Professional kitchens are required to produce great quantities of food. This may sound like stating the obvious, but I'm not sure the uninitiated (that is, those who have not had the great pleasure of languishing in front of an eight-burner stove for fourteen hours a day) really understand what this means. It means that we chefs cook foods in quantities that are otherwise unimaginable. Think massive amounts. When we make caramelized onions, for example, we peel and slice twenty kilos of onions, at least, and then cook them down in a stock pot. Gazpacho special? Half a box tomatoes should be a good start. Braised lamb shanks on the menu? Forty at a time, for the first half of the week.
On Cooking in Miniature
On the Farm...
The following statement will come as no surprise to anyone remotely acquainted with the restaurant business: professional kitchens are an extremely rough environment. Physically, they are torturous: often poorly lit, sparsely ventilated, over-heated, over-crowded, smokey, back-achingly concrete floored, and greasy. The work required is no less strenuous: standing for twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, lifting 40 litre pots, constant bending, endless physical repetition.
Most brutal, however, is the emotional environment. A professional kitchen is a time warp of hyper-masculinity, where abuse, physical and otherwise, is not merely accepted but expected. I've seen and heard of and experienced the most brutal treatment. It's more common to be yelled at than spoked to, often drill-sergent style, inches from your face. I clearly remember one head chef screaming in my ear: “YOU CALL THAT A BRUNOISE? I KNOW FUCKING THREE YEAR OLDS WITH BETTER KNIFE SKILLS!” It's the sort of thing that sticks with you.
Sinking Feeling
Chefs fear nothing. Nothing. We work with dangerous implements at terrifying temperatures at searing speeds. In such an environment, fear is a luxury. Hesitation, at best, causes mistakes. If you're a bit worried about singeing the flesh on the back of your hand when you are retrieving that potato rosti from the back of your 300ºC oven, there's a good chance that what you finally do pull out will be carbon. Fear slows the kitchen down. It's not possible to cook 40 or 50 meals at once without keeping very, very focused. A moment's panic will send you spinning.
Admittedly, I am not completely fearless. Hypodermic needles make me quite squeamish and I could do without spiders in general (especially the giants that pass for house spiders here in Sydney). Inside the kitchen, however, I'm completely unflinching. 200 covers booked for lunch? No worries. Deep fryer on fire? Under control. Angry kitchenhand with a knife? Bring it on.
Hot Holidays
It's the tail end of the holiday season and I (as I imagine many of you) have spent the last few weeks celebrating and dancing and visiting and consuming ungodly amounts of food and drink and participating in several other forms of gluttony. We've had poultry and pork, crustacean and cow, cured and roasted and smoked, vegetables baked and sauteed and steamed, puddings and cookies and pies and cakes, whiskey on ice, brandy in 'nog, beer from the bottle, wine and champagne by the barrel. Life has been a veritable parade of earthy delights, and I no longer fit the majority of my clothing.
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