Fourteen days ago I was unsure of how I was going to buy groceries. Now I still don’t know how I’m going to buy groceries, but if I use the Enron mark to mark balance sheet module I might be able to bank on potential profits.

I’m re-opening a restaurant in San Francisco!

I came home to the Bay Area to find and apartment and found myself a job instead. Gina Milano, owner of several popular establishments in San Francisco called me last week and the conversation went something like this:

“Amy, Babe, where in the world are you right now? Are you still at Le Bernardin or are you in Paris, or where?!?”

“I’m flying back to SF this week. Why? What’s up?”

“You want to cook a dinner party for 30 people on Wednesday at Le Club?”

“Sure! What’s the menu? Or do you have one yet?”

“Yeah, it’s easy. It’s a salad with three choices of entrées: chicken, filet, or pumpkin risotto and chocolate pots de crème for dessert.”

“No problem, I can make that happen…”

“Call me when you get in hon’.”

I’m great at committing myself to things and then freaking out over how I’m going to accomplish them. So I call one of the sous chef’s at Le Bernardin and ask for advice because he is the master of running private parties.

“How much filet do you think I’ll need to order for a party of 30 texan doctors with 3 choices on the menu? I don’t want to over order the filet because it will go to waste.”

“Are you kidding me? You better expect all of them will order filet.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I respond with calculator in hand adding up pound per pound.

“What are the other options?”

“Roasted chicken and pumpkin risotto”

“No one’s gonna order the risotto.”

“Yeah, not when there’s filet on the menu. So I’m cooking this alone. I gotta pre-sear stuff or I’m going to get seriously crushed.”

“Oh yeah, pre-sear everything. You really gotta take the bull by the horns, ya know? I mean you have to embrace it even if you don’t want to embrace it or you’re going to fail. Failure is not an option, remember? See, now you understand why I was such a control freak in the salon parties.”

“Yeah, I understand a lot more now, that’s for sure. I wish I had taken better notes.”

“You’ll be fine. Just don’t leave anything up in the air and trust no one. If you mess up something in the cooking process then you can blame yourself, but it you let some one else f’ck it up then that’s a different story. You’ll be fine. Let me know how it goes, huh?”

It’s not that preparing a meal for thirty people is so difficult. But picking up three different entrées simultaneously and getting food out hot and timed correctly for thirty people is challenging when you have limited help.

The evening was a total success. Knowing that it would be impossible to plate thirty dishes and pick up three different entrées alone, I brought in a new cook friend of mine to help out and we just had a blast in the kitchen.

It’s been a long time since I actually had fun cooking. I forgot how much I loved it. Working in 3 Michelin star restaurants is exciting, but the pressure can be draining. And it’s hard to find time to really talk to colleagues and get to know them. Crazy, considering we work side by side day in day out.

I blaze through most of the prep the day before and Eric comes in after his daytime shift at a different restaurant to help me finish up. We’re ready to go. No rush. We’re confident. We’re swapping cooking stories, jokes, comparing burns injuries, talking about knives, gossiping about cooking schools and restaurants. We’re having fun.

We wait and wait and still the tables haven’t ordered and now we’re getting bored and Eric, no doubt, is getting tired having already worked 10 hours or more. The servers bring the tickets back to us and sure enough each of the three tables has ordered a staggering amount of filet. I sell one risotto. What a waste of time and effort! But thank God I ordered enough filet to cover the board.

We pump out the orders table by table all the while loving the 12 burner stove from the 1940’s that burns hotter than any stove top I’ve ever worked with. And then one of the ovens dies. The chicken is semi-done. Not good. I put my hand in the oven and realize it’s gone kaputz.

But it’s not a major catastrophe. I switch the proteins to the other oven and in minutes we’re ready to plate. The first table is turned out a few minutes later than I would have liked, but the servers reassure me there is no rush. The party is giving speeches, drinking wine, and enjoying themselves.

I pick up three more last minute private parties in the same week. All the parties go smoothly and the regular customers happily eat up the extras I send out to the bar. Everyone agrees that it’s time to bring the food back.

The last chef was fired a year ago for soaking the restaurant in outrageously high food and staff costs and Gina has kept the restaurant closed ever since keeping the three lounge rooms open for cocktails. She books the small restaurant with private parties and normally brings in a chef to cook. We’ve flirted off and on this year about re-opening it. But with the bad economy and my work commitment in New York, the timing was off.

Now the timing is perfect!

I am scared, nervous, and totally excited. It is rare that a cook can walk into a kitchen that has everything in place and do exactly what he or she wants to – with in limits of course, we are working on a tight budget. Which makes it even more of a creative challenge and will translate into an affordable menu that clearly everyone is looking for these days. We’re bringing ‘bistro’ back. (As if it ever went out.)

I love the venue. I always have. It’s one of San Francisco’s last true historic gems. In fact the name, Le Club, dates back to the original restaurant/lounge in the 1920’s. It has an old Paris bistro feel with a certain San Francisco speakeasy flare. And the kitchen is amazing. Small, but loaded with goodies.

And the piano! Oh my goodness I have never worked on a piano quite like this one. Twelve burners, two rows of six, with unusual flower shaped cast iron and btu’s that are out of control. An energy saver’s nightmare for sure. Now if I can just get that oven calibrated…

I will be heading back to NYC to pack up and move out. We hope open next month. In the meantime come by for a properly made cocktail or glass of champagne on the top of Nob Hill! Or, book a reservation for March…

I can’t believe this is really happening!

Le Club

San Francisco

1260 Jones Street, 94109 (top of Nob Hill)

The post The Ending Chapter And the Beginning of a Restaurant first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Saturday morning, my last Saturday morning, I hop in a taxi and take the FDR freeway from Lower Manhattan to Midtown. I look out onto the East River as rain pelts against my window, beading up, then sliding down the pane contorting my view into a million tiny fisheye lenses. I glimpse the Brooklyn Bridge arching gracefully to a place called Somewhere Else.

The taxi takes the 42nd Street exit and we are whipped into Midtown madness. Tourists line up in the rain around the Radio City Studios hoping to catch the Letterman show or the Rockettes. African street vendors hawk their counterfeit purses and sunglasses under plastic rain ponchos. Steam rises from street food vendors luring in travelers with a promise of spicy halal stirfry or Jamaican jerk chicken.

I slip unseen into work.

There is no reason for anyone to notice. I work on the groundlfloor of an enormous skyrise building located between 51st and 7 Avenue.  Unless you are an investment banker there is no reason why you would even know the builing exists.

Nevermind that Mama Mia is playing right across the corner. We might as well be the invisible empire in the midst of toursit central. Half of France and Switzerland bank right overhead, and yet we remain concealed from view.

We are very private. And yes, we do serve over 350 clientele privée everyday. But you would not know we are where we are, unless you knew where we were. So to speak.

You enter.

A beautiful hostess takes your fur lined coat and seats you at your table. You float by flower arrangements half the size of an average human being that decorate the warmly lit contemporary dining room. Modern Oil paintings depicting the sea and all its wonders hint to what the menu has in store. White table clothes dressed with crystal are set like diamond necklaces in silk. Contemporary luxury.

A waiter takes your order after your thirst has properly been addressed – Champagne? A martini? A glass of sparkling water perhaps?

An amuse bouche arrives seconds after the waiter disappears with your command for the kitchen to fuss over.

The sommelier appears and, being the best in the world that he is, guides you through a volume of voluptuous green bottles until, together, you have reached a suitable date for the evening. Or perhaps a few. Maybe just a taste from many?

The courses roll out and waiters glide to and from your table seen and unseen. They know when to get your attention and when to leave you alone. They know when you want to strike up a conversation and when to remain in the shadows refilling glasses, brushing away the crumbs, taking away empty porcelain plates with silverware made of real silver. That is their job – to know what you want and when you want it.

And then there’s us cooks in the kitchen slaving it out under extreme pressure like we were in a war game simulation with chef’s barking orders and tickets in-coming faster than torpedos. And we’re either laughing in the trenches because we’re winning the game or keeping our heads down working faster and faster hoping the flag is still ours at the end of the night.

Yes, it is quite another world from the dining room. I personally like to play both fields.

Nonetheless even you, the diner, has entered into the timelessness of ‘kitchen years’. The Broadway show you thought you were going to catch at 8PM has now become less important than staying for an extra dessert course and an after-dinner drink. You are living moment to moment, like us cooks do, just in a different way…

I’m not so early into the kitchen this Saturday, but not so late either. Early enough to gather my equipment before the rest of the kitchen staff starts searching for all the good flat bottomed pots and pans and the desirable cutting boards.

“Last day, huh? Is it really your last day?” The hot appetizer cook, Chris, comes over to chat a little before the kitchen becomes a circus.

“Yup, it’s my last day, and you’re the next Monk Station cook. Are you excited to be on the entrée line?” I ask wondering how he’s feeling considering he will begin without any training on the station.

“Yeah, I’m excited, but I don’t know the station at all.”

“Don’t worry.” I offer with a pat on the shoulder, “I have everything written down that you need to get prepared with an hour by hour itemization. And they won’t let you fail on this station. Trust me. A dish off the entrée line costs at least $50. They will not let you fail. But they will scrutinize everything you do over on this side.”

“Yeah, so I’ve heard…” He remarks and I can tell he’s worried about the position.

“You’re shit has to be tight over here. I mean really tight. Expect to be yelled at for weeks about everything – even if you think it’s perfect, it’s not perfect. You’ll be fine.”

He leaves to go back and set up the Hot Appetizer station which is by far one of the worst to get up and running. That station has so much mise en place it’s almost unthinkable. And he will be fine, he’s a good cook.

“Hey, there’s much less mise en place on Monk Station!” I call to him from across the piano, “It’s easy compared to Hot Apps….”

I am blazing through my prep work and I’m not feeling anything yet. I expected to feel sad or relieved or something upon arrival into the kitchen that has been my home for the last year and a half and instead I feel nothing. It’s just a regular Saturday.

Cooks come up to wish me well and ask if it really is my last day. One of the new cooks catches me in the walk-in fridge and says: “You’re going to cry tonight, I know you’re going to miss us.”

I tell her, “I am going to miss you, but I am not going to cry.”

And I know I’m not going to cry. I don’t know why I know that, but I do. It’s not that I love anyone less or more than the last place I cooked at, it’s just that I know in my heart I’m ready for the next chapter to begin.

Diner service finally starts up after five hours of prep work and the chefs are messing with me biggtime: last night on the line Amy? How does it feel? You’re gonna miss us? Thank God you’re leaving –if you put another plate like that on the passe we’ll have to fire you….

But it’s all in fun. And for the most part we are just too busy to do anything but concentrate on the dishes.

The first seating is over and I’m still not feeling anything. And now this is bothering me.

Actually I am feeling something: I’m feeling really tired because I haven’t slept well for weeks. And when I’m tired, I’m irritable. And dammit, I want to feel something other than irritable.

“You okay tonight? You seem mad or upset?” the Chef de Cuisine asks as I’m gathering plates for the line in between seatings.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask? I’m concentrating on making my dishes perfect tonight. I want a perfect night.”

“Well you look angry. Smile.”

“Why are you asking me to smile. You never ask any of the male cooks to smile and they look more upset than me right now.” I lash back, surprising myself.

“Amy, I am not messing with you tonight. I just know that cooking is a passionate thing and it brings out lots of emotions. That’s all.” He says still slightly messing around with a sparkle in his eye that tells me he’s up for a good challenge and a slight smirk that always means trouble.

When my Chef de Cuisine is in a good mood that normally means he’s going to come down on us harder. I usually try to stay clear of him when he’s happy.

I ignore the rest of this conversation because I’m obviously being led down a road of no return and continue bringing plates for the line.

The second seating is smooth and my fish is poaching nicely and my plates are looking clean and my sliced monk is looking soignier…

Chris, the Hot Apps cook is sent over to my station to join me for the end of the last seating and I am trying to teach him everything amidst the rush. But it’s impossible. And he, of course, wants to plate everything.

But at the same time I want all my dishes to be perfect because, it’s my last night and I want to finish them myself.

But I like Chris and I want to help so I let go a little.

The last dish is ordered and it’s a filet with pommes purée. I have no idea it’s the last order and I heat up the filet and sauté the wild mushrooms while Chris caneles the purée on the plate.

He does a good job, but I like it when the caneles are shaped just a little bigger and fanned just a little wider. No matter, it looks good, he takes the plate to the passe and I follow behind so I can glimpse the upcoming tickets.

I read the tickets, and read the tickets again, and then it hits: that was the last ticket for my station and I let Chris plate it. The horror! It’s not his fault, but I’m upset that I’m asked to train a cook on my last night on the line when I could/should have been doing this the whole week long.

I leave the kitchen to cool off and go to the bathroom while the other stations (besides the entrée line) are cleaning up. The Chef was right – cooking is a passionate thing! I look in the mirror, take off my paper hat, and finally I feel something totally unexpected: I am so happy! And I still don’t know why – but I am so happy!

I come back up to the kitchen and half-heartedly pitch in cleaning. No one expects me to. And I’m busy taking loads of photos. I look on the passe and a silver tray of Champagne glasses await.

The Chef de Cuisine comes up to me, “Well Amy, go get your champagne in the walk-in, I know you wanna open it.” But first he hands me the blue permanent marker and I write on the dry-erase board, what we write when a ‘dish’ is taken off the menu for the evening.

Amy 86 at 12:30 A.M

I stare at this and for a second I think maybe I will cry, but tears don’t come and I grab my champagne.

“Are you gonna open it for me chef? I ask

“No way sister, I’m sure you’ve had a little practice at this one…” He smiles, but something is bothering him and he leaves briefly while I pop the corks and pour champagne to discuss something with the Maître D in his office.

Hmmm, not good, a problem on the floor.

He comes back to the passe to grab his glass of champagne, but another cook has swiped it and I feel bad for not saving a glass for him. He gives a speech that frankly does nothing to inspire and I look at him a little confused. He looks back to the dining room. Something is bothering him and it’s not my departure.

“”The pressure he must be under”, I think to myself.

I snap more pictures of the team and invite everyone over to our local hang out, Faces & Names, for pints.

I arrive at the bar and the Chef de Cuisine is there. I was wondering if he would make it. I know he doesn’t always come to farewell parties. But his mentorship has meant much to me and I find myself choking up at his presence. His friendship and respect have been hard won.

I chid him, “Nice farewell speech Chef. Maybe you should consider changing your day job…”

He laughs, “I’m sorry, there were some problems, I’m sure you saw that?”

“Yeah, I gathered as much.”

“Okay Amy, you’re right, let me re-give your speech…” He lifts his beer to my glass of wine, “Thank you for your hard work, I have really enjoyed you here, your have grown so much as a chef, and best of luck in your next endeavor…”

“Thanks Chef…”

For the first time in a year and half we just talk. We talk about my future, the restaurant, the work, the life of a cook. We talk. And I see him, just for a second, as a normal person with a family to support and not just an intimidating Chef de Cuisine of one of the best restaurants in the world.

We finish our drinks and he ducks out before his staff (and fan club) pull him into their drunken conversations.

Bob, the sauté cook comes up to me with a beer and we start philosophizing…

“How was your night Amy?”

“I dunno. Good. But not perfect, ya know? I just wanted one perfect evening…”

“We live moment to moment, what happened yesterday is a thousand kitchen years away, a thousand kitchen years away” he says for extra emphasis.

“What do you mean Bob? What do you mean ‘kitchen years’?” I asked a little slow in understanding.

“Look, in the kitchen you cannot let things get to you. What happened the day before was a thousand years ago. When you are judged moment to moment on what you bring to the passe, what happened just five minutes before does not mean that what will happen five minutes after is the same.”

Sipping my beer and still taking in all the happy emotions of my last night I ask for clarification because frankly I have no idea what he is getting at.

“In your heart you have to know when you bring something that is perfect to the passe, that it is perfect. There in no one who is going to tell you that it is. But when you do bring that perfectly cooked fish to the passe there is no better feeling. And that feeling comes from within.”

