My 2nd Day as a Stage

My body was hurting, my fingers felt swollen, and my feet ached from the clogs. I guess I'll get used to it. Today, the most senior Sous Chef was running the kitchen. His leadership style, a little stern and business like, was quite different from yesterday's Sous who was a bit more relaxed.

I began chopping away at the same herbs (parsley, chervil, chives, and tarragon) which are then combined and used as garnish on salads and most of the meat dishes. The number of seating expected was double that of yesterday, so I had to chop twice the amount of herbs. The chopping seemed to last forever. Then I had to brunoise some carrots and celery for the meat cook. Next I made some chicken mousse with creme fraiche, ran it through a tamis, and mixed it in with some duck confit and herbs to make a duck farce. I then made little egg shaped farce wrapped with cooked onion skin. The meat cook uses this for one of his dishes. This took me right up to service time.

The amuse bouche is a dollop of chopped lobster meat and herbs (I think) placed on a toasted brioche disk. I was told to make 20 more of the disks. I pulled out my bread knife and began slicing 1/4" thick slices of brioche. Then using a ring cutter I made 20 disks, sprayed with butter, and headed to the oven to bake them when the meat cook stopped me and told me that my disks were uneven in thickness. "You need to make new ones" he told me. Damn! I went back to my prep station and cut more slices as carefully as I could, made 20 more and went back to the oven. The same meat cook said "hey can you run back and get me ------ from the fridge, I'll watch the brioche". While I was in the back gathering his stuff, he came back and told me that he had forgotten about the brioche and they had burned. Damn! I had to make another 20! By the time it was over, I could cut some nice 1/4" slices.

The line was slammed twice and I did my best to help where needed but mostly stayed out of the way. I fetched items that were needed form the back fridge as stations ran out of their ingredients, chopped some shallots when they ran out, and got a little time at the stove with the hot app cook who let me cook some fois gras.

I got to see the line in full motion. Apparently it was a bit too chaotic because one of the waiters also played the role of expeditor. If an order came in while he was out front, then the ball would be dropped as an expeditor since you really can't do both jobs effectively (that's how it was explained to me anyway).

It was already closing time when I looked at the clock. The service was a big blur of time that had elapsed double time. As I walked to my car I took a mental inventory of lessons learned for the day. This sous chef was reluctant to let me run too freely and kept a little tighter leash on me than yesterday's sous. The kitchen behaves differently depending on the leadership style of the Chef in charge. Fetching items was a great way of learning the whereabouts of items in the kitchen and the walk-in fridge. The brioche fiasco taught me not to present something unless it was done right. I made a few mistakes and learned form them. All in all, another great day of learning in the kitchen.