Ms. Glaze's Pommes d'Amour

End of One Line: Hot Appetizers

The executive chef pulls me into his office Friday before dinner service, tells me to get comfortable, and asks me to take off my hat.

I'm sitting there staring at him wondering if I'm going to get fired. My mind starts playing back the week trying to recall any unforgivable errors.

I take my hat off and rest it on his desk.

Normally, when pulled into his office I sit in a chair and he sits on his desk towering and totally intimidating the living daylights out of me. He's a big guy with football shoulders and sharp blue eyes that can change instantly from humor to hostility.

But this time he takes the only other chair in the office and we sit eye to eye.

Shit, I'm really in trouble this time.

The office is incased in glass within the kitchen, so all other employees can see what's going on even if they can't hear what's going on. I'm quite aware that my body language is communicating what my colleagues can't hear.

So we're sitting eye to eye – merde – this is it and I don't even know what I did. Could it be that I told a cavalier employee to clean his station the other night with words perhaps stronger than recommended in the employee handbook? Did a customer find a crab shell in the new panacotta dish and choke? Am I too slow, too silly, too, too, too....?

"How do you think you're doing right now? Would you say that you have been successful here?"

"Yes chef, I think I really understand the cuisine on a deeper level and my skills have improved greatly. I'm more focused and I enjoy being here everyday – even though every day isn't easy..."

I'm babbling a mile a minute wishing something profound to come out of mouth, instead feeling like every sentence is canned and falling to the floor like bricks dropped from the top of the Empire State building.

"Yes, I would agree with you. You've done very well at veg station, your raviolis and your lobster plates were good at rav station, you know all the positions in garde manger inside and out, you've done fish pass and canape station well. I'd say you have been successful too."

Wait whaaaaaaat?

In the ten months I've worked at this restaurant, this is the first time I've ever heard a serious compliment from the executive chef. Understand that in a 3-Michelin star restaurant 'good' is never 'good enough'.

"I'd like to start you on Morning Hot Apps this Monday."

"Great Chef!"

Most cooks dread this position. It's a lot of work and a lot of responsibility. The position is titled 'Morning Hot Apps' (appetizers) because the cook comes in at the wee hours of the morning to prep mise en place for the day and night, cook family lunch for 50 people, and run the line during service for the veg station and garde manger.

Lunch service is fast and furious often serving one hundred clients in less than 3 hours.

"You know this station is a lot of responsibility. You must show up whether you are sick, injured, or otherwise."

"Yes, Chef, I know."

"However, I do not want you to get stuck at this station. I think you have more value in the evening during the longer service, but you will learn a lot about being a chef from this position and I know that is important to you. This position is no joke, huh?"

"Yes, Chef."

He calls in the executive sous Chef and asks him to join our conversation about the Morning Hot Apps position.

The French executive sous chef in his thick accent sums it up:

"Amy, eets a laaaht ov wurk, hein? Eets naught uhn easee stahsion, tu sais?"

"Oui chef, je sais."

The Executive Chef excuses me from his office to go begin setting up the line and I'm positively glowing. I'm so happy I could burst. And although the compliments could have done that alone and the responsibility is over the top exciting and challenging, I'm also just flat out ready to have a normal life even if it is only for 6 weeks. I haven't seen the sun in God only knows how long.

The shift ends at 4 P.M in the afternoon and includes two days off in a row: Saturday and Sunday. My body could use a good a rest and my social life could use some improvement.

I joke with the executive chef as I'm wiping down the stainless steel on the line:

"Wow, now I'm going to be able to work out in the evening, maybe go on a date, write my blog..."

"Don't get too used it, huh? It's only for 6 weeks and it is hard work, and I want to see you on the entree line after that. This is your life Amy. Everything you want is here."

He smirks viciously and I laugh at the hard truth we all have committed our lives to.

"Really? I didn't know that husbands, babies, and toned abs came from here chef?"

He rolls his eyes, annoyed (or amused?) by my somewhat wry sense of humor.

