Keeping 'em Happy

I've spoken before about the intricacies of preparing staff meal in restaurants. Mostly I've focused on the challenge it presents a chef; how transforming offcuts and trimmings and discarded bits into a delicious meal for twenty or more people is a deeply satisfying experience, when you pull it off. What I have not, in the past, focused on is the reason restaurants bother with staff meal at all. Why make the effort to give away free food to people you are already paying? The reason is simple: you have to keep your staff happy.

This is not always easy.

There are several laws dictating the way the workforce is treated here in Australia. These laws outline pay rates and shift lengths and break times and several other odds and ends. I can assure you that not a single restaurant I've ever worked in has paid the least bit of attention to any of these laws.

Rather, restaurant staff are asked to work down right illegal conditions. These people – your team – are going to work for eight hours, no, run for eight hours, if not more (much more for the kitchen staff) without a single break. The good ones won't bother drinking water so that they won't have to waste time in the toilet later. They are going to sweat, get burned by hot pans or hot plates, endure abuse from the customers or you or the angry dish hand who wants the plates stacked just so. They are going to resolve most problems before you know about them, and except blame, regardless, for the one you do hear about. If adversity brings a group of people closer, these people are your fucking family; until the end of service, at least.



The least you can do is feed them a meal.

It's a challenge keeping the staff satiated. The truth is, when cooking staff meal, you are limited in time and budget and ingredients. Every member of a restaurant's staff is expected to work as much as is physically possible in the time given. Work is to be completed at a frenetic pace, leaving no time for uselessness such as socializing or coking for the staff. Preparing staff meal is supposed to be squeezed in between all the other jobs that need to be done. Add to this that most restaurants allow little or no expenditure on food for the staff, expecting them to eat only leftovers and other random kitchen detritus. This leads directly to a dearth in the variety of ingredients; the same menu yields the same off-cuts, and the same off-cuts inspire the same staff meals. It's a (welcome) challenge to, somehow, take the same few scraps, zero budget, and no time, and come up with something copious, novel, filling, and delicious.

Like I said, it is not always easy keeping your staff happy. Which is why I bribe mine with treats.

Notably, I have been known to crank out pancakes on the rare Sunday morning I agree to work. The rationale is something like: I don't want to work Sunday morning; none of these people probably want to work Sunday morning; we deserve a treat.

In the same vein... Tradition dictates I work every News Year Day (the most hungover day of the year) and I turn it into an event of sorts; putting on a staff brunch of epic proportions: scrambled eggs with truffle oil, eggs Benedict, homemade bacon, ham and cheese croissants and so on.

And sometimes, when I really want the staff onside, I bake cookies. Chocolate chip, usually, or some variation thereof. Surprising my workforce with a batch of warm cookies has something of a magical effect. Most of them (especially the men) turn into excited little children. Glasses of milk are produced and the lot of them giggle away, like toddlers, hoarding cookies and generating milk mustaches and chocolate lips. And they'll do anything I ask.



White chocolate and Macadamia nut cookies

Remind me sometime to tell you about how macadamia nuts are native to OZ, but Hawaii treats them like their own. I'm telling you now that the hard-to-crack nuts are best of friends with white chocolate. Trust me.

This flavor combination is completely the idea of my wife's; it was her flippant comment that macadamia would make a mean contribution to my cookies which led to these.

250g butter, room temperature
125g sugar
300g brown sugar
1 egg
300g flour
1tsp bicarb soda
150g macadamia nuts, very roughly chopped
300g white chocolate cut into large chunks

Cream together the butter and sugars. Add the egg and mix well. In a separate bowl mix the flour and bicarb. Fold this dry mix into the butter and sugar mix. Stir just enough to combine. Add the chopped nuts and white chocolate. Mix well. Chill in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Meanwhile, heat your oven to 180ºC. Spoon rounded tablespoons of cookie dough onto baking paper-lined trays, leaving plenty of space for the cookies to spread. Bake 12-15 min. Cool on wire racks.