Honest advice to a budding cook/ chef with no experience whatsoever

This is a slightly altered version of a real email that I wrote to a young man who found my blog and is considering culinary school, but had no real experience cooking. He wrote me that he was intrigued by cooking, and I thought it pertinent to share this advice with a wider audience. I get the "should I go to culinary school?" question all the time, and I think it really depends on your situation, but the following is the advice I give to anyone who is considering culinary school without some background in restaurants.

Hey ****!

I can definitely relate, as it took me about 5 years of waffling back and forth before I finally decided to go to culinary school. I checked out FCI, ICE, CIA Hyde, J&W in various locations, AI in various locations, CCA, CSCA, and Western Culinary before deciding on OCI. Let me go ahead and squash your concerns about not being good enough for culinary school, because I didn't know shit about cooking besides what I had learned as a hobbyist cook and food geek, and most of the people around me at school knew even less. Now that I'm on the other side of it and have been cooking professionally for about 6 years, I feel that if I had to do it all over again, I would still go to culinary school, but I'm glad I had some restaurant experience before I went, and that's my advice to you if you want to know whether or not your cut out for this industry: GET SOME RESTAURANT EXPERIENCE.

Books/magazines/websites can supplement your education, but real learning comes from doing, and doing things over and over and over and over again until it's muscle memory and/or intuition. You will do this at culinary school to an extent, but I think it's best to know before you make that career move and investment. Is there a place in your town you can go in and do prep when you're not in school? Even a little family-run diner that does things from scratch will be able to show you the inner workings of a restaurant. If you're lucky and there's a nice-ish restaurant nearby, see if you can get a weekly stage (stage= French word for unpaid trial period). A lot of cooks and chefs do stages in other restaurants to expand their horizons. If you can go into a restaurant, offer your services one or two days a week for free (Saturday mornings/afternoons are great, as most restaurants need extra hands for prepping Saturday night service), and just be their yes man for a few weeks/months, you will learn A LOT. Even if it's just for one night. Most of all, you will see what it's like in real life, and whether or not you're really cut out for this line of work/life. And also whether or not you want to invest in culinary school.

Cooking in a professional kitchen is nothing at all like cooking for your family or what you see in cooking shows; For the first few years of pro cooking especially, it's a lot of hard work for little pay, not seeing your non-restaurant friends or family, not getting "normal" days off, and simply following orders ("Yes Chef!"). You're cooking other people's recipes and menus, and you're doing it their way, and your doing the same thing over and over, night after night. You're paying your dues and building your foundation. You're not exercising your creativity, and you're not writing menus and coming up with dishes. You're lucky to have an idea of yours show up on a menu in your first three to five years of cooking--I still remember the day I got an oyster mignonette on the menu, almost a year into my first job. I felt like I climbed a mountain. I didn't get anything else on a menu for another 2 years, when my chef was stuck in NY during a snowstorm and the sous asked me to come up with a pasta special for just that night. One menu item and one sauce in my first three years, out of hundreds of menu items I cooked. You're burning/cutting/breaking yourself in new and weird ways, and you're eating irregularly at best. You burn shit and your chef gets pissed and you feel worse than you ever have, until you fuck up that other thing and your sous almost beats your ass. You're really tired and you eat Hot Pockets for dinner after service at 1AM because you don't have the energy to cook for yourself after cooking all day.

BUT! If you have the "it", the X-factor, the thing that lives in us crazy cooks and chefs that forces you night after night to work your ass off and do better than you did before and want to be better for your Chef and want to be better for all your coworkers, you will thrive in this environment. You will soak it up like a sponge, and question every technique and every step, even as you're doing things the way you've been taught. You want to know the "why" of it all, and you'll start to figure out the "why" that makes the most sense to you. You're okay knowing that your cooking job will not make you wealthy, unless you luck into a high-paying corporate gig that somehow doesn't suck your soul.

All this said, I really loved and cherished my time at OCI, and I would definitely do it all over again if I had the chance. So much of your success in culinary school is dependent on the work you put into it-- you get out of it what you put into it, really and truly. I showed up early and stayed late every day; I turned in every assignment on time; I did all the extra credit and volunteered for all the off-site events; I asked every single instructor every stupid question I could think of. It's a really safe and fun place to learn, and of all the culinary schools out there, OCI does the best job of putting the "real world" of cooking into perspective--you're doing tons of knife work and kitchen techniques daily. But there's also a ton of culinary math and exams and book knowledge that you must know to pass, and I swear it's vital further down the line. As a chef currently I'm constantly swimming in spreadsheets and numbers, and my Harold McGee is never too far away.

Speaking of which, I know you asked for some book/reading recommendations, to which I will recommend:

- On Food and Cooking, Harold McGee. This is the driest reading of all time but it's a great reference when you want to know why meat turns brown and crispy, and what the difference is exactly between a poach and a sear.

- Any cookbook by James Peterson. He does a great job with explaining history of food, and his basics are always solid.

- Joe Beef cookbook. One of my favorites in the last year, reads like a novel in some ways.