Still catching on I add, “Yes, I agree with you. You are right. We live moment to moment and are judged moment to moment.”

“What happened five minutes ago in the kitchen could be a thousand kitchen years ago. The person who was being an asshole the day before was an asshole a million kitchen years ago. That perfectly cooked halibut you brought to the passe was a hundred kitchen years ago. And you…YOU…” he taps me on my breast bone to send the point home, “…need to constantly be looking to the next moment. To the next I-cooked-that-perfect moment before it too becomes a, a, a, a…memory.”

We sip our beers and sort of stare at each other. I’m dumbfounded at Bob’s revelation. Because it is profound. And I think he is sort of feeling the same way. He has summed up just how time passes in the kitchen and what we all as cooks strive for – the next moment of perfection.

“I’ll write about this.” I tell him.

“Good, I hope you do!” He tells me. We sip more beer.

“And I hope you stay and make sous chef Bob, you will be a good one, I have really enjoyed working with you. You cook fish beautifully.”

He laughs and we drink more beer.

The senior sous chef slides a chair beneath my tired knees, pushes Bob out of the way, and pulls up a table to what appears to be the beginning of a serious conversation about life.

He rests his chin on his hand, elbow propping up his inquisitive concerned face, beer firmly grasped in his other hand. “So, what are you going to do now?” He asks almost like I think my father would if he were half my age instead of three times it.

“I’m going to finish my book.” I say frankly, because it’s the only thing I”m sure of at this moment in time.

“Good, I really meant what I said months ago – if you ever wanted to be a professional writer – you could. As long as you don’t write about me.” He laughs his contagious laugh and takes a long sip of Stella.

I sigh. It’s hard to not have a most innocent crush on a very talented young man who undoubtedly has a brilliant future ahead. Not to mention the one person, in an extremely competitive kitchen, that has always had my back.

“You know, I wrote a book when I left Paris, it’s a long book. Funny. Painful. French. But I never wrote the last chapter. I think now I’m ready to write it.”

“There’s no books out there written by a female chef.”

“Yes, I know.” We sip beer and think about this. “There’s really nothing out there on being a female cook in France and what it’s like cooking at a 3-Michelin star restaurant.”

He nods his head vigorously while listening, and his belief in my writing ability is making me more high than the alcohol and dehydration I’m experiencing.

“But, I don’t know, I have some other interesting cooking offers too, I just want to take this time to close one chapter of my life before I begin another.”

“Do it Amy. And if I ever open my own restaurant ten years from now, can I count on you?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely Chef!” and then I change my mind, “But chef, I think you’re a lifer. I think I will be coming in to dine ten years from now and you will be the Chef de Cuisine.”

He laughs his contagious laugh again because he knows there’s some truth to this. He loves his job and loves the restaurant.

“Yes, you’re probably right.”

“I always am chef!” He laughs again, knowing that my weakest personality trait is being wrong – I hate being wrong. And it sometimes gets me into trouble in the kitchen.

“Yes, it’s been fun to work with you and I’ve always enjoyed telling you how to do things differently than you did in France. It’s always fun to watch you argue, then do it the American way, and then understand.”

“Fun for you I suppose, painful for me. I’m sure glad I won’t be hearing ‘Is that how they do it in France?’ anymore.”

We drain the last of our beers and now it’s really time for me to go. The alcohol has caught up with a year of exhaustion and dehydration. I say goodbye to my long time family. Giving long hugs to everyone I can. We all pile out of the bar and cooks gather around trying to figure out the next venue: “Where are we going next? Where are we going?!?!?”

But I am tired, just plain tired. And happy nonetheless. One of the cooks hails a taxi for me and the rest of the cooks gather round and wish me farewell. The senior sous chef literally lifts me up in the air like a child light as a feather and then puts me back on the ground and into the taxi.

“Bon chance, hein?” He says and everyone waves goodbye.

I look back through the rearview window, the rain has stopped and I can see the cooks huddling for warmth planning their next destination for the evening.

A million kitchen years ago…

The post Le Bernardin: A Thousand Kitchen Years Ago first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

“Amy, Amy, Amy – you cannot wear that, you’re going to freeze”.

“Really? But it doesn’t look that cold?”

“It’s going to snow today.Seriously, put on a heavy coat at least” he says shaking his head at my obvious lack of common sense.

“It wasn’t that cold yesterday…hmmm…okay…I’ll be back…”

I change quickly piling on layers and, this time, pass the inspection test. But now I’m running a little behind so I hail a taxi who immediately takes me the way I tell him not to take me. It doesn’t matter, his taxi is heated and I’ve already committed. Besides I want to get to work early. And the conceirge was right. It’s freeeeezing.

I love being first in the kitchen. Love it.

I’m never truly first in because Pastry is always set up way ahead of us. But, to be first in on the cuisine side of the kitchen is magic. To own all that shiny stainless steel and be the person to light up all the burners and fuel all the ovens. I love that. Love it, love it, love it.

I suppose in some ways it’s like walking into Notre Dame or the Sistene Chapel and having the whole place to yourself. Just for a second of solitude in a place of worship.

Before the continual fight for burner space starts up, before the stress starts to trickle into my veins over being set up in time, before chefs come by tasting my mise en place and giving their opinions, before tickets fly in and orders are shouted out and plates are rushed to the passe and, and, and…

Just alone in the kitchen.

But this Saturday is special because it’s my second to last Saturday. I have finished my contract to stay through the busy holiday season and given my official notice. And we all know that when you give the mandatory two weeks notice everything changes: black looks white, frowns turn to smiles, pain turns to bliss, weeds come up roses. And you wonder why you decided to leave.

C’est la vie.

But I have decided to leave because I’m missing something: friends and family. I love cooking. I can’t imagine life away from the kitchen. But I think there has got to be a way to balance it. Perhaps that means running my own kitchen and creating the environment I want to work in with the team I want to work with. Perhaps it means being able to foster people’s talents while learning with them and from them at the same time. Or perhaps it means something else. I’ll know more in a few weeks…

But it’s Saturday, the second to last Saturday, and now the other entrée cooks have started to trickle in gathering equipment and ingredients. Sleepy hellos are exchanged. One of the other entrée line cooks slips me some homemade Christmas cookies, a pastry cook leaves me some tasty petitfours on my cutting board, the barista has made fresh coffee and I’m back in business. Sugar-caffine high galore.

I breeze through my morning mise en place. We don’t serve lunch on Saturday so setting up can be stressful without the morning team to prepare everything. But since I’ve worked the Monk Station in the morning the routine comes back naturally.

I grab two hotel pans from the dishpit, one large bain, one small bain, several mixing bowls, five 6-pans, two 9-pans, a rondeaux, a small sauce pot, a large stock pot, and a cutting board.

I put my potatoes on to simmer for my senusously smooth pommes purée, I get my water on to the boil for my halibut poaching liquid, I cut ten heads of garlic and three nubs of ginger and sweat them for my daikon braising liquid. I cut romaine lettuce tips to blanch, trim tiny honjumanji mushrooms, chiffonade mint and parsley, clean mini radishes and turnips, slice green onions two different ways for two different dishes, cut corn off the cob and clean leeks for my corn canolloni, and slice daikon on my mandolin then punch it out into perfect circles with a ring mold.

After I’ve finished all my cut work I start to put everything together. I peel the potatoes and pass them through a ricer then through a drum seive. I make a large batch of roux and mix it into my boiling water with a hand mixer that’s half the size of me (I call it ‘The Beast’) adding orange juice and vermouth for a little extra kick.

I blanch my romaine lettuce, leeks, radishes, and turnips. I purée my fresh corn and mix it on the stove top with butter and parmesan, let it cool, add herbs, and pipe it into my blanched leeks rolling it up like cuban cigars. I strain my daikon braising liquid, add the daikon rounds, and let them simmer until tender. I make ponzu sauce and truffle butter. I gather plates for the line. And Finally I’m set up! It takes me five hours.

It takes me five minutes to write about it and five hours to actually complete it.

Saturday is always pizza day and the new sauté cook has been more than appeasing the hungry masses. In fact his family meals have become too good – there is hardly anything left over for the people who can’t wait in line.

He puts the pizzas on the passe and a swarm gathers around ready for the offical “Food’s up everybody!” call before they dive in. Within minutes the pizzas are demolished. But, he has saved a few slices for the entrée line. Call it senior cook privilege or whatever, I don’t care, we don’t have time to stand in line. And why should we? We’re the senior cooks.

I know, that sounded awfully pretentious…

The first seating starts off and it’s fun. When I say fun I mean we’re getting our asses kicked but maintaining a humorous positive outlook. With two sauté cooks working the fire, I’ve got my girl Kendra next to me slinging heavy cast iron pans like they’re cotton candy on sticks. And I know she’s going to time it right so I don’t get all the fish at the same time.

She knows if I’m plating a monk fish and a striped bass if I get both at the same time then one will end up over cooked. I can’t slice the monk and simultaneously finish the stripe bass plate. I love her for it.

But orders are piling up quicker than I can get the plates ready. With two sauté cooks on the line the fish is coming out faster and faster and I’m still only one person slicing, poaching, and plating. A sous chef arrives to the rescue and we’re running up and down the line to the passe with plates and sauces like two people walking (running) on hot coals.

One hundred covers flies by and finally it’s the lull between the second and first seating. Great, I can replenish my mise en place that is completely wiped out…

Mais non! The Chef – I mean the Chef – wants to change an item in my mise en place. One that is time consuming. He wants the hand cut wedge potatoes that go with our Kobe beef dish to be changed from Idaho spuds to Yukon gold. This is not normally on my mise en place list, but there is no way in hell I’m going to say so. The only answer to the Chef’s requests are: yes, Chef!

Of course my inner thought is: really? Are you sure you don’t want to make that change on Monday when it’s a bit slower and the morning cook has the time to actually cut them? And I don’t have a thousand things I really need to do at this particular moment? Going to the bathroom being one of them!?!?!

I run down to the dry storage room and begin punching out wedge potatoes. But the puncher is not properly oiled and it’s been reassembled badly. I half want to kick the blasted thing across the room, but fear I’ll loose a toe in the process. To make matters worse the yukon gold potatoes are small and I’m only getting one good wedge per potato. No matter, I cut thirty potatoes and get thirty wedges. I save the scraps for City Harvest, a company that feeds the hungry in Manhattan.

I get my wedge fries on to simmer – and they must simmer gently or they break – and the second seating starts up. I’m still trying to roll more corn canolloni, blanch more romaine lettuce, and generally clean my station in between the first few orders. Not fun. I hate playing catch-up on a busy evening.

But the second seating is not as bad as the first. The tables are timed better and the rush is hard but not impossible. Word gets out that tables have cancelled because of the weather.

The weather? What weather?!?!? What’s going on out there?!?!? Servers come back with the news: it’s snowing! It’s snowing!! It’s snowing!!!

An hour passes and my wedge fries are cooked. The Chef (the Chef) tastes one after I pop it in the deep fryer and salt it. I place it, like a golden orb, on a porcelain plate for him to cut into. The thought of handing it directly to him would be unthinkable. He cuts into it, thrusts his fork into a bite size morsel, holds the morsel up to inspect and study rotating his fork slowly to catch all angles under the fluorescent lights, pops it in his mouth, and chews slowly.

I watch.

He begins to nod his head while still in the process of chewing and swallowing. He points to the remaining morsel and says, “Yes, this is it! This is it!”

Relief. I have passed the wedge potato test.

Who knew a wedge potato could cause so much anticipation? It’s a potato for crying out loud. (But a damn good one.)

The third seating always takes me off guard. I look at the clock and we’re still sending out amuse bouches at 11:00 P.M. How can this be? I’m personally closed for business (mind shut down, exhausted, delirious from the heat, total mush pot) but somehow these people are hungry enough to order tasting menus at this late hour. Who are these people and don’t they know the evening is over?!?!

My mise en place is, once again, seriously depleted but I play the game of Russian roulette than all cooks play at the end of the evening, the: will-I-have-enough game. And no, it’s not because I’m lazy and don’t want to make more, it’s about not wasting product that will just get thrown out at the end of the evening.

Okay, you’re right, maybe it’s a little bit of laziness too.

The other game at our restaurant (we have so many games we play) in order to avoid being blamed for running out of something is to make sure one of the chefs knows about it. Then it’s their decision over whether or not to make more. I have found through trial and error if you skip this step you always get burned. It’s the: pass-the-responisbility game. Also called: passing-the-buck.

We play this game throughout day. It goes like this:

“Chef, can you taste this?”

“Does it taste good?”

“I think so, but I’m Californian and you know our taste buds are different….”

“Add more salt and then I’ll taste it…”

He tastes, approves, then if the Executive Chef doesn’t like it I get to say: “But the sous chef tasted it and liked it…”

Or for my mise en place I”ll say:

“Chef, I have 45 corn cannelloni rolls, do you think that’s going to be enough?

And he’ll say, “I don’t know, let’s roll with the punches and see what happens.”

Then if I run out, we’ve already had this little conversation about it, so I don’t get yelled at – or worse – sent home for making a stupid error. All the cooks have become expert at this game.

Two tables are left on the board and I’m running low on my turnip ginger foam. This foam is shot through a canister loaded with nitrous cartridges so it’s impossible to actually see how many orders are left. I lift the canister and give it a shake trying to judge just how many pumps I might be able to get out of it. Not many.

And the third seating rush makes it impossible to quickly whip up another batch. The garde manger staff is finishing for the night and I ask one of the cooks to set up a blender at my station and cut some turnips and ginger to quickly cook off and purée.

He cuts the wrong turnips – the small white ones – and I send him back to find the big purple and white two-tone turnips. This time he returns with a watermelon radish that is expertly peeled and diced.

“No, no, no…” I say, panicked “This is a watermelon radish – it’s pink! The turnips have purple and white skins….”

The Executive Sous Chef comes down the line and in his French accents asks, “Amee, what ahre you do-ing? Focus on your dishes s’il vous plaît.”

“Desolée (sorry) Chef, I think I’m almost out of turnip foam and I don’t know if I have enough to cover the board.”

“Forget it, there are two tables left, we’ll use the turnip purée from the Saucier station if we have to and blend it with some blanched ginger…”

And sure enough two monk fish tasting plates are fired. I slice the monk, plate it, and garnish it with tiny mushrooms and micro chives. I run the hot plates to the passe. Then run back to pour my sake broth into one gooseneck and squeeze my turnip foam into another.

The foam canister sputters it’s last breath. I’m screwed. With fish on the passe and a server ready to carry the tray into the dining room I feel as if the boat has begun to sail away and I’m still at the dock with my luggage…

The whole entrée line pitches in. The Saucier gets some of his turnip purée on to simmer, I take the blanched ginger I’ve prepared and throw it in, we quickly dump everything into the vita prep mixer and buzz it, the Executive Sous Chef tastes it, I pour it into a fresh canister and the sauté cook recharges it, I squeeze the foam into a gooseneck and run it to the passe, and the server whips away the finished tray.

The boat has sailed and I’m on board…

It’s 12:30 A.M. and the kitchen staff is polishing the stainless steel, bringing loads of pots and pans to the dish pit, and throwing away left over mise en place while the entrée line is finishing the very last plates. Everyone is exhausted. We have all worked 6 days this week and finally our minds are starting to switch off and relax.

Paper hats are thrown in the garbage, we pack up our knives, punch out on the clock, grab our complimentary ice cold beer, and pile into the elevator to head back to our respective changing rooms and transform into everyday people in everyday clothes.

I pound my beer in the dressing room, thirstier than normal, and the alcohol hits me instantly. Dehydrated but happy (drunk) I leave with the other female chefs and we climb the stairs back up to the real world.

It’s 1 A.M and New York is quiet. The streets are covered with a thick blanket of pristine white snow. Not a single taxi in sight. The normal hustle and bustle of tourists and traffic in Times Square is silenced.

The ravioli cook picks up a handful of snow and starts to pack it into a ball while snowflakes fall lightly around the cooks exiting from the restaurant. He’s Southern Indian, I can’t imagine snow being a regular sight for him – nor is it for me. Other cooks take the cue and pack snow into hard balls.

