The happy kitchen

As much as I have been enjoying my internship, I have also had some doubts as to whether this was the beginning of a new career for me after all. Sure, I haven’t been very aggressive in my job-search, being still in student mode, and making the most of it till the very end. The thing is, the very end is approaching fast, and it’s time for me to plan out a post-end- of-June road map.
In the meantime, I am into my second week at the restaurant, and it is going as I wish. On Saturday, the chef gave me to honor of leaving me alone in the kitchen throughout the lunch service, while he worked the dining room. It was an exhilarating, albeit sweaty experience. As much as I like teamwork in the kitchen, I am finding out just how much I also like working alone there.
Chef Claude is a heaven-sent mentor. He’s been kind, encouraging, patient and open-minded. I’m not saying he’s the best chef or anything like that; as a matter of fact there are a number of things I would do differently in my own kitchen. It’s also funny some of the habits I’ve carried over from my other experiences – it looks like I am developing my own identity as a cook. This can be seen in the way I work (from left to right on the chopping board), to the way I clean up (I use way too many paper towels) or the way I taste (only with a spoon!) or plate (with metallic circles and lots of chives and squiggles).
A kitchen is really like taking a glimpse into the chef’s mind. Some are shiny and some are cold and others are moldy and out of date. Saturday night, after working Chef Claude’s tiny, modest kitchen on my own, I got a glimpse at Marseille’s only three Michelin star kitchen, and was overcome by a sense of awe and admiration at the quiet dexterity of every cook seemingly in synch with every other one, everything immaculate and shiny, everyone going about their business with perfect precision, without a wasted movement. The chef, Gerald Passedat, the only one without a toque, was working too, not screaming at his staff while feeding his dog foie gras, as I had always pictured him. Did I have any regrets as to my choice of internship? Not for one second.

Déjeuner en Ville

Ever since my traumatic experience at my last restaurant, I’ve been wanting to find out how my next and last internship would turn out… today was my first day, and I am much more than relieved. Not only is the Chef actually nice, he doesn’t scream or swear or smoke in the kitchen, and the food is delicious! I now know for sure that I made the right choice, as I was hesitating between another Michelin-starred restaurant (three stars, actually) where the chef is known to be human only with the one non-human in the kitchen: his dog (not only does the dog preside next to him in the kitchen, he is fed choice cuts of meat, foie gras and the like).
My new chef is bald and round and has a big white moustache. He had a classical training starting at age fourteen in his native Strasbourg, but since has lived and worked as a chef all over Africa. He took over this business in downtown Marseille five years ago, and has a steady clientele who come for lunch from the nearby offices around the Vieux Port. His cooking is very personal, meaning to say he is not interested in trends, as was the case with my last three restaurants. He described his style as “rustic,” which suits me perfectly, as for me this implies authenticity.
Today we served aioli, which is steamed fish and vegetables with a home-made garlicky mayonnaise – his was divine. We also had turkey with cèpes mushrooms, which was probably good, but I personally prefer serving seasonal dishes, and this for me was an autumn dish. There were a lot of salads as well, and Corsican flavors such as bruccio (a fresh cheese, served savory or sweet) and figatellu (a sort of dried pork sausage). I am not working this week end but I can’t wait to see what we’ll prepare on Monday.

Déjeuner en Ville, 3 bis rue de la Coutellerie, near Vieux Port

Petite parenthese parisienne

Nothing like a weekend away to give you a fresh look at your surroundings. Last time I was in Paris in October of last year. The weather was cold and grey, and though I enjoyed my time with my friends, I longed for the lingering warmth of the south and I was psyched to start my cooking adventure. Six month later, my Parisian visit was like a breath of fresh – and very chic – air. Getting off the train the first thing I noticed was the number of women with very short hair, similar to the look I sported on my last visit to the city of lights. I reflected on how Marseille women value their long, dark , Mediterranean locks. I also noticed the color in women’s clothing – Marseille women love their black, another Mediterranean trait. Then of course came the designer bags (loads of Chanel) and the heels, spring-colored eye candy whichever way you looked. Saturday was such a sunny day that all Paris was celebrating and it was a pleasure to sit back and enjoy.
Saturday evening my girlfriend and I made our way towards the Marais to check out a “secret” bar tucked away behind a bright-lit taco eatery. There was no indication anywhere of a bar except for the guy hanging out on the sidewalk, who turned out to be the bouncer. We were about to leave the place, defeated, when we decided to ask him about it, and lo and behold, he showed us the way towards a dark and cavernous back room with flickering candles, a DJ who looked like he was twelve, and a bartender whose beard, glasses and lanky frame made me doubt for a second if I was really in the third arrondissement and not in Williamsburg. The music, décor, cocktails and even the waitress were a perfect end to our day, even though the place was overheated (having only been open for two weeks, they were still working on getting the AC going).
Back in Marseilles on the Sunday, I was amused at the uniform of training suits, mostly Adidas, that most men had on. And definitely, the shoes were different, mostly sports shoes for both men and women, with the first few Birkenstocks appearing – no doubt these are meant to dodge the dog poo on the sidewalks, which Paris, at last, has been able to get rid of.
And today, after class, I took my daughter to the beach downstairs from our house. She played in the sand and in the water while I read and worked on my tan and thought to myself… Marseille isn’t that bad after all!