- Julia and Jacques Cooking At Home. This was the first cookbook I ever read that really imprinted in me the idea that there's more than one way to do things "right" when it comes to cooking.

God there are so many other cookbooks I could recommend... The French Laundry, River Cottage, Zuni Cafe, Baking Illustrated, Fat Duck, even Joy of Cooking. Get thee to a bookstore and sit your ass in the cookbooks section for a good long while.

- http://linecook415.blogspot.com/ The blog of Richie Nakano, current chef of Hapa Ramen in SF. Specifically his blog entries from 2007-2009, while he was sous chef at NoPa. They're gut-wrenchingly accurate tales from line cooking, and really rung true to me in my first few years of cooking.

- http://eggbeater.typepad.com/ . The blog of Shuna Lydon, NYC pastry chef. She has some really good advice to starting cooks or people looking to dabble in professional cooking. Good place to start is here: http://eggbeater.typepad.com/shuna/so-you-want-to-be-a-chef-.html

- Ideas in Food: http://blog.ideasinfood.com/ . I'll be honest, I don't read this frequently but a lot of cooks I know do and have found it insightful.

- The Food Lab at Serious Eats: http://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab/?ref=nav_main

- Lucky Peach Magazine. The only paper magazine I subscribe to.

So that's probably either way too much information or not at all the answer you were hoping for, but I hope I was able to help in some small way. Good luck with whatever you decide, and there's a great farmer's market at the PSU park blocks every Saturday from March-December :). Let me know if you have other questions.

Cheers,
Ingrid

Beyond Line Cooking

Truth be told, I never seriously considered becoming a line cook when I entered culinary school. I thought that I might be a caterer, or an event planner, or maybe a food writer. Then fate stepped in and off I went down the rabbit hole.

Three years later, here I am, having landed my first lead line cook position under an esteemed Thomas-Keller-trained chef, for the re-opening of a classic Portland restaurant. I achieved my goal of working all the stations at my last restaurant, and when the opportunity came to take a leadership position and try something new, it was an opportunity I couldn't turn down.


Butchering whole King salmon at work. Fun as hell, and this particular fish was one of the better cuts I've made

I've learned so much at my new gig, from butchering whole fish and breaking down primals to actually having a voice on the line as kitchen-side expediter. My boudin blanc touch is getting better by the day. Although I am not officially a manager, my job includes some management duties, and it's been really educational to exercise that part of my self.

But I've recently found myself in this constant state of 'What's next?' I think there comes a time in every line cook's career, probably many times for some cooks, where he or she wonders when it'll get better. It's hard for me NOT to think about it, especially when the grueling services, long hours and hard physical labor have taken their toll. I don't kid myself in thinking I'm a young flower; I'm officially in my thirties after all, and keeping up with kids 10 years younger than me ain't as easy as it used to be.

There is a beauty in perfecting your craft, and getting your technique just right, finding focus and making it right every time, and I have found that beauty in line cooking. Romance aside, however, doing the same thing night after night, in the same physical space, hundreds of covers after hundreds of covers, can truly qualify as backbreaking, soul-crushing work. It's why line cooks tend to meander, and it's why a couple of years in any one kitchen seems like a lifetime. For a cook my age, it's hard not to question why you're working twice as hard as your cubicle-sitting peers for a fraction of the money and none of the benefits.

So it comes to this…

For the past six months or so, I've been feeling extremely conflicted about my work. I'm a cook, so why don't I love line cooking the way I used to anymore? Why would I find that when I sat down to write a blog entry, I couldn't write with the same gusto for what I do for a living? Where did my fascination for it all go? I would start to write, only to come up with some bitchy cook blog that I didn't actually want the public to read, lest I or my workplaces be judged to Yelp death.

I tortured myself with guilt over my lack of love for my work, and overanalyzed it all to a pulp. "Most of my coworkers seem totally happy being line cooks, and they've cooked for longer that me… why can't I handle this? Am I just being lame?" But in all that analyzation, I realized this simple fact: Since I started cooking professionally, I've been mainly working in restaurants that seat an average of 140 guests, with lunch, happy hour, dinner and late night. My current workplace has the clusterfuck of Sunday brunch added to that. 300-400 covers a night with barely a respite, thanks to my great luck with working in successful restaurants… it doesn't really seem like a puzzle why I was starting to burn out, or why I was starting to associate cooking with resentment.

My amazingly patient boyfriend will laugh at me for saying this now, but in retrospect the answer to all my conflict and self-questioning seems so simple. It wasn't cooking that I was learning to hate; it was cooking in this volume, in this environment, under this pressure. Certain cooks thrive under the pressure and live for the adrenaline. While it was satisfying for a while, I've come to realize I am truly not one of those cooks. And I'm totally fine with that.

I've had moments where I've thought, "Quit whining, Ingrid, you just need to pay your fucking dues like every other line cook out there." But what makes me think even more so that I'm totally fine with not being a line cook is the fact that at the top of this particular pyramid is the Executive Chef position, what most line cooks aim to be, and quite frankly it's not what I want for myself. I see how hard all of my chefs work, and how hard they've worked to get to where they are now, and I honestly don't think I have the willpower to work 16-hour days six or seven days a week, being pulled in a thousand different directions while being responsible for every plate that goes out. I love food, I love cooking, and I'm not afraid of hard work, but I don't have the drive to be that kind of boss.

