, B) It looks totally stylish and I have shoes to match, and more importantly, C) A farmers market is so crucial to my center of happiness that I take it seriously enough to get the right gear for the job. Sounds frivolous, I know, but safe transport of a quart of baby-bum delicate figs with tissue paper skins is just as important to me as is strapping a newborn into a child seat in a car. I think about food like some think of their own children, I suppose, and not being able to kiss either one on the forehead on the way out the door makes me feel as if I have lived my life in vain. I just gotta be connected with my food, Man!
I interviewed with a lovely couple who own an inn just outside Medford, Oregon last Saturday afternoon. We three strolled the garden, toured the house and chatted about the future of the landscape, the busy upcoming wedding season and about the amazing local artisans and purveyors in the valley. It is my understanding that a tentative agreement is in the works for my internship alongside the chef in the kitchen and throughout the house, as well as learning from her husband in the garden to grow produce and herbs for the meals. The memories of Grandpa flooded back to me. I explained hoe he managed his five acres of very fertile soil, his techniques in composting and burning for valuable ash fertilizer, how he utilized everything he had nearby including the manure from the horses across the street. I stared at the llamas over the fence and the plant beds just over the main house and put the two together with a little smile. A huge primal part of me wants to be in the dirt, nurturing those carrots, protecting them from veggie-rustlin’ varmints, preparing them respectfully and then delivering them to an eager mouth. The potential match between the innkeepers and me gives me warm fuzzies, totally.
Not wanting to count my chicks before they hatch, I will save the details of the whole arrangement for the finalization. The second term has yet to end for me in school (two more weeks to finals again), at which time more energy will be devoted to formal coordination of the internship. Students about to go out from third term [ahead of me] need all the faculty’s attention at the moment. The opportunity is one I do not want to miss because of the structure of the education and the potential for further networking, and I am very eager to gear up for it. I can wait my turn.
School Update
Well, the long honeymoon with the new teacher is over. Unfortunately, he was called away on family business and will not return until term end at the very least. We got this depressing news right before our huge two-day long lunch live fire- a daunting project that has a notebook of paperwork to be handed in once it is over. We are all addicted to our teacher like crackheads, his brain so fertile, its a vertiable honecomb of sweet knowledge of which we all clamor for a delectable drop. And no, I am not exaggerating.
After two runs of firing off lunch tickets of 8 items in 45 minutes of service, we have to hand in a tome containing the following:
A menu with marketable lingo, item descriptions and accurate market prices for 16 items including soup, salad, sandwiches and entrees.
Recipes for all items, including pre-production preparation and storage instructions and then finally, actual preparation, holding and service/plating instructions for a stand-in to comprehend. All recipes accurately written for 10 servings and prepared items actually made for 20 servings during live fire, 10 each day. All recipes, whether from a source or contrived must have explanations as to origin. All items must have accurate conversions for the recipe yield, actual measured portion sizes and cooking methods listed. It also needs to have a la minute instructions for finishing and plating in under ten minutes a plate.*
Items were assigned with certain requirements and guidelines. Our group was tasked with preparing some sort of Reuben, a vegetarian entree that forms a complete protein on the plate, panfried fish, a butter sauce, braised chicken thighs, a pureed split pea soup, a grain salad, a leaf salad, ground meat and assigned starch sides. We had to design the menu with those needs incorporated fully, creatively and artfully. And it had to taste good.
Plate analysis describing all the components on the plate, including portion size, preparation and cooking method, dominant taste, dominant aromatics, color, shape, height, texture and temperature. This exercise is to help you look at what your plate tells you. If you have a dish of pureed peas, mashed potatoes and meat loaf, you have basically got either nursing home cafeteria food or a bunch of bottles of Gerber baby food on the plate. Get the picture?
A Food Cost Form, the fucking antichrist of math homework, breaks down each ingredient into how much it costs to produce. Sounds like fun until you realize that you have to convert that price tag on the shelf to reflect how much per ounce, fluid ounce, each or volume amount (dry measure cup), then calculate the product’s value after you have processed it for actual edible portion (snapping the ends off asparagus, for example), then further breaking it down into the smallest logical amount possible in case you use a teaspoon of it as garnish. Yes, that miniscule sprinkle of parsley on your tater salad actually costs $.0132 per toss, ladies and gentlemen. Ever watch Office Space? It all adds up.
Add in the only fun portion of the paperwork- Plate Diagrams of each dish. It must show position, breakdown of ingredients and assembly/garnish for presentation. Guess who volunteered that task for the group? Ubetcha. The one who finally did not waste her first ever term of college drafting school 23 years ago (I can’t believe I just admitted that in public). Woo-Hoo!! As usual, an A+ for the book report cover!!
How It Shook Out
Happily, nobody was threatened or injured this go-round, as we all had new teams. I lucked out and got some awesome partners who communicated well, were very easy to brainstorm with, and we all worked like gangbusters. Bringing our individual talents to the table, we fashioned a little Mediterranean style menu to keep an easy theme going that maximized our utilization without being boring. We had a few mishaps with production, one of which cranked out a great substitute item in our Christmas bean, arugula and artichoke salad. I’m actually gonna make this at home all summer, it was so good.
We were set up with minimal help (the other team was not so organized, despite having one more person on their crew than us), and our first night we cranked out an impressive 42 plates in 45 minutes. You do the math. Granted, we had a few issues, like a little rare Tilapia and unmelted cheese on the Reubens, but we knocked plates out with time to spare. Our second production day and live fire went better, a little slower with better finished results, 39 plates in 45 minutes. We learned a lot, got valuable feedback and felt like we did a good job. Our menu stood up, looked as interesting as it could with the constraints we were given and we were satisfied. No tears this time, either!
We head to baking fundamentals and then gear up for finals. I reckon I have taken 200 pages of notes this term. You bet your ass I will be studying starting Monday. I said many times that this term was like trying to drink from a firehose. I am gonna be smarter than that whipping inch and a half booster line and dammit, I am gonna get a drink out of it no matter what. (Hi Pop!!)
* Guess what I figured out? Making your own Secret Dish a formal menu item totally sucks ass on the paperwork end, but I finally got my favorite dish done in publcation-ready format. I don’t recommend it.
