Steadily on

This was a somewhat different day. I got in a few minutes late because of really BAD subway luck – I just missed the first train and had to wait for the next, and the second train (I take three) sat for a long time in a station.

When I got there, I was told to make pierogies, so I did – two trays worth. And then – there wasn’t much else to do. I put away some ganache. I wiped up a lot. I fetched some cooked tomatoes for the braising tuna. And that was it, so I went to the cafYé to see if they needed me there. We couldn’t call because A lost her phone. I offered mine, but she doesn’t know Chef M’s number – it’s all preset.

So, I pack up my backpack, exchange my chef’s coat for a denim shirt, which I drape over my arm, and walk across the street. One problem – I forgot to take my watch out of the breast pocket. I’ve been putting it there since I washed the case of celery last week, when it got so wet there is *still* water under the crystal and the Indiglo (I’m a Timex girl) stopped working. I hope it’s still in the kitchen.

And what do I see? Chef in a seminar room, apparently starting to teach the class he’d been prepping for. His assistant, K, sees me and suggests I sit in. I ask if I should wear my coat, and he says yes – I should look official. I go even further – I put one of the standard caps over my scarf, tucking in the back so it doesn’t show.

The seminar was on Cookies, Brownies and Cake (not my favorite subject, given my general lack of sweet tooth plus the blood sugar issues, and my dislike of baking in general.) However, I was able to help out – I fetched things he needed, I helped clean up and I even got involved in discussion. One thing he did make – vegan brownies. I can’t find the link to the recipe, but the key was cooking flour and water together to make a slurry – this shortened the proteins enough to take the place of eggs. He actually made it with butter, but it calls for pareve margarine.

He also made sugar cookies, and the cake base for the café’s peanut butter cupcakes. We take commercial organic peanut butter and add salt to it, so it’s very, very yummy in combination. The cupcakes are scooped out and the peanut butter piped in, and then they’re dipped in ganache.

He asked me to come in tomorrow, which is different – and A won’t be there. And I have to be there at 8AM.

I had grilled cheese and soup and went home.

Today, I used my knife. First, Chef had me cut crudites – celery, carrots and cucumber. When that was done, I finished rough-chopping a case of red peppers. That was followed by making macaroni sets (mixing cooked elbows with roasted vegetables and filling 16oz containers.) I labeled them and the cheese sets and put them away.

Then I dished cupcake batter into muffin tins lined with paper. Then I cut up still warm potatoes for salad (note – two pair of latex gloves help a lot with this.) However, Chef already made some and told me to put my potatoes away for tomorrow, which I did.

Eggplant. Again. I’m getting rather good – I’m making the slices the right size, and the frying went better – faster and more controlled. And I used two trays. Then I helped make roasted vegetables (cut into smallish pieces, toss in oil, salt and pepper and bake. Make sure not to burn, which is what happened to the first batch (not my watch.)

Then I helped make granola – I took already roasted oats, and mixed them with cashews and pumpkin seeds that I roasted, plus oil, maple syrup, golden raisins (no dried cherries or cranberries, unfortunately) and some cinnamon sugar, and then baked it for about ten minutes. Very yummy. (To make the oats, mix steel-cut oats with oil and bake until brown. Careful not to overcook.)

There was another person in the kitchen on Friday. She helped with the baking and some of the chopping. Every thing helps. We got through the long list on the white board before 1:30.

I made herbed mayonnaise – Hellman’s mayo, chopped tarragon, dill and parsley and lemon juice mixed together. Then I julienned a dozen onions for caramelization, which I followed by quartering tomatoes for the Thai Tomatoes. I then julienned six more onions, a bit more finely, and made the sauce. While doing these, I also cooked, cooled and quartered red potatoes, and these I made into potato salad. I also packed away some hardcooked egg whites (the yolks were mixed with mayonnaise and wasabi to make wasabi deviled eggs, which are as delicious as you would think. Only these – the end taste was good, and sinus-clearing, but the initial taste wasn’t there. Which is not great.) These would be put together at another time.