I continue my scrubbing, and suddenly my heart skips a beat as I realize what I have to prove at this station. The reality settles and I start thinking about family meal and all the dishes we pick-up on the Hot Apps station. It is no joke.

I grab my little black moleskine note pad and start diagramming the 8 dishes that come off the station and all the garnishes and sauces that are included on each:

My jaw drops. I know how to pick- up all the dishes during service, but I've never prepped them before.

BACALAO (salted cod):
1. Salt cod with smoked salt over night. Grill. Flake
2. Sprinkle with brunoised chives and red onion, olive oil, sherry viniagre
3. Make arugula purée
4. Make lemon confit purée
5. Garnish with brunoised tomato confit, preserved lemon chiffonade, parsley, and almonds
6. Make garlic chips (slice garlic on mandoline very thin,blanch garlic slivers, gently fry in oil)
7. Make garlic oil

But really, I'm ready and excited for this position.

The dishes are beautiful and I've never had the opportunity to work with octopus from beginning to end, or make bacalao (salted cod), or prepare scallops that are so alive they are still quivering when sliced. And the sauces and garnishes are worldly drawing upon flavors from Japan, Spain, India, and France.

Now family meal is another kettle of fish.

You are up for scrutiny not only from all the chefs but all your colleagues as well. I enjoyed cooking family meal for the staff at Guy Savoy twice a day and I somehow managed to squeeze in all my mise en place and endure cooking through lunch and dinner service so I'm pretty sure I can manage it.

Although I doubt I'll be cooking veal liver, lamb's brains, tongue, or tripe for my friends at Le Bernardin. Which is a big sigh of relief. There's only so much offal an American girl can stomach.

And even though I haven't posted a recipe on this blog for months (because I simply have no time to cook at home) I do enjoy coming up with my own dishes and using the creative side of my brain that often is on silent mode at work.

If my family meal really sucks, maybe I'll surprise everyone and just order pizza. I hear you can get anything delivered in NYC. Ha!

So all in all, I'm looking forward and cooking forward to the next 6 weeks of Morning Hot Apps. Wish me luck! And feel free to email any fabulous pasta and fish stew dishes that serve masses of people!

Chef's Whites and New Dishes

I don't look my age.

At least I didn't think I looked my age until I caught my reflection in the bathroom on my only 'sit down' break during the day. There it was, staring back at me in the mirror, an unrecognizable face and an emerging small shock of white hair.

You know what I did? I literally turned around to see if some one was behind me. As if I wouldn't notice some one else in the bathroom with me staring into the mirror.

On closer examination I leaned into the mirror and brought my fingers to my white hairs pulling apart my cowlic to count them. The more I searched, the more I found, the more I lost count.

When did I turn this old? How did I not notice this before?

I put my little paper cook's hat back on making sure to cover the intrusion of white and walked back to the kitchen in a state of denial.

"Look, look at this!" removing my hat slightly so only my girlfriend could see, I pointed to the spot .

"What? What am I looking at?!?!"

"My white, hair, do you see it? Do you see it?!?!"

"Oooooo that's kinda sexy, that little streak there."

"Hmmmm, that's one way of looking at it." I said and pulled the hat half way down my forehead again.

I flung myself back into mise en place in the hopes that total concentration would take my mind off my new discovery. Besides, I work in a kitchen where nobody really cares what you look like as long as you look clean cut. What matters most of all is your skills and your speed and your effeciency and your ability to organize.

Not whether or not you have white hairs sprouting up all over your head.

Then it hit me. I looked down at what I was making. And I blamed it full heartedly: "You, you have given me white hairs."

This is what new dishes do to cooks my age. I suppose it's what unruly teenagers do to parents. They stress them out completely until their hair turns white.

And new dishes are a little like children. They are so beautiful and exciting at first, then they are rebellious and obstinate as you try to include them in the grander scheme of things, and finally they come into their own.

