Crumby Jobs

Kitchen work, as I have said many times in the past, is mostly made up a seemingly endless series of repetitious tasks. I don't mind most of them, though I can see how some people might find the prep aspect of cookery quite boring. Menus, for the most part, don't change all that often, and so it is quite likely you'll have to perform today most of the tasks you completed yesterday. It's the nature of the work really: prep the food, serve the meals, order the ingredients, prep the food... As I said, I don't mind it, but I can see why the prospect of making another batch of gnocchi, or picking ten bunches of parsley, or peeling several kilos of parsnips every day for a month mightn't sound like a good time. There are, however, some kitchen jobs I can't stand.

In fact, I might be a bit guilty of romanticizing the profession, what with all my past musings on the meditative and sooting nature of repetitive work. The truth is, some of the repetitive jobs are down right shitty. Sweetbreads, for example, the thymus gland of a cow, require poaching in a prepared court bouillon (flavored poaching liquid), draining, pressing, and then separating and peeling. The peeling step is the real bitch. You've got to somehow remove the tough little membranes which hold the sweetbreads together without the sweetbreads completely disintegrating. The white membranes, a film really, are fused to the edible part of the sweetbreads through the cooking, and vary in strength from papery to sinewy. I love to eat sweetbreads; I do not love preparing them.

Some kitchen jobs are evil by nature. Broad beans must be removed from their pods, blanched, shocked, and them peeled again. From the perspective of a cook with more work to do than time in which to complete it in – a normal state for kitchen staff – broad beans are not worth the effort. I hate them and do not usually have them on my menu.

Other kitchen jobs are evil by design. Some head chefs absolutely delight in dishing out horrifyingly soul destroying jobs, menial tasks on monumental scales. One Valentine's day my head chef greeted me with “Hey oyster boy!” To which I responded with a puzzled look, as there were no oysters on the menu. “Special menu today, and you get to scrub and shuck the oysters.” The oysters arrived inside two giant hessian sacks, 360 in each. I spent the day scrubbing and then shucking nearly 650 of the bivalves; half a dozen each for a booked out restaurant.



On another occasion, again for a night with a special, fixed menu, I had a quail dish I needed to prepare 100 portions of. Half a quail each meant 50 of the little birds needed to have their legs cut off, wishbone removed, and cavities stuffed with a sprig of thyme and a cracked clove of garlic. These, the crown as they are called, are later to be roasted, to order, until medium rare, when the breasts will be carved from the bone. The legs had to be salted for an hour, then rinsed, browned gently in butter, and braised for a couple hours with chestnuts which earlier had to be roasted and peeled. The cooked meat was then picked from the bones, mixed with the now mashed chestnuts and used as the filling in 100 hand-made ravioli, which were made from hand-cranked pasta. These were blanched and cooled, ready to be steamed to order. The braising liquid was then mixed with a splash of maderia and reduced to a sticky jus. All of this was my job. I started work at eight a.m. and had until six p.m. to finish. It was, as you can imagine, a race.

During service, the plan was to roast the crown, rest it, carve off the breasts, steam a ravioli, sauté some cavalo nero which had previously been blanched and squeezed dry, heat some jus, and assemble thus: bed of cavalo, ravioli, medium rare breast on top, jus around.

At about five o'clock I said to the head chef “I'm set. 100 portions of the quail dish.”

“Ravioli done?”

“Yup.”

“Crowns stuffed?”

“Uh-hu.”

“Jus? Cavalo? Grapes?”

“Yesss... what grapes?”

“You need three grapes per portion; they are to be warmed in the jus. A few bunches came in today. Brown bag, cool room.”

Cool. I've got an hour to count out 300 grapes, I thought as I turned towards the cool room. Easy.

“Oh,” the chef added over his shoulder, “and peel them.”

Peel. 300. Grapes.

Pure evil.

Apart from skinning grapes, there is another, much more common, kitchen job I completely despise: crumbing. Also called pané (pronounced pa-nay), it is the simple process of coating a food in bread crumbs so that it can be fried. It is, however, a messy job, and no matter how carefully you try to use one hand for drys and one for wet, dipping a series of, say, twenty veal schnitzels in flour, then eggs, and then breadcrumbs will inevitably result in fingers coated with several layers of sticky mess. Cooking is a visceral trade, and I spend most of any given day elbow deep in some food or other, so I can't really tell you why I find this one job so distasteful, but I do. If you ever work in my kitchen, you'll have to get used to doing all the crumbing, because I won't touch it.



Crumbed Mackerel Fillets with a Witlof and Shaved Fennel Coleslaw, and Horseradish Dressing

Mackerel are terribly underrated fish. I love their rich, oily flesh. They deserve a bit more culinary attention than they get here in OZ. I'm allowing one fillet per serve from a 500g fish. If you are unfamiliar with filleting fish, ask your fishmonger to do it for you, or, better yet, ask him to teach you. I match it here with a fresh, crisp salad, do balance the fried, rich fish.

Witlof, also called endive or chicory, is a bitter lettuce, that should be yellow, not green, as greening is a sign of over-exposure to light, and indicates that the witlof will be excessively bitter.

1 500 mackerel, fillets removed from the bone, pinbones removed
100g flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
100g bread crumbs
100ml vegetable oil

Place the flour, egg, and breadcrumbs in three separate wide, shallow dishes. Lightly season the flour and breadcrumbs. Dredge each fillet in flour, dust off excess, and then coat with the egg. Transfer to the breadcrumbs and coat thoroughly. Repeat with second fillet. Refrigerate for at least half an hour (it gives the crumbs a chance to set) or up to 24 hours.

Heat a small frying pan on medium heat. Add oil (it should be about 1 cm deep) and heat until nearly smoking. Add the mackerel fillets and cook until brown and crisp on one side. Flip and cook the second side. Remove from tee pan with a slotted, metal spatula and drain on paper towels. Serve on witlof and shaved fennel coleslaw (below).

Witlof and Shaved Fennel Coleslaw

1 head witlof
1 head baby fennel
½ bunch parsley, leaves only
a very small bit of purple cabbage, shaved

Prepare the witlof by cutting about 3 cm from the base. This will allow you peel off the individual leaves. Reserve half a dozen of the nicest ones. Shred the remaining leaves lengthwise. Shave the fennel on a mandolin. Toss all the ingredients (except for the reserved witlof leaves) and dress lightly with horseradish dressing (below). Use three of the reserved leaves to make a cup of sorts and fill it with the coleslaw.

Horseradish Dressing

For this recipe you'll need to either make mayonnaise (whisk together 1 egg yolk, 1tsp dijon, and a pinch of salt and pepper. While whisking, slowly pour in about 250ml veg oil until it is all incorporated and you have a thick, glossy mayo.) or use a store bought one.

125ml mayo
1tsp sherry vinegar
1tsp horseradish cream

Mix all ingredients together.