Before the first tickets of the night start rolling in you want to be having a cup of coffee and a conversation with your chef or another line cook in front of a spotless station, filled with mise en place in the appropriate amounts organized by dish. Your meticulously selected cooking equipment (slicer: check, serrated: check, mini-offset spat: check, microplaner: check, sauce spoons: check, demitasse spoons: check, hand mixer: check, and so on...) is all exactly where you want it. The plates (cold for cold food, hot for hot food -- god help you if you try to serve a cold black truffle foie terrine on a hot plate), bowls, soupiers, sauciers are all accounted for. You are ready for the madness. The machine starts chattering and it's go time, rock and roll.
When you are dans la merde, or in the shit, you never get to the aformentioned scenario. The chatter of the ticket machine becomes a terrifying sound because you still have to blanch the rest of the angolotti garnish, shape the cooked hearts of palm, punch the butternut millefeuille, as well as build the station, that is gather your pots, pans, plates and all that other shit. Chef's voice booms out,
"Ordering for 4; 2 tasting; 2 regular; 2 regular canape, 2 pannacotta no glaze; 1 terrine, 1 HOP, veloute, white asparagus; 2 suzuki, 1 bass with an out of place ango..." and down the line. The hit is coming super early, of course, today because you are late and could the first order be any worse. You got all 4 first course dishes, each of them different: terrine, HOP, veloute and asparagus (you've never even picked up the veloute and asparagus because they were created at last night's meeting), as well as an out of place ango with the fish. There are knots in your stomach and you're in a cold sweat: am I gonna make it? The sous chef is simultaneously helping and bitching at you: I mean seriously, do I have to help you set up everyday? Why is this station such a goddamn mess? No plates, come on, this is ridiculous, your station is not set up. Inside, you think, "Hey, dick, at this point, help me or get of my way." You forget about that stuff, try and stay calm, keep it together and continue finishing tasks. You get rid of the ice baths you used to shock the ango garnish, wipe down, pull garnish for a HOP salad, cutting the HOP to order this time, and start the plate as the canapes walk. Ok, got 30 seconds to punch that MLF. Done. Sometimes you catch up, sometimes you don't and service is pure hell, 6 hours of pure hell.
How did we get dans la merde? Let's rewind to mise en place. Mise en place, or preparation, on first course at per se is, as Matt Lewis, my mentor on the station put it, "So aggressive you start bleeding." Cooks are scheduled to arrive at 1:00pm. No one arrives later than 12:30 and I'm in my whites and clogs by noon, as is Ann, my partner working the cheese side of first course. Wednesday, my Monday is the hardest of the week. My first course counterpart, Anthony, (he works lunch Fri, Sat, Sun; dinner Mon, Tue) wrote the menu the night before and I have no idea what I'm in for. I make the rounds, shake chef's hand, grab a pen and start organizing my day. I read Anthony's menu:
VEG TASTING:
1. citrus/fennel/nicoise rounds/nicoise oil/citrus powder
2. MLF/panade/cabbage coulis/squab spice
5 COURSE REGULAR:
1. morel veloute/morel vin./morel slices/spiniach/sweet garlic pain purdue/mushroom powder
2. white asparagus/soft poached egg/truffle coulis/truffle crumble/mache
3. agno/celery dice/celery root dice/truffle emulsion/celery leaves
TASTING:
1. braised winter radishes/roasted beets/radish ribbons/truffle coulis/bulls blood greens/beet powder
2. torchon/apple gelee/apple consomme/r.onion dice/celery dice/green apple dice/cutting celery/apple chip/brioche
Take a deep breath and devise a plan of attack. I fight my gut reaction to lose no time and just start chopping, spending precious minutes mapping out the day in my mind. I assess the station, looking through the lowboys at all the mise, checking of both quantity and quality. If I don't need to prep it I won't. The big items on my mind are, soup, MLF, radishes, gelee. Everything else is a quick cook, blanching or knife work. I write my prep list, grab a deep hotel pan and head for the reachins. Time to do the shopping. There is no walk in at per se, only reachins, the theory being things get lost in big fridges (it's really like Ruhlman says in Soul of a Chef, nothing is very big in this kitchen, speaking of The French Laundry). I grab all my produce in one shot. Ann you need any dairy? How much? She needs eggs, milk and cream for a savory almond/apricot bread pudding. I need butter and milk and run down the hall to pastry, grab all of our dairy. Ann and I are starting to work well together. While I grab dairy, I know she is setting up blancing water and ice baths for us both to use. Back in the kitchen, I wrap my seasoned, oiled, vinegared beets in