Bone in the Throat - Anthony Bourdain [9]
"TOMMY!" it said, in the chef's jagged, block lettering. (The chef loved exclamation points.)
Veal stock not reduced enuf. . . FIX! Also: Roast Chix . . .
25# culls coming . . . Cook and shuck for pasta Tonite.
Need Sauce for Sword . . . Any Ideas??
Also: Gaufrette Potatoes and Pommes Annas (sorry)
Tommy hated to make Pommes Annas.
There was more:
Fill bottles with red pepper vin. and Cilantro Sauce.
Cut Fish—One Sword Puppy (make sure it's a puppy!) and one
Salmon coming in. Sword cut 7 oz. Salmon usual.
SOUP!! 86 the old shit. Use squid from walk-in, any odds and ends in reach-ins. DO NOT USE SCALLOPS!
Mushie Sauce: Use portobellos, black trumpets, dried cepes. Step on it with regular mushies. Use demi after reduced. And PORT WINE!
Use any scraggly veg trimmings in veal stock . . .
Have DW pick over mussels when he comes in. Also shellfish.
One Pine Island Oyster and One Cherry coming in . . .
There's Veg cut already in walk-in . . . DO NOT MAKE!
When Ricky and Mel come in, have them clean out boxes, throw out Mystery Items. I'll be in around 2:30.
Tommy looked at the last line. When the chef said he'd be in around two-thirty, he meant maybe three-thirty, or even four o'clock. "Mel" was the name given to any new, inexperienced cook. It was taken from the Italian term mal carne, meaning bad meat. The latest Mel was the new garde-manger, real name Ted, or something like that. Like all the other Mels, he was an extern from the Culinary Institute, spending a semester working in the real world for school credit. He was having what was sarcastically referred to as a Learning Experience, meaning he worked his ass off and the restaurant got some motivated labor dirt cheap. He'd shown up, like the others, freshly scrubbed, in his own new uniform, with the standard-issue black-vinyl knife roll-up under one arm and a copy of The Professional Chef under the other. But he worked like a Trojan, didn't bitch if somebody asked him to peel garlic or make hollandaise in bulk for brunch. Tommy considered asking Mel to shuck the lobsters but thought better of it.
The bell at the delivery entrance rang. Tommy walked down the narrow hallway and pushed open the heavy trap doors to the street. It was the fish delivery. A short, unshaven driver wearing a leather truss, work gloves, and rubber boots came in with a long cardboard box heaped with crushed ice. He dropped the box at Tommy's feet, a thin stream of water from the melting ice running out onto the floor. Tommy reached inside, first removing a wheel of swordfish, then an Atlantic salmon. He weighed both on the digital scale atop an ancient chest freezer, gave the salmon a perfunctory press with his fingers, checked the eyes and gills, and signed the invoice. He gave the driver the white copy and spiked the yellow on a nail on the wall next to a stack of shellfish tags. Then he returned to the kitchen.
Tommy could hear Barry, the manager, in the upstairs waiter station steaming milk for cappuccino. He finished his coffee and shouted "SALAAM" to the two Mohammeds as they passed through the kitchen on their way out the door. He filled up the steam table with water and, his knees resting on the clean rubber floor mats behind the line, reached under and lit the burners. He switched on the range hoods and fired up the Frialator, the ovens, and one side of the grill. In a nonstick pan, he sauteed some chorizo and chopped scallions left over from the night before, then quickly beat in some eggs with a rubber spatula. He added a little fresh cracked pepper with a few turns of a steel peppermill, slid the eggs onto a salad plate and, standing there at his workstation, ate quickly. When he was finished, he put the empty plate and the fork down on the prewash area of the dishwasher.
Moving on to his mise-en-place, he collected the pots he would need from the overhead racks and neatly arranged the house knives next to his cutting board. He filled a stainless steel crock with hot water and dropped a handful of male and female spoons, a pair of tongs, and a spatula in it.