eat a peach for hours

kitchens are dangerous

i’ve never been much of a cutter. instead, i burn myself. this is my way of getting to know the physical space of a restaurant kitchen: i bumble about, sentimentally clinging onto old habits and previously enjoyed repetitive motions, occasionally brushing against something very hot. it’s a bizarre way, but it is my way. i’m six days deep into my new position in a different kitchen, and i think i may have burned myself on enough things to have a good idea of where i’m not supposed to go. everything is different in a new kitchen. it takes no time at all to realize just how much of a robot you’ve become, even after a few short months in another space. the pans, for example, are a little more rustic, and so they don’t respond the same way to the previously prescribed flick of the wrist as they did in my former kitchen home. as a result, i often find my whites not so white, speckled with errant sauce that is initially quite hot. i think the moment all this accidental touching of hot things stops, i won’t be the new guy anymore.

onward and upward

a while a go i was approached with a potential opportunity, the kind a cook cooks for. i was asked by the boss if i would be interested in climbing the ladder a little bit, from the cook rung to sous chef one. i excitedly admitted that i wanted to take the step, and then i waited to hear word of the when and where variety. now i know those things, and it is officially in full swing.

i recently wrote about the perils of misusing the term “chef”, so it’s strange now to have people using that word in reference to myself. i have tried to tell them to stop, but they won’t, so i guess i’ll just roll with it for now. i’m being eased into the position, which is for the best because the machine is going full tilt through december. there are a lot of seats in the restaurant. as a result, we feed a lot of people. this means it’s a daily grind, a sort of eternity spent keeping afloat. every sous chef and chef i’ve ever had has played a part in shaping who i will be once i become a fully formed sous; i’m a larvae right now. there is plenty of work to do.

goodbye roma

i arrived in their hands a wounded, embittered shadow of the person i try to be. somehow they saw something they wanted to keep around, so they did. that was at the end of july, and now four months later i find myself setting my alarm clock for pretty fucking early for one more time. tomorrow is my farewell shift at campagnolo roma, and on wednesday i’ll be found at campagnolo wearing my white clogs and some freshly pressed sous chef pants.

four months isn’t a very long time, but plenty happened. for a while it was hot out, whereas now it really isn’t. see what i mean? what i really mean, is that i was kindly nursed along from a sullen state to a more confident one. if i was an investment, i was definitely a “buy low” kind of deal. the first month at roma was good. i’m even willing to say it was great. but i had a feeling that somehow it was too good to be true, and that i’d be found out for being a fraud. i kept waiting for something bad to happen, for someone to tell me that it wasn’t working out and that i should probably find somewhere else to peddle my wares. to my surprise, it never happened. in fact, things continued to get better, and the doubt started to shrink and continued to do so until it didn’t exist any more. that is precisely when i started to feel ready.

i can’t even begin to describe just how impossible this seemed at the outset. let’s just say that when i interviewed for the position i was very clear that a career in professional cooking was no longer my goal. in january i had tried to sell my knives and most of my cookbooks, but the world intervened and refused to provide me a buyer. i screwed around for the first half of the year (arts classes and cooking fried rice), and now i feel like cooking is the way forward.

time

cooking and time are married and divorced all at once. good food usually takes time to make, but often i feel as though there just isn’t enough of it to go around. the ability to manage a clock is perhaps what separates me, a professional cook, and someone who is cooking at home. preparing one thing at a time would guarantee the best results, but it isn’t a fiscally sound way of approaching a day’s work. it can also be boring. instead, the day is spent trying to get everything done without getting anything wrong within the confines of a set period of time. i’ve learned the hard way that food will not wait, and that the incessant tones of an expired timer must be acknowledged or whatever it is that the timer was originally set for will probably become compost. it is seldom convenient when things suddenly become “ready”, and often they’ll become ready at once, which sounds delightful but is less desirable than if they became ready in succession. prep lists are like snowflakes in that there are (supposedly) no two exactly alike. ingredients vary as well in shape, size, and condition, as do the circumstances of a kitchen. equipment falters, which has a way of turning a 2 minute task into something that stretches beyond a half hour. i am painfully are that getting everything done is impossible, as there will always be something more to be done, but this does not keep my mind from being disappointed when i fail to do so. at this point in my career, i am less concerned with preparing a “perfect” ______ (no such thing), than i am with getting everything done properly in a timely fashion. this season’s edition of “lucky peach” (read it, please) is all about the “sweet spot”. it’s a broad topic, but in relation to time, the sweet spot is all about taking on the exact right amount of work so that it all comes out properly. take on too little, not enough gets done. take on too much, things probably aren’t right. there is a spot, right in the middle, where speed and efficiency become one. i remember reading about NBA basketball player tim duncan, who appears to move more slowly than many other players. he, however, is undeniably successful in spite of his seemingly slow approach to the game. it was said that he moved at the speed that offered him the most control of his game. he operated in the sweet spot, and dominated from it. everybody has a sweet spot. everybody’s sweet spot is different. we each need to find ours.