take backs

So I need to take back something I said a while back... about the lazy girl I worked with on my first day. She's actually been quite awesome to work with ever since my first day. I think she was having an off day. Usually she doesn't work Friday night, and that was when I started... anyway, as it turns out, she's been one of the people that helps me out so I'm not falling on my face. She's given me tips to make my life at work easier and has helped me out a few times. So while first impressions are important, it doesn't hurt to take notice of how that person acts/interacts with/in the environment around them... maybe they'll change your mind!

Loafing around on my day off, I tuned into the Ellen Degeneres show for a few minutes and was delighted to see this little skit. I know I'm uncool & out of the loop, so I'm sure everyone had seen this, but holy crap, I laughed out loud so hard I think I had tears in my eyes... I hope you enjoy this short by Will Ferrell & Adam McKay...

not blamed for a three star review, but definitely other things...

I'd like to brag, just for a moment... not that I had any part in this, but it is cool that I'm lucky enough to be an extern at Gramercy Tavern during what might be it's "revival"... not that it ever really seemed to disappear...

New York Magazine just published this review that bumped up the rating from 2 stars to a 3 stars... out of 5... Hope you'll read it!

I can say, the chocolate bread pudding is awesome, and the ice creams (& sorbets) are made on premise and delish... although the chocolate - toasted almond - coconut ice cream does it for me... that is served with the coconut tart.

Otherwise, things are going well. Much better than last week, that is for sure. I'm getting faster at my tasks, although I have a long way to go. Three of the four days I worked I was able to go upstairs during service and learn the plating, help plate desserts and watch what it is like around the kitchen. I'll tell you one thing it is every night... HOT! I learned tonight that the new chef, Michael Anthony, prefers not to have the AC on. Something that is good for his hot dishes, but not so good for our cold ones! That means I have to get really good at scooping ice cream if I ever get the opportunity to take the reigns the next time I get to help with service.

Here's something that bums me out a little bit... I feel like I automatically get blamed for mistakes by the chef and sous chef. Two examples...

Saturday night my chef asked me to go through about 15 lbs of coffeecake streusel and break up the (large, tablespoon sized) butter chunks because they hadn't been fully incorporated. I haven't made streusel for coffeecakes since before the Hobart got fixed and it was unlikely that it could have lasted for over a week and a half. Her tone was what made me feel like I was being blamed, but when I looked at the handwriting on the label, I knew it wasn't me. So what am I going to do? Tell her that I wasn't the one who made the streusel because that isn't my handwriting? Doesn't change the fact that there are butter chunks in the streusel and it can't exactly be used the way it is! So I chalk it up to a very valuable lesson learned... I will always (like I've been doing since I was taught how to make it) check for butter chunks because I don't want to have to think about the poor person who will have to dig through streusel to break up cold butter chunks if I don't do my job correctly the first time. Doesn't change the fact that I was pretty mad I had to do it in the first place...

Tonight the sous chef reiterated how important it was for me to smell all the containers and lids used to store batters, sauces, etc. because we don't want our pastry to smell like onions, garlic, fish, etc. if it isn't supposed to. The reason this was said was that part of the coffeecake batter had to be thrown out from the batch made Friday night because the lid smelled like onions and had permeated the batter a few inches down. I haven't made coffeecake batter since Thursday night... which I had taken full credit for when the coffeecakes weren't baking up correctly - possibly because of a mismeasurement on my part. But again... when I started, I was told to smell everything, so I smell all the containers and lids! And also, what am I going to do? Argue with the sous chef? No... so I take it as one more lesson learned... how my actions (or someone elses' that I get blamed for) affect the work and production of desserts by my co-workers.

More lessons learned this week; more progress to be made next week. And great news, a new extern starts on Wednesday which means maybe I can break the Hobart and blame it on her so she knows what it feels like to be blamed for things she didn't do and how it feels to batch out (what seems like endless) batches of that stupid, haunting coffeecake batter & streusel!!!

Nope... not going to do that... although I do hope to see her stuggle a little bit, just to verify that my experience is as normal as everyone says it is.

the mixer is working now... am i?

Started my work week last Thursday night... with a broken 40 quart Hobart... some how I got through that night... but I don't remember it...