So what now? This is by no means the end of cooking for me; I'm simply stepping away from this kind of cooking before I become the angry lifer that I've seen often enough to know better for myself. I'll be completely honest; there have been times in the recent past when I've been so frustrated I've thought about quitting kitchen work altogether. I've considered going the nine-to-five route, becoming one of the cubicle-sitters, collecting benefits and a retirement fund and the whole nine yards. But talk about soul-crushing; I've brought myself to tears just thinking about it.

I know I'm a cook, I know I can cook, and pulling off a seven-course wine dinner for total strangers (with the awesome exception of Brian Wilke, the Exec Chef of OCI, and his wife) while having a fucking blast last week only cemented the fact that I feel far more comfortable on the kitchen side of the pass than as a diner. But I'm ready for a change of pace. I'm ready to not push out hundreds of plates a night. I'm ready to take care in every single goddamned dish that reaches a diner without the crushing pressure of "just get it out, we've got a six-ticket pick coming up next!" To have work that fully interests me and engages me in every way.

I've been so lucky to work for some amazing chefs, and my current chef has been so awesomely understanding about my decision. When I told him what I've been thinking, he said it best: "I've always told my cooks, 'If you don't love it anymore, it's time to move on.'" I lost my love for cooking, and I'm ready to get it back full time. I'll be at my current workplace until August, but after that I'm taking a break to go back to North Carolina for a few weeks. There's a cross-country trip with my mom in the works, and some time to spend with precious family members.

I have some ideas marinating for my future with food, but just reaching this point of clarity is beyond satisfying. And I'm totally okay resting here for a minute.

Getting closer

The new dorade set: eggplant caponata and coriander tomato sauce. The fish in this photo was only the second one that I did with this set, which is why the saucing looks kinda wack. Still love this plate though.

One of the big goals I've had since I started at my current restaurant is to work all the line stations. When I was hired last summer, I started on pantry and soon after moved over to the grill, where I've been for almost a year. I have my good days and my bad days, but generally speaking I feel like I have a decent handle on grill station. I know my equipment, my technique is getting better and I fuck up my temps less frequently these days. I know the dimensions of my work space really well, and sweating over the carcinogenic fire monster from hell that is our grill every night has become normal. Which is, by the way, totally abnormal, but that's a whole other blog post.

At the end of the day, I love what I do, and I can't imagine myself thriving in another profession. But, like everything, it has its downsides. I'll be honest: I've felt "the grind" of line cooking recently, and though I am quite fortunate to be working at a restaurant with a seasonal menu that changes daily, being on the same station for almost a year had started to wear into my bones. A year is not a long time, really, just enough time to start to get good at a station. I didn't even realize I was coming up on a year until I thought about it yesterday--clearly, this year flew. Line cooking is all about repetition and practice, doing the same thing over and over until you're as close to perfect as you can be. And then you get a new set or a new pickup, and the learning starts over. I remind myself that line cooking is a step in the process to something greater, and that I'm building a solid foundation and skill set. And I'm learning every day. Still, doing 200+ covers with a three or four man line, working the same station night after night, and working an 6 to 8 hour service, not including prep time or cleanup... I'm only human, y'all.

I'm determined to work all the stations, however, and the one station I haven't worked yet is saute. Saute is a killer station at my work: it's fresh pasta and fish, as well as chicken and a few hot apps. You need to be able to throw down to work saute, and I've seen seasoned vets reach the edge of breaking point on that station. Some nights, everyone in the restaurant wants pasta and fish, and cooking the majority of the entrees for 200+ covers ain't easy. Needless to say I've been wary yet eager to try my hand at saute, and because of several factors it didn't look like I'd be able to make it to saute until after the holidays.

Due to some recent unexpected but welcome changes, however, I just learned that start training on saute next week. Next week! Just typing that makes my heart beat a little faster. I feel a renewed sense of pride in line cooking, and I'm that much closer to realizing a major goal. I'm feeling The Fear (you cooks know what I'm talking about), but somehow it feels... comforting. Like an old blanket. Welcome back, The Fear. Keep me on my toes, will ya?

My desire to keep up with this blog is still very pressing, yet these past six months have brought all sorts of upheaval into my life, mostly in good ways. I have some almost-finished blog drafts in the works though. In the near future, expect a couple of blog posts soon about the merits (or demerits?) of culinary school, and a little expounding on The Fear. Should be interesting.

Gastro-Recovery

One week later (and five pounds lighter), including three days of missed work, I can happily report that the gastroenteritis is almost entirely curbed. I'd say I'm at about 97% right now, the 3% being my body getting used to eating real meals again, and feeling a little tired still from rapid weight loss and lack of fuel. I inherited my mom's quick metabolism, and I didn't exactly have five pounds to lose before the illness, so I'm slowly working on getting back up to a normal weight.