Candelaria, 52 rue de Saintonge, 75003 Paris

Repent!

…the end is near. In less than two months time my course will be over. I feel like it was just yesterday that I inquired about it and next thing I knew I was enrolled for the following week. I’ve been looking for my first paid job in the kitchen and needless to say that it is a bit intimidating. After working for so many years in an office, which was not satisfying but was comfortingly familiar, I am once again venturing into unexplored territory. Looking for a job is different from looking for an intership; there is much more at stake in the former than in the latter, for obvious reasons. To begin with, my internships have been very short, so no matter how unpleasant the experience, I knew it was temporary and it made the present more bearable. Also there was less pressure since I was not a paid employee; the chefs were mostly cool and flexible with me on many accounts, from schedules to responsibilities.
For my next and last internship, I picked a little restaurant downtown where the chef works alone. The place is open just for lunch and it’s more simple fare than my previous three restaurants. Nevertheless, I like the daily menus and the fact that the chef advertises his home-made foie-gras; that’s the kind of stuff that speaks to me (even if we eat mostly quinoah and fat-free yogurt with agave nectar at home). The chef showed me around today and the kitchen is actually not that small, there is plenty of room for two. There are also two big windows which I was delighted to see… natural light in the workplace is important to me (and possibly one of the many factors that eventually led me to resign from my last job at 580 Madison Avenue). Also, and this will be a big change for me, the chef doesn’t wear a chef’s coat! He told me I was free to wear one if I chose to but that he was comfortable in a tee-shirt.

Just a little story on the importance of a chef’s coat: the other day in class we had to bake about two hundred little palmiers (sugary puff pastries) and since we only had two ovens it was taking a long time, so while I was waiting for them to cook, I removed my chef’s coat and put on my civilian top (which for the record was not a mid-riff, lord have mercy). I proceeded to take the pastries out and put the racks on the counter. At one point I reached over a hot rack and it seared my belly (which was led bare as a result of my leaning over the counter), leaving a deep purplish mark across it ... A painful reminder that I should never be in the kitchen without the proper attire!

The piano

So in the kitchen there is the piano, and it doesn’t make music, thought it does produce delicious food if you know how to play it. I like this lyrical term used to describe something rather heavy, grey and intimidating. The piano is divided by invisible lines than cannot be crossed within the hierarchy of the French kitchen. For instance, during my very first internship, and my second week ever in a professional kitchen, part of my responsibility in the garde-manger was to fill shot glasses with velouté de cèpe or porcini cream, whenever a server announced a new customer. When I heard “deux couverts!” (four-top!) I would have to grab the chinois à piston or siphon with a valve (I don’t know what they are called in English) and reach for the soup which was maintained at the correct temperature in a water bath at the far end of the piano.

Each time I would do this my arms would burn as I would stretch them over the hottest part of the huge rectangle of fire to fill my siphon. So I asked my chef de partie if I could move the water bath closer and he said no, because the meat/fish guys needed the space. So that whole week I burned the hairs off my forearms because the hotline owned the piano… we in the garde-manger were just squatting it.
Another example comes to mind at my second internship, during my first week at the pastry station. The pastry chef placed a huge vat of cocoa and water to boil for icing, if I remember correctly, over the piano at the fish station (in this kitchen there was a separate one for fish and for meat). Though the pastry station owns the pastry ovens, we only had a little induction pad which we could not use for larger amounts since we did not have the appropriate pots. So we used piano at the fish station (why not the meat station, I am not sure, but maybe to stay out of the sous-chef’s way). Now the chef de partie for the fish reminded me of the sous-chef at my first restaurant (it turns out, they are actually good friends): young, perfectionist, fit, arrogant, talented, and very very hot-blooded. You could see how proud he was of his station and always kept it sparkling clean through a reign of terror and intimidation. So back at the pastry station we had a long list of, well, pastries to bake, when all of a sudden I see the fish chef screamed the pastry chef’s name and barged through our station, through an emergency exit onto an outdoor patio I didn’t know existed. I thought he was just taking a break until I found out that the chocolate mixture had overflowed all over the shining piano down to the floor. Without a word the pastry chef started cleaning up… I think the only reason she didn’t get beat up was because she was a woman. They didn’t speak to each other for the rest of the week, and next time we need to heat something, we went over to the meat station.

