This last workweek has been trying to say the least. In my
career as a cook, I have only had limited time at a sauté station, and it is
known as the fastest-paced station in any busy restaurant. Over the past four
work days, I have been trained in on that very station. When I say trained in,
I mean thrown to the wolves like is customary in a kitchen.
The last time I tried my hand(s) on a twelve-burner, I was
working down at Riverside on the Root in Lanesboro, MN where I was high on days
of meth and I had trouble keeping my eye on a single pot of boiling water. I
never could keep it together at any station there: tongs and spatulas
everywhere, none of them functioning properly as my mind whirred about in a
spin-cycle of culinary chaos. I would sweat profusely, and I was blind from
neglect of proper eye-care—I cannot see without corrective lenses. I often
wonder what I looked like from the point of view of a coworker or a diner;
could they tell? Did they watch me waste nearly every move, spinning in
unproductive circles, and wonder which drug I was currently abusing? Of course
they did.
Five or so years later, and with couple-or-so years of
sobriety behind me, I am able to be in the moment, and focus on the
task-at-hand. Orders come in, and I can make sense of them, put them in order
in my mind, and cook properly. Sauté is difficult,
and I have made some mistakes, but I didn’t get flustered: I fixed them and
moved on. There is no time in a busy kitchen to waste on thinking in the past.
Everybody will make mistakes; we just
have to make sure those gaffes don’t make it out to the customer.
One thing that is a little frustrating is that the
particular clientele—country club members—occasionally will send something back
that is perfectly cooked, and we have to start it over. This slows everything
else down, and disrupts the flow, but these people pay a lot of money to be
members, so we do what they say and keep moving.
So, what do I do on sauté? Well, I start the day by getting
all of my ducks in a row. I set up my line, make a few sauces like beurre monte,
and orange beurre blanc, and make sure I have adequate amounts of all of the
pastas and ingredients and proteins. Then we get to work. Orders come in and I
quickly scan the ticket, look for things I need to fire, and then assign them
an order in my brain. I do a lot of sides like sautéed pea shoots and roasted
baby carrots with pepper jelly. I also make pasta to order like the mezza-luna
which is like a half-circle-shaped ravioli that we make from scratch. For that
pasta, I assemble together in a pan: buerre monte, lemon juice, shallot,
garlic, fines herbs, smoked raisins, roasted cauliflower, and s&p. I put
the pasta in boiling water for a couple minutes, and when it’s ready I fire the
burner and add the pasta to the ingredients and flip it around just long enough
to heat it all up, but not so long that the sauce breaks. It is very complicated,
and it takes a lot of concentration when I have five other things going on at
the same time, but somehow…. I’m good at it. It truly is more complicated than
I can even put into words, but I’ll get there.
Each day I fall in love with this new job as it presents a
new challenge. Each day I remain sober, my mind becomes more focused on
celebrating life and finding the best in every day. I think I’ll stay there for
a while.