All that frustration and pain just a beautiful memory. (Which is why cooks then create more dishes and, I suppose, parents more children.)

But rolling thinly sliced zucchini around tube shaped curry crab panacotta is a little like threading a very small needle with a vary large piece of yarn. If my fingers were long and thin and not short, swollen, and burned this sushi-like exercise might be enjoyable – even easy, who knows?

In theory the idea of rolling zucchini slices around any stable tube filling should be simple. However, if you want perfect spacing between the green skin and the white flesh of the zucchini with 5 lines of green showing, then this is another feet all together.

In order to achieve this perfection a range in size of zucchini slices must be used. Let me backtrack a little here...

First I slice zucchini very thin on a madolin and salt it heavily to draw out the water. I rinse the salt off and begin laying out a series of slices on my cutting board. The first slice I choose is small, so the two edges of green skin are only an inch apart and no seeds are showing.

Next I sort through the slices to find one that is a little bigger and layer this half way on top of the first slice checking that the green skin edges are all equidistant. This is repeated 4 more times.

After achieving the right spacing I gently place my curry crab panacotta at one end and roll it up. Then I repeat this whole process about 50-60 times.

Now you understand the white hairs?!?!

But making the zucchini rolls is not the only stressful part of the dish, finding a way too cook it so the curry panacotta doesn't melt on the plate before the zucchini has a chance to get hot is another dilemma.

The curry powder we make is yellow in color. And If the curry crab panacotta melts all over the plate, the color of the plate is......?????????

Yellow.

Hmmmmm, I think i just felt another white hair popping up.

Trying to figure out the production of this dish from start to finish so that the only two entremet cooks (myself on the dinner shift, and Marino on the lunch service) can also finish our other mise en place for our new poached egg caviar dish, our beautiful poached tuna (escolar) dish, our pastas, and our vegetable plates in time for service and have enough of everything to serve to two hundred people a day is, well, challenging.

Thankfully all that figuring out is left to the chefs and sous chefs. I am merely a worker bee. I'm just the one who is supposed to "make it happen" as we say in the kitchen.

By the way, I haven't even started in on the process of making the panacotta, and I won't for my own sanity's sake and yours. But let's just say it's also a bit temperamental.

Two hours after plunging myself into zucchini roll maddness, service started. The enormous white erase board we use to diagram tables and chart the courses our guests are presently eating started filling up like crazy.

Two people on table 10, four on table 12, six on table 18....

Thirty people seated, judging from the board. None have ordered yet. All have received their amuse bouches. Now it's just a waiting game...

As always the back waiters come in and announce the first tickets with gusto: "orrrrrrrrrrrrder in......."

They hand the ticket to the chef and fill out one of the boxes on the white erase board which diagrams the menu to come so all the cooks can see and plan accordingly.

The chef calls out the first courses and I scramble up to the passe to check out the mid courses and see if I have anything ordered on the entrée side.

No crab yet.

But why? I spent so much time on that crab dish. All those white hairs in vain? Hmmph!!!

The chef calls in the maître D and some of the waiters to try the new crab dish. I cook two off for him, dot the plate with a spicy Southern Indian oil, and place two micro chives elegantly across each of the green and white spiral panacotta rolls.

The chef pours the crab consommé sauce around the plate. They taste it. They like it. (of course, it's beautiful and delicious why wouldn't they?)

And the orders start coming back to the kitchen with crab panacotta mid courses. Bien sûr.

The evening is in full swing and I'm popping crab rolls into the oven, slicing white tuna, sauteing vegetables, and running poached eggs with caviar to the passe. It's a workout. My thighs are grateful for the exercise but my knees are making an ominous crunching sound every time I squat to heat a plate in the oven.

The second and busiest seating winds down. I bring one last crab panacotta to the passe. The chef looks down at the plate as he takes his white napkin, dips it in hot water, and cleans my finger prints from the edges erasing all evidence of a busy kitchen. With a half smile and a half glance at my weathered state he asks, "How's this new dish workin' out for you?"

