Bourbon Brained

It’s Thursday morning and I don’t work today. So, I’m sitting at Nina’s Coffee Café and for about ten minutes, I’ve been staring at a blank screen. More than a few times I’ve wondered if I’ve written every terrible story, every frightening twist, and each minute detail. I don’t believe that I have, but some things are better left unsaid, and my memory is not capable of remembering blackout moments along with other periods of drugged stupor. So, where does that leave us? In very capable hands, that’s where. There is a lot going on in my life, and you can live vicariously through me, through these posts. You are lucky to not have to experience most of these things yourself; you should be thanking me. Better yet, you should be paying me!

On my first day on the job, one of my tasks was to make a bourbon brine and a glaze for a pork roast that would eventually feed about 100 people. So, my first question was, “Where’s the bourbon?” And just like that, the chef handed me a bottle of whiskey. There’s nothing in the world I’ve ever come across that feels like a bottle of booze in your hand; you know what you’re holding. To my dismay, the idea to hide in a closet and make a brine in my stomach did not occur, nor did any feelings of guilt or contempt come with such a potential burden. All I thought was how great it was to cook with alcohol again. Maybe I had a few cutaways of me doing hilarious things while under the influence at the workplace.

For example, when I worked at Pedal Pusher Café in Lanesboro, I had a tendency to show up drunk, like, every day. I preferred to drink in the morning, and I didn’t work until the afternoon during which I also enjoyed adult beverages. On more than one occasion, I woke up at 5pm, four hours late for work. On one very memorable occasion, I woke up with a spatula in my hand, and all of my coworkers were staring at me. I had apparently walked into work in a blackout and started flipping the burgers off of the back of the grill, on to the floor. An associate accidentally shoved me out of the way and grabbed the spatula from me and I told everybody I was then done working for the night and I retired to the local pub where I could tell everybody what a long day I had at work. The bartender laughed at me and said I had left no more than 20 minutes before, saying I needed a nap before work.

I thought of that day as I held that bottle in my hand and it disgusted me. That bottle transforms me into a monster, incapable of self-control, and very capable of harming myself and others. But I really do like cooking with alcohol. Of course, all the good stuff is almost always heated out of whatever recipe is being created, and this case was no different. So, instead of pouring the bottle down my throat, I poured equal parts into a hotel pan, and a sauce pan, and continued what I had already started forming in my head. I didn’t get to try the bourbon-maple pork loin until the next day, but I truly believe it was the best I had ever tasted. It was nice to have the time and unlimited resources to craft something so wonderful.

There will be a lot of tests, as there always are in a kitchen, but I’m well prepared. There’s a reason I didn’t want to get back into that environment right out of the joint, and I’m glad I waited. I’m far more capable of handling every situation that comes my way, every day, because of everything I’ve done for myself since my release. And as long as I keep in fit, spiritual condition, I don’t believe I’ll run into any major setbacks.

Plating

After enjoying my last weekend off for presumably the rest of my life, I worked a 10 and a 12-hour shift on consecutive days. I need to come clean right away and say that both of those numbers are exaggerated, but only by minutes. The hardest part was getting home at roughly 10pm last night and waking up just after 5am to go work at the laminating factory. I was tired, and I very simply didn’t want to go to that job anymore. Although it is probably necessary to sustain my income, I can’t see myself as a laminator for very much longer. I quit last week, and I’ll do it again, I promise.

Two days into this new experience with Levy Restaurants, I can tell you that I like it. After doing nothing but prep for the first 18 hours of my tenure there, I finally got to plate my first order last night shortly after 6pm. The Wild hadn’t started yet, and I was placed in a small kitchen on the suite level at the Xcel Center. I was given a menu—the same menu given to the customers—and told by my boss that I had enough experience as a line cook to do just fine. He said it would be slow, and he was right, but either way I jumped right in and felt right at home behind the line. The menu was simple—only ten items—and all I really had to do was assemble all of the ingredients I had spent all of that time preparing.

Here’s the menu from memory (I have a copy of it at home, but I’m gonna try anyhow).

1.       Spicy dry-rub chicken wings.

2.       Sirloin-swiss melt with chips.

3.       Pork belly steam bread “tacos.” (Yum.)

4.       Mac and cheese

5.       Bacon-jalapeno-cheddar pretzel (Remember I’m still serving in a stadium.)

6.       Olivino mozzarella flatbread with balsamic reduction.

7.       Some kind of chicken salad.

8.       Hmmmm. I guess I should have taken the menu with me.

I know there was more, I just can’t recall. I also know I didn’t make everything on the menu last night, so that’s what I blame on my forgetful memory.

I’ve always had a knack for plating. What that means is the presentation of the food on the plate. The wait staff seemed very pleased with the limited amount of work I was able to do last night, and asked if I could work up there every event. They said that it looked like I cared and was enthusiastic, based on the plates I was putting out, and, I’m sure my charming demeanor. I’m one of the best chefs in the state, just ask me!