My diet for most of the last week has consisted of mostly soup, applesauce, purposefully bland congee (rice porridge) and a few pieces of white bread. I know this sounds somewhat ludicrous and possibly pretentious, but it felt so, so wrong to not properly season my food when my cook's instinct is to make it right and balance it well. I forget that the primary function of eating is for energy, and I'm grateful that we've evolved from simply fueling ourselves into creative experimentation with flavor, texture and balance.

Another thought I'll take away from this whole bout with stomach flu is this: I'll never again take for granted the ability to eat, and the variety of foods available to me. Around day four, after my millionth or so bowl of soup, I started to dream in Technocolored gastro-porn: cheeseburgers, sashimi, mussels, mayonnaise, over easy eggs, carbonara, corndogs, lardo, burrata, French dips... everything that I physically could not stomach. It actually made me nauseous to think about food, but after a while I really couldn't help it. I am so, so spoiled by the riches around me and I'll never complain about having to taste my sets before I send them out.

I finally felt good enough on day five to attempt eating a real meal. Following a restorative afternoon relaxing in the sun (a nice change from my bedroom), I settled around the dinner table with my boyfriend and his roommates who had made perfectly barbecued chicken, potato salad with Walla Walla sweet onions, fresh-shucked Oregon peas with yogurt and mint, and grilled summer squash. Not a bad welcome back to gastronomy. Adorably, my boyfriend only served me about a third of what I'd normally eat of each, but he was right in doing so as my stomach seems to have gotten tinier with lack of proper usage. Worry not, it'll be back to right in no time.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Why do we, as culinary professionals, as line cooks especially, do this to ourselves?

I think about this a lot, especially on those days when I'm nursing my shift drink at 1:30AM, sticky with dried sweat, grill smoke and fryer grease and thinking about how hard we got rocked, how much my back hurts, and how poorly I'm gonna sleep before I have to peel myself out of bed and do it all over again. How big my prep list is for tomorrow, how perpetually dirty my cuticles are from scrubbing the grill grates, how much it sucks that even though I'm dog-tired at the end of the night I won't be able to fall asleep for another two hours at least. How I wished I hadn't missed a certain concert or birthday party, how badly I need to do laundry and clean my house, how I haven't been on a date in months, how my last relationship deteriorated in no small part due to my work schedule. Try explaining to someone who gets home from work at 6 or 7PM that waking up at the ass-crack of dawn to an alarm clock that snoozes for over an hour is neither normal nor acceptable to someone who gets home from work at 12:30AM at the earliest.

Then I have days that are nice reminders of the work we do, the world we live in, the people we can proudly call our colleagues. I do this because I love my crew, I mean I love them, really. I can be myself wholly and completely, in all my nerdy, foul-mouthed ridiculousness and they'll just shake their heads and say, "Yep."

I do this because as much as I hate to admit it, I'm an adrenaline junkie. I get a crazy high from pushing out ticket after ticket on a busy night, the one where I can feel my jugular pulsing in my neck when I'm on top of my game. I'm juggling 10 things on the grill, pirouetting to the sound of expo calls, talking with saute with just a nod or an eyebrow tweak, and, despite myself, letting out a "yessssssss!" when I slice a steak and hit the temp dead-on. I've stopped looking at the clock for how many more hours of service we have left and instead I'm keeping an eye on the minute hand to pace my fire times.

I do this because I'm tickled by the customer who interrupts me during a three-ticket fire to tell me that the steak I cooked him was incredible, one of the best he's ever had, and made his trip to Portland worth it.

Because I'm stunned by the amount of work that made that steak possible: The cow farmers, the butchers, the purveyors. The farmer who grew the lettuce and raised the hens that laid the eggs, the time it took for the artisans who made the balsamic vinegar and cheese, and my chef who portioned the meat and made the marinade. It's easy to get complacent in the everyday life of a line cook, and I find it helps to put things into perspective.

Because I get to help do this every week:


Whole lamb being broken down for brochettes of loin, braise, lamb belly for breading/frying, and stock

And be proud of the little things:


Soft-boiled, 5 minute and 15 second eggs. I usually break a couple per batch, but this was the perfect batch--no breakage, perfect consistency

And admire gorgeous handiwork close-up, seeing the man behind the curtain:


Javier, our pasta man, working his magic on our buckwheat cavatelli

Because I have moments every now and then where I think I might actually know a little something about something. And then I'm completely bowled over by how much more someone else knows about that something. It's humbling and inspiring all at once.

Because I love the look on some people's faces, men especially, when I tell them I'm a line cook. And because I can't help but be proud of the places I work, and the places I've worked before.

Because the people we meet, the people we feed, they had a memorable experience and we were part of that. Every day, I am a part of someone else's experience. I make things with my own two hands that people eat and (if we did our job right) enjoy fully, tell their friends about and come back for more.

Because I can go to an event with my restaurant where there are nine other awesome restaurants representing, and you can feel the love and respect. I've met so many great cooks and chefs in Portland, and worked with a lot too, and it still stuns me that I can even consider myself in any way remotely associated with that talent.

