Scrounging and Leading

I have to admit, my years doing political stuff and having to figure things out on the fly has given me a very transferable skill. I can scrounge nearly anything because I know who and how to ask.

As I mentioned, we went out and bought our stuff for Friday’s “Market” workshop yesterday.  Three students and a $60 budget, including everything right down to the salt and pepper.  We had the option of buying a few things (like spices, tomato paste, etc) in small quantities from the school production kitchen – an excellent idea if only a few grams or a spoonful is needed.  But it meant careful shopping and thinking hard about the recipes ahead of time.

Wednesday morning I wandered into the production kitchen to speak to the Chef there about what I might be able to buy from the kitchen.  I have an interesting idea for one of the courses and needed a few ounces of alcohol – not the cheap, salted syrupy industrial stuff that we usually cook with, but some real stuff – gin in particular.  And it just so happened that Chef 4 (the Cuisine Director, and therefore the final word) was there.  I asked him – no problem at all, and he gave me a very good price on it.  Yay!  I also asked him if it would be okay to use some molecular gastronomy chemicals in a dish – sodium alginate and calcium lactate in particular.  You can’t buy those in the Market, but I do have them at home.  The answer again – no problem.  See what happens when you just ask?

So my group and I dashed off to the Byward Market and started shopping.  A quick trip to the butcher, another to a little shop with some herbs in a cooler at the back, then to Metro and Loblaws.  I had done a little tour on the weekend before and knew what was in each store and roughly speaking what it was going to cost.  And once we were done at the stores, we had a little money left and decided to head to the LCBO (Ontario’s government-run liquor monopoly).   And that’s where something very cool happened.

I had an idea in mind that we could pair at least one of our courses with beer.  Wine would have been too expensive, but a can or bottle of beer is usually about $2.50-$3.50.  I had an idea of what I wanted, but stopped to ask one of the staff people in the beer section.  I explained who we were, what we were doing, and what we were making.  She had a good suggestion (better than mine), and standing near her just happened to be a rep from a microbrewery.  He agreed with her suggestion, and we ran off to pay.  I didn’t notice though that the beer rep followed us out into the parking lot.  He beckoned me over, and asked if we might like a mixed 6-pack of his product.  I was honest with him and said that we might not be able to use it since we didn’t buy it (and thus wouldn’t have a receipt), but he insisted we take it.  Sweet! 

When we got back to school we brought it in, I explained to Chef 1 what happened. He was slightly astonished and said “Why doesn’t this happen to me when I go to the LCBO?”  Hmm… I’m girl, blonde, and was looking a little desperate? In any case, the answer was “yes!”  Again, the value of asking!

We packed up our box for the workshop, put our “Team Fun” sticker on it, and a big note on the beer – “NOT YOURS”.  I wouldn’t want to come back and find that someone had availed themselves of our stuff.

A little scrounging also came in a bit handy with today’s “black box” workshop.  This morning I did my last hours for the term as an assistant in the production kitchen.  I was supposed to have the hours yesterday, but it conflicted with the trip to the Market, so I asked the Chef if I could reschedule them for today.  Again – not a problem.  I’m not sure the other students who were supposed to be with me bothered to reschedule their hours – when we found out about the conflict they complained heartily, but kinda seemed to leave it with the Chefs as something for them to solve.  C’mon people… show some maturity and solve your own problems.

And you know, it was very fortuitous to be doing those hours this morning.  While my task was to pack boxes for the Superior Cuisine exam next week, I did have a little time to poke around the kitchen and ask the staff there some questions.  The three young folks who work there are all very nice and very willing to help you if you ask.  I didn’t know what stuff we’d be getting in the “black box” that afternoon, but it was nice to know where to find things.  A browse through the spices, the cubbyhole in the back with all the different oils and alcohol, the shelves with different grains and flours.  And, what ended up being very useful information – where to find the good-quality saffron.

