Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [80]
As I brush my teeth, turn on the shower, swallow my first couple of aspirin of the day, I'm reviewing what's still kicking around in my walk-in from previous days, what I have to unload, use in specials, merchandize. I hear the coffee grinder going, so Nancy is awake, which leaves me only a few more minutes of undisturbed reflection on food deployment before I have to behave like a civilian for a few minutes.
I watch the local news and weather with my wife, noting, for professional reasons, any major sporting events, commuter traffic and, most important, the weekend weather forecast. Nice crisp weather and no big games? That means we're going to get slammed tonight. That means I won't come crawling home until close to midnight. By now, half-watching the tube, and half listening to Nancy, I'm fine-tuning the specials in my head: grill station will be too busy for any elaborate presentations or a special with too many pans involved, so I need something quick, simple and easily plated - and something that will be popular with the weekend rubes. The people coming to dinner tonight and Saturday night are different from the ones who eat at my restaurant during the week, and I have to take this into account. Saddle of wild hare stuffed with foiegras is not a good weekend special, for instance. Fish with names unrecognizable to the greater part of the general public won't sell. The weekend is a time for buzzwords: items like shrimp, lobster, T-bone, crabmeat, tuna and swordfish. Fortunately, I've got some hamachi tuna coming in, always a crowd-pleaser.
As I walk up to Broadway and climb into a taxi, I'm thinking grilled tuna livornaise with roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus for fish special. My overworked grill man can heat the already cooked-off spuds and the pre-blanched asparagus on a sizzle-platter during service, the tuna will get a quick walk across the grill, so all he has to do is heat the sauce to order. That takes care of fish special. Appetizer special will be cockles steamed with chorizo, leek, tomato and white wine - a one-pan wonder; my garde-manger man can plate salads, rillettes, ravioli, confits de canard while the cockle special steams happily away on a back burner. Meat special is problematic. I ran the ever-popular T-bone last week - two weeks in row would threaten the French theme, and I run about a 50 percent food cost on the massive hunks of expensive beef. Tuna is already coming off the grill, so the meat special has got to go to the saute station. My sous-chef, who's working saute tonight, will already have an enormous amount of mise-en-place to contend with, struggling to retrieve all the garnishes and prep from an already crowded low-boy reach-in - just to keep up with the requirements of the regular menu. At any one time, he has to expect and be ready for orders for moules marinieres, boudin noir with caramelized apples, navarin of lamb (with an appalling array of garnishes: baby carrots, pearled onions, nicoise olives, garlic confit, tomato concassee, fava beans and chopped fresh herbs), filet au poivre, steak au poivre, steak tartare, calves' liver persille, cassoulet toulousaine, magret de moulard with quince and sauce miel, the ridiculously popular mignon de pore, pieds du cochon - and tonight's special, whatever that's going to be.
I've got some play here: both leg of venison and some whole pheasants are coming in, so I opt for the pheasant. It's a roasted dish, meaning I can par-roast it ahead of time, requiring my sous-chef simply to take it off the bone and sling it into the oven to finish, then heat the garnishes