The IACP annual conference kicked off today in Portland, and as frightened as I am of mouth-breathing chef groupies, the roster is legit (Ruth Reichl, Kim Severson, Michael Ruhlman, Madhur Jaffrey, Dornenburg/Page, et al). While I couldn't (and probably wouldn't) pay what they're charging for tickets to the event, I was fortunate enough to tag along to help set up, serve and break down our station at the opening reception for the conference. A giant ballroom was packed to the gills with hundreds of eager guests, all of them friendly and mostly knowledgeable about food. We scared off a couple of folks with the mention of the words "pig foot" (and I judged them for it, I admit), but by and large we were a hit. The feedback was awesome and I always have a lot of fun interacting with people through tasty morsels.

I've always craved connecting with people, which is what made me gravitate naturally toward hosting and waiting tables. I was never truly fulfilled by front-of-house work, however, and it was my thirst for being in the trenches, cultivating skills and knowledge that seemed to belong to an elite few, that eventually won out. Turns out that through line cooking, a job that people have historically turned to specifically because they don't care to interact with other people, and a trade that has a reputation for harboring some of the surliest and least personable workers around, I've connected with more people on a more meaningful level than any other work I've ever done.

Since I started cooking for a living, I've worked the hardest I've ever worked in my life, and with all the triumphs have come major downfalls too. But I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. I won't be a line cook forever, and frankly I don't know where this will take me, but for now, right now at this very moment, despite all of its downsides and the ridiculous life that comes along with it, I'm pleased as punch.

Burger Redemption

My relationship with burger cookery got off to a rocky start.

One day last spring at my old job, right before happy hour started, my sous chef decided on a whim to move the very popular burger pickup to my station. Though I was cooking steak, lamb, pork and poultry at that point, I'd never temped a burger in my life and, frankly, I had no desire to. Burgers were cooked to order in saute pans, so the far more skilled saute cook had been picking them up for the more than six months that I'd worked there. I'd watch him fire several 10 burger pickups in a row at peak happy hour rush, holding it together but starting to break a sweat, and I'd be so, so happy it wasn't me.

...Until suddenly it was me. After a minute or so of angry silence and stunned shock on my part, I had about 10 minutes to rearrange all my mise and try to figure out what the hell I was doing. I was so livid about this last-minute change, I was on the verge of tears. It made me even angrier that the other cooks took to taunting me about it, and when they realized through my silence that I was genuinely upset, the sous helped me take my station apart and put it back together, somehow cramming six new 9th pans, a 6th pan and two 3rd pans into my already-crowded station.

Like anything in the kitchen, I just got to it. Fake it 'til ya make it, as they say. I started to get a feel for temping burgers, and fortunately my first day as burger lady wasn't insanely busy so I didn't go down in flames.

(I did, however, go home that night and cry myself to sleep. Don't tell anyone, okay?)

Even though I'm still convinced it was really shitty to give me the burger pickup with no warning, it was probably one of the best things that's happened to me so far as a cook. My sous chef was no dummy. I got better at multi-tasking real fast out of sheer necessity, and I was working harder than I ever had. The days when I cooked dozens of happy hour and bar burgers while firing dinner tickets at the same time and managed to do a decent job, I went home feeling pretty good about myself.

But I also had a fair amount of resentment toward the burger pickup. Maybe it was because it felt like an interference when I was already temping five proteins and picking up several other dishes. Maybe it was the fact that burgers were commonly fired at the end of the night. The countless number of times that we were on the verge of closing and a burger ticket came in, oftentimes after our official closing time... I let the resentment build up.

I had a lot of burger anger.

I bitched at bartenders who fired late burgers, as if they had gone out of their way to inconvenience me, which, of course, they hadn't. It's a fact of life as a cook--you'll get tickets at the end of the night, sometimes after closing time, and even though you're all wrapped up and ready to bounce, you have to stay and finish your job. I didn't see it that way for a long time, until well after I left that kitchen. Late tickets are never fun, but getting mad about it doesn't exactly help.

About a month ago, I moved over to the grill station at my current restaurant. We have an extremely popular burger that we grind in-house, and I used to come in all the time before I ever worked there to get a burger after work. It comes off the grill, so I've been working some burger action as of late. I was worried that I'd be out of shape for meat station, and I am a little, but I found that it's like riding a bicycle. Getting back to it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be.

I told myself one thing before I started on grill station, however: I would not let myself have burger anger. I volunteered for the job, I wanted grill station, and there's nothing worse than a cook who works from a place of anger. Seriously.

There's a reason that grill cooks tend to be the surliest of the bunch: They're standing in the hottest part of the restaurant for hours at a time, smoke wafting in their faces, maneuvering multiple proteins between the hot and cool spots on the oft-temperamental grill, and likely slangin' some major burgers. By the end of the night your skin has a fine coat of smoke and grease and sweat. It ain't glamorous, that's for sure.