So when we got the bins of stuff for the workshop, our group picked through it and chose a few things – a marrow bone, some halibut, and a rack of lamb.  Easy enough.  A fish cake with potato and a garnish of fennel, carrot and red onion salad with orange and mint vinaigrette, risotto Milanese, and braised rack of lamb with Mediterranean spices (oregano, mint, sumac, etc), couscous and roasted carrots.  A quick dash down to the production kitchen and I was back with the rest of the stuff we needed.

As a group we worked fairly well, but I could definitely see where the strengths and weaknesses were.  One guy basically made the fish cakes…. and that was it.  Didn’t occur to him to even check if the deep-fryer was plugged in until less than 15 minutes before we were supposed to plate the dish.  I got a little frustrated with him and suggested frying on the flattop.  Chef 3 looked a little irritated with me, but I was leading the group and we needed it done – and we got it done.  And the orange beurre blanc the other guy in the group was going to make for the sauce?  Yeah… I asked him about it several times, but it didn’t happen.  Chef 3 though our dish was pretty good, though perhaps a little too much onion in the fennel salad that I’d made – fair enough.  And our dish could have used a sauce.  Really?  Ya think? Ugh….

Somewhere in this I made our second dish – risotto Milanese.  The morning class had brought some of their leftover risotto back to the production kitchen and it was awful.  I thought, perhaps a risotto for one of our dishes?  This is something I know I can do.  It worked – though Chef 3 thought perhaps a little more cheese would have been nice.  Ok – point taken.

Unfortunately, my phone battery was on its last legs - so no battery, no flash, no decent pictures.

Last was the lamb.  While poking around in the kitchen this morning I had noticed sumac on the shelf.  Interesting spice with a slightly lemony flavor.  It’s often used in Mediterranean/Middle Eastern cooking in spice blends like zata’ar (sumac, mint, oregano, salt, sesame seeds).  I kinda thought it would work, and the guy who was going to prepare it seemed okay with the idea.  Didn’t seem to have a strong idea of his own.  Okay – then it’s my idea we’re going with.  I mixed up a spice/herb blend and asked him to taste it.  He gave me a slightly sullen look.  But to his credit, he did help keep an eye on the guy making the fish cakes, and had a lot of input into them, and they turned out well.  On the other hand, the lamb was overcooked and the couscous was almost, in the words of Chef 3, “like polenta”.  Thankfully the taste was good.

But this workshop has me thinking about leadership again.

In my previous career I’ve had a lot of job titles like “Supervisor”, “Team Leader”, “Senior Coordinator”, etc, so I do know a bit about my leadership style.  I like to work with people who have “spark” – that is, a real passion for what they are doing.  We all have our good days and bad ones – I’m a horrible grouch when it’s not a good day.  But overall passion for a topic makes it easy to get past the crap and remember why the things you do are important.  I’ve seen people I know who volunteer their time for political causes do the most horrible and tedious jobs imaginable with next to no resources – but they do it with a smile on their face because it’s important to them.

And when something is important to someone, they don’t need to be micro-managed.  I have never liked supervising people who need me crawling up their ass all the time – if you need someone on you for you to do your job, then you need to find another job because don’t have the spark.  It means that you aren’t motivated from the inside with a passion that will make you stay up late, get up early, read everything you can find on the topic, experiment and learn and, most importantly – ask the right people the right questions.

Must get to bed – the Market workshop is first thing in the morning.  But I don’t think it will be hard to get up tomorrow even though I’ve stayed up late.

Birds Galore (and Being Bitchy and Old)

We had our last practical lesson of the term yesterday.  And guess what?  More birds.

It seems to me that one skill LCB really wants us to learn is how to cut and debone various birds.  This term we’ve cut up chicken, deboned pheasants and quails, made escalope of turkey, and last night learned to make crapaudine (butterfly cut) of Cornish Hen.  I’ve spent a lot of time with my hands up the business end of various birds this term and learned more about avian anatomy than I would have in any science class.

Crapaudine literally means “toad cut”.  One you get the backbone and ribcage out of the little buzzard, it does kind of look a little frog/toad-like, but I do prefer the English “butterfly” name…. slightly more appetizing.