I run for cover. Grab my iphone and distract the cooks from pelting me with snowballs with the suggestion that we take a photo instead – it’s the first snow of the season.

They bundle up for a quick photo then part for an afterwork beer. I’m too tired to join, and with no taxis in sight I walk through Times Square ankle deep in snow and head for the train station.

The snow is glittering with the reflection of all the enormous lighted billboards. The pavement looks like millions of tiny rubies, emeralds, sapphires, and diamonds. It’s beautiful.

I know tomorrow this snow cover will melt and turn black and messy but, for now, it is truly a New York winter wonderland…

The post Le Bernardin: A Kitchen Winter Wonderland first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I arrive Friday afternoon at the restaurant surprisingly awake. It’s the first time in a month where I haven’t debated over whether to sleep in an extra ten minutes or take a shower. Some people can adapt to a 5A.M. wake-up call, but, I’m apparently not one of those people.

I get out of bed before my alarm goes off and head to the gym. I go for a leisurely swim then shower, blow dry my hair (a first), return home and pour myself a cup of freshly brewed coffee (a luxury), check my email, read the NY Times online, sharpen my knives, and head for the subway. A great start, it practically feels like I’m on vacation.

But no, I arrive at the restaurant during one of the busiest lunches of the year to prepare for the evening service. I walk through the kitchen to gather equipment and ingredients and notice the lunch cooks have this look of – well how to describe it exactly – not fear, but an expression of trying to hang on for dear life in a roller coaster with no seat belts.

There’s really no time for fear while being whipped around the loop-de-loops. It’s that stomach-in-throat sensation that either allows for tunnel vision to take over and control the situation or sabotages the best life saving attempts. Fight or flight. Adrenaline. Pupils dilated, eyes bulging, hand and body movements working in overdrive.

I set up my cutting board in the back prep room, grab another cup of coffee, and thank God I’m not on the line while all hell is breaking loose.

Stupid me. It’s been a month and half since I cooked at night on the line.

Here’s the pros and cons to cooking the lunch vs. the dinner service: lunch cooks always have more mise en place because they set up the kitchen in the morning for the day and night. The lunch cooks are responsible for the various stocks, sauce bases, and time consuming complex garnishes. But the actual service is quicker and they have the evenings and often the weekends to relax.

Dinner cooks have less mise en place but a longer service – about 3 to 4 hours longer. The menu is often expanded and the clientele order multiple courses. And dinner cooks always work the weekends, and often suffer from the absence of a normal social life.

But, if you’re a cook, you want to work the dinner service. That is where it’s at, so to speak.

I much prefer the energy in the nighttime. There is nothing like it. It’s fun, physically demanding, and much more spirited during service.

However, I’ll admit it’s been nice to have the evenings and weekends off. And frankly, I can get more done in the morning because I can work on my station without spending precious minutes searching for equipment or ingredients.

But, as my chef nicely reminded me: “This is what you signed up for. Do you want to be an excellent prep cook or a really tough line cook?” I think the answer’s obvious: I’d like to be both and retain some sort of normal life outside the kitchen while not having to wake up at the crack of dawn. Subtract an hour from the mise en place of the lunch cooks and an hour of service from the nighttime cooks and you’ve got a great schedule. Sounds reasonable, no?

I slurp my coffee in the back prep room half listening to the orders being fired in the kitchen and start to ponder how in the world I’m going to set up my station with no stove or oven at my immediate disposal. I put my potatoes on to simmer in the upstairs salon kitchen and come back down to begin all my cut work: chopping mint, parsley, daikon rounds, mushroom tops, baby turnips, baby radishes, scallions, etc.

An hour passes and I’m still blazing through my knife work. There’s only 250 covers for the evening. Only. I check on my potatoes, which have been mysteriously removed from the burner they were simmering on and replaced with some other bubbling concoction. I refrain from freaking out, I know we all need to get our stuff cooked, and there are still a few hours left before service. Another cook offers up his burner and all is well.

The lunch service is winding down and the hot appetizer cook generously gives me some space on his burners for my turnips to simmer. So now I have potatoes cooking upstairs and turnips cooking downstairs and I’m in the back prep room equidistant from both kitchens.

I’m pretty much done with the knife work, but I don’t have enough mise en place to make it through the whole evening and I’ll have to wait for a second shipment of produce to arrive. No stress (yeah, right), I’ll finish my prep work in between the first and second seating. I’m used to this by now, and besides, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway.

My potatoes are done, I drain the water, bring them back downstairs, peel off their bursting skins, and grind them through a ricer.  Then I pass them through a drum sieve to insure extra smoothness. I add enough melted butter to sink the Titanic and some milk. And they taste extra silky rich. Even the sous chef comes by to taste hoping they will elevate his mood – it’s been a tough lunch service. They don’t, I haven’t added salt yet and his wishful hoping turns to disappointment.

“There’s no salt!”

“I know chef, they’re not finished!”

He walks away shaking his head clearly unsatisfied and we all laugh around the prep table in pity for our poor sous chef who has taken a beating all morning long.

It’s 4P.M and the lunch service is still droning on. I’m anxious to set up my station and finish cooking the little garnishes I need to watch over. Instead I spend 20 minutes trying to find a Vita Prep blender so I can purée my turnips for my turnip-ginger foam. I run upstairs to see if anyone has the blender, but a cook has just taken it downstairs. I run downstairs and find the bottom for the blender then search the dishpit for the top.

Success! I have both the top and bottom but they are not working together.

“It’s broken, you can only use it on the highest speed or it doesn’t turn on”, one of the cooks advises.

I set up the blender next to a cook rolling out pasta who looks at me like I must be on drugs and he quickly gathers his ravioli away from the on-the-fritz blender. I apologize in advance knowing since I’m a senior cook and his friend, he’ll allow me this indulgence – total abuse of authority and our friendship. I cover the blender with a dish towel since the top to the top has disappeared and I have no time to look for it.

I flick the switch on to ‘high-variable’ and the motor kickstarts spewing turnip purée everywhere. But it’s not too bad, his ravioli are safe. And now it’s time to clean up my mess and get on my station.

My station looks like a bomb went off. No one is at fault, the lunch was a whirlwind and my morning counterpart is trying to tidy it up while I’m trying to set it up. We’re both in each other’s way. Cooks are running back and forth down the line yelling “Behind you! Hot! Behind you!” trying to get their various stations set up.

It’s a race to the finish line, but the real finish line is still 7 hours away.

Family meal is put up on the passe and I’m starved after my nice relaxing morning swim and the half marathon I have just run between the upstairs and downstairs kitchen, but I have no time to eat. The smell of rich beef stew with puff pastry crust wafts down the line and my salivary glands start to water. I take another swig of cold coffee hoping it will satiate my hunger. It doesn’t.

I work in one of the best kitchens in the world, and I’m starving. Go figure.

The Monk Station lunch cook stays late to help me get everything set up and he makes more of the complex garnishes since they were depleted during lunch. I tell him to go, I know he’s tired. But the adrenaline has got to him and he’s still in overdrive. Finally he crashes, wishes me well, and packs up.

It’s 5P.M. and the evening is off to a slow start, which is not a good thing. It buys me a little more time to get my station set up, but I’ve been cooking long enough to know it also means we will get hit all at the same time. And we do.

The tickets trickle over from the Garde Manger and Hot Appetizer side of the kitchen to the Entrée line and they are long complex orders. Everyone is working as hard and as fast as possible and the plates are lined up – practically piled up – around the piano to be finished and flashed in the oven and raced to the passe.

The young and talented Saucier is setting the tone and the pace for the entrée line keeping our spirits high and shouting out the fired orders as well as the ones coming up so we can prepare and think ahead while focusing on finishing the immediate dishes. How he is not already exhausted is a mystery. The Saucier creates 25 sauces (maybe more) every day and every night which is no small feat.

The first seating winds down, I’m out of just about all my mise en place. I need more braised romaine lettuce (which thankfully has arrived), more corn canolloni, more, more, more… I manage to cook off enough of everything in the fifteen minutes of rest before the tempest hits again.

The second seating begins and now I am more confidant. I have a better feel for the station at night with all the tasting menus and a more accurate sense of how much preparation I need to do for the next time. The only thing that is ruining my flow are two garnishes for the Saucier’s dishes which utilize the deep fryer. These garnishes are rarely part of the lunch-time service so I’m not yet comfortable with the pick-up’s.

To complicate matters, the deep fryer is not next to my station. It’s on the other side of the piano. This means I have to scramble over to the hot appetizer line and drop my eggplant or wedge potato fries or whatever, while trying to plate dishes and poach halibut on my station. Luckily the Veg. Station cook keeps an eye on the fryer for me.

I’m getting dominated by the tasting menu orders and a sous chef comes down to bail me out. He too is not used to the deep fried garnishes, and we grumble light heartedly about the pick-up. He’s fun to work with on the line and as my energy starts to wane his humor and focus keep me going.

The second seating peters out and I’m set for the 3rd seating with mise en place but the heat, lack of food, and dehydration are taking their toll. I’m tired. It’s way past my 10 o’clock bedtime.

The 3rd seating is not so bad, but steady nonetheless. There’s no time for a break. I’m on overdrive and my muscle memory has taken control which is a good thing because my mind is mush. And I’m so thirsty I could drink a lake.

And finally we get the last order. The rest of the kitchen is cleaning, but the entrée line is finishing the very last touches on the very last dishes. I’m delirious, but happy. I attempt to clean my station, but my mind and body are not working together and my effort to organize is futile. It doesn’t really matter anyway, the chef takes everything on my refrigerator shelf and dumps it in the trash. He does this to everyone’s shelf to make sure we start fresh the next day. I’m not happy about this, but it does makes clean-up easier.

Thankfully some of the new young cooks come over to help us polish the stainless steel piano, brick the flat-top spotless, and run mountains of pots and pans to the dishpit so we can all get out after a very long 12 hour day and have a much. desired. ice. cold. beer.

The post Le Bernardin: Monk Station at Night first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

And I don’t mean in the traditional sense like if you see a penny face up and you leave it there (because New York City sidewalks are dirty) that you will get hit by a bus.

I have created my own superstitions. I think this is the beginning of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder…

I hit my snooze bar at 5:45A.M. my body begging for another ten minutes. My hands are so numb and swollen from fresh cuts and burns that I’m not even sure they are still connected to my body. And my desired ‘extra 10’ is looking like a lost cause since the feeling is starting to creep back into my extremities.

The numbness has now morphed to a new sensation resembling frost bite mixed with boiling hot water. Not pleasant. I get out of bed pumping my hands to get the blood going.

I stumble into the bathroom, look in the mirror, and ponder for a split second if I really need to shower. I showered last night. Do I really need to do this again? Couldn’t I crawl into bed again instead? No, I turn the rocket jet on and walk into the shower, bend my head slightly forward, and let the water which falls like hard rain pummel my brain. This feels good. I know it sounds like torture, but really it feels good.

I scrub quickly, vow to wash my hair in the evening, put on the same clothes I wore yesterday (change underwear and socks), grab my knives and run to the subway in order to catch the 6:06 A.M subway. On the train I doze off. Everyone dozes off. We are all sleeping, rocking too and fro with the rhythm of the wheels gliding over the well polished tracks.

My eyes open every now and then to peek at what station is next and then close thinking about what I need to do when I get to work…..cut kobe fries first, then make tuille batter, continue with normal prep but have grilled veggies done by 8 A.M, don’t forget extra corn cannelloni’s for the salon, and…..

It’s finally my transfer stop, 42nd Street, and I stumble out of the train eyes still half shut to wait for the local #1 train to arrive. It never arrives at the same time. Ever.

If the #1 train is already at the station and all I have to do is hop over and take a seat, then I know it’s going to be a good day. But, if I have to wait 10 minutes, then I know the Gods have predetermined my morning if not my afternoon and evening…

I wake up early so I can spend 3 minutes on my walk to work to grab a quick cup of coffee at Starbucks. I need coffee in the morning. I am not human without coffee in the morning. And none of the morning cooks (myself included) have figured out how to get our brandnew coffee machine going so we are forced to outsource. We all come with Starbucks coffee.

Which is a good thing because there are too many sharp objects and stressful situations in the restaurant kitchen to start off work at 6:45A.M without coffee. It helps to take that edge off.

No zucchini in the walk-in fridge for my cod tandori plate? Slu-u-u-rp. No problem, I can wait till 10AM when the produce arrives to finish that. The 4 gallons of freshly squeezed orange juice that I need for my poaching liquid have mysteriously disappeared overnight? Slu-u-u-rp. No problem, I can squeeze my own.

But here is where superstition comes in… if the #1 train has screwed me over yet again, this means that Starbucks had better be empty so I can grab a quick cup. But, if Starbucks has a long line and only one person working behind the counter – like today – then I know I am going to be in the shitz all day long.

Today, specifically, not only were all the tell tale signs in place of a no-good-very-bad day. But I’m pretty sure the kitchen witches were gathering around their Amy Glaze voodoo doll and sticking in pins. I’m almost positive that every time I tried to get back on track this morning one of the witches stuck me good.

You have heard of kitchen witches haven’t you? Perhaps you have a kitchen witch doll hanging in your kitchen to appease the coven?

The kitchen witch, and I quote here from a pagan wicca website, “honours what she cooks, preparing meals with loving intent. Using fresh ingredients, often from her own garden, she makes magic in the kitchen by creating delicious, seasonal food, herbal remedies, and magic spells.”

Clearly the kitchen witches felt I was not honoring them in someway. Why else would I semi slice off my finger tip with my brand new mandoline? Or drop my misono pairing knife on the ground breaking its tip? Or why would there be no orange juice in the walk-in for my poaching liquid but a bunch of staffers sipping something cold and citrus-like all morning?

12 o’clock finally hits like a sledgehammer and I’m set up. I’m ready. fingertip be damned. I am set up and ready rock.

And then the kitchen witches start to make a mockery of me. I grab a plate from above the stove to flash in the oven for the first order of striped bass and cramps stab me in my lower abdomen. Oh yes, the joys of being female, working on a hot line, without coffee, and my premenstral syndrome just went code yellow to code I-could-use-some-motrin.

My eyes cloud momentarily with pain. The sauté cook, and only other female on the line, looks at me and asks if I’m okay.

“Cramps.”

“Oooooo, stay away from me! I don’t want mine yet!”

We laugh. Women who live and work together will pull each other to the same cycle. And having attended an all woman’s college I can say it’s a fact not a myth.

Orders start flying in now and I’m getting hit pretty hard. However, Kendra, the sauté cook who cooks 80% of all the fish we have on the menu, is getting pummeled. But, like always, she’s going strong. She loves it, the sense of dominating and controlling chaos and the euphoric release of endorphines that no street drug can replicate.

The chef calls in the nightime cooks who have started their mise en place for the evening to give a hand on the line. We are doubled up on the three one-man entrée line stations and the chef starts firing off the orders all at once.

“2 halibut, 1 monk, 1 stripe by 2 stripe by monk, stripe by salmon, skate…”

I pull my two halibut out of the poaching liquid while Brian slices the monk for the first order. They’re perfectly cooked but by the time they reach the passe they will have gone from medium rare to just under medium. I rush the plates, the chef checks the temperature with his metal skewer against his lip:

“Less cook on the hali…”

“Oui, less cook on the hali…”

I finish the striped bass while Brian brings the next monk to the pass. We grab sauces for the dishes and run back to start the next table.

The rush is finally over and the line is turned over back over to the girls. It’s a nice feeling to have a little female comraderie on the line. Something I’ve only encountered once. Another order comes in and it’s mostly mine: two halibut (one well-done) and one striped bass. I drop the two halibuts in my poaching liquid and set up plates, garnishes, and sauces while Kendra pan poaches the striped bass.