But telling myself that one thing, no burger anger, has made the busy happy hours go pretty smoothly so far. Cooking without anger is something I never thought I'd have to make a conscious effort to do, as I'm not exactly an angry person, but when you're doing the same thing dozens of times a day, day in and day out, it's easy to see how the tedium and the constant buzz of the ticket printer can wear at you. I haven't been on grill that long yet, but I'm doing my best to watch my temperament this time around.

I don't want to cook out of anger. This job is too good to waste on that.

A New Year

Oh, my poor neglected blog. Thanks to a nudge from my coworkers, here I am at last. For whatever reason in the last few months I've suffered from a self-imposed, increased pressure to write quality material that people can relate to. Mix that with general blog laziness, being sick four times in five weeks, and a lovely Christmas trip to North Carolina where I did nothing but watch movies and eat pound cake and Chick Fil A, and ye here blog goes without company for too long.

Unfortunately, I really miss writing, so let that be my first resolution of 2010: Think less, write more.

So what have I learned in this past year? I'm well into my second year of cooking professionally, and things are only looking up. I've been going into work on my own time on one of my days off to trail the day kitchen manager, and it's been so eye-opening to see things from beginning to end. PM cooks are pretty spoiled at my restaurant, as a majority of the big prep gets taken care of for us during the day--butchering, portioning, braises, cures, terrines, sausages and other charcuterie, burger prep, breads, pastas, some sauces... nearly all of it is done in-house, and most of it is taken care of by the swift hands of the day crew, sous chefs and exec chef. There's definitely a good amount of prep for the evening cooks to take care of, but I think most of us would agree that we have it pretty cush.

It makes for a smooth system, but how do you learn and grow in this environment? One of the biggest lessons I learned the hard way this year was to never get comfortable. Comfortable leads to plateauing, which leads to complacency and oftentimes a shitty attitude. And, trust me, NO ONE wants to work with a cook with a shitty attitude. My point is, I'm learning to make a conscious effort to stretch my limits and my comfort zone.

Confession: Charcuterie intimidates the shit out of me. I don't even know why. Maybe it's the history of it, or how finicky it seems, or the fact that I've just been spoiled by working at two places that did almost all of their sausages, cures and terrines in house, and the people doing the charcuterie were crazy good. But I only see one solution: Learn to make it. Conquer the fear. Push my limits, scare myself a little, make some mistakes and move on. That's the only way we can get better, right?

Things aren't always what we hope for, but instead of complaining and doing nothing, I'm learning to make the best of it. I remember one of my classmates in culinary school who had this extraordinary ability to complain about everything. The kid clearly had raw talent, but he took complaining to some next level shit. Everything was always too much or not enough. Too easy, too hard, too much work, not enough to do; no matter what the situation, this guy managed to see the negative in everything. Worst of all, it was permeating--the attitude just ate at your nerves until you could cut the tension with a knife. This leads me to possibly the biggest lesson I learned this year: We can complain all we want to, but in the end we're responsible for ourselves. Getting bored on my station? Try different tasks, ask for more, trail another station. Giant prep list? Work faster and request help. Does shit suck? Then change it. It seems so unfairly simple to say, but there it is.

I'm no saint. I don't claim to be perfect, by any means, and I have my bad days. I've definitely fit the complainer description well in the past. But I'm mostly in what I'd call a happy place right now. Things are fluid and fun, my coworkers are pretty awesome, and though I get stuck in station tunnel-vision from time to time, the extra days and new projects help keep me flexible and challenged.

Other cool things that happened in 2009:
- My mom turned 60 (happy birthday Mom!)
- The third anniversary of my surgery, and I'm fit as a fiddle (despite the winter colds!)
- Bought a condo!
- Went to San Francisco and LA by myself, had an amazing time and ate some of the best food of my life
- Made some of the best food I've done yet
- Met some amazing cooking (and non-cooking) related people in Portland and elsewhere
- Obtained a 17-year-old cat named Whimpy, who was a friend's childhood house cat. Spry old guy, and a biggun too, but what a ridiculously sweet thing. I was already basically a cat lady before I got the cat, and now it's official.

This year, I'm hoping to narrow my career focus a bit. I'll let you know how that goes. I'm also hoping to travel: San Francisco is calling my name again, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Taiwan and/or Europe. And I'll write more, yes!

Things are good, friends, things are good.

Know Thyself

I had a thought the other day while getting ready for work, ruminating about the stage who trailed my station the night before and the new back-line guy who didn't know what mise en place was and who I've kind of taken under my wing:

I think I might have gotten to the point where I might actually know something about being a cook.

Which is also to say I don't know that much at all.

Lemme explain.

At some point in the past few months, maybe especially since my trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and definitely since the start of my current job, I started thinking a lot, A LOT, about who I am as a cook.

When I first started on the pantry station at my first kitchen, I was completely fascinated, if not overwhelmed, by the wealth of knowledge that my bosses and coworkers possessed, the experiences they had, and the energy they had to carry out the hours they were doing every day. It got to the point where the insecure control freak part of my personality would worry that I wasn't good enough to be in this industry because I wasn't _____ [reading enough cookbooks/ eating out enough/ working enough hours off the clock/ staying late enough/ reading this one blog and that site and the other thing/ sharpening my own knives/ talking enough about food/ thinking enough about food/ obsessing over food/ forsaking the other things in my life for this career path... ad nauseum]. You get the picture. I had nights where I went home and cried because I know I didn't give it my all, or I couldn't stop thinking about how I messed up a ticket and let it haunt me for the remainder of service.