Since it was the last practical and not a dish that’s going to be on the exam, I think minds were elsewhere yesterday.  At this point, most students are thinking about the workshops or next week’s exam.  Because even though it was not a particularly hard dish, there were lots of problems.

Cutting the bird was not a problem.  I think most people have that figured out now.  Sauce diable, and some pommes gaufrettes (waffle cut frites) on the side.  How hard could this possibly be?

With minds slightly absent, I saw people do all sorts of odd things.  It was also my last turn as sous-chef for the term and I thus was on the receiving end of about a million questions, as is usual even if I’ve explained to everyone a dozen times that “birds and watercress are in the first fridges, butter in the end fridges on both sides.  All the shared ingredients at the front of the kitchen.”  And I was pretty firm about one thing – don’t take the shared stuff like vinegar, mustard, cayenne, etc from the front or I might just punch someone.  The worst question for the sous-chef is “Where is the X?”  I don’t fucking know – I know where I put it, but I don’t know who has it at this very second. But then I need to spend a few seconds figuring out where things are instead of worrying about my own plate.  Would it kill people to get a bowl or a spoon and take what they need and leave the container in a logical place?

My dish was okay, but nothing special.  My little buzzard was a bit more blackened than it should have been, thanks to my “clever” thought of finishing it in the oven instead of on the flattop.  The ovens in the 3A kitchen seem to have three settings – “Off And Won’t Light”, “Pilot Will Light But Shut Off For No Reason”, and, best of all, “Cremate the Corpse”.  Guess which one I had?  It’s not Cajun week, Sarah!    And worst of all, my sauce was almost cold. Chef 3 handed me a spoon.  Yup… gummy and a little over-reduced… I should be better than this by now.   He seemed a little disappointed with me. He knows I can do better and expects it.  

 I think my pommes gaufrettes were pretty good, but that’s thanks to a little tip I know.  Put frite-type things in the freezer before cooking.  The fans in the freezer will dry them out a little, which means they will colour a bit better/more evenly.  This isn’t my Triple Cooked Chips, but it isn’t my first rodeo either.  And, as sous-chef, I didn’t bother grabbing a deep fryer from one of kitchens. We would have had one fryer, that wouldn’t have worked for 10 students.  I just handed out a few pots of the (nasty) frying fat.  If you haven’t learned how to fry something and keep a handle on temperature, then WTF are you doing in Intermediate Cuisine?

My mediocre dish aside, what irritated me was the clean-up of the kitchen. There are a few people in the class who are very good and take the initiative to clean up.  But what grinds my gears is that people don’t understand concepts like “clean from top to bottom”.  Why does the person who sweeps the floor do it before the counters are cleaned?  Do I have to explain this to people in Intermediate?  I felt really grumpy and old when I saw people standing around chit-chatting and I could still feel lumps of crap on the counters.  I run my hands down the countertops – I learned from people who care about the details. This is where I feel my age again.  I had chores when I was a child – and I got spanked and grounded more than a few times.  If I left crud on the counter, I had to clean up again.  And as I walked out of the kitchen I asked the steward/dishwasher how many burned pots they got that night…. 6 or 7, apparently.  Perhaps some of my younger classmates weren’t spanked enough as children.   A Chef could very easily give the steward a two hour break and make us all wash out our own dishes.   Wouldn’t that be fun?

So that part of the course is done.  Just out of breathe from running around for the Market workshop on Friday.  Two ideas – popcorn and a beer pairing!  

Butchery, Bunnies, and Bubblegum

If you’ve been reading for a while now, you know that I occasionally like to reference stories in my past that have some relevance to study at Le Cordon Bleu.

On Friday while Chef 3 was signing my Student Evaluation Form at the end of class, I teasingly asked him how many dishes I needed to make for him before I got some gum.  With a shy little smile, he said he would bring me some next week. 