But the timing goes funny. Her stripe is done and one of my halibuts is done, but the other is still medium. I bring to the passe the two dishes that are ready and then run back and plate the last one. I know it’s a little under in temperature, but I’m hoping the heat of the plate will finish it off. It’s so close to being well done…

The chef checks the fish temperatures with his skewer and I’m sure I’m off the hook, but then he calls out: “What is this? Did I not say ‘well-done’? Does this look like well-done to you?” He pulls apart the fish and a thin line of rareness is visible.

I’m pretty sure he’s going to throw it at me, but instead he gives me back the plate calmly and tells me to fix it. No problem. I can fix it easily. It’s impossible to turn ‘well done’ into ‘rare’ but the reverse takes seconds – at least with fish.

I fix it and bring it back to the passe, but I’m embarrassed. I felt pressured to rush it because I didn’t want to loose the other fish.

I’m telling you: no #1 train, no coffee, no orange juice + pms + kitchen witch voodoo = no-good-very-bad day.

But there were some humourous parts to the shift. Think of them as out-takes on the line….

Kendra split her pants on the line during service and no one but me noticed. And they were split from waist to bottom. Thank God for long chef’s coats. She’s not fat, she’s mean and lean, but boys pants somehow don’t work out all the time for us ladies.

I got so upset with the coffee maker at work that I opted for espresso instead. But there was only decaf. This did not help any. So I poured a cup of what I though was iced tea. I took a big gulp only to discover that it was cleaning liquid and water. I basically drank half a cup of industrial soap. Luckily my stomach didn’t object.

8 gallons of freshly squeezed orange juice arrived late, the driver got stuck somewhere.

Sometimes you gotta roll with the punches! And, pay a little homage to the kitchen witch in your house – or restaurant…

The post Le Bernardin: Superstitions & Kitchen Witches first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Excitement can’t even begin to describe a goal that has been so heartily pursued through the course of a year. In some ways ‘relief’ is a closer fit.

But I have learned heaps along the way personally and professionally and each station I have conquered has also come to represent a period of my life throughout this year. And what a rocky roller coaster year it has been for me and just about everyone else I know for that matter.

I keep coming back to a conversation with the Chef de Cuisine after my burn injury. He said, “Amy you’ve got to cook from within. Protect yourself in this environment.”

Anyone who has cooked under pressure will understand there is a zen you must find while in the midst of potentially dangerous chaos. A sort of serene tunnel vision that sees the food to the pass and keeps the adrenaline rush at bay. And, it does get easier and more controllable with time.

Now what exactly does the Monk station do? Poach halibut, plate monk fish, skate, stripped bass, and get everything to the pass hot and medium rare. Not to mention prepare an intimidating plethora of garnishes from silky potato purée and corn cannelloni’s wrapped in leeks to truffled frisée salads, fried eggplant, and more.

I’m sure I’ll find out exactly what the ‘more’ is tomorrow morning at 6:45 A.M. – yikes! I normally don’t get to bed before 3:00 A.M.

But I am very much looking forward to being totally exhausted tomorrow…

The post Le Bernardin: The Monk Station first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

She said, “Amy, have fun. If you’re not having fun teaching, the students aren’t having fun learning.”

One day while I was desperately attempting (and failing) to give a lesson on simile and metaphor to a bunch of squirming adolescents her advice washed over me. I stopped my lesson, erased the blackboard, and picked up a rubber eraser on my desk. I got the students out from behind their desks and we formed a circle.

“Now here’s what we’re going to do…” I told them. “I’m going to start a sentence, throw one of you the eraser, and you’re going to finish it with one word using the first thing that comes to mind even if you think it doesn’t make sense.”

My heart is like a…

(throw the eraser)

… clock

The sun is like a…

(throw the eraser)

… smile

The sky is like…

(throw the eraser)

… Vishnu

Needless to say, the lesson was successful.

This advice stuck with me upon my return to California while I continued my teaching career. When a lesson bombed my Mom, a master educator, would ask me if I enjoyed giving it. Always the answer was ‘no’.

At that time I was teaching 4 periods of Theater and 2 periods of Cooking to over 180 kids daily while directing musical theater at night to another 70 students.

My students ranged from the gifted to the physically & mentally challenged to the suicidal to the English Language Learners to the gang corrupted to the normal (if there is such a thing). And they all brought their talents and special gifts to my cooking classroom and to my stage.

‘Have fun’ became a mantra for my drama students. Before every opening performance I would gather the actors in a circle for notes. And my parting advice was always the same: get out there and have fun! If you’re not having fun, the audience is sleeping. If you feel that your performance is diving look within, turn it around, and remember why you’re here – because it is your passion and you love what you do. But above all have fun, have fun, have fun…

And now, here I am years later and my advice has been given back to me by a long time reader of this blog.

After five weeks out of work due to a 3rd degree burn, I was hesitant to walk back into the kitchen. My position was filled and other cooks had been moved up the line to cover my absence. I knew that my return would be welcome but worrisome. How could it not be? And what an uncomfortable place to be in.

To top it off my year contract was rapidly coming to a close and my decision to stay and commit for the busy Winter season still undecided.

I spent two weeks as the tournade for the kitchen filling in different positions while cooks took days off for vacation or for rest. For the first week it was great. It’s always nice to come back to an old station. It’s like coming back to an old friend. The routine and the muscle memory kicks in and the pressure to prove yourself at the station escapes because it has already been conquered.

But then the reality sunk in. Where am I going to fit in here? I don’t want to bump anyone off but I certainly don’t want to spend a whole season filling in. And what do I want out of this experience anyway?

And the competition. Oh the competition.

On one hand it fuels the drive for perfection and on the other hand it’s crippling if you let it get to you. Unfortunately for me, I take things to heart, and I don’t enjoy that every-man-for-himself spirit that New York has a tendency to draw out even in the best of us.

I much prefer the cohesive team esprit. I have always been drawn to team environments. The idea that together we can create something much better, much more memorable than we could on our own – that, to me, is as important as ‘have fun’.

Finally the chef asked me before service on Saturday whether or not I had seen the schedule for the next week. He always posts the schedule on Saturday night. I had failed to notice during my prep time that the schedule was up and that there was no station next to my name.

“You’re probably wondering, now that you’ve looked at it, why you’re not written in.” He said as we both turned to his office window facing the kitchen and stared at the taped up sheet.

“I want to ask you if you’re going to commit to the season.”

I don’t know why the decision felt like the dentist pulling teeth without heavy tranquilizers, but I suppose being so worried about where I was going to fit in had plagued my decision to stay or go.

“Yes Chef, I’ll commit to the season.” I said wondering if I had just sold my soul up the river.

“Good, you’re going to be running nighttime Hot Appetizers. You know this is a very difficult position, but I know you can do it. The nighttime position has less mise en place than the morning but a much longer service.”

And indeed it is a very demanding position in the kitchen. Running the front of one line and coordinating with the Garde Manger team is no joke at the restaurant I cook at. The energy of the Hot Apps cook sets the tone for half the kitchen. And I have been lucky to work under some very talented cooks at this station who drove hard, demanded perfection, and kept the energy pumping throughout the longest of nights.

Of course this promotion comes with a taste of bitter. The teacher in me, who adores fostering talent, does not like to see anyone set back. But the director in me and the desire to fulfill my own cooking education knows that this position will be a challenge and a great test.

And I have faith in the Chef. After all, he’s been there longer than any of us, practically two decades. If he thinks I’m ready then that’s that. If i f’ up he’ll be the first to let me know.

To some ‘having fun’ might be equivalent to partying the whole night long, but to me it’s following your heart and pursuing your passion to its fullest potential. And from what I’ve learned along the way, it’s awfully contagious.

The post Have fun, Accept the challenge, Conquer the fears first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I burned myself so badly on Friday night that I just don't think my foot will rebound in time. My foot! Can you believe it?

The handle of an enormous pot of salted boiling water broke and I slipped on the rubber matting and dumped it right down my ankle and into my cooking clog. Immediately I rolled up my pant leg to get the hot cloth off my skin. But my sock and shoe were the last to come off trapping the heat in for longer.

Wincing, I tried to continue with my mise en place but the burning sensation wouldn't subside. I stuck my foot in an ice bath and still the burning continued. I smeared burn gel all over it but no relief. The burn burned for five hours after the accident. Five hours! Fifteen minutes after icing and gelling, inch-high blisters started bubbling up over the top of my foot and the skin around my ankle began peeling off. Time to go to the hospital.

So much for working a double shift. And what a terrible way to end a difficult day. This week has been hard and I'm not sure why. I love my new station and I have a firm grasp on all the mise en place. I absolutely adore working with the morning staff, many who have been at the restaurant for over fifteen years and understand/embody the concept of mentoring. And I especially love cooking Family Meal. It's the highlight of my day and I've been enjoying the complimentary response from the staff.

And I would LOVE some new creative ideas that are tasty, feed over 35 people, and can be made in an hour and a half. I make a lot of fish stews (cioppino and thai curry are big hits right now) with the extra scraps from our fish butcher. Most of the fish is white and includes: black bass, striped bass, halibut, cod, monk fish, and skate. Unfortunately the scraps are all different sizes and normally not big enough to serve as whole fillets so some sort of stew or all-covering sauce works best.

I once made fish tacos with black beans, rice, salsa fresca, and gaucamole. That meal disappeared fast. Got any ideas? Recipes? For mixed fish scraps?!?!?!

My pantry at work always includes: 1. Canned tomatoes, tomato paste 2. Coconut milk 3. Onions: red, yellow, green onions, garlic 4. Potatoes: russet, yukon gold 5. Rice: japanese, basmati, uncle Ben's 6. Black beans dried, chinese black beans 7. Israeli couscous 8. Pasta: rigatoni, spaghetti, penne 9.Vegetables: green beans, zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, bok choy, carrots, celery, cauliflower, etc 10. Herbs: cilantro, parsley, thyme, rosemary, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, chives, bay leaves, mint, basil, thai basil 11. Mushrooms: chinese dried mushrooms, button mushrooms, wild mushrooms 12. Chicken stock 13. Sauces: sirracha, soya sauce, thai red curry paste, harissa paste 14. Nuts: almonds, walnuts, pine nuts, pecans 15. Dried fruits: cherries, figs, apricots

Help a burnt out cook and send your recipes to msglaze@gmail.com or write them below. International recipes welcome – especially the spicy ones!

The post Le Bernardin: All Burnt Out! (Help me plan Family Meal) first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

In the underground maze of Penn Station I find the ticket machine, grab my roundtrip stub, and check the board for departure time. Just as I find my destination glittering in orange lights, the gate number flickers on next to it and hundreds of beach ready New Yorkers dying to get out of the city, surge like a swarm of bees attempting to squeeze all at once down a narrow hallway to the train platform.

Everyone is frantic to find a seat. Parents are getting separated from children, husbands from wives, sororities from fraternities. It’s a cluster fuck.

I race to the last car and happily find a seat empty in a four seater – two seats facing two seats. I sit across from a nice looking girl and we are both thankful that no one yet has tried to claim the vacant seats next to us. I take the isle seat and put my two carry on bags next to me to claim the window space.

It’s the first weekend I’ve had off in months. And I really want to relax.

I begin to close my eyes, thinking about this long week and pondering new ideas for family meal at the restaurant I cook at, when four absolutely stunning, skimpily clad, young, and totally annoying models squeeze in next to me and across the way.

I don’t mind moving my stuff and scooching over to the window seat. I’m transferring trains anyway in 15 minutes. But God, their conversation is so petty, that I almost wish I had just opted to stand.

“So this guy was trying to get my number in the train station the other day, and he takes out his Blackberry and it falls onto the tracks, and he jumps down to get it and there’s a train coming. He leaps back up. But oh my God, he could have been killed. Just for my phone number, ya know? He’s so stupid.”

“So are you gonna see him?”

“Uh, no.”

“So what did you bring in that big bag?”

“Um, I have a fold up beach chair, towel, change of clothes for tonight, margarita mix…”

“You brought margarita mix? But you didn’t bring tequilla?”

“We talked about this remember? It’s just one less thing we have to buy. Okay, I also have handsanitizer and salt and…”

“You carry salt in your purse?”

“Yeah, you can’t go anywhere without salt.”

“Who carries salt in their purse?”

“I do.”

I kept waiting for her to add that the salt was intended for the margaritas. But no. She just carries salt around in her purse. Had she not been born into a ridiculously perfect body that under no conditions could/should sustain kitchen brutality, she might have become a chef.

No doubt about it, salt can make or break a meal. And cooks that don’t like salt are eyed with disdain, awe, and curiosity in the kitchen. While most home cooks season food with a two finger pinch of salt, we kitchen cooks opt for the three finger pinch. Sometimes the four finger grab. And as I’ve come to realize, New Yorkers like salt waaaaay more than San Franciscans or even Parisians for that matter.

The conductor announces that Jamaica station is next and I squeeze my way in between a plethora of long legs and edge my way down the packed isle of beach goers to the train door.

Thankfully only half the people on my train are transferring stations and the other half (models included) are headed to Long Island beach, wherever that is.

I find a new seat next to a nice man who is glued to his i-phone. Which is fine because I’m glued to my computer trying to remember the exact verbiage of the models only seconds before. He’s talking to a friend and giving out restaurant suggestions in Pennsylvania. Again the salt issue comes up:

“Yeah, this restaurant’s great but it’s B.Y.O.B and the food is well seasoned so you gotta B.Y.O.B. if ya know whud I mean?”

And I’m thinking: did he really say “well seasoned”? Wow, everyone’s a salt fanatic here.

I have to laugh at myself because the very first family meal I made for the staff lunch was a nice spicy fish stew with beautiful steaming white basmati rice. The expensive kind that cooks up fluffy and is snow white in color with long elegant grains.

But I didn’t season the water, because I personally like my rice plain. Especially if I’m going to spoon something that’s already salty over it.

I don’t think I’ll be making that mistake again. The Caribbean fish stew was good. It was teaming with carrots and potatoes and spices, but one of the Latino janitors came up to me and said:

“The stew was good. But not the rice. What do you think we are? Chinese? You need to put salt.”

I could have killed him on the spot. It’s not easy to set up my station which includes an insane amount of garnishes and sauces and cook family meal for the entire body of servers, cooks, and janitorial staff. In fact it’s a race to the finish line everyday.

I told him:

“You know where the salt is, why don’t you use it next time? I don’t know how you have the time to criticize my food. The rest of us don’t even have time to swallow.”

However, the next day I made pasta with a nice slowly cooked marinara sauce and he came up to me and said:

“The sauce? You made the sauce?”

“Yes, I made the sauce.”

“Very good. Very, very good. Lots of flavor. Tomatoes were fresh? How did you do it? Pasta was good too, you salted the water.”

“Yes, just for you.”

“Pasta sauce very, very good.”

I decided to let him live another week after his compliments. And I might add that the janitorial staff have become the most vocal critics of my staff meals. And although most of the time I can’t understand a word they say, they always come up to me in person and tell me when they like the food. Which honestly, drives me to do something even better the next day.

I’ve also begun to notice that they walk by my station as family meal draws near to see what I’m concocting.

My French girlfriend Camille (who I cook with) also speaks Spanish and often after staff lunch she will come up and say, “They like it. That’s what they’re saying. Your food is good. They are talking about the flavor. And they like the rice too. You make good rice.”

So let it be known that salt can not only enhance your margarita on the beach and encourage you to drink more beer with friends at diner, it can also make a staff of hungry food critics happy. And more importantly, make an exhausting job one worth having.

The post You Can’t Go Anywhere WIthout Salt first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I’m sitting there staring at him wondering if I’m going to get fired. My mind starts playing back the week trying to recall any unforgivable errors.

I take my hat off and rest it on his desk.

Normally, when pulled into his office I sit in a chair and he sits on his desk towering and totally intimidating the living daylights out of me. He’s a big guy with football shoulders and sharp blue eyes that can change instantly from humor to hostility.

But this time he takes the only other chair in the office and we sit eye to eye.

Yikes, I’m really in trouble this time.

The office is incased in glass within the kitchen, so all other employees can see what’s going on even if they can’t hear what’s going on. I’m quite aware that my body language is communicating what my colleagues can’t hear.