Slowly, slowwwwwly, I started to ease up a little. I took work home a little less. I forgave myself a little more. I realized that the nature of our workplace is inherently forgiving in a way: You fucked up yesterday, but look! Here's a whole new batch of people and a whole new service where you can atone for your sins and show them what you're really made of!

And then I met and befriended more cooks and chefs and saw the range of personalities that float in and out of kitchens every day. Some I could relate to more than others, and some were just completely unrelatable. I've had (and keep having) great conversations with cooks about food and work, but found that there were cooks (and even foodies) who couldn't shut the fuck up about food and what chefs they admired and what they wanted and how badass of a line cook they were and how they deserved better and how they were mistreated or taken advantage of or this that and the other thing. They're unable to step outside of themselves or the industry for just a second and see this whole big world that's going on around them, with or without their stellar butchery skills. I came to realize that I didn't exactly fit in with this tunnel-vision, food-is-God worldview, but I got the feeling I wasn't a bad cook for it.

I also found my own level of comfort with the accoutrements of our industry. I got to know the cookbook section of Powell's a little more. On the advice of my first chef I bought The French Laundry Cookbook, and then I found The Devil in the Kitchen, and enjoyed my way through The Man Who Ate Everything and even re-read Kitchen Confidential (less scary and more silly this time around, FYI). My bookshelf found more company more regularly. I found cooking blogs I loved, and instead of being so jealous of food writers who were far more talented than I, I embraced them for their literary skills and their ability to capture what I could hardly comprehend.

I overcame the fear of sharpening my own knives on a stone, and though I still pretty much suck at it, I do a serviceable enough job and am slowly getting better. I made it a habit of eating out at restaurants on my days off, partially as a way of catching up with friends I missed with my insane schedule, but mostly to get a little inspiration and to see what chefs were coming up with in Portland. I came in to work a little earlier, worked a little later, tried (and am still trying) to complain a little less and keep my mouth shut a little more.

And then, somewhere in there, I started to see the everyday a little differently. The minutiae of the grind became something to love. The perfect sear on a steak, hitting the medium-rare beautifully, finding the perfect spoon with which to butter-baste, working faster, cleaner, more precisely yet more efficiently. Picking herbs a little faster than the day before, making the Bearnaise better than yesterday's, being one hundred and ten percent ready for service when the time came.

This is not to say I'm any less hard on myself; in fact I'm probably more so now than when I first started. I still don't consider myself a great cook, and I'm really young in this industry. I'm too slow still, I can work much cleaner, the color on my sear could be more consistent, I need to be better about remembering the six hotel pans I have going in the convex while portioning my pork belly and emulsifying my sauces. I get pissed at myself when I don't do something right. I get impatient, I get short with people, I talk too much, I don't focus enough. I've fucked up enough temps to know I'm not the queen of meat... yet.

But rather than harping on exactly how much I suck, I'm more willing to let a mistake go knowing that I'm making it a goddamned mission to not make that same mistake again. That, I think, is called learning.

This is ultimately about the fact that I'm reconciling with myself who I am as a cook and what my capacity is for the idiosyncrasies that come along with being a cook. In a way I'm glad I came into cooking at the age I'm at now, because I'm surer of myself and what I want than who I was 10 years ago. I've heard chefs and cooks say "Cooking comes first; everything else is secondary," and I simply don't subscribe to that philosophy. I'm not willing to forsake my relationships with friends and family to have a successful career, especially considering what my family and friends have done to help me get to where I am now.

I've heard cooks say "You're not a real cook if you can't hold your liquor." I'm not a party girl and I rarely drink to excess, as I need to take care of my body and I have a very low tolerance for alcohol (what can I say, I'm a cheap date!). I'm very, VERY lucky to be able to even work in a kitchen in the first place and I don't take that for granted. I don't make it a habit to pick up every new hot cookbook, but that doesn't mean I don't have a few in mind or that I'm not paying attention. I'm not sure how many more years of line cooking I have in me, but I'm pretty certain it's not enough to want to make it all the way to the top of this particular chain. I know how much time and energy it takes, and while I want to give it all I got, I don't got enough to be an executive chef of a four-star restaurant.

What I do know is I want to keep cooking for people. I want to keep line cooking, at least for a while, get techniques and moves under my belt, and LEARN. I want to continue to be surrounded by cooks who are better than I am, who know more than I do, knowing that simply watching them and working side-by-side with them every day is making me a better cook. I'm figuring out my own pace, my own style, my own preferences. I'm working with what I have, yet I'm pushing myself to be better, faster, more efficient. I'm not mouth-breathingly obsessed with this career and this lifestyle, but I love it and I love that I get to live it every day. I want to be really fucking good at what I do. I have ideas in the works, and I don't need to be the kind of cook that a lot of cooks aspire to be.

