Monday, 9/13/10 – Level 6 Day 2 (Saucier)

Sometimes it seems like I'm always rushing somewhere – to the dentist, to get ready for bed, to blow dry my hair, to get to school. Regardless of the end result, it always involves me saying to myself, Oh, you have time, just stay till the next commercial, and then inevitably, Crap! How did it get so late?! Then there's that moment of, It's alright, the train will surely come immediately, it always does……ok, so the train didn't come immediately, it never does, followed by, No big deal – you're only five minutes late. Well, I'm tired of the stress and hectic nature my life has slowly taken on over the past few years of living in New York City, so I've made a mental decision to be slightly better about leaving myself enough time to do what I need to do. It's unexplainably hard, though, to not hit the snooze button five times in the morning after a sweaty, frustrating night in a crowded kitchen after which you didn't get home until past 11:30pm, then must shower, pack for the next day and find time to bring your mind down to a level that welcomes some sort of restfulness. Such has been my life since January, but the light is definitely at the end of the tunnel. It has affected me more, recently, because I've been working Monday-Friday during the day, leaving work at 5pm to rush to the subway, hopefully catch a train quickly to take me all the way downtown, run to school and change into my uniform in time for roll call at 5:45pm. Sure, I always make it, but my teammates are usually at school, working and setting up, about 15-20 minutes before I even enter the building. Part of me doesn't feel bad, because I'm almost never late (regardless of what I've previously revealed about myself) and I have to pay off these student loans some time this century, but then again I feel like a total a&$ because they are essentially working harder than me. And with our hair tied up underneath our hats and our identical uniforms, there's really no way to tell that I just spent 8 hours pushing papers in a midtown skyscraper.

We had an incredibly slow night in the restaurant last night, partly due to the fact that it was a rainy Monday. Nevertheless, we still had to prepare the night's dishes and power through the nine million things on our To Do lists. We had our last table order their meat dish at 9:45pm, so we started to clean up and cool down our sauces and were done by 10:15pm. We all worked our fastest, scrubbing and cleaning like crazy thinking that we were going to be out (and home) incredibly early. I overheard the Level 5 chef demand that they all be done and ready to go by 10-after, and started to get jealous that they were getting preferential treatment…until he announced a pop quiz to fill the time. Our chef, on the other hand, didn't want to let us out early, lest we go home and spend some joyous time with our families, so he made us stand there…and stand there…and wait until 10:40pm. I understand that he might get in trouble if he lets us out too early…but it's not our fault there were 30 customers total all night!

Speaking of those 30 customers, for some reason they all decided to sit down and order at the exact same time, so while I was having a blast eating dinner, chatting with my friends and leisurely doing some pre-prep for Wednesday, I got slammed with order after order, all at the same time. Luckily, we cook the duck breasts at the beginning of service, but they still need to be heated up in the oven for pick-up, and it's really hard to stay organized and aware when you have 6 different dishes all on "fire" that are at different stages of the process: one heating, two being sliced, two being plated and one being finished. I was proud of myself, though, when I stepped back and realized all that I had accomplished in a mere fifteen minutes, something that would have made me crawl through the cobwebs under the oven, stuff my sweaty neckerchief in my mouth and cry into the lamb blood stains on my uniform's sleeve just a few months ago. I accomplished the task at hand, but in the scheme of things fifteen minutes of franticness is a cake walk compared so some NYC restaurant kitchens. I learned the other day that my friend, who works at the famous Momofuku Noodle Bar, does about 500 covers on the average Saturday night…that makes my armpits sweat.

Good news! I found a great new deodorant to make my armpits stop sweating. But seriously…I was browsing the personal care aisle at our local Duane Reade the other day and saw a great new anti-perspirant that I wanted to try. The fun scents were either already opened (ew) or gone, so my choices were: Unscented and Fresh Powder. Seeing as how I don't want to smell like nothingness, I chose powder. Now, I feel like a Johnson & Johnson employee and everywhere I go I hear people whispering "Who's changing a baby?" I wave to a friend - diaper rash. I curl up with my husband - newborn. Note to my female readers: Please learn from my mistake; unscented is always the best choice.

I managed to sneak my iPhone into the kitchen to finally take a picture of one of our beautiful L'Ecole dishes. Below is a Seared Duck Breast with Sweet and Sour Mushroom Sauce on a bed of Kale, Duck Confit and Kefir Lime Cream, served with a Potato Terrine cooked in duck fat. Pure glutton. (Since it was the demo plate we made for chef, the meat didn't rest long enough so the juices leaked…hence the red liquid pooling near the potato. Please disregard.)