Staff Meal

I have two favorite times of day. The first, surprisingly, is the period between 8:00 and 10:00 a.m. Anyone who knows me will, I am afraid, find this hard to believe, as I am not generally identified as being a morning person. This perception is fueled by such quirks as my insistence that 8:30 a.m phone calls are “in the middle of the night,” my kitchen-wide, one-hour moratorium on asking me any questions (I call it “morning quiet time”), and my complete lack of motor skills prior to consuming several macchiatos. In spite of my general inability to cope with mornings, I love my walk or bike ride to work. I'm not going to give you any crap about the fresh air or sunshine (though chef's see little of either); I love all the quiet restaurant business one can witness if you know where to look. Chefs and waiters tend to congregate in cafés at this hour, lingering over lattés and half eaten eggs; you will recognize them by their burn scars and bleary eyes, and their conversations will involve prep lists and profanity and the number of covers served the night before. Delivery men in trucks and refrigerated vans double-park and wheel boxes and bags and drums and tins and bunches and bundles of meat and linen and bread and rice and herbs and milk and oil and onions. Everywhere in alleys and side doors, food awaits the arrival of chefs and dish hands to sort and prepare. I often wonder what feast might be possible if one only had the will to carry the unguarded food away.

Likewise, my other favorite time of day is centered on secret kitchen business. 5 p.m. - near or at or after sunset, depending on the time of year – restaurant crews all over the city stop. This break is often the only afforded to staff who are expected to work 12 – 14 hours a day. The occasion warranting such a luxury is staff meal. I love staff meal. As a chef I love the challenge of it, cooking for as many as 40 people, often with only kitchen offcuts and rejects, it is frequently more than difficult to prepare something tasty. In most of the restaurants in which I have worked, everyone sits together, at a table, and eats. Families should eat together. While restaurant staff make, at best, something of a dysfunctional family, staff meal is a ritual dear to us all. I enjoy, if nothing else, the semblance of normality it lends. Look for them, you regular people who leave work at 5, you civilians rushing home to meals of your own, you earlybird diner waiting for doors to open; they'll be sitting, in uniform, at a table near the back of the restaurant, the same table where customers will soon be fed, and there is something magical about the whole experience, watching servers and cooks partake in even a little of the customers' experience. After dinner, time permitting, staff often slip out the back door for a smoke or a glimpse of the sky or a mobile phone chat to a loved one. It is this one quiet moment you are most likely to witness. I look for it on my days off. Note the meditative manner of someone with a satiated appetite and hours of work behind them. Note also the stoic look of one who knows what lies ahead: yelling and heat, running and sweat, panic and exhaustion.

I love the bookend nature of these two times. They provide a sort of story outline for a day in the lives of others. I know well the details of that story, having enacted it more times than I care to count, but I think it is just as interesting if you don't know exactly what goes on in between. These moments, snapshots, are beautiful, and that's enough.

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When working at a busy fish restaurant in Sydney, I was often in charge of cooking staff meal and, as all of our fish was bought in whole directly from the fish market auction floor, I had a great deal of fish trimmings to use up. This was one of my favorite ways to use tuna offcuts.



Tuna Nicoise

There are two differences between the salad here and the one I served to staff. One, I usually poached the tuna trim in olive oil, so that it is more like tinned tuna (which is traditionally served in a tuna nicoise salad, and can be substituted here), and two, I bulked the salad out with some mixed leaves and croûtons, which isn't necessary unless you plan to feed a few dozen people.

200 g sashimi-grade tuna, not sliced
300 g green beans, blanched for 1 min in boiling water and cooled
300 g kipfler or other waxy potato, boiled until just cooked and cooled
100 g ligurian or other small whole olives
8 anchovies,
12 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
2 eggs, hard boiled, cooled, peeled and quartered
small handfull whole leaf parsley

Heat a small skillet on high heat. Generously season the tuna on all sides and, using a little olive oil, seal it in the pan on all sides, about 30 seconds on a side. Remove from pan and cool. Using a very sharp knife, slice the tuna into 10 or 12 thin slices. Combine all the salad ingredients, season, and dress (below).

Dressing

1 tbsp anchovy oil (from the jar of anchovies)
150 ml olive oil
50 ml red wine vinegar
1 tsp dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Whisk all ingredients together.