Kitchen Confidential_ Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain [82]
Delivery guys keep interrupting me for signatures, and I don't have nearly as much time as I'd like to check over the stuff. As much as I'd like to push my snout into every fish gill and fondle every vegetable that comes in the door, I can't - there's just not enough time. Fortunately, my purveyors know me as a dangerously unstable and profane rat-bastard, so if I don't like what I receive, they know I'll be on the phone later, screaming at them to come and 'pick this shit up!' Generally, I get very good product. It's in my purveyors' interests to make me happy. Produce, however, is unusually late. I look at the kitchen clock nervously - not much time left. I have a tasting to conduct at eleven-thirty, a sampler of the day's specials for the floor staff, accompanied by detailed explanation, so they won't describe the pheasant as 'kinda like chicken'.
The butcher arrives, looking like he woke up under a bridge. I rush downstairs, hot on his heels, to pick up my meat order: a towering stack of milk crates, loaded with plastic-wrapped cotes du boeuf, entrecotes, rump steaks, racks of lamb, lamb stew meat, merguez, saucisson de Toulouse, rosette, pork belly, onglets, scraps, meat for tartare, pork tenderloins larded with bacon and garlic, pates, rillettes, galantines and chickens. I sign for it and push the stack around the corner for Segundo to rotate into my stock. Still downstairs, I start loading up milk crates of my own. I try to get everything I need for the day into as few loads as possible, limiting my trips up and down the Stairmaster as much as I can. I have a feeling I'm going to get hit on lunch today and I'll be up and down those stairs like a jack-in-the-box tonight, so those extra trips make a difference. Into my crates go the pork, the liver, the pavees, filets, some duck breasts, a bag of fava beans, herbs and vinegar for sauce. I give Ramón, the dishwasher, a list of additional supplies for him to haul up - the sauces to be reduced, the grated cheese - easily recognizable stuff he won't need a translator or a search party to locate.
On my station (saute), I've got only a six-burner Garland to work with. There's another range next to it which is taken up with a bain-marie for sauces and onion soup, the rest of it with stocks - veal, chicken, lamb; and pork - which will be reducing at a slow simmer all day and into the night. One of my burners during service will be occupied permanently by a pot of water for Omar to dunk ravioli in, leaving me five with which to work. Another burner, my front right, will be used mostly by him as well, to saute lardons for frisee salads, to sear tidbits of hanger steak for onglet salad, for sauteing diced potatoes in duck fat for the confit de canard, and the cockles - which will leave me, most likely, with three full-time burners with which to prepare a wide range of dishes, any one of which alone could require two burners for a single plate. Soon, there'll be a choochoo train of saute pans lined up waiting for heat, requiring constant prioritizing. If I get a six-top, for instance, with an order for, say, two orders of magret de moulard, a pore mignon, a cassoulet, a boudin noir and a pasta, that's nine saute pans needed for that table alone.
Reducing gastrite (sugar and vinegar) for duck sauce while the Dead Boys play 'Sonic Reducer' on