"Look!" I say, taking off my hat and pointing to my white hairs, "Look! This is what that new dish is doing to me!" He laughs hard and playfully boxes the top of my head like a coach to a teammate.

I feel like I have just made a touch down until I realize, while replacing my hat and walking back to my station, that there is still one last seating to go before I can truly celebrate getting through the evening with new dishes on the menu.

The third seating begins and it's much slower than the first two. An hour passes and we are waiting for our last reservations to show up. Time is ticking slowly by. I bring another crab panacotta to the passe and the chef says to me:

"You know Glaze, that dish is going to be on the menu for at least a year, better get yourself a bottle of L'Oreal"

"Very funny, Chef."

I can see now I set myself up a plethora of old age jokes. Nothing goes unprovoked in the kitchen. Nothing. I laugh anyway.

The Maître D comes back and announces that the last reservation is not showing up. The chef calls out "Kitchen closed!"

I put my tools away and begin to scrub my corner of the piano all the while thinking about the crab panacotta dish and my white hairs... just a memory now until tomorrow... or until I catch some one else staring back at me in the mirror.

Kelley & Ping, A Shanghai Noodle Bar, And a Summer Long Gone

I've been coming to Kelley & Ping's, a stylish Shanghai noodle bar for fifteen years.

I discovered it the summer I graduated from from college while visiting my college girl friend who had, at the time, dedicated her life to urban forestry in NYC.

Quite a noble mission for a rural born Oregonian.

New York was much different then. And in someways the same. But, no, much different.

It was dirty. You hung on to your purse tightly on the train. But it was fun, the same way it is now, with energy, excitement, and diversity that no city in the world can match.

It's just I'm not as worried about getting mugged as I was back then.

Catkin landed an internship for a company called the Green Gorillas and with her major in Environmental Studies, New York seemed the perfect battle ground for a must-change-the-world-now type of gal.

I was on my way back to London to make it as an actor, but thought I'd stop in New York to help her out for a few months. After all, we became friends in an Environmental Studies class and best friends during a hellish Biology class at Mills College.

Later we became roommates. But after receiving a 'C' in Organic Chemistry I gave up on becoming a Botanist and traveling to the Amazon rain forest to discover cancer curing plants and decided to focus more on Theater, Communications, and Middle English. Don't ask.

She stuck with Environmental studies and added on a French major just to cover the bases. And she also completed a minor in ballet. No one can say we weren't well rounded in our education if not totally bipolar.

How could I turn down being a green gorilla for few months?

We planted gardens along Houston Street in Soho, handed out information about "getting green", and traveled into Harlem to replant people's personal gardens (incuding the late Langston Hugh's backyard), greenify parks, and spread the gospel about the dangers of lead paint.

These were the days before the word "green" was PC. I think we were seen as annoying, funky, crunchy granola, West Coast hippies. Probably how most people view those college kids who canvas for Green Peace. I mean come on, the company was called Green Gorillas afterall.

New York really didn't care about getting 'green' in 1995. Global warming was a concept that was mostly uninteresting to people if not proposterous. And radical. And totally unproved.

Cows were blamed by the media for part of the problem because of the methane gas they create. As if getting rid of cows would end the insignificant annoyance called: Global Warming.

Harlem was in transition too. We got off the train one day with our pamphlets and shovels and quickly were told by a group of young men that were hanging out around the station that we "didn't belong here", "it could be dangerous for us", "best get on the train back to where we came."

Catkin and I just laughed and asked directions. The guys shook their heads in disbelief but headed us on our way all the while shouting out how crazy we were. We really didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Still don't.

However we did look ridiculous in our Green Gorilla uniforms that were really nothing more than cut off shorts, bandanas to hold our hair back and keep the sun from melting our brains, and our college T-shirts that boasted slogans like: "Strong women, proud women, Mills Women" or "Remember who you are and what you represent".

Regardless of the warnings we had a great time in Harlem. And people fed us constantly. We inhaled the hospitality. Summer never tasted so good.

