Spring Cleanings

There’s always something to do in a kitchen. Even when the mise en place is done and no event later on. Chef can always find something interesting for his stagieires to clean. These past couple of days I felt as if I’m in Israel doing the Passover cleaning in an orthodox kitchen. Half a day today and yesterday we were cleaning the hinges and the  door nobs of the fridges around the kitchens with toothpicks. Unfortunately it was just a way of telling us there’s nothing for us to do right now but there’s years worth of dust around the hinges so why not. In the end it wasn’t that bad and I’m sharing some clean kitchen and hinges pictures:

 

Yesterday I had a hard time in the morning, mainly because Chef Bartingac was in a bad mood. Meaning – I couldn’t ask to turn off the AC. It was cold and I was given the onion task. Three types of onions to peal and cut. White onions I just peeled, Spring onions (something like eight bunches) I peeled, cleaned and cut to thin rings. All the broken rings and inside part had to be sorted out. Red onions – cut to small triangles. The carrots, I did them as well,  had to Canneler which means to take out strips off the exterior of the carrot so that when it’s sliced it looks like a flower.  I started my mission at around 9am. The white onions went pretty fast. The spring onions were horribly small this time and broke very easily so I had to be very gentle while trying to cut them thin without the layers starting to separate. Chef rushed me “Vite Vite”. I worked faster. Then the carrots that I already peeled, cleaned and cut were decided by the chef as too small pieces so I redid it and with the longer pieces it was harder for me to canneler with my short fingers. The red onion is the most annoying task because even 2 big onions are a lot to separate all layers, cut to stripes and then to small triangles. If you think about how many knife strokes it takes to make one triangle you reach the conclusion of about 1.27. In a rough calculation of about 480 triangles for a large onion times two onions, it come up to about 1200 knife strokes!! Yes, I do think about things like that. So at around 10:50 Chef looks at the clock and in my pile of stripes of red onions not finished and says that it took me two hours and it’s not fast enough. I was literally crying: from the cold, from the onion, from the chef’s comment. Later on that same day begun all the cleanings so overall, not the best day ever. When the chef is in a bad mood, everyone is in a bad mood. Next day my onions and carrots were cooked (a la grecque) for the salmon entree dish.

Some other pictures from these two days:

 

Spring is here:

Tomorrow’s gonna be a surprise, for you and I both. I am sent for two days to stage in another restaurant. A demain!