And I'm really okay with that.

Starting fresh

My current workplace was amazing enough to give me time off right after I started working there to sit my ass on a beach in North Carolina for a week with my lovely family. Besides doing a lot of lounging, napping and catching up, we cooked every meal and ate and drank like spoiled kings thanks in part to the fact that my aunt owns two restaurants and my cousins are the front of house managers and wine buyers for one of them. I've surpassed my filet mignon quota for the year.

Also on hand, thanks to the great fishermen of the East Coast and the most amazing shanty of a fish market on a dock in Topsail Island: blue crabs. Lots of them. Cooked in beer and Old Bay. Maryland would be proud.



The only dreaded part of the trip was the actual traveling; 8 hours on planes and in airports is totally not awesome. I touched down at PDX at 11:30PM on Tuesday and got right back to work Wednesday. In a way it's been great to jump right back into it, but I'm just now kicking the last of the jet lag. Hitting a wall at 9PM during dinner service is far from ideal.

What has been great is knowing I'm finally on a solid schedule. While I was extremely fortunate and happy to take this time off, I like having set hours and days that I can rely on. Is it part of getting older, craving some stability? While the job itself is refreshingly unpredictable in many ways, knowing where you're going to be and when you're going to be there is a small comfort.

Not to say it isn't a little rocky at first; I remember when I first started working at my previous restaurant, the most frustrating thing about the first few weeks was figuring out where everything was located, and my new restaurant is no different. The hotel pans, the China caps, the pint containers, all your various and sundry utensils and every individual ingredient you needed for your station--like an old cat lady who keeps her hair pins in tidy rows on the bathroom counter, every kitchen has its small idiosyncrasies into which you eventually step in line. Most of all, I hate pestering people to ask where things are, but as they say, it comes with the territory.

I can report that even though I'm still very fresh meat, my new job so far has been refreshing and fulfilling and slightly terrifying; in short, all the things I was hoping it would be. I miss my old coworkers a lot, but in my humble opinion, opening the doors to new opportunities and experiences is one of the best parts of cooking.

The awesomeness that is restaurant cooking

Being a kitchen cook is really hard work, probably the hardest I've ever worked in my life, and I've only been at it for a couple of months. With full time work on top of full time school, it's a struggle to stay on top of my game 100 percent of the time. I miss seeing my friends, I miss weekend trips, and having a normal social life is nearly impossible--I can hardly make time for laundry, much less a civilized date. I sleep erratically and I eat standing up at work or walking to/from school, usually scarfing down whatever I'm eating in less than three minutes. I'm lucky if I actually get to sit down for a meal more than once a week.

Even though it crosses my mind that I'm crazy for doing this, I truly love what I'm doing, and here are a few of the reasons why.

The Sounds: Sizzling of meat hitting a properly heated pan, clanging of metal pots and pans and bowls, whirring of mixers and blenders and grinders, the calling of orders and the echo of cooks, the blasting fan in the walk-in, even the whooshing of the mechanical dishwasher.

The Smells: Sauteed onions, creamed butter and sugar, fresh-out-of-the-oven bread pudding, pan-fried lardons, citrus rind zested on a microplane, simmering corn bisque, resting duck confit before it goes in the walk-in.

The Particulars: How a bunch of ingredients sitting in various sizes of hotel pans, Cambro containers, squeeze bottles and plastic pint cups become a 28-dollar plate that looks worth the money. I love that it's rather unromantic in the kitchen, and I love that the food makes a magical transformation once it's in the server's window and delivered to a patron's table.

The Organized Chaos: It looks like an abstract mess on the surface, but every step you take and every turn you make means something. A good cook makes no wasted moves. There's something kind of awesome about five cooks juggling searingly hot pots, pans and bowls in a 20 square foot galley kitchen with lowboy refrigerators, ovens and hot surfaces. It feels great when you're moving swiftly and efficiently.

The Textures: Getting my hands on crisp greens, slippery scallops, creamy dressings, rock-hard mollusk shells, soft strawberries. It's a good occupation for hands-on kind of people.

The Tastes: This one should go without saying. Tasting 10 flavors in one dish, tasting 10 dishes in three minutes, tasting the difference between something unseasoned and the transformation it makes when properly seasoned, trying something I've never had before and being completely surprised and/or blown away.

The Camaraderie: This is one of my favorite things about cooking, really. The minute I set foot into the kitchen, it's like stepping into an exclusive club. An exclusive all-boys club, in my case, and for a lot of other kitchens out there. For the longest time when I was a server and a host, there was a sense of mystery about the kitchen to me; I was so curious, yet afraid to touch anything or get in anyone's way. I stuck to asking a lot of questions and pestering chefs to let me taste dishes instead. Now that being in a kitchen is my job, the mystique and romanticism is gone, and it's fun to finally know what it's like to be back there. I love behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, and this is the ultimate in being behind-the-scenes, for me at least.

It's been a busy few weeks with the start of Term 3, but I'm doing my best to power through as usual. Late nights and early mornings take a toll, but I know it's worth it.