At the beginning of class tonight, I dropped my recipe and my knives at my station and sprinted off to gather plates, bowls, cutting boards, etc.  When I got back, there were three pieces of gum.

Awww.. how sweet!  My sense of humour isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it is nice when someone gets an inside joke.

So what was the dish tonight?  Lièvre navarrais (Hare Stew Navarrais).  Sorry Mr. Fluffy, I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice…

This is the last dish on the list that could end up on the exam, and it’s the only one in our book this term with a list of ingredients that goes on to a third page.  Nearly a page of that is stuff that goes in the marinade, but on first glance this is a scary dish.  Butchering a hare, and about a million other things to do.   

But, as I said last week, what would have scared the shit out of me a few weeks ago is now actually manageable.  It turned out okay too – a few flaws, but no mistakes that I wouldn’t have fixed next time, or that wouldn’t have been better if I had a few more minutes.  My plating was “a little conservative”, according to Chef 3, and he had some useful suggestions to fix it. Expectations are certainly getting higher now.

And Chef?  Thanks for the gum!

Some Say (Apologies to Top Gear UK)... and the Value of Crazy

“Some say he’s a closet pastry chef and that he seasons his food with the tears of Cordon Bleu students… All we know is,  he’s called the Stig.”

If you’re a fan like I am of Top Gear UK, you’ll be familiar with a character called The Stig.  He’s a top level race car driver that appears in full racing gear on each show to put cars through their paces, coach celebrities for the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment, and whose identity is a closely guarded secret even on the Top Gear set.  He’s a bit like a superhero with a twist of weirdness that only the genius possess.

Let me introduce you to the character in my life that I’ll simply call The Stig.

While I’ve had moments in the kitchen this term where I’ve been deeply in the shit and feeling very alone, the truth is, I haven’t been alone.  I’ve had a voice in the back of my head pushing me to work harder, taste (and taste again!) and make sexy plates. 

The Stig is a Chef and dear friend of mine with a dose of the freaky-crazies that reveal not just talent, but genius. Mysteriously (ok, not that mysteriously) he knows a fair bit about the Cordon Bleu curriculum and has given me excellent advice about process, what NOT to do, and has told me what to worry about and what I can let slide.  Over the years, he’s recommended some excellent books and resources that I would have not found otherwise and pushed the limits of my imagination a few times.

I never understood the link between Chef-food-insanity-brilliance until my first visit to Belgium nearly 10 years ago.  Belgium is of course famous for its chocolate, but the tourist-trap shops selling Godiva and the like on the Grand Place in Brussels are a giant rip-off.  A tip led me to a little shop selling chocolates by a guy named Pierre Marcolini.  It was expensive as hell - the Euro equivalent of several dollars per chocolate.  I got my little bag of about four bites and slouched onto the curb outside.  One bite of the chocolate flavoured with violets pretty much shorted out my brain.  It was literally the best thing I had ever tasted, and perfectly captured both violet and chocolate in a way I had never considered.  When I was finally capable of speaking, I turned to my partner at the time and said “I don’t know who Pierre Marcolini is, but he’s crazy."  Anyone who has the passion and obsession to refine a simple thing to that level is clearly out of their mind.  But for just a few dollars I got a glimpse into the mind of a mad genius.

Last night I shared some of my ideas for the market workshop with The Stig. I don’t talk to him every day or even every week, but when I ask for advice, he always delivers.  He thinks what I have in mind is ambitious, but sounds very good. He reminded me that traditional works, and that it need not be a 3-Michelin star tasting menu.  Essentially the advice was, don’t over-commit to something I can’t deliver, and if I’m working with “morons and princesses” that I’m going to have to take charge of it.  His last words to me were a request for pictures of my dishes this week, and “I believe in you.”

I remember talking to him a few years ago, after Basic Cuisine. I asked him if I should bother going back to LCB to finish the program.  I recall his exact words – “You have it in you.”  Those are the words in the back of my mind every class, and that’s the standard I’m holding myself to.

Do I have the crazy in me?  I guess I’m going to find out.