Our apartment was in Brooklyn. Alice Walker's daughter had just purchased a cafe just down the street and Spike Lee opened a shop on the corner boasting his own clothing line. A lively performing art's school chorused with talent from morning through the afternoon right across from us.

I haven't been back to Brooklyn since that time, so I can't exactly remember where the neighborhood was sadly enough. And I wonder if that special area has maintained it's vibrant artist community. Brownstones were just beginning to become hot commodities then and I'm sure I wouldn't be able to afford an apartment there today.

In the morning we would catch the train into Manhattan were the headquarters of the Green Gorillas was lodged just North of Houston in a neighborhood that is now called Noho. It was defintely not called Noho then. It was simiply: North of Houston or North of Soho.

One hot sticky muggy summer's day after planting a garden that is now in shambles near Houston and Broadway, we ventured into the trendy Soho district for lunch, broke and starving after a hard day's work in the sun.

And we were not attractive: the two of us covered in dirt wearing our cut off shorts and our dirty bandanas that barely hid our sweaty, dusty, greasy hair. We were not Soho material. We were not Sex In The City girls by any means.

Walking down the little streets West of Broadway we came upon a restaurant called Kelley and Ping's and decided to take a risk. I had never seen a noodle bar and certainly not a stylish self serve Shanghai canteen that boasted affordable prices and huge bowls of soup steaming with noodles and vegetables.

We were not disappointed. Although hot food was not exactly what the doctor ordered on a New York muggy summer's day steamed vegetables, nourishing broth, with tender pork dumplings hit the spot. The restaurant captured summer effortlessly with an overhead gentle breeze from slowly moving fans and sunlight streaming through its partial glass ceiling.

Kelley and Ping is exactly the same today. Except they have a liquor license. Which I think is an added bonus. Especially considering that now I am more than old enough to legally drink. The prices are still cheap. (I hate the word 'reasonable', it always sounds like a compromise.)

You can order any number of soups from Pho Bac, a frangrant Vietnamese soup with beef and basil to Wonton soup with duck, chicken, or pork broth and any noodles of choice. There are lots of Asian curries and stir frys too. I always order a side of the steamed market vegetables that comes with a carrot ginger dipping sauce and fresh tofu.

My friend has long since left the Green Gorillas in order to pursue a career in Chinese Medicine and acupuncture and I have returned to study botany in the form of cooking at the Veg station (Entremet) here in a fancy New York restaurant. We both still enjoy Kelley and Pings.

She never left New York. I keep coming back for more...

Kelley and Ping is located in downtown Soho
127 Greene Street (between Prince and Houston
New York, NY 10012

Phone: 212. 228. 1212

Technorati Tags: Cheap restaurants, Kelley and Ping, New York, New York City, Noodle bars, NYC

Veg Station: A New Frontier

Changing stations in a kitchen can be like diving head on into an unfilled very deep, very cement pool.

Perhaps tennis shoes in the dryer would be a better metaphor.

Shoes clunking around bouncing off the metal canister and bouncing off each other in an un-rhythmic sort of way. I hate that. Clunk, clunk, clunk... clunk... clunk, clunk...

That's me right now. A little bit at least. When I change stations I normally mess everything up until my inner self loathing demon relaxes, my nerves settle, I tame the adrenaline rush, and I focus.

Does anybody else over 30 find that they are increasingly becoming their own worst critic now more than ever? Is this part of getting older and wiser? And if so, when will I get there?

The veg station is really sort of simple. There are basically two pick-ups and then a few others that are thrown in at random times throughout the evening in order to really screw things up. (Pick-up's refer to the physical action of cooking and plating a dish when it is ordered).

I pick-up the zucchini blossom dish that is stuffed with truffled crab meat (so, so delicious, I almost resent having to send it to the passe) and a stunning white tuna dish that is poached in olive oil and sauced with a deep red bearnaise.

Sounds easy, two dishes.