Meta-graduation

I got my exam grades two weeks ago and it turns out I passed, so now all I need for my diploma is one last internship. It’s been unexpectedly bittersweet to get my results; though of course I hoped and believed that I passed, in the last six months I had a goal to work toward, and now that I have reached it, well I need to face the reality of working in a kitchen for real and not as an intern, as soon as this summer. Of course I am thinking of starting my own business, but I don’t feel like I’m ready at all; the restaurant business is so vast and there’s still so much to learn, and the more experience I gain the more I realize this.
In the meantime, I am searching for one last place to work as an intern. I sent an email to Le Petit Nice, which is the only three Michelin star restaurant in the area (the next one would be Alain Ducasse’s Louis XV in Monaco). I haven’t heard back from them so I am taking it as a sign to go elsewhere. Basically the chef’s reputation is amongst the worst I’ve heard of… he spends his time yelling insults at his cooks and gratuitously humiliating them. Why, do you ask, would I ever want to work with someone like that? For starters, the writer in me is fascinated by the caricature and simply witnessing him in action. How could I not want to work with him!
On the other hand, having spent two miserable weeks at my last restaurant, which almost completely sapped me of my desire to work in a kitchen, so I’m thinking perhaps that would be the wrong thing to do at the moment. My advisor also told me that I should do something I enjoy, as a present for myself, in French, “fais-toi plaisir” which literally means, “pleasure yourself” (you’ve got to love the French for this- I couldn’t imagine an American advisor giving me this kind of advice). Not to mention that I was reading the blog zencancook.com yesterday and there was an entry on spending a day at Eric Ripert’s le Bernardin in New York City. The author said that “I’ve been in quite a few fancy kitchens over the years and this one strikes me as one of the most kind, human and civilized i’ve seen so far. This is a culinary school of the highest level where everyone is given a chance no matter their background.” This means that you don’t have to be mean to be a great chef! As such, the search goes on, Le Petit Nice will not have the honor of working with me after all…

Of chives and risotto

My research for the next kitchen to intern in has brought me to a restaurant downtown. I had noticed the window several times before but it was always closed, so I set a date with my girlfriend to check it out for lunch. The owner is a Swiss lady and the kitchen seemed small but promising. When we got there we were greeted by the server and seated in the spacious, luminous room. I immediately liked the vibe of the place. I ordered ribs and my girlfriend a risotto with figatelli, a Corsican sausage. We were served rapidly and as soon as I got my plate I winced. There was pork (not ribs, by belly), sweet potatoes and leeks. Though it did not look like what I expected, that was fine. What stood out for me were the chives sprinkled over the plate: they were chopped irregularly, meaning to say some were longer than others. After spending hours over the last few months perfecting my chive and shallot-chopping, I had a moment of indignation, for lack of a better word (it was not revulsion, nor bitterness), followed by a resignation that my view of food served in restaurants (as opposed to homes) was forever altered. Those tiny green bits were like so many mini-Proustian madeleines for me, bringing back hours of concentrated effort in various kitchens spread across Marseille.
The rest of my food was fine, I finished it all, but would never serve such a plate in my own restaurant, no matter how modest the place. As for my girlfriend’s order… What was placed before her was a dish of rice (not Arborio) mixed with a bunch of vegetables and rawish sausage. Simply put, it was not good. Now she and I have had several discussions regarding risotto in the past, starting with my dismay at the French habit of adding cream to it (unlike the Italian way where the starch from the rice combined with the stock and wine is what produces the unctuousness). So when the server asked us how our food was, I refrained from saying that my chives were chopped irregularly, but my friend ventured to say that her food was good (lie) but that it was not a risotto. The server immediately headed to the open kitchen to tell the chef, a skinny woman with a huge head of frizzy hair, at which point we heard some loud voices saying that the food was how it was meant to be or something to that effect. It appeared that the chef was miffed by our feedback and screamed at our waiter who from then on ignored us completely. Welcome to the food industry in France, where the chef is always right…