Not very exciting, but I felt very competent,which is a good thing, too.

I began by chopping onions. Three gallons of onions. Chef saw me stretching out my right hand, which had woken me up the night before, and suggested Ben Gay. I bought some today, and it helped. I was much faster, though, because I stopped being super careful and just *chopped.* Also, I used a more comfortable knife with a smaller handle.

Then I washed and chopped a case of scallions. Afterwards, I made the cheese part of the mac and cheese sets – grating and mixing the cheese, adding it to the containers, then finishing them with flour and butter.

And then I made the salmon reubens. This is multigrain bread, mustard on both sides (just a smear, or, as I taught A, a “shmear”), gruyere on both sides, then a layer of smoked salmon and a bit of saurkraut (the saurkraut cooked with caraway and mustard seeds.) These are covered and wrapped in plastic, and dated. They’ll be placed in a panini machine at service.

And that was that.

Truly exciting day. Oh, scads of excitement. I washed and chopped a case of celery – about three gallons of celery. It took me almost 4 hours – but I got faster by the end. I learned (thanks, A) to split the entire stalk and just *chopped*. This isn’t for nice and neat and precision. This is to have celery on hand for whatever mirepoix or salad needs arise.

Seriously, though, it was fine. I had no problems chopping for that length of time. My feet hurt, but I didn’t lose focus until about the end.

I did cookies – I took a small scooper (maybe a tablespoon?) and dished out twenty oatmeal cookies to a tray (covered with parchment paper), which I placed in the fridge. And I put away three quarts of saurkraut (cooked with caraway and mustard seeds.)

However, there was one great moment. Chef tasted the Thai tomatoes I wrote about yesterday. And he said they were perfect. I just smiled, but A told him that I made them. Which, you know. Even better. YAY!

Nothing like starting a day on your feet than not getting a seat for a 45 minute subway ride to work. On the other hand, ending such a day with a pedicure is NICE.

Today, the first thing I did was prep for Thai Tomatoes – I julienned four large onions and quartered a gallon of plum tomatoes. Then I made the veg mix for the tofu salad. I diced peppers, carrots and cucumbers. There should have been green beans but we didn’t have any. I mixed these together into a large bowl and then put them in quart containers.

Next thing, I made the tomato sauce (served with udon noodles.) I cooked the onions until they were sauce, and added tomatoes. When they were cooked enough, I added 48 oz of rice vinegar, and let the sauce simmer until it was time to add a cup of soy sauce and a cup of sugar. (Meanwhile, A was cleaning out the lowboy fridge next to the stove, and I kept busy tossing things out.) I also peeled some shallots. We were going to make some vinaigrette, but we didn’t have fresh herbs. She did find a package of usable wonton skins – different ones than the ones I’d used before (the others of that brand were all moldy. ICK.) So, once I added a splash of sesame oil and a bit of salt to the sauce (YUMMY), and it was turned off, I filled more pierogies.

The eggs for deviled eggs wouldn’t peel. Chef suggested that she put them into a container of water and shake them up until they cracked slightly, and they would peel tomorrow. Cool tip.

I could have left at 2PM, but I wanted to finish the package of wonton skins and help do some clean up. It feels wrong to leave a job half-done, you know?

Another Friday in the kitchen. More eggplant and more potato salad.

I cooked the potatoes. That was a problem – many of the potatoes were bad and I had to pick through them to find good ones. I found too many and made the pot too full.

Then I did the eggplant – slicing them and then breading them. *This* time, when I ground the panko finer, I made two gallon buckets instead of one. I figured that the very worst that would happen would be a gallon of preground panko, and how could that be bad?

Why was this better? Because, as the breading continues, the panko gets clogged with egg. I can and do sift out the bigger clogs with my fingers and with shaking the hotel pan, which brings the clogs to the top, but that also means less panko. I need to do this or I get big clogs on the eggplant itself – a very bad thing. With enough panko, I can keep refreshing it as needed. This meant that all my eggplant slices had a nice, even, thin coating of panko crumbs. MUCH better.