Okay the z-blossoms are a cinch. Quick, easy, beautiful, delicious. Great!

And the white tuna is not that hard either unless you forget it in the poaching oil because all of a sudden a side of sautéed vegetables is ordered, and a plate of tortellini, and an off the menu fried rice, and an off the menu pastsa with urchin and caviar sauce...

Oops there goes the tuna. Hammered. Waaaaaaaay overcooked.

Regardless of my first night jitters on the hot line and a few sloppy errors, I survived the evening. I'm sure they're giving me a one night grace period to figure out the pick-ups before they rip me apart. I'll take the breather while it lasts.

Could I have done better? Yes. Nonetheless my counterpart on the line said while we were scrubbing down our stations: "You did pretty good for your first night, you just need to get cooking the tuna down". Maybe he was just trying to make me feel better.

I think I'm not going to analyze it too much, take the compliment, and focus on how to poach tuna perfectly!

At least I didn't hear "Welcome to the veg station now go back to Garde Manger".

Hopefully tonight will be less like tennis-shoes-in-dryer and more like towels-on-spin-cycle.

Duckathlon: NYC Restaurant Industry Showdown!

I am not just a little bitter that we lost the annual d'Artagnan Duckathlon Industry Contest: I am OUTRAGED!!!!

Conspicuously missing from this (official?) video is our team. I'm not sure if they left us out because our crew happens to be so good looking that all other teams pale in comparison or what.

At our level though, we are used to jealously. (Toss of hair, smirk, who-really-cares-it's-just-a-silly-game expression).

This competition is just for fun, organized by D'Artagnan, a food distributer who is famous for specialty products.

Foie gras, truffles, game, organic turkeys, jambon, saucisson sec – you name it, they supply it. All the top restaurants in NYC rely on d'Artagnan for quality ingredients.

Each team (restaurant) is given a list of different shops and restaurants to find in the Meat Packing district. At each stop there is a different challenge. Including: olive oil tastings, blindfolded guess-the-spice games, and French-English translation tests (we lost this event even with 3 native French people on the team).

Some of the craziest contests included dunking a sausage tied around the waist by a thin string while dressed in a bra and hoop skirt into a milk pale as many times as possible in one minute.

The hoop skirt, I'm assuming, keeps the contestant from watching the exact placement of the sausage so team members have to aid in direction. What the DD bra over the clothes has to do with anything is a mystery...

And the Ball Busters table where cooks had to match the animal to the correct testicle. I was not good at this. However I did learn that ostriches have large testicles.

And I also scored the bonus point: name the pink fleshy thing...

My sous chef was shocked. Whatever, I'm a woman, there are some things we inherently understand. Now if I had to tell you what animal it came from, that would be a different story.

And of course we also had some fun walking in between shops, bars, and restaurants...

and taking refreshments along the way...

Where we failed completely was the final competition where all the restaurants (Restaurant Daniel, Le Cirque, Cercle Rouge, and Bar Bouley included) gathered around a stage (next to an open bar) in the Chelsea Market and one by one performed a song about food.

We did not pull our song together in time. Our attempted version of "God Bless Foie Gras" to the tune of "God Bless America" bombed.

Next year I think we'll plan it out in advance like the team from Restaurant Daniel who clearly spent hours orchestrating their performance. (losers).

Okay, we got booed off the stage. In fact, we had things thrown at us. Yes, little plastic ducks were literally thrown at us on the stage. It got really bad when we started to throw them back. Big kisses to Adrien who performed the song. We all just stood behind him with our hands on our hearts as we hummed along and dodged flying objects.

Nonetheless we won one of the competitions (every restaurant wins something).

We won the prestigious Sausage Dunking Competition thanks to Camille!!!!!! To quote my friend: "Mais oui, je suis Française."

We walked away with some magnificent prizes including one enormous jambon de Bayonne and two enormous sausages

I barely walked away. Too much Moet.

Totally worth it. I suppose sometimes you have to take one for the team.

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