aluminum foil and get them in the oven. I put up an rondeau and get half a pound of butter foaming. I add 5 shallots, emincer, sweat. While the onions cook, I slice the morel mushrooms, Anthony had the commis clean for me. Shallots tender, I add the morels, sweat them out, add chicken stock an bouquet garni and simmer. Next to the rondeau I have two small pots with apple consomme coming up to a simmer. Anthony hooked me up by clarifying the apple juice yesterday. All I need to do is finish with reduced calvados, season with salt, sugar, and add gelatin, 3 sheets per deli for the gelee and 1 sheet per deli for the sauce. My gelatin is blooming in tepid water and I have radishes shaping on the board. My tasting tonight (that means prep big) is braised winter radishes, french breakfast, red, icicle, daikon, watermelon. I call chef over and he demos how he wants each radish cut: breakfasts cut lengthwise into quaters, reds in sixths, icicles peeled and obliqued, daikon sliced and punched into circles, watermelon shaped into batons. This is a shitload of knife work. As I shape one set of radishes, I have the previous one cooking in veg stock, butter, salt, vinegar (champage vin for the white radishes, cabernet savignon vin. for the reds). The apple consomme is up, I whisk in the gelatin and get them into metal hotelpans over ice and pop them into the reach in. The soup is simmering away nicely. Radishes are cooking and shaping. Okay, now a MLF. I peel 8 butternut squash, separating the tops from the bases. Using the mechanical slicer I slice the tops as thinly as possible and in a parchment lined half hotel pan layer the slices, brushing melted claified butter between each layer. I season each layer lightly as well. Parchment on top, another half hotel pan and a heavy griddle pan to press the MLF and in the oven it goes for 1 hr at 325. Every 20 min., I pull it decant the excess liquid and rotate it in the oven. Back to radish land. I continue to shape and cook radishes. While I prep radishes I'm blending the soup and passing through a chinois into an ice bath. I look up, damn, it's 3:15. I've still got so much to do: cook white asparagus, prep garnish for the entire agno and torchon sets. I am in the shits. I need help. I grab Ivan, one of the externs and have him peel my beets. I also give him demos on how I need the garnish cut for the torchon set. I need to push hard now with the white asparagus. I peel it, tie it into bunches and get it into a large pot filled with 3 parts water to 1 part milk. The asparagus in, seasoned with salt and a pinch of sugar, I cover with slices of pain au lait, creating a cartouche, completely submerging the asparagus. Family meal rolls around, 4:20, and a runner brings me a plate (the runners execute a buddy system grabbing 2 plates one for a cook because the cooks have no time to get off the line). Some meat loaf, braised cabbage, salad sits in front of me. It looks real good and I want to eat it. There is no time, though, and it's becoming a disraction. I dump family meal into the garbage and continue prepping. Boom, I'm rolling through knife work, celeriac brunoise, celery brunoise, red onion dice, apple dice, and suddenly it's 5:20. Ann and I are still meezing hard and are dans la merde. It's going to be a rough one...
Why do it? There are days, many in fact, I ask my self, why am I putting myself through this? Actually being in the shits is unpleasant and I've thought, albiet for very brief moments, about turning in my apron. Looking back and writing about it, though, gives me a sense of satisfaction -- the pressure, the hours, the fatigue, the amazing amount I actually accomplish at a high, high level. per se is hard, I believe the hardest, and is making me strong. Matt used to say, first course at per se makes you invincible. It's a good feeling to know I will be able to walk into any other kitchen and throw down.
Cooking with TK:
Thomas was in town last week. He doesn't expedite and ususally spends lots of time in the dining room. It was Saturday and we were getting slammed, huge VIP night, in terms of numbers and magnitude (deNiro was entertaining Bono, Chef Hubert Keller was in the house). VIPs mean a lot of off the menu cooking which throws a huge wrench into all the cooks' service. It was so busy Thomas hopped onto the line between canape and fish. What. Chef (JB) called for VIP pasta, taglatelle and agno, both black truffle style. Thomas started picking up the tag and agno is my dish. He called over, "Hey, that agno down. How long?" Are you serious. I'm cooking on the line with TK!!! Oui, chef, 90. I'm a minute and a half out. Agno are down, bowl is hot, I'm finishing my beurre monte with hacher black truffles and truffle oil. Taste for seasoning. I look over my shoulder and make eye contact with TK. Let's go, we plate, the dishes arrive on the pass simultaneously. Yes.
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