pastry days.

It's 6:30am, and im standing in a cold, tiny kitchen. The hoods are off and the stoves are empty. The only sound I can hear is the hum of the refrigeration. I'm all alone, and this is a problem. You see, a week earlier, after a night of getting thrashed on sautee, I overheard my chef telling the sous that he needed a pastry production cook. My standing with my chef wasn't exactly good at this time; the previous night I asked the sous why I hadn't been fired yet, and his response was something like, "Well, it's hard to fire a guy that shows up on time and tries hard." It's not like my pastry skill set was strong or anything--but I needed a way to get off his radar while contributing to the restaurant. So I volunteered for the job. It meant early mornings, all alone, prepping desserts. How hard could it be?

Well, like I said, I was alone. The sous chef that was in charge of the pastry menu was supposed to be training me, but he was late.
I looked over our prep list: pate a choux, pastry cream, bread pudding, chocolate sauce, caramel, whipped cream, souffle batter, 3 cookie doughs, creme brulee, and cobbler or crisp. While I waited for my trainer to arrive I tried to situate myself. The pastry station was in the middle of the tiny kitchen, next to the dishwasher and ice machine. At best this space was an afterthought; to prep and run a service out of it seemed impossible. I pulled the recipe book and got to work. Cracking eggs, melting chocolate, cutting fruit, burning caramel sauce then starting it all over again...things were not going well. I started to notice I had a woeful problem with using a tablespoon when it supposed to have been a teaspoon, or baking powder when the recipe called for baking soda. By the time my trainer showed up I was no longer in the weeds--I was lost, deep in the woods. The lunch crew was trying to shoo me off the line so they could start service, and my jacket had so much chocolate on it that you would think I was wearing a smok. I rushed while tempering my creme anglaise and it turned to scrambled eggs, right there before my eyes. It seemed like I was adding more items to my prep list than crossing off. My time management, to put it mildly, was very poor.

Eventually I started to settle into a routine. It helped not really knowing anyone that worked in the morning, as there were no distractions. I would go in and bang out the biggest projects first; bread pudding soaking while chocolate is melting, crack eggs for bread pudding and souffle at the same time, caramel cooking while stirring pate a choux. The other pastry cook had earned the nickname "Salty" after he mistook salt for sugar and ruined an entire batch of Scharffenberger souffle batter....so next to him I was starting to look good to my chef. My confidence rose a little bit, and when chef fired the grill cook mid-shift, he barked at me to take his place on the line. Three weeks later, I was back on sautee, only helping pastry one morning a week.

Pastry is one aspect of cooking that most hot line cooks will tell you strikes fear deep in their hearts. It's precise and difficult and completely unforgiving. It means early mornings, little to no help on prep, and a constant fight for space on the stoves. It also means a strong lesson in efficency, humility, and cooking delicately. After working pastry your approach to everything from mise to plating changes. Your palate adjusts to appreciate not just taste, but texture. And in the end you are a stronger, more competant and confident cook...as long as you've been minding the salt.


if you were an exotic fruit, what kind of exotic fruit would you be?

paul - passion fruit. obviously
ponder - mango. ripe.
al - dragon fruit.
nick - durian.
me - star fruit.

quotes.

• "So, no balls?" -Eddie, wondering if we needed an order of salt cod fritters.
• "My cat took a dump on my clothes last night." -Corey
• "New record last night, 4 covers! Pretty fucking pathetic" -text, from Joey.
• "The only way i'm doing it is if I go on national tv and Ronald McDonald gives me a blowjob." -Corey, on what it would take for him to sell out to McDonalds.
• "And he should be wearing a shirt that says 'im lovin' it.'" -Corey
• "Sometimes I stand in my doorway naked wearing an easter bunny mask." -more Corey
• "If I ever get in a room with Tyra Banks, I will kill that bitch." -even more Corey
• "It'd be fun to slap Tina Turner." -Nick, when asked if he would rather be on a pairs ice skating team with Bjork or Tina Turner
• "If he were younger and single, he's the kind of guy I might go out with." -Kim Keme, who disputes Corey's low standing with the ladies.
  

notes:

• Thank you to the buzz blogger team for giving me blog of note this week. That shit was bananas...visitors from all over the world, in very large numbers. (6000 hits in two days!!) To everyone that commented and started following this blog (up from 32 to over 160 now...) thank you very much. Sometimes i'm still baffled that folks read this at all.
• I also got linked on Michael Laiskonis's blog--the pastry chef from Le Bernadin. He's a chef I really admire, so this was pretty damn exciting. He's also an exceptional writer.
  
• My head was in 7x7 magazine. Seriously, just my head.
  
• Blue Bottle coffee + bacon + glazed pork belly + donuts = chest pain.
• The more I talk to Justin Simoneaux, the more I think he's a cool ass mother fucker. The same goes for Brett at Coi, and Luis from Orson.
• This photostream has a really funny picture of Thomas Keller and Corey Lee playing on their iphones.
• The Dark Knight on blu-ray was awesome.
• Pork Belly "porchetta" at coco500. One of the best pork dishes i've tasted in a long time.
• I wore my new jeans once, then my rabbit chewed a hole in them.

from top: cara-cara's, hey hey hey!, mongoose, the view from here, black cod, citrus party, amy, donuts, pork belly, risotto, blogs of note, a gift from Tiffany (top chef season 1) and the hail storm.