I was dead-tired when my alarm went off this morning at 5:20. I got up, let Willie out, let Willie Jr. out, and headed out to laminate. My feet were killing me, so it really hurt when I ran into a bolt that was sticking out of the floor, about three inches, and for a brief minute, I thought I had a broken foot. I suffered through that and when I was done with work, I took my tired feet for a 35-minute run around Lake LA. My Fitbit claims that I have taken 66,135 steps since midnight, Monday. It feels like it. Tomorrow, Thursday, I’m not working anywhere. I’d love to sit around the house and watch T.V. all day, but I have too much to do. Tomorrow night I’m speaking at the Center for Victims of Torture on my experience with segregation. Growing up a black boy in a white world I have a lot of experience with that. Just kidding. Segregation in this case means the hole—my anus. Ok fine, I’ll stop. I’m speaking on my experience with isolation in prison. The hole is a terrible place to live, even though it was only for six days. I have to talk for ten minutes on my experience and how it relates to my relationships with people after my release. So, I have my plate full, so to speak.

Tomorrow, for the first time in months, I won’t have an alarm set. Yep, I’m going to sleep in as long as I can. Usually that means I’ll be up at 5, but I’m going to try to go back to sleep if that happens. Now I’m just rambling, so I say good day.

What a Rush

I was scheduled to work this morning at 9am so, naturally I showed up at 8:45. I don’t have my ID to get through security yet, so I waited for somebody from the kitchen to come up and get me. As we strolled through the long circular walkway that was home to many fine concession stands, I could hear the sound of hockey sticks hitting the hard pucks, and the pucks likely hitting their intended targets. I was only able to catch a glimpse of the Wild practicing, but it was pretty cool. Tomorrow is their first preseason game, and there was a lot of work to get done.

We entered the elevator and pressed M for dock. I also noticed the letter C was for the main floor. Anyway, the elevator moved slowly down to where I was told the kitchen would be. The guy was right. When the door opened, we were right in the middle of the storm. I stepped out and looked left, then right. I was surrounded on all sides by everything stainless steel. Prep counters and grilles, griddles, pots, pans, whisks, ladles, and more. Every cooking appliance I had ever used and more was there and in the biggest size I’d ever seen. I was in awe. I wasn’t nervous, but maybe a little intimidated. I shook hands with one of the chefs and he brought me back to the locker room and gave me a pair of 3X chef pants with no cinch and said that would have to do until more came in. We laughed about that, and he handed me a few towels for the day, and I went to change. I came back into the kitchen wearing only my boxers, and we all laughed at that, too. Ok that last part didn’t happen.

Here's where I’m glad that I remembered much more than I had forgotten in cooking. The term “Threw me to the wolves” was dead on accurate. The chef gave me a menu, not a prep list, a menu, and gave me a workspace (not an office). My job was to prepare the meals for all of the press that will be attending the event tomorrow evening. It’s only pre-season, so there will only be about 100 of them, “…so prep accordingly”. We went over a few details, and he said that almost everything as far as recipe was up to me. I could choose what to put in the salads, I could make my own brine (I made a maple bourbon that I think will be spectacular) for the pork loins, and, well, the rest of the menu was fairly self-explanatory. Tomorrow when I go in, I will be cooking everything that I prepped today, then serving it to the media. It was my first day and I was already responsible for feeding the broadcasters and reporters. It will most likely be my job for the season if I like it.

Here’s what I really like about this job; everybody has their own jobs and different tasks that they work on, so I never have to worry about anything other than what I’m doing. Does that make sense? There are several restaurants within the Xcel Center that are all run by us, Levy Restaurants, and they all have their own theme. I get to focus on one task, but I get to use some creativity, and I got to do this from day one.

I try not to toot my own horn too much, but I did really well, not just for a first day on the job scenario, but I think I killed it for any day. I felt really confident about everything I was doing, and once I stopped walking into the wrong coolers—there are like seven or eight of them—I think I might have even looked like I knew what I was doing.

 I worked next to a Mexican feller who has been there for five years. He is fast. His knife sounded like a hummingbird was in command when he was chopping away. I was nowhere near that quick, but I was impressed at how decent I still was after all of this time away. At the end of his shift, he said to me in his broken English, “No offense to you, most new white people take too many breaks, and don’t get anything done. You work hard all day. You get job done.” He told that to the chef, too. The chef asked me to stay late tonight, which I did, and asked me to come in three hours early tomorrow for the game. It’s going to be a 12-hour day, I haven’t done that in a while, but I know I have it in me.

This new job is going to be challenging, fun, and some other word I just can’t seem to come up with right now. I can’t wait to get there tomorrow.

After my day, I punched out, changed, and took the same route back. While I was working, there had been quite a change down on the event floor. The ice was gone, and the Lynx were taking practice shots. I only watched for a minute, but I thought it was pretty cool that I was the only audient (singular of audience that I just made up).