So we’re sitting eye to eye – merde – this is it and I don’t even know what I did. Could it be that I told a cavalier employee to clean his station the other night with words perhaps stronger than recommended in the employee handbook? Did a customer find a crab shell in the new panacotta dish and choke? Am I too slow, too silly, too, too, too….?

“How do you think you’re doing right now? Would you say that you have been successful here?”

“Yes chef, I think I really understand the cuisine on a deeper level and my skills have improved greatly. I’m more focused and I enjoy being here everyday – even though every day isn’t easy…”

I’m babbling a mile a minute wishing something profound to come out of mouth, instead feeling like every sentence is canned and falling to the floor like bricks dropped from the top of the Empire State building.

“Yes, I would agree with you. You’ve done very well at veg station, your raviolis and your lobster plates were good at rav station, you know all the positions in garde manger inside and out, you’ve done fish pass and canape station well. I’d say you have been successful too.”

Wait whaaaaaaat?

In the ten months I’ve worked at this restaurant, this is the first time I’ve ever heard a serious compliment from the executive chef. Understand that in a 3-Michelin star restaurant ‘good’ is never ‘good enough’.

“I’d like to start you on Morning Hot Apps this Monday.”

“Great Chef!”

Most cooks dread this position. It’s a lot of work and a lot of responsibility. The position is titled ‘Morning Hot Apps’ (appetizers) because the cook comes in at the wee hours of the morning to prep mise en place for the day and night, cook family lunch for 50 people, and run the line during service for the veg station and garde manger.

Lunch service is fast and furious often serving one hundred clients in less than 3 hours.

“You know this station is a lot of responsibility. You must show up whether you are sick, injured, or otherwise.”

“Yes, Chef, I know.”

“However, I do not want you to get stuck at this station. I think you have more value in the evening during the longer service, but you will learn a lot about being a chef from this position and I know that is important to you. This position is no joke, huh?”

“Yes, Chef.”

He calls in the executive sous Chef and asks him to join our conversation about the Morning Hot Apps position. The French executive sous chef in his thick accent sums it up:

“Amy, eets a laaaht ov wurk, hein? Eets naught uhn easee stahsion, tu sais?”

“Oui chef, je sais.”

The Executive Chef excuses me from his office to go begin setting up the line and I’m positively glowing. I’m so happy I could burst. And although the compliments could have done that alone and the responsibility is over the top exciting and challenging, I’m also just flat out ready to have a normal life even if it is only for 6 weeks. I haven’t seen the sun in God only knows how long.

The shift ends at 4 P.M in the afternoon and includes two days off in a row: Saturday and Sunday. My body could use a good a rest and my social life could use some improvement.

I joke with the executive chef as I’m wiping down the stainless steel on the line:

“Wow, now I’m going to be able to work out in the evening, maybe go on a date, write my blog…”

“Don’t get too used it, huh? It’s only for 6 weeks and it is hard work, and I want to see you on the entree line after that. This is your life Amy. Everything you want is here.”

He smirks viciously and I laugh at the hard truth we all have committed our lives to.

“Really? I didn’t know that husbands, babies, and toned abs came from here chef?”

He rolls his eyes, annoyed (or amused?) by my somewhat wry sense of humor.

I continue my scrubbing, and suddenly my heart skips a beat as I realize what I have to prove at this station. The reality settles and I start thinking about family meal and all the dishes we pick-up on the Hot Apps station. It is no joke.

I grab my little black moleskine note pad and start diagramming the 8 dishes that come off the station and all the garnishes and sauces that are included on each:

My jaw drops. I know how to pick- up all the dishes during service, but I’ve never prepped them before.

BACALAO (salted cod):
1. Salt cod with smoked salt over night. Grill. Flake
2. Sprinkle with brunoised chives and red onion, olive oil, sherry viniagre
3. Make arugula purée
4. Make lemon confit purée
5. Garnish with brunoised tomato confit, preserved lemon chiffonade, parsley, and almonds
6. Make garlic chips (slice garlic on mandoline very thin,blanch garlic slivers, gently fry in oil)
7. Make garlic oil

But really, I’m ready and excited for this position.

The dishes are beautiful and I’ve never had the opportunity to work with octopus from beginning to end, or make bacalao (salted cod), or prepare scallops that are so alive they are still quivering when sliced. And the sauces and garnishes are worldly drawing upon flavors from Japan, Spain, India, and France.

Now family meal is another kettle of fish.

You are up for scrutiny not only from all the chefs but all your colleagues as well. I enjoyed cooking family meal for the staff at Guy Savoy twice a day and I somehow managed to squeeze in all my mise en place and endure cooking through lunch and dinner service so I’m pretty sure I can manage it.

Although I doubt I’ll be cooking veal liver, lamb’s brains, tongue, or tripe for my friends here. Which is a big sigh of relief. There’s only so much offal an American girl can stomach.

And even though I haven’t posted a recipe on this blog for months (because I simply have no time to cook at home) I do enjoy coming up with my own dishes and using the creative side of my brain that often is on silent mode at work.

If my family meal really sucks, maybe I’ll surprise everyone and just order pizza. I hear you can get anything delivered in NYC. Ha!

So all in all, I’m looking forward and cooking forward to the next 6 weeks of Morning Hot Apps. Wish me luck! And feel free to email any fabulous pasta and fish stew dishes that serve masses of people!

The post Le Bernardin: End of Hot Appetizers first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

At least I didn’t think I looked my age until I caught my reflection in the bathroom on my only ‘sit down’ break during the day. There it was, staring back at me in the mirror, an unrecognizable face and an emerging small shock of white hair.

You know what I did? I literally turned around to see if some one was behind me. As if I wouldn’t notice some one else in the bathroom with me staring into the mirror.

On closer examination I leaned into the mirror and brought my fingers to my white hairs pulling apart my cowlic to count them. The more I searched, the more I found, the more I lost count.

When did I turn this old? How did I not notice this before?

I put my little paper cook’s hat back on making sure to cover the intrusion of white and walked back to the kitchen in a state of denial.

“Look, look at this!” removing my hat slightly so only my girlfriend could see, I pointed to the spot .

“What? What am I looking at?!?!”

“My white, hair, do you see it? Do you see it?!?!”

“Oooooo that’s kinda sexy, that little streak there.”

“Hmmmm, that’s one way of looking at it.” I said and pulled the hat half way down my forehead again.

I flung myself back into mise en place in the hopes that total concentration would take my mind off my new discovery. Besides, I work in a kitchen where nobody really cares what you look like as long as you look clean cut. What matters most of all is your skills and your speed and your effeciency and your ability to organize.

Not whether or not you have white hairs sprouting up all over your head.

Then it hit me. I looked down at what I was making. And I blamed it full heartedly: “You, you have given me white hairs.”

This is what new dishes do to cooks my age. I suppose it’s what unruly teenagers do to parents. They stress them out completely until their hair turns white.

And new dishes are a little like children. They are so beautiful and exciting at first, then they are rebellious and obstinate as you try to include them in the grander scheme of things, and finally they come into their own.

All that frustration and pain just a beautiful memory. (Which is why cooks then create more dishes and, I suppose, parents more children.)

But rolling thinly sliced zucchini around tube shaped curry crab panacotta is a little like threading a very small needle with a vary large piece of yarn. If my fingers were long and thin and not short, swollen, and burned this sushi-like exercise might be enjoyable – even easy, who knows?

In theory the idea of rolling zucchini slices around any stable tube filling should be simple. However, if you want perfect spacing between the green skin and the white flesh of the zucchini with 5 lines of green showing, then this is another feet all together.

In order to achieve this perfection a range in size of zucchini slices must be used. Let me backtrack a little here…

First I slice zucchini very thin on a madolin and salt it heavily to draw out the water. I rinse the salt off and begin laying out a series of slices on my cutting board. The first slice I choose is small, so the two edges of green skin are only an inch apart and no seeds are showing.

Next I sort through the slices to find one that is a little bigger and layer this half way on top of the first slice checking that the green skin edges are all equidistant. This is repeated 4 more times.

After achieving the right spacing I gently place my curry crab panacotta at one end and roll it up. Then I repeat this whole process about 50-60 times.

Now you understand the white hairs?!?!

But making the zucchini rolls is not the only stressful part of the dish, finding a way too cook it so the curry panacotta doesn’t melt on the plate before the zucchini has a chance to get hot is another dilemma.

The curry powder we make is yellow in color. And If the curry crab panacotta melts all over the plate, the color of the plate is……?????????

Yellow.

Hmmmmm, I think i just felt another white hair popping up.

Trying to figure out the production of this dish from start to finish so that the only two entremet cooks (myself on the dinner shift, and Marino on the lunch service) can also finish our other mise en place for our new poached egg caviar dish, our beautiful poached tuna (escolar) dish, our pastas, and our vegetable plates in time for service and have enough of everything to serve to two hundred people a day is, well, challenging.

Thankfully all that figuring out is left to the chefs and sous chefs. I am merely a worker bee. I’m just the one who is supposed to “make it happen” as we say in the kitchen.

By the way, I haven’t even started in on the process of making the panacotta, and I won’t for my own sanity’s sake and yours. But let’s just say it’s also a bit temperamental.

Two hours after plunging myself into zucchini roll maddness, service started. The enormous white erase board we use to diagram tables and chart the courses our guests are presently eating started filling up like crazy.

Two people on table 10, four on table 12, six on table 18….

Thirty people seated, judging from the board. None have ordered yet. All have received their amuse bouches. Now it’s just a waiting game…

As always the back waiters come in and announce the first tickets with gusto: “orrrrrrrrrrrrder in…….”

They hand the ticket to the chef and fill out one of the boxes on the white erase board which diagrams the menu to come so all the cooks can see and plan accordingly.

The chef calls out the first courses and I scramble up to the passe to check out the mid courses and see if I have anything ordered on the entrée side.

No crab yet.

But why? I spent so much time on that crab dish. All those white hairs in vain? Hmmph!!!

The chef calls in the maître D and some of the waiters to try the new crab dish. I cook two off for him, dot the plate with a spicy Southern Indian oil, and place two micro chives elegantly across each of the green and white spiral panacotta rolls.

The chef pours the crab consommé sauce around the plate. They taste it. They like it. (of course, it’s beautiful and delicious why wouldn’t they?)

And the orders start coming back to the kitchen with crab panacotta mid courses. Bien sûr.

The evening is in full swing and I’m popping crab rolls into the oven, slicing white tuna, sauteing vegetables, and running poached eggs with caviar to the passe. It’s a workout. My thighs are grateful for the exercise but my knees are making an ominous crunching sound every time I squat to heat a plate in the oven.

The second and busiest seating winds down. I bring one last crab panacotta to the passe. The chef looks down at the plate as he takes his white napkin, dips it in hot water, and cleans my finger prints from the edges erasing all evidence of a busy kitchen. With a half smile and a half glance at my weathered state he asks, “How’s this new dish workin’ out for you?”

“Look!” I say, taking off my hat and pointing to my white hairs, “Look! This is what that new dish is doing to me!” He laughs hard and playfully boxes the top of my head like a coach to a teammate.

I feel like I have just made a touch down until I realize, while replacing my hat and walking back to my station, that there is still one last seating to go before I can truly celebrate getting through the evening with new dishes on the menu.

The third seating begins and it’s much slower than the first two. An hour passes and we are waiting for our last reservations to show up. Time is ticking slowly by. I bring another crab panacotta to the passe and the chef says to me:

“You know Glaze, that dish is going to be on the menu for at least a year, better get yourself a bottle of L’Oreal”

“Very funny, Chef.”

I can see now I set myself up a plethora of old age jokes. Nothing goes unprovoked in the kitchen. Nothing. I laugh anyway.

The Maître D comes back and announces that the last reservation is not showing up. The chef calls out “Kitchen closed!”

I put my tools away and begin to scrub my corner of the piano all the while thinking about the crab panacotta dish and my white hairs… just a memory now until tomorrow… or until I catch some one else staring back at me in the mirror.

The post Le Bernardin: Chef’s Whites and New Dishes first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Perhaps tennis shoes in the dryer would be a better metaphor.

Shoes clunking around bouncing off the metal canister and bouncing off each other in an un-rhythmic sort of way. I hate that. Clunk, clunk, clunk… clunk… clunk, clunk…

That’s me right now. A little bit at least. When I change stations I normally mess everything up until my inner self loathing demon relaxes, my nerves settle, I tame the adrenaline rush, and I focus.

Does anybody else over 30 find that they are increasingly becoming their own worst critic now more than ever? Is this part of getting older and wiser? And if so, when will I get there?

The veg station is really sort of simple. There are basically two pick-ups and then a few others that are thrown in at random times throughout the evening in order to really screw things up. (Pick-up’s refer to the physical action of cooking and plating a dish when it is ordered).

I pick-up the zucchini blossom dish that is stuffed with truffled crab meat (so, so delicious, I almost resent having to send it to the passe) and a stunning white tuna dish that is poached in olive oil and sauced with a deep red bearnaise.

Sounds easy, two dishes.

Okay the z-blossoms are a cinch. Quick, easy, beautiful, delicious. Great!

And the white tuna is not that hard either unless you forget it in the poaching oil because all of a sudden a side of sautéed vegetables is ordered, and a plate of tortellini, and an off the menu fried rice, and an off the menu pastsa with urchin and caviar sauce…

Oops there goes the tuna. Hammered. Waaaaaaaay overcooked.

Regardless of my first night jitters on the hot line and a few sloppy errors, I survived the evening. I’m sure they’re giving me a one night grace period to figure out the pick-ups before they rip me apart. I’ll take the breather while it lasts.

Could I have done better? Yes. Nonetheless my counterpart on the line said while we were scrubbing down our stations: “You did pretty good for your first night, you just need to get cooking the tuna down”. Maybe he was just trying to make me feel better.

I think I’m not going to analyze it too much, take the compliment, and focus on how to poach tuna perfectly!

At least I didn’t hear “Welcome to the veg station now go back to Garde Manger”.

Hopefully tonight will be less like tennis-shoes-in-dryer and more like towels-on-spin-cycle.

The post Le Bernardin: Veg Station A New Frontier first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

 This competition is just for fun, organized by D'Artagnan, a food distributer who is famous for specialty products. Foie gras, truffles, game, organic turkeys, jambon, saucisson sec – you name it, they supply it.

All the top restaurants in NYC rely on d'Artagnan for quality ingredients. Each team (restaurant) is given a list of different shops and restaurants to find in the Meat Packing district. At each stop there is a different challenge. Including: olive oil tastings, blindfolded guess-the-spice games, and French-English translation tests (we lost this event even with 3 native French people on the team).

 Some of the craziest contests included dunking a sausage tied around the waist by a thin string while dressed in a bra and hoop skirt into a milk pale as many times as possible in one minute.

The hoop skirt which you can see behind the sausage in the photo above, I'm assuming, keeps the contestant from watching the exact placement of the sausage so team members have to aid in direction. What the DD bra over the clothes has to do with

anything is a mystery…

And the Ball Busters table where cooks had to match the animal to the correct testicle. I was not good at this. However I did learn that ostriches have large testicles.

And I also scored the bonus point: name the pink fleshy thing…

My sous chef was shocked. Whatever, I'm a woman, there are some things we inherently understand. Now if I had to tell you what animal it came from, that would be a different story. And of course we also had some fun walking in between shops, bars, and restaurants…

and taking refreshments along the way…

 Where we failed completely was the final competition where all the restaurants (Restaurant Daniel, Le Cirque, Cercle Rouge, and Bar Bouley included) gathered around a stage (next to an open bar) in the Chelsea Market and one by one performed a song about food. We did not pull our song together in time. Our attempted version of "God Bless Foie Gras" to the tune of "God Bless America" bombed.

Next year I think we'll plan it out in advance like the team from Restaurant Daniel who clearly spent hours orchestrating their performance. (losers). Okay, we got booed off the stage. In fact, we had things thrown at us. Yes, little plastic ducks were literally thrown at us on the stage. It got really bad when we started to throw them back.

