Friday, 6/4/10 – Level 4 Day 1 (Production)

This was by far the kookiest day of culinary school thus far. First of all, level 4 is VERY different than level 3:

1. We're finally down in the restaurant kitchens, which are surprisingly not any cooler temperature-wise.
   
2. I actually had some down-time to relax and catch my breath.
   
3. For the first time in several weeks we got to eat Family Meal dinner prepared by 1/3 of my classmates.
   

I was assigned to the production group, which handles all of the stock-making and protein butchering for the entire school (the other two groups were Family Meal and Buffet – a special project group that puts on a massive buffet for the entire school every two weeks). I was a little nervous about this new level, considering that actual humans, other than chef and myself, will be paying a lot of money to consume the product I produce. I got to school a little early to change and get my bearings and ended up being one of the first students in the big kitchen. An intimidating and busy looking chef, who runs the Level 6 kitchens in the restaurant, called me over to where she was standing in front of a huge wad of veal. "Hi, are you in this level?" I considering lying and just running the 90 blocks home. "I need you to portion this veal…and I needed it like 5 minutes ago." She turned and exited the room, and I was left trying to decipher what I had just been tasked to do. Luckily, she had already done one, so I had a good idea of the size she was looking for and got started immediately, placing the little cutlets in a pan over ice. Slowly, my classmates started filtering in. "What the heck are you working on?" "Can't talk…must slice."

Due to the restaurant's current menu, production was tasked with filleting two huge halibut (along with several other smaller fish), butchering hanger steaks, quartering hundreds of chickens, portioning the veal (done) and breaking down hundreds of squid. I had my eye on the latter, as it looked like the gooiest and most interesting of the stations, so once the veal had been delivered next door I grabbed two pairs of gloves (or, according to chef, the neighborhood cats would be following me) and got started on the squid. Their bodies range from 3"-6" long, and you must gently pull on the tentacles to remove them from the "tube," or the body. The tubes are emptied and set aside to be washed out, and the heads are cut just below the eyes to remove the long, spindly tentacles yet leave the "brain." If you've ever ordered fried calamari, you're familiar with these two parts of the body. I was happily pulling, separating, digging and slicing when Chef Marc approached. He still makes me terribly nervous, and I'm convinced he doesn't like me because I have a hard time understanding his accent. "Non, non, non! You are wasting ze best part!" he started yelling. I dropped what I was doing and anxiously waited for him to correct me. He took one of the discarded brain/eye parts and tugged on a small, fleshy knob which pulled off to be a delicate and long piece of muscle. "Zis ees ze most del-ee-cious part. Pull all of zem off and I will show you." I immediately dug through my bowl of guts to locate more of these "best parts" and gathered them for chef. He came back with a pan of hot butter, garlic and a chili pepper and threw in the pieces, swirling them in the butter in one last brief sizzle. He grabbed a plate, poured the beautiful, delicious pile on and motioned for me to take some. I peeled back my gloves and picked at one little piece of cooked squid and popped it in my mouth. Sweet, buttery and tender; it practically melted on my tongue. I smiled at him; he smiled back. "You see…ze best part." Feeling good about this positive interaction, I got back to work on my assembly line of tearing apart squid bodies and explained to chef that my next step would be to wash out the tubes. "Non, Jacques-leen. Don't ever wash ze tubes." Now, this was going to be a problem: Chef Janet, for whom I was preparing these squid, had specifically asked that they be washed. I explained this to him, and he leaned in close to my face. "Who do you teenk ees bett-a? Me? Or Chef Janet?" Sh*@, this was the man who competed and won the show "Chopped," but Chef Janet is amazing too. I decided to diffuse the situation best as I know how – avoidance. "Oh…ha ha ha…yes Chef. Capisco." Then, the craziest thing happened – I grabbed a new squid and began tugging out the guts…yet they wouldn't budge. I used a towel to get more grip on the slime and pulled even harder; nothing. I stuck my finger inside the tube, and immediately recoiled. "Ugh!! What the heck is that!!" One of my classmates was curious and decided to stick his finger in the tube as well…his reaction was even worse. Something disgusting was down in there, and I'll be damned if I wasn't going to figure this out. I mustered all of my strength and tugged, hard. The mysterious item started to shift, and began to make its way down the body and closer to being revealed. All of a sudden - as I was concentrating and pulling my hardest - a small, half-digested fish popped out. No joke…almost perfectly intact except for the fins and part of the top of its body. An entire small fish. Apparently my little squid friend had being eating dinner during captivity…a last meal of sorts.

I was still excited and giddy from my discovery when I got blindsided by an unexpected occupational hazard. It all happened in slow motion: the puncture, the explosion and the resulting black ink spraying like shrapnel towards my stark white uniform and pale-skinned face. I dodged left, then right. A male classmate tried to sacrifice himself for my dignity by jumping across the room and in front of my torso…none of it helped. All was silent as the battle came to a close. As the haze cleared, we opened our eyes to survey the damage and collect the survivors; Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You" was quietly playing in the background. I had been hit…bad. With all of the adrenaline coursing through my body I couldn't yet feel the injuries, but the black spray across my uniform was all I needed to see. "Man down!" I yelled, frantically wiping my face to prevent the black ink from searing tattoos onto my cheek and forehead. My uniform, however, could not be saved.

A few minutes later, after Chef Janet reminded me to wash out the squid tubes (crap), I rushed over to the sink to get it done as quickly as possible after I saw Chef Marc leave the room. Suddenly, I heard a "tisk tisk" behind me, along with the unmistakable voice saying, "What a shame." I turned to explain, and he just made eye contact and walked away; we both knew he had specifically told me not to wash the tubes, yet he had caught me. "I still respect you!" I frantically yelled as I watched the back of his head get farther and farther away. So much for that positive interaction.

I finished the squid and moved on to assisting with quartering the chickens. Making his rounds, chef stopped by our station and looked at me in amazement. "Your friends have failed to tell you that you have ink on your face." OhmyGod no they didn't. As I was yelling and rubbing at my face while scolding my friends for not telling me, I suddenly remembered the "beauty mark" on my chin that looks a heck of a lot like a black, round ink splot…he was teasing me. Awesome. I fired him a death look, and he sauntered away, laughing at my ignorance. I refused to let this man get the best of me, and planned my attack. I remembered that he has a small tattoo behind his ears, and decided that would be my coup de grace. Later in the night, he approached me with a devilish smile on his face. He mimicked me frantically rubbing my chin trying to remove the "ink." I took a breath, and responded by frantically rubbing behind my ear…exactly where he has the tattoo. He narrowed his eyes at me for a brief second, and then they softened. He laughed, turned and walked away. Victory. Later in the night I caught his eyes from across the room and we exchanged a mental white flag of surrender. I do respect you, chef, but I'm hoping to earn some respect of my own.

We ended the night with a little experiment: Chef Janet taught us how to de-bone a chicken while keeping it fully intact. Seriously – we didn't cut the chicken, we simply worked out all of the bones so that what was left was a shell in the shape of a chicken! It was really difficult, and took about 45 minutes, but the result was incredibly bizarre and fascinating. We were told that we could take them home to stuff with ground chicken, herbs or sausage, but I chose not to drag this carcass with me on the subway. That's not something you want discovered when the NYPD does a random bag search…no explanations for that creepiness.

I had a hard time explaining to my nice, foreign laundry lady this morning what the heck happened to my uniform. "Squid ink," I said, which was met with some confused looks. "The animal…the squid…his ink!" She realized what I was saying, laughed, and said, "ok, we try…we try…" At least my chef's jacket will have some sweet battle wounds and a crazy story to tell.