Friday night when I went in, the Hobart was still broken... the repairman hadn't shown up... I started my day by making 4 tabletop mixers full of coffeecake batter... one of our mixers had broken the night before... my list of things to do was endless... it seemed like everything was important and needed to get done... my chef wanted to leave early at 10pm to catch up with a good friend who was moving out of town... I was flat out - running around like a chicken with my head cut off... her reminders of don't forget to do this or do that, were starting to sound like scoldings, threats... then she says "You have to bake all of the tart shells." 30 minutes before that I thought I had just baked all the tart shells... I looked in the OTHER refrigerator... there were still two more trays... that is when I completely lost my shit... I had 4 other big jobs to complete, 2.5 hours to do it, and 2 fucking trays of tarts that were hiding... to make a long story short... if it was my kitchen I would have thrown the damn things across the room at my own head and called it a night... what ended up happening was that I was let off the hook on one job and told to complete two others, so that my coworkers who come in the morning "don't freak out"... what does this mean?

well... to me (the perfectionist) it means I have no choice but to complete these two jobs because someone already has to clean up after me on all the other stuff I'm dropping... it means that I miss the last train to NJ... it means I'm calling a few people I know at midnight to see where I can crash, and contemplating what it would be like to ride the PATH or subway all night long... it means when I finally leave at 2:30am after getting those two jobs done and cleaning up the kitchen I'm fucking fuming...

it means I have to give myself a damn break... so after stewing about it Friday night, talking to my friend Danielle, Sean and family about it... I need to put this whole "job" in perspective... as my chef so kindly pointed out the next day... "it's only food" and "never, never miss your train for this job"... I'd like to do everything perfect the first time, I'd like to work really fast, I'd like to know all the shortcuts, I'd like to be able to look at a list of things to do and quickly calculate in my head the most efficient order in which to complete them... but if I knew all those things, would I have needed to go to culinary school? wouldn't I be an executive pastry chef right now instead of a shit eating extern? Yeah... I just needed some perspective... it's too bad that it takes a catastrophic event for me to figure it out... Can I ever do things the easy way?

I'm already in the shit...

Okay... quick post because it is 3:30am & I need to be back at work in 11 hours... yeah... what the f^%$?

So just in case you were wondering, working in a kitchen is nothing (NOTHING, just in case you didn't catch it the first time) like being in pastry school. I thought I was stressed about that shit cake & silly little chocolate showpiece I made!?!? HAHAHAHA! I laugh in the face of that crap now!

So here is my day #1: Some time in the afternoon on Friday, the 40 qt. Hobart mixer breaks in the pastry kitchen. No one can repair it until god knows when... "The bad news is, the Hobart is broken, the good news is, we have an extern starting today." I train with the most relaxed (aka fucking lazy) girl on the whole staff and under her direction manage to do one wrong thing after another. It isn't a pretty night... when 12 midnight rolls around, there are still 4 things on our list to do... if we had done the shit right we originally were supposed to do, I wouldn't have left feeling like maybe I made the worst mistake of my life... I somehow manage to catch the last train home to NJ. Luckily on that train is my friend Ravi from school and he listens to me bitch for a few minutes and reassures me that it will be okay. I get home and somehow manage not to cry myself to sleep.

Day #2: Either I get into work an hour early, or I take a leisurely stroll thru Union Square Greenmarket before being fashionable early to work... so I take the stroll. People are out in storm buying pussywillows. Those things are selling like friggin hotcakes! I go into work. I find out I'm the only one on the shift me and the lazy girl shared last night. I got there 20 minutes early and I'm so far in the fucking weeds, I should have just worked all night long... despite that, I do better tonight than last night. The Hobart is still broken so I have to batch out 8 times for the coffeecake batter. I hate the coffeecake muffins now. I'm still in the shit, so my chef stays til 5 after midnight to help me out. She works like lightning speed. I aspire to do that some day...

And when that day comes... I'm going to one day hire an over-acheiving pastry school grad, break my fucking Hobart, watch that extern twist and turn out there struggling for the last bit of air, let her go home & wake up at 7am remembering that she forgot to rotate the pans of bar nuts in the oven, give her an insurmountable number of tasks her second day, especially in light of the Hobart still being broken, and then win her over by staying later than I originally expected, and comforting her with a story about how slow I was when I first started working in a kitchen...

Yup... that will be the way it goes... one day down the road... until next time, if you ever realize you are having "the worst day ever" consider the odds at which you are having that bad day against, and think about playing the lottery... maybe in actuality, it might be your "lucky day" - in one way or another you are beating all the odds... I wish I had considered buying a lottery ticket or even a scratch ticket Friday night... I might have been a billionare by now...

Anyway... I'm rambling because I'm deliriously tired... if I go to sleep now, I'll get 7 hours... sounds like a good plan... night night!