Big kisses to Adrien who performed the song. We all just stood behind him with our hands on our hearts as we hummed along and dodged flying objects. Nonetheless we won one of the competitions (every restaurant wins something). We won the prestigious Sausage Dunking Competition thanks to Camille!!!!!!

To quote my friend: "Mais oui, je suis Française." We walked away with some magnificent prizes including one enormous jambon de Bayonne and two enormous sausages

I barely walked away. Too much Moet.

Totally worth it. I suppose sometimes you have to take one for the team.

The post Le Bernardin: Duckathlon NYC Restaurant Industry Showdown! first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

When I leave my apartment to catch the train I glimpse the sun attempting to find the earth between montrously tall skyscrapers. Then I get off of the train and walk two blocks before disappearing for the day. 

I've never lived in a city where you can see the sun, without feeling it. Sometimes I pause, if I have the time, on the corner of 50th between 6th and 7th (right off the train station) to let some rays warm my face and dry my hair. I have found the one spot between leaving my house and getting to work where the sun manages to strike gold.  Then I descend down an elevator to a fluorescent lit hallway to a fluorescent lit locker room. I change into my whites. I take an elevator up to a fluorescent lit kitchen and I stay there anywhere between 10 and 12 hours.

After my shift, I descend in the elevator, change in the dressing room throwing my sweat soaked whites into the laundry bin, spray my whole body with perfume, and take the escalator up to ground level. It's dark. Stars in sky, moon up above, dark. This Sunday, the first truly sunny warm Sunday of the new year, every single one of the chefs was either sunbathing, walking around in the sun, drinking in the sun, falling asleep on a park bench in the sun, or doing whatever-one-can-do-under the sun.

The funniest sunburn is that of chef Pierre. He came to work with a terrible driving sunburn. The kind where only one half of your face and one whole arm is red. I doubt he'll let his left arm hang out the window unprotected again. And I'm sure he'll remember to move the visor over to block the rays beating down next time. Hilarious. (For us, not for him). We teased him for days.

All joking aside, the lack of sunshine is really no laughing matter for cooks. I've started piling up on vitamin D as a result. I went through months of not being able to sleep because my body simply had no idea what time of day it was.

I clearly remember in the middle winter taking a long weekend back to San Francisco to see my folks. It was sunny. On my return one of the chefs said: Wow, you look good! I'll never forget it. Because what was left unsaid was undeniable: Wow, most of the time you look tired and pasty, I forgot you could be attractive! Myself and chef Pierre (the car burned cook) have made a pact that on the next super sunny day we will injure each other so we can be sent home.

We have made a plan being that I will stab him where it won't kill him, but hurt him enough so that he can't work. (We work with knives all day remember). And then he will kindly return the favor.

Sometimes when I work across from him he'll tap a part of his body and wink knowingly. Secretly saying: this is the spot, Amy, this is the spot. Then I'll reach for my knife and carefully sharpen it slowly eyeing my next imaginary insicion. It's madness, I tell you. Madness!

Actually the plan has become much more elaborate. After mutually mutilating each other and getting sent home, we will pass by the emergency room pleading for painkillers. But not before raiding the walk-in vegetable refrigerator of it's kaffir lime leaves and ginger so after our hospital excursion we can cook a tasty Thai lunch and enjoy our drugged state-of-mind in the sun while nursing our wounds.

Today he pointed to his fingers. Things are getting desperate. Normally cooks need their fingers. If he points to his tongue tomorrow then I'll send him to a psychiatric ward. We're just teasing each other. I think. Us cooks certainly feel that heat in the kitchen. So we know when it's a beautiful day even if we can't see that's a beautiful day.

By golly, things are steaming up! Chef's hats are coming off!

The post Le Bernardin: Sun Burned Chefs first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Even kitchen's in France (or maybe I should say especially kitchen's in France) are balls to the wall, militaristic, male environments. So how does some one like me, a girly girl, who actually picks the pink kitchen towels out from the blue and white ones fit in? Good question. I suppose the answer is: I don't. That's not to say that I have a problem breaking down a leg of veal, killing lobsters, or sweating it out over the fire. I'm all into that too. I enjoy the adrenaline rush, the push, the team effort just as much as any guy.

I find the trick (as I've learned through trial and error) to cooking in a dominant male culture is to be yourself, but stand your ground. And make sure you have at least one really good girlfriend. Maybe even one that speaks French so you can talk privately. Gossip shamelessly.

The other great thing about having at least one girlfriend in the kitchen (I'm lucky to have several) is then you have your own private island that you can escape to when the guys start, well, being guys.

And truthfully, I actually think the girl talk is often dirtier than the guy talk. Our conversations vary from what's the hottest perfume to the latest greatest cooking technique to whether vibrators should be substituted for male companionship. (No conclusions formed on any subject listed.)

At least we have better things to talk about than football and basketball. Jeez. Do men and women approach cooking differently? Of course we do. Is that a bad thing? No. Do some guys hate cooking with women in the kitchen? Yes. Do most guys appreciate women in the kitchen? Yes!

Do we all cook together for 12 hours a day and then go out get beers together afterwards? Oh hell yes! What is respected above all regardless of sex, is the quality of your work and your commitment. That stands on its own. I think all the men and women that I cook with would agree .

The post Le Bernardin: The Women in the Kitchen first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

Nope, this isn’t my advice to lovers, one-night stands, and people about to get married. But maybe it should be?

In every restaurant worth its salt are the old timers. The cooks who have dominated a station for so long that they are intrinsically part of every dish that is served.

It’s the sign of a good restaurant.

I say ‘intrinsic’ because those of us trained under these pillars of culinary wisdom can’t’ make anything without hearing their words ringing in our heads: “make it nice or make it twice…” or “medium rare fish guys, medium rare fish…” or “tasting our food, tasting our food….”

I’m not talking about the young hot shot cooks who cruise upward through the different stations faster than a heart beat on adrenaline. But those noble few who have given their lives over to one station and have no intention of going anywhere else in the kitchen.

There is one living fixture in the kitchen who I sincerely look up to. He’s probably around 15 years older than me and has run the garde manger station for around that same amount of time.

So while I was studying geometry in high school, falling in and out of love, taking my S.A.T’s, performing in theaters, and doing all the things wild teenage girls do to drive their parents crazy he was building the garde mange empire at Le Bernardin.

While I was reading In the Heart of Darkness for my English Lit AP exam he was concocting fluke ceviche. While I was cutting 6th and 7th period to go see the Pink Floyd concert (even though my parents said I couldn’t) he was pounding out tuna into a thin perfect ovals and placing it ever so gently over croutons spread with foie gras.

While I was sneaking out of my parent’s house after curfew he was training new cooks the art of beautifully prepared food.

And he was doing it in a foreign language: English. People underestimate how difficult it is to work in a foreign country in a foreign language.

Having worked in France, I get it. I clearly remember speaking English to another cook during my first week desperately attempting to get a translation on the orders coming in and being yelled at: “Anglais?!?!? Pas Anglais! Anglais non!“

It did help me learn French fast. And I am very thankful now.

And, regardless of my university minor in Middle English and Single Subject Teaching Credential in English, I still struggle to understand half the English speaking people in this country.

Brooklynese, Long Island-ese, Midwesternese, mumble-ese, voice-so-low-I-can’t-understand-ese… yes, English is very difficult to comprehend under pressure. Whoever said that 90% of communication is nonverbal has obviously never worked a service in a 3 Michelin star restaurant.

Having spent six months attempting to master the various stations: garde mange, canapé, raw fish, fish pass, ravioli, and back monk I now truly understand my chef’s quote: “Make it nice or make it twice”.

I’m not panicking about getting my preparation finished or rushing around during service accomplishing nothing very well.

I’m, let’s say, a little more focused. More settled. And a lot more aggressive about achieving the right finished product because now I know exactly what it is.

I don’t want to have to re-do all the work I just did.

I get annoyed when I see newbies working fast and sloppy. And I get perturbed when I know I’ve spent time and love to make a plate beautiful during prep time only to see it destroyed in a mad dash during service and sent back at the passe by one of the sous chefs.

During service is where my chef’s soft but firm words come in to action…

He looks out of the corner of his eye to glance at the dishes being made around him by young energetic cooks and if he catches anyone trying to rush perfection he’ll warn: “Make it nice or make it twice”.

This always has the desired impact. The cook slows down and focuses. The adrenaline ebbs. (If only for a second). But my all time favorite quote of his, is one that I’m sure he’d be slightly embarrassed about me repeating: “I need-a that shit!” Pronounced: I needuh that sheet!

You have to understand my Chef is not the swearing type. Not at all. But if you try and take something away from him, like a squeeze bottle of olive oil or a jar of caviar, he will definitely stop the intruder with: “I need-a that shit!”

Nobody takes anything away from my Chef when he’s about to use it. Or they must suffer the consequences of making “fluke on the plate, fluke on the plate, fluke on the plate” the next day. (Don’t ask, “fluke on the plate” is a whole other story. It’s really a sort of torture that involves cutting fish into perfect rectangles.)

Sometimes my chef says “I need-a that shit!” for fun and we all fall about laughing.

Or other times I tell him, “I need-a that shit too!” and I take it away. Which normally makes him chuckle. Normally.

When you work in a kitchen there will always be those cooks who try and get away with bad prep. It’s often part of the learning process and mostly a side effect of feeling it’s impossible to finish all the mise en place before service. They rush and make mistakes hoping no one will catch them.

I’ve definitely been guilty of it before. I think we all have. And I’ve always been caught which is even more embarrassing especially when the whole kitchen hears it.

There really is no hiding in a kitchen under those bright fluorescent lights. A cook with bad “place” can only get away with it for so long before the rest of the staff calls him or her out.That is why the pillars uphold the quality of a station because they know exactly how to make it nice with a style and flare that only comes from some one who has repeated the same dish over and over. Muscle memory. Like a ballerina doing a pirouette.

Once the technique is internalized then and only then can the art of doing it show through. Trust me, If you plate a dish 10,000 times you will find a way to turn it into a master piece, not a finger painting.

I want the art of it to show through….

Make it nice or make twice, make it nice or make it twice, make it nice or make it twice, make it nice or make it twice…

The post Le Bernardin: Make It Nice or Make it Twice first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

“No, not yet, why?”

“You’re ‘Back Monk’ next week girl!”

“What the hell is ‘Back Monk’?”

“It’s the ravioli station!!!”

“Oh my God, really?!?!?! SWEEEEEET!!!! Um, but why is it called ‘Back Monk’?”

“I have no idea.”

“Oh putain, me neither.”

This is the conversation between me and my best friend at work. She’s French and cooking here on a one year visa. And yes, we do gossip in French as much as we possibly can in the hopes that no one around us will understand.

But I’m sure everyone does understand because our body language is just too conspiratorial and my French is simply too remedial. If you took an 8th grade French class you could probably make out what I was saying. Oh heck, if you took an 8th grade Spanish class you could probably figure out what I was saying…

Thank God, you couldn’t figure out what she was saying.

So ‘Back Monk’ really means that I make raviolis, plate lobster carpacio, and help the cold appetizer station out during service until the hot appetizer station needs me more.

Which really means – I finally get to cook over the fire!!!

Still not sure why it’s called ‘Back Monk’.

And yes, I still turn bright red when I cook. And yes, everyone still makes fun of me. And no, it’s nowhere near as hot as the kitchen as Guy Savoy in Paris so I’m not making excuses to get things from the refrigerator like I used to.

I’m so thankful to be doing something different. If you’ve ever cooked in a restaurant then you will understand what I’m talking about.

Sometimes when I do something over and over and over again I just want to shoot myself in the head. I have to force myself to focus on making the next dish more perfect so I don’t become complacent and lazy.

Sounds easy, but it’s not. Trust me. Being mindless is not easy.

I mean really, if you had to write the same email or type the same bill, or teach the same lesson to the same class, or operate on the same patient, or drive the same customer from point A to point B day in day out, you would turn to automatic pilot too.

Of course it’s reassuring to come into work and know exactly what you’re going to do and how much time you have to do it in, and how to prepare for fire drills in advance. But let’s face it, it’s also boring. Like sharpening 1000 yellow #6 pencils by hand every day.

So speaking of boring, there are two things that are quite the opposite: ‘Back Monk’ and my ‘Love Life’.

I’m thinking that my ‘Love Life’ should be a station at the restaurant as well. Since it seems to flow in and out of the time I spend at work, I think it could (at this point) be considered a job. I’m unsuccessfully working pretty damn hard at it.

I should be getting payed for it dammit. Minimum wage at least.

Back to ravioli’s… ravioli’s are a life saver. Why? Because I’ve begun to realize that relationships have a lot to do with ravioli.

Have you ever made pasta dough? First you weigh out the flour (that’s you) then you carefully pick out the yolks from the whites of countless eggs (that’s your significant other that you’ve sorted through).

Then you make a well in your flour (that’s you again) and place the yolks in the center (that’s the significant other again).

Then you put the mixer on low speed with a dough hook that gently combines you and the other person, ooops I mean flour and egg yolks, until you are somewhat mixed together.

Then you add water (commitment?) and all of a sudden the flour/egg mixture starts to turn into real pasta dough that is stretchy but manages to maintain its balled state (oneness) as it’s whipped around the mixing bowl by a large metallic dough hook (metaphor for life putting you through the wringer?).

And, if your pasta dough is perfect it will maintain good elasticity, sheen, suppleness, and finally it will handle the automatic pasta machine which, is like a close-up print out or photo copy of your relationship.

You put both of you together (with some water or commitment) through the automatic pasta maker and you either come out: too wet, not wet enough, crinkly and in need of more flour, or crackly and in need of more water, or perfectly supple and smooth.

Damn, that shit’s not easy to get right.

But, with practice, and perhaps mistakes as well, it all comes out in one long paper thin strip of moldable pasta dough. And from this point, you can get really experimental.

The first week at the ravioli station went smoothly. Relatively. There were a few hiccups along the way, but nothing unexpected or unacceptable. Nothing to get yelled over.

My second week at the ravioli station included Valentines day. Dough, egg yoks, water – knead I say more?

Our restaurant was slammed for Valentine’s day. I mean booked to the gills. And we were all excited about it. Honestly, it’s fun to cook when the restaurant is full to bursting. All of us prefer it. We cook better, we work better, we have more fun when the restaurant is packed.

But my valentines day kind of took a dive off the high board into an empty cement pool.

I received divorce papers on my way to work.

Still having trouble getting the dough right….

I showed up to work laughing with tears running down my face. I bummed a cigarette off a fellow cook who was counting his last few moments before entering the abyss for 12 hours. He looked at me cockeyed, handed me a smoke, and asked, “Are you okay? You look like you could use a shot of something….”

To which I could only reply, “Is my masacara all over my face right now?”

To which he gracefully responded, “No, no one will notice. You look fine.”

(Liar.) “Thanks, thanks for the smoke…”

I called my husband who thankfully, being the good guy that he is, (yes, we still talk about each other in the positive and are very close friends) was as shocked as I was. The papers were sent a whole week before and I had been expecting them – just not on Saturday morning. It was an untimely accident.

But the fact still remained: I received papers on Valentines day. And I had to go into work and stare at flour and egg yolks working themselves out in a bowl. And then I had to put the dough through the pasta machine and give it attention and … thank God I had to give it attention…being busy and under pressure and maybe even somewhat mindless is better than thinking about reality at times.

I would much rather be thinking about the present than freaking out over the future.

God, I love pasta. Is this why it’s considered comfort food?

As much as I forced myself to focus on making pasta my stomach was also forcing me not to think about food. I couldn’t even smell food without wanting to throw-up.

I didn’t eat. Not one single thing. Just one cup of coffee and one cigarette.

I began my shift on the cold appetizer line making stunning barely cooked fish starters and 2 hours later was called up to the hot line to help the hot appetizers cooks. Here, normally I would have been nervous with the anticipation of a new station and a new challenge but instead I was just shaky with apprehension and simply loss of love.

How doing the mundane, the boring, the rote, could have been such a godsend on this dark day. Oh well.

Why is the power of love so underestimated? When full of it we ride higher than the moon, and when empty with it we sink lower than the sun.