Meanwhile, the potatoes cooked. A helped me dump them into a colander and then onto a sheet pan to cool. I SHOULD have put them on several sheet pans in one layer. I made the same mistake later on.

I fried the eggplant as usual, getting more control and better looking eggplant slices. Here again, I needed to use more than one sheet pan to get better cooling of the cooked product. But I know this now. I hope I don’t forget.

Then I quartered the potatoes and made the potato salad. I had to chop up a few more onions and some rosemary and thyme for the salads (the fresh herbs are what we have on hand.) So, while I wanted to leave by 2PM, I ended up leaving 20 minutes later. Fortunately, I’d made most of Shabbat dinner ahead of time, and anyway, I had plenty of it.

It was a light day in the prep kitchen. I made macaroni and cheese sets.

First I grated cheese (the types and proportions don’t actually matter) in the Robot Coupe. I then cut a pound of butter into 32nds. I put each pat into a small container, and added a tablespoon of flour to each. Then I put a large handful of cheese into each, and covered and labeled them, and put them away. That would be the cheese sauce – butter, flour, cheese. All it would need was milk, and that gets added during the cooking.

The cooked macaroni was mixed with roasted carrots and rutabagas, which I scooped into pint containers. In this case 33 of them – that’s how much we made. We’re not measuring, so that’s pretty good.

At that point, there wasn’t much else to do, so A had me chop a gallon’s worth of onions. As I was doing this, Chef came up and said I should go to the café. He also suggested I wear one of their caps, which actually covers my hair better than my pre-tied bandannas, so, fine. He wants some uniformity, but he would rather I wore my whites anyway.

He wanted me to go at 1PM, but I was ready to go at 12, so I went. There I met D, who is the café sous chef. I made a number of sandwiches (the fish sammy and the ELT) and a mac and cheese. And I did make a mistake on the line – using mayo, not mustard. *Shakes head*. But otherwise it went fine, and I’m getting better at shouting things out.

One thing that’s less fun – I have blisters. I have a constellation on my right forefinger, where I hold the knife. And I have two others that sprouted on my forefinger *tips*. I think they came from forcing sixty-odd covers on sixty-odd containers. Weird.

Today I did a little cooking, a lot of peeling and chopping, and made one very silly mistake.

First thing I did was make applesauce. As in one of the first things people learn to make, either at home or in home ec in school. I was told to peel and chop eight apple. I did what I’ve been doing – starting out doing things carefully, the way I was taught. And A comes and tells me, “You don’t need to be struggling like that.” And then she shows me how to do things – well, pretty much as I’d do them at home. In this case, it was take the peeled apple and just slice the fruit off the core, leaving a long, slender rectangle. Then rough chop the apple. Took me 1/4 of the time to do the final four as it did the first. I added two cinnamon sticks, a splash of lemon juice and water to the pot and let it cook. We discussed adding sugar, but decided to wait until the sauce was done.

Once the pot was on the stove, I peeled and finely chopped carrots until I nearly filled a gallon container. At this point, the applesauce was at the chunky-smooth stage. Chef said it was a bit watery, so I put it into a double strainer for a few minutes. He also said it needed about two tablespoons of sugar. This was for 8 apples, which ended up exactly a quart of sauce, so not a huge amount of sugar.

A wanted to use the carrots I’d peeled but not chopped for another dish, so she told me to wash out the applesauce pot and put in a flat (about 24) eggs. I was an idiot. She wanted to hard cook them. I *broke* them.

Not a waste – the eggs could be used to make other recipes, but oh, I was dumb!

I finished the time preparing daikons to be pickled. First I peeled a case full of the baseball bats. I’ve started to feel very proprietary of that peeler – the only one in the kitchen. Then Chef showed me how to cut them into two-inch long sticks. Later, after I got a fair amount cut, he showed how to cure them – he tossed them with about a quart of sugar and a cup of salt. I finished the case, tossed them on top of the ones already treated (and sweating), and added more sugar and salt. Tomorrow, we’ll drain the container and add in rice vinegar.