I want none of it.

(such a lie, I want all of it!)

I no sooner got to the hot line during the middle of the second seating when one of the cook’s frantically asked that I re-stack the plates. I scuttled hurriedly to the dish pit to grab clean plates carrying a stack that normally would have been challenging, but not heavy.

I placed half on the dish rack next to the station and the other half I attempted to place up above the piano (the stove top) where we keep all of our plates warm.

I lifted the plates and my arms gave out. I was only an inch away from making the connection – my arms outstretched and elbows locked – but something gave way and the stack fell with an embarrassing crash onto the hot grill underneath.

Only one plate broke in the stack. But, I panicked. It was like something cracked inside my brain, a little tiny blood vessel bursting and yet single handedly causing a flood.

The other two hot apps cooks rushed in to clear the plates and re-group. But I simply took a step back and tried to focus on the present. No one yelled at me, no one said a word about it the whole night. Thank God for small favors.

And thank God for the excellent team I work with who often get on my nerves, and more often than not, calm them.

My shift ended on a positive note. I got to cook on the hot and cold line and make fresh pasta off and on throughout the evening. The executive chef ordered the kitchen crew several bottles of champagne to quench our desires, our thirsts, and to say goodbye to two beloved externs who have made life more bearable over the last few months.

I ducked out shortly after finishing my glass of bubbly to cry a little on my own in the girl’s locker room and just release.

It was certainly not the best day in my life, and most certainly the worst Valentine’s day I have ever had.

But you know, it’s always nice to finally feel free to start the whole pasta making process over again…

The post Le Bernardin: Valentines Day Recovery & The Ravioli Station first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

It came to me indirectly from the executive chef. I don’t think he had any idea how meaningful it would be to me but, it’s a damn good title and I’ll attempt to do it right..

I came to New York knowing that it could support me with the energy, dynamism, and happiness that has been slowly leaking out of my life if I could muster up at least a little effort and courage in return.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on my own.

It’s not fun changing countries, starting new jobs, making new friends, and ending frayed relationships. When I look at other people my age in their mid 30’s who are settled with children and houses and well into careers with nice retirement plans I sort of want to put my face in my hands and cry.

Either that or pick up a cleaver and chop down the chain bone of something twice my size.

I dove head first into a New York 3 Michelin star kitchen culture that perhaps wasn’t the best place for a woman, going through what I’m going through, to be in.

Why? Because your head needs to be in the game and your spirit needs to exude self confidence. But when all you feel like inside is a human construction site, walking into a competitive unforgiving environment is a little akin to smashing beer cans against your head over and over.

How can I organize a station if I can’t even organize my life right now? How can I react to command when my inner voice of doubt and worry is drumming out the chef’s outer voice? How can I cook anything right when everything in my life is wrong?

How am I going to get through this?

I pretty much wanted to quit after the first month. I thought: the executive chef’s a jerk, I hate the people I work with, I don’t fit in here, garde manger is stupid, the sous chef’s don’t do anything beside criticize everything I do, the guys are competitive for no reason, I’m here to cook fish and I’m a year away from getting to the line.

and…

I want to be where people know me and know what I’m capable of – not where I have to prove myself. I’m tired of proving myself. And further more, I don’t have the energy to prove myself.

So I dragged myself and I’m sure everyone around me through a grueling first three months at the garde mange station.

I prepped salads, sauces, gelées, cold fish plates. I diced cucumbers and jalapenos till I never wanted to see either vegetable again. I Plated smoked salmon, raw salmon, hamachi, kampachi, and bluefin till my hands could go through the motions effortlessly while my mind wondered back to it’s dark ‘why am I here?’ place .

I whipped green cilantro foams (still something that never turns out right by my hand) and seaweed soysauce glazes. And the whole time it felt like moving mountains, not like creating fragile art.

I’d be a liar if I said that nobody noticed I wasn’t focused.

It took me a little while to realize, and yes a good long heart to heart with the executive chef too, that really I’m the one who needs to pull it together. I was hired to do a job and do it perfectly regardless of my personal life or the dynamics at work. And out of this conversation I re-found my backbone which had started to disintegrate

and…

that the executive chef is really a great leader, the sous chef’s are talanted, I sincerely like the people I work with, garde manger is perfect for me because I need better knife skills, I can be competitive too without being a bitch, and I do want to prove myself.

And just as I was beginning to feel the cloud of doom clear from my mind the executive chef sent me to the fish pass (which momentarily clouded me again) and then to a sunny short vacation in the salon, and now on canapés…

Where: FOR THE FIRST TIME I STAND ALONE

(you knew I’d weave this back in somehow didn’t you?)

The canapé station, or amuse bouche station, is a little like a life raft bobbing on the tumultuous high seas without a tow in site. In other words you’re all by yourself and you either sink or swim. I have seen quit a few cooks flounder and fall off this boat only to find themselves flung back to the mainland (garde manger) until given a second chance to prove themselves.

I have witnessed several cooks sent home for a plethora of innocent yet amateur mistakes: soup not hot enough, wrong bread used for the croutons, or shortage of mise en place.

So when I got to this station all I could think of was: I don’t want to be sent home. I’m over 30 years old not 12 and if I get sent home I’m going to be very, very, very upset.

But here’s the thing: it’s really hard to cook something right when you are terrified of cooking something wrong. It makes you not trust your own judgement. It makes organization difficult. Ah heck, it just takes the fun out it in general and creates an atmosphere where success seems unobtainable and being set up for failure a certainty.

I kept telling myself: I have nothing to loose. There is nothing more in my life left to loose and there is everything, everything to gain.

And it’s just an amuse bouche for goddsake. It’s not rocket science or quantum physics or computer technology or anything requiring a PhD. Jeez: it’s just food!

Furthermore, I absolutely adore amuse bouches. They are beautiful mini meals in a single bite that set the tone for the menu to come. And anyone who downplays the significance of a canapé or amuse bouche has never truly experienced one before.

They are little suprises. Even when they are expected they are still a surprise because you don’t know what it will be until it arrives. I love that.

My first few days at the canapé station were cake. I got to work with a girlfriend of mine who was on her way out (to move back to L.A.) and she showed me how to get organized, set up the station, hide the pots and pans needed for service early in the afternoon, and load up on extra mise en place.

We had a lot of fun working together. It could have been called the ‘gossip station’ instead of the ‘canapé station’ because that’s really all we did in between spooning lobster into tiny cups, squeezing hot foams, and yelling “pick up canapé!”.

We had good time. Something that had been missing for me.

Then she left and it was all up to me.

My canapé for my first day alone was simple enough: a truffled celriac soup with lobster and a gorgeous bright red sauce Americain foam on the top. I followed the instructions I was given to make the soup, but when I blended it, it was border-line too thin. I got chastised for it, but not sent home.

Had I done the soup the way I knew how to this would not have been a problem. Had I trusted my own instincts this would not have happened. And then getting blamed for not following common sense like: remove the celeriac cubes from the broth before blending and add the broth in little by little until the right consistency is acheived feels even stupider.

Lesson learned: trust instincts. Then you have no one to blame but yourself.

The service went fine. I didn’t run out of anything, I enjoyed talking to the servers as they picked up the plates, and I sincerely enjoyed being responsible for my very own island.

In fact, I prefer to be in charge of my very own island.

“Pick up canapé!!!”

The post Le Bernardin: For the First Time I Stand Alone first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

The salon is a separate kitchen on the second floor that only caters to private events. And it is so much fun to work up there. Almost like a vacation without the fruity cocktails and hot pool boys (bien sûr).

Let’s call it an offsite. Isn’t that where corporate employees go to bond, learn new skills, and just enjoy each other?

Don’t get me wrong – it’s not easy – just a different change of pace and the opportunity to work with the executive chefs and sous chefs one on one and learn their individual styles without all the al a carte drama of the main kitchen.

And every once and awhile I get to actually cook something on the line – HALLELUJAH!!!!

Working the salon is an introduction to working downstairs on the main floor. It’s a chance to see all the dishes on the menu and become familiar with them. The stakes aren’t as high in the salon because the menu is set to begin with so there is less margin for error.

It’s also the chance to see the flow of service: when to flash dishes in the oven, when to start the pick-ups on the main courses, and how the servers handle different crowds.

There’s some drawbacks too. It can be painfully slow and then all of a sudden you have to dredge up endless energy to pump out a gazillion plates all at the same time. One hundred and eighty different canapes? No problem. Fifty tuna- kobe plates? No problem.

Are the mashed potatoes hot? Are they f’ing hot or not? Oven! Oven! Put the plates back in the oven now – all seventy of them!!!

(Oh my God) Yes! Chef!

Okay and there’s the horror part of working the salon. Like when there are two totally different parties side by side with different canapes, cold appetizers, and main courses and all of it must prepped beforehand and everything gets fired between ten minutes of the other.

That is when working the salon is not like an offsite. That is like one huge panic attack with an added acid flashback for icing.

That’s when I’m running back and forth to our taped up menu sheets double checking the different canapes for each party to make sure we don’t pass the wrong hors d’oeuvres to the wrong group.

That’s when the downstairs line cooks rush upstairs from the main kitchen to help fire off all the fish dishes to the different parties.

That’s when I’m just putting my head down and finishing plates with the garnishes and passing them off to the executive chef for one last final inspection before the servers carry them away on silver trays.

And honestly, that’s fun too.

The post Le Bernardin: Le Salon! first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

At the restaurant, all cooks when hired begin on the garde manger station and rotate through the various duties: salad prep, cold fish plates, canapes, homemade ravioli, and hot appetizers picking up the necessary skills along the way to eventually work on the intense frenetic fish line.

And, if the cook is really good, after working all the other stations at the restaurant he or she will finally become the ‘Saucier’ and run the fish line – a very demanding position. The Saucier is responsible for making 20 different sauces and insuring that the 14 different fish dishes are perfect by the time they reach the pass.

“Medium rare fish, guys, medium rare fish…we’re tasting our food, right? Coming up on a mahi by halibut followed by 3 stripe by snapper, cod, black bass… how long on the mahi? Minute and a half – we go?…”

It’s a smart system. The idea being that by the time you have finally made it to the fish line you can jump back into any station at the restaurant at any time to help out.

We seat over 200 people an evening and as customers eat their way through the menu from cold to hot dishes the sauté cooks come over to help out garde manger and hot appetizers until all the orders rest solely on the line.

But the Fish Pass station is not on the normal rotation. It’s kind of island of it’s own and a very significant one at that.

What does the fish pass cook do? Besides not cook a single piece of anything?

He runs back and forth from one side of the kitchen to the other passing perfectly portioned pieces of striped bass, black pass, skate, mahi mahi, cod, halibut, monk, white tuna, snapper, langoustines, salmon, lobster, lamb, squab, and filet mignon to the sauté cooks while popping oysters to order and keeping a running count of the tickets coming in and all the fish being sold.

Here’s the deal, and I know I’m a little crazy for thinking this way, but I really want to work this station. Not forever – I can barely even type this post right now my fingers are so shredded from the preparation involved – but it’s a great opportunity to actually get to work with the fish itself.

Great position or not, I really f’d things up on Friday night. Everyone got their fish on time and all the oysters were opened to order, but I didn’t follow the executive chef’s request on one small eensty teensy little thing so I was banished for the last hour of service and sent to clean mushrooms alone, upstairs, in the salon kitchen.

I don’t like being banished. And I don’t like messing up. But I definitely understand what I did wrong.

I didn’t communicate. And that is a very important part of my job.

My Friday afternoon preparation started off great. I waltzed in around 1PM and directly asked the chef how many lobsters I should kill. He told me I needed: “20 all day” (meaning that I needed a total of 20).

I looked in the fish pass refrigerator at my station to see how many lobsters were already prepped from lunch and there were 7. I failed to notice however that there were still 15 customers yet to order on the board from lunch. I just sort of assumed that lunch was finished.

It wasn’t.

I’ve worked the garde manger station during lunch and I know we rarely sell a lot of lobster so I thought it be okay. In France we cook both lunch and dinner so it’s easy to keep a count on what’s selling in the kitchen or at your individual station.

I butchered 13 lobsters for the fish line.

Killing lobsters used to freak me out but now I just take my old Wustov knife (that I don’t care about) shove the tip right between the lobsters eyes to kill it instantly and then rip off the tail and claws.

Breaking down lobsters cuts up your hands because their claws have exoskeleton thorns that pierce through just about everything – five pairs of latex gloves included.

And sometimes, even after I’ve killed them, their tails spasm and clinch up wrapping around my hands and pinching my fingers. Or their claws open and close without warning – again pinching my fingers.

Next I de-shelled and cleaned a box of 40 langoustines. Clearly not enough for a service of 200 people, but they were the only ones I could find in the fish fridge.

Cleaning langoustines is another finger shredding job that sent me to the hospital a few weeks ago for a two night hiatus. My puncture wounds from their shells somehow got infected with Staff and red lines started growing up my arms from the blood infection. Not fun.

Back to my preparation… after cleaning the evil langoustines, and stabbing 15 lobsters, I started stuffing calamari. But I ran out of stuffing. I don’t make the stuffing, that’s another cook’s job, but I had enough calamari prepped (or so I thought) for at least the first seating of 100 people.

And yes, I did communicate with the powers that be that I needed more stuffing and that I didn’t think there would be enough langoustines for the whole evening.

I get my station set up by 5PM and I think I’m totally ready to go. I’m actually excited to start my aerobic workout for the evening running back and forth throughout the kitchen passing fish and popping oysters. God, do I love oysters…

But then the orders start flying in and low and behold they are all langoustines, calamari, and lobster. We’re 8 tables deep into the service and I’m already out of lobster tails. I look into my little fish pass fridge and I’m freaking out – where did all my friggin lobsters go?

I notice that the cook on the canape station is doing a lobster amuse bouche and I go over to him and accusingly ask, “Did you take any of my lobster tails for your amuse bouche?” He responds “No.” I turn to the sous chef and ask him about my tails and he doesn’t know anything so nervously I ask the executive chef about my lobster tails.

He laughs. Thank God. And asks what time I counted the lobsters at before I killed them. “Did you actually look on the board before you killed the lobsters? I told you there was a table of 15 yet to order at lunch”.

This stupid mistake hits my stomach like a ten pound boulder, my face flushes crimson, and I realize that all in one second that my college degree is worthless and that I’m probably lower than a cockroach on the scale of evolution.

“They ordered lobster? The whole table?”

“Yes. The whole table. You better kill 10 more right now.”

So in between popping oysters, running fish, totaling tickets, and freaking out in general – I’m also killing lobsters. An hour hasn’t even gone by yet and I’m already in the weeds so deep I might as well be in the amazon rain forest slashing my way through creepy vines and overgrown bushes.

Weeded. Weeded. So weeded it’s not even funny.

Of course, I’m sure it was hysterical to everyone else. But certainly not to me.

I get the lobsters finished miraculously and breathe a sigh of relief that the rest of the service can return to a normal state of controlled chaos.

But no, how could I think such a stupid thing? The hot apps cooks need more stuffed calamari. And they need it now…

I finally get the stuffing for the calamari and the more langoustines are retrieved from the downstairs freezer.

All langoustines are frozen fresh, they don’t make it to the U.S. from France in any other way. Nonetheless they are outrageously delicious. If a shrimp and a lobster made babies they would taste like langoustines. Depending on how they are packed and shipped, they can either be thawed out and used over a few days or they used that same day.

Quality is closely monitored in all respects at the restaurant. Especially the fish rotation and our langoustines are some of the biggest and tastiest that I have ever seen or eaten – France included.

Here’s where I messed up biggtime: the chef tells me to wrap up the langoustines I have in my fish pass fridge to save and breakdown and serve the other ones first.

This would not have been a problem if I wasn’t also doing my aerobic fish pass workout while finally getting the opportunity to stuff my 80 calamari tubes.

Cleaning langoustines takes time. They are sort of an overgrown crawfish and their shells are almost as hard as a lobsters. The tricky part in cleaning these evil succulent tasting creatures is to not tear the flesh while ripping off their segmented shells piece by piece. After the exoskeleton is removed they need to be gutted and trimmed – again without tearing the flesh.

Did I mention that langoustines are really expensive?!?!

I kept thinking: it is more important that the cooks have the fish they need when they need it instead of breaking down the other langoustines. So I continued to pass the langous in my fridge. I just didn’t think about how important it might be in terms of cost. And, I just didn’t have the time.

The evening begins to slow down a bit with just 60 left to order. I’m exhausted, my hands look like they’ve been mauled by a pit bull. My arms are tired from reaching for fish, running fish, popping oysters to order, butchering lobsters, and stuffing calamari.

I finally have the langoustines cleaned and wrapped up and I’m about to take them to the back fish fridge to store for tomorrow. But the chef sees me and says, “Those are the langoustines I asked you save right?”

“No chef, they’re not.”

There is a brief moment of silence as he looks me over with a mixed lethal concoction of disappointment and anger.

“What happened to the ones I asked you to save.”

“We sold them.”

I start to launch into my litany of excuses as to why I couldn’t get them prepared in time and how the orders of langoustines kept coming in while I was still trying to prepare calamari and lobsters and, and, and…

“I dont want to hear your excuses.”

“It’s not excuses!” I retort.

I wish I hadn’t retorted. Because it’s not my place to tell the man who has run a world famous kitchen for over 15 years with only impeccable reviews whether something is or is not excuses. He clearly knows the difference.

He turns away from me after a long sideways glare and gives his attention back to the fish line. Meanwhile I return to my station heart in hand wondering whether or not I’m going to get fired for such a costly mistake. Isn’t this the time where that big black hole is supposed to open up beneath you and swallow you whole?

The old fish pass cook is called back over to the station and one of the sous chef’s tells me to take two sheets of black trumpet mushrooms to the salon kitchen to clean.

I take the mushrooms and head upstairs to my solitary confinement. An hour and a half passes and I’m still cleaning mushrooms defiantly willing myself not to cry. My punctured hands can barely hang on to their delicate stems because they are swollen. My fingertips are stained black and I start recounting the events of the evening. How could I have made that happen differently?

I couldn’t have. I did everything I could have possibly done. Except the one thing I needed to do: communicate with the chef. Tell him why I couldn’t or wouldn’t be able to do what he asked. And that’s 100 percent my fault.

It was my job to make his request happen and if I couldn’t then let him know immediately.

Service is service. And when it’s over it’s over. Tomorrow’s a new day.

And speaking of new days, Saturday the chef greeted me with same familiar “Hi Ms. Glaze”. No altercation hangovers thankfully. Service was fun. We did 240 covers which is record breaking in my short two months at the restaurant. My mis en place was en pointe and the whole evening was a success all around.

“Pass the striped bass Amyyyyyyy!!!!”

“Yes, chef!!!!!!!”

The post Le Bernardin: Fish Pass Girl first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I hope this story doesn't come across as blood thirsty or unappreciative of life, because I often struggle with my emotions when it comes to the butchering process of animals. It's so much easier to pick up a piece of protein that is already cleaned, filleted, and wrapped in celophane.

But, if you've followed this blog from Paris then you will remember my tumultuous feelings about skinning baby boar and wild hare and my guilt over plucking and gutting pheasant, grouse, and wild pigeon day in and out at Guy Savoy. What I've learned through all these experiences is: respect. How can you cook something properly if you don't even know what it is that you're cooking?

Now, I'm working with fish and only fish but the opportunity to break it down doesn't come everyday. We have excellent prep chefs who skillfully do a lot of that work early in the morning before anyone arrives. Considering the fact that the restaurant receives up to 800 pounds of fresh fish on any given day, it would be impossible not to employ master fish mongers.

But today we received a whole 130 pound farm raised ecologically sound bluefin Tuna from Japan, Kindai, during the afternoon so everyone could participate in the experience. I'm 5'5" and I weigh around 115 lbs so this tuna was my size give or take a few pounds. That should put things in perspective. Kindai is by far the most prized tuna in the world for it's sensous silky texture and flavor and sadly the most overfished – bordering on the endangered list.

In fact, it's so overfished today that helicopters often patrol waters where bluefin are protected to stop poachers from throwing their nets out. As the demand for sushi rises higher throughout the world so does the popularity of this particular tuna. Doesn't everyone love a slice of fatty torro dunked in shoyu?

Before you go thinking that there must be hundreds of Tuna farms, let me just say it has taken 30 years for the Japanese fish farmer, Hidemi Kumai, head of the fisheries laboratory at Kinki University, to successfully raise Kindai. Who would have thought that a fish that can reach 1,800 pounds in the wild could be so delicate and sensitive?

They need plenty of water to swim, they are sensitive to noises (even car horns), and their necks break easily if they make turns too sharp. Sometimes they turn cannibalistic and eat each other or they simply refuse to spawn. They're fussy fish. Due to the difficult and time consuming process of raising farmed Kindai, only 3 are sent to the United States every week.

One comes to New York and is divided among five of the top restaurants here and the other two get shipped to California. Today, when the whole kindai arrived at the restaurant everyone stopped what they were doing and gathered around in the kitchen to watch the professional tuna butcher break down the human-sized silver shimmering fish.

Actually, we all ran to the lockers for our cameras first and then clamored around the counter elbowing each other to get better shots and a piece of the action. And it wasn't just the cooks who put down their work to watch the butcher take apart this mammoth kindai – it was the servers, the management, the owners – every one gathered around to watch this momentous occasion.

The professional butcher armed with a white plastic apron, faded tattoos, and a thick irish brogue brought out a wooden mallet and chisel and broke off the tip of the tail first with a whack that would have landed Marie Antoinette's head on the plate in one fell swoop.

Then with a foot long knife resembling more of a machete than any of our rinky dink chef's cutlery, he slashed his way through the fish reserving different parts for the various restaurants that would receive them. This picture of above was special for me – LOL!!!

Per Se takes the toro, Gramercy Tavern takes the collar and the spinal cord (I've been told they make bone marrow from the spinal cord. It's not printed on their menu, but you can order it if you know about it.), and Le Berardin takes the meaty tasting melt-in-your-mouth top fillet.

I can't exactly say after watching the butchering process that I could repeat it. I think it takes some one who doubles as Indiana Jones to fully get into the swing of things. But I will say, that I will never look at bluefin tuna in quite the same way.

And I know when I slice into the kindai at work I will spend a little more time and a lot more care not to waste a single piece and to make the dish as memorable for the client as it was for me in the preparation process. That's what it's all about. And it is indeed a very special fish.

The post Le Bernardin: How to Butcher Bluefin Tuna (Kindai) first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

“I’m not freaking out.”

“It’s written all over your face. It’s just food.”

“It’s not just food. It’s NOT just food. How can you say that? I have tons of mise en place to finish by 4:30P.M. and I’m not even close.”

“It will get done.”

“Yeah, but not by 4:30 P.M. and I have to set up the station and I don’t even know where it all goes yet and I haven’t even toasted the croutons or plated the…”

“Look. It’s just food.”

“Are you crazy? If you have nothing to do then why don’t you help me out?!?!”

(laughs) “Sorry, I have to get back to my station. But Amy, really – it’s just food…”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“Relax.”

It’s irritating when a 25 year old hot shot departs sage words of cooking wisdom to a freaked out in-the-shitz 34 year old. Even more enlightening when he’s absolutely right. Damn, I hate that.

It’s just food.

This new cooking mantra, as I’ve learned, can be applied to everything that is spinning out of control – it’s just a haircut, it’s just money, it’s just work, it’s just New York, it’s just …

Of course the reality is that food is not just food. You’ve got to care deeply about it to spend day and night in a kitchen. And we all care. But it’s not a life or death situation either. It might seem that way at the time, but it’s not. Hence, the beauty of the “It’s just…” mantra.

Some cooks have mastered the art of making total chaos look like a beautifully choreographed tango. Some enjoy it, live for it, get high on it. And then there’s me who, if not 100 percent prepared by the time the first reservation rolls around, starts to panic.

Panic and fear helps no one in the kitchen. Or in life. When I start to freak in the kitchen here’s what happens: I do everything ass backwards. Even the muscles in my hands that know how to chop, cut, dice, and slice better than my brain ever will start second guessing themselves and all my preparation turns out like merde.

I make bad decisions. I don’t finish tasks completely. I spend half my time going and back and forth to the walk-in refrigerators to grab items I should have taken all at once the first time around.

I waste time.

I cut corners causing myself to re-do things I should have done correctly to begin with. Like maybe I should have dipped the apples in the lemon water before cooking them and letting them turn brown? Or perhaps I should have used the baby carrots the sous chef talked about the previous day instead of the regular carrots? How about making the brunoise a brunoise not a mish-mash of different sizes? Or plating the salmon like I was shown – not like I was in a hurry?

I can’t think, prioritize, or organize.

My inner voice starts screaming: I am a complete and total failure. I suck. Shoot me now. Why am I here? You’re too old. Too slow. Too, too, too…

But really, it’s just food…

(sigh)

The post Le Bernardin: It’s Just Food first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

“It’s your profession. You use a knife all day and you should have one that you can sharpen easily and that stays sharper longer. Japanese knives are expensive but it’s like – why race in a Pinto when you can win in a Porsche? Why wear a Timex when you can sport a Rolex? If you’re cooking at the top level then don’t you want to have the tools to take you all the way?”

Why, yes I do want to have the very best tools.

So I took his advice (and many of you who left comments on my last post) and headed to Korin’s knife store in Lower Manhattan.

Wow! I knew nothing about Japanese knives. I mean, I had heard of Shun (which they don’t even carry) and Global (which they do carry, but they don’t display) but Masamoto? Nenox-Honyaki? Misono?

These knives have tradition behind their names. Serious tradition. In some cases dating back over 800 years. Many of these families made samurai swords and now have turned their attention to crafting knives.

I asked the sales lady to show me a range of chef’s knives in different prices. She pulled down a ridiculously expensive Ninox that was beautiful but out of my budget. The next one she displayed was a Masamoto Virgin Steel (first press steel that is handmade and not reformed over) that was sharp enough to split hairs but also too pricey.

And then she laid down a mid priced one and I knew immediately if was for me. Yes, I might be a sucker for marketing, but the dragon etched in the blade caught my eye. I had heard of the name, Misono, which is known for making excellent blades with pure Swedish steel – some of the purest steel in the world right now.

I picked it up, felt it in my hands, and handed over my credit card.

My knife is amazing. I had no idea how much difference it could make in daily preparation, speed, and accuracy.

It’s true they require a little more care. Mine is carbon steel which can rust and should not be used to cut acidic foods. Also, they need to be sharpened on a wet stone preferably at the end of ever 12 hour day to keep the edge sharp.

Any sharp knife serves it’s purpose. And nothing is more frustrating than a dull knife in the kitchen. What might be right for me, is not necessarily going to work for a home cook.

But after using Japanese knives I will never go back. Now I open my after shift beers with my Wûstof knives – at least they’re still getting some action

Technorati Tags: chef’s knives, japanes knives, knives, korin, Misono

The post The Professional Edge first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I mean I got the job I really, really, really want. I should be clinking cosmopolitans. But instead, I am sitting here staring at this computer wondering how I’m going to make ends meet.

How do I get by on a salary that I was making when I first graduated from college 14 years ago?

Listen, you and me are going to have to figure this out together. One of you out there in cybersapce has got to be in financial services and looking for a pet project.

Scratch that idea – if you’re in financial services then you’re probably loosing your job tomorrow and I’m the one that’s going to have to support you!

It’s one thing to be living abroad and sucking up the lack of sufficient funds to “experience” and “adventure”. It’s another thing to be on home turf and chomping down on knuckle sandwiches.

Was it me who said that the street food here was delicious? I feel like I am the street food now.

Ah, well, we can’t die with our money. We can’t take it with us. It’s only life after all and I certainly won’t starve – that’s the great thing about working in a kitchen. Oh heck, this job is sort of like my postdoc in beautiful food. Why not splurge on education right?

On the sunny side: the restaurant is stunning, the kitchen sleek and modern, the food exquisitie, the staff exceptional, and the air circulation fantastic. What more could a girl – who used to hide out in the walk-in refrigerator to escape the nauseating heat – ask for?

A ridiculously high salary? Thank God for overtime. I need all the hours I can get.

But really that’s the breaks. As one of my girlfriend’s put it: you chose the profession.

Yes I did. And If I want to learn from the best, then I have to suck it up. And I will, because I do. (I’m sounding like a marriage ceremony).

If you don’t love food, love sweating it out over the fire, love crazy people who swing sauté pans around like swords and somehow have time to joke while turning out 210 covers in one evening – then you certainly won’t love being a cook because (wait for the drum roll….) there’s no money it!

Now that I’ve got that out of my system, it’s time to find a knife grinder in New York so I can start work with my knives razor sharp.

Either that or an organ grinder.

I wonder if I could make extra tips as a dancing monkey? I’m sure I have a red vest somewhere…

The post Le Bernardin: One Cook For Sale first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

I am so excited I don’t even know where to begin. Part of me feels like I just walked out of 1940’s Broadway musical where the leading lady shows up in NYC with two suitcases and a lot of nerve and just dives right in.

Come on, you know that song… “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere..”

That’s me pretty much, except I showed up with 16 boxes (half of which were shipped from France), 2 suitcases, 2 army duffle bags, and my knife case.

And the most important item: a wine opener.

I have learned through living in 6 different apartments, 4 different cities, 2 different countries over the last 5 years that having a wine opener is really the key ingredient.

Everything else can wait. But damn, that glass of wine just cannot wait.

When you’re sitting around staring at an empty apartment wine makes everything look rosy. Or it knocks you out cold so you don’t have to think about the grim reality of starting all over again.

I’m still in the rosy phase, but depending on how my furniture looks when it gets delivered, I might end up in the drain-the-bottle-in-one-whole-swig phase. We’ll see.

But that’s what I love about this city – everything can be delivered right to your doorstep even if it’s on the 17th floor. How cool is that?

No wonder the French love to visit New York. They don’t have to climb up and down multiple flights of stairs all day long.

Today I had 6 bags of groceries from Whole Foods delivered plus multiple boxes from Bed Bath & Beyond and I didn’t even have to lift a finger. I didn’t have to drag my little Parisian wheel-y cart through bumpy cobblestone streets and up five flights of stairs.

Aside from settling in to my new apartment, I’m peddling my resumé around once again. And this time it’s hard. I’m anxious to see what it’s like to cook in a New York kitchen, but not so energized about starting from scratch.

I know things will be different here. I know there are kitchen systems, regulations, cultures that are unfamiliar. I’m sure I will be flung mercilessly to the bottom of the totem pole and then struggle to inch my way back up again.

I’m positive that I will be cooking beside 20-something’s that have boundless energy while varicose veins climb faster and darker up my legs.

Oh well, as everyone says: fuhgghedabowdit. I suppose that’s a little like: tant pis.

The street food alone is reason enough to move. Oh my God is it delicious. I’ve been eating off the streets since my pots and pans have yet to arrive and all I have to say is: I LOVE NEW YORK!

I thought the crèpes in France were tasty, but I’m sorry, they are nothing compared to the spicy stewed chicken tacos I had for lunch today oozing with sour cream and melted cheese or the philly cheesesteak I had for dinner – again oozing with carmelized onions, peppers, and more melted cheese.

Nathan’s hotdog? Yes please. Halal gyro? I’ll take two. Fruit smoothie? I need my vitamins. Salted pretzel with mustard? Yup. Spinach empanadas? Oh hell yeah.

Work-out at the gym? No thank you. I’m too busy stuffing my face right now.

Maybe I should re-name my blog: Ms. Glaze Eats Manhattan. Then again, maybe not.

Just so you don’t get the wrong impression about my feelings about Paris, I should let you know that I’m applying to only French restaurants.

I’m not sure how restaurants here feel about cooks blogging about their kitchen experiences, so I will keep mine on the back burner until I find out what the proper etiquette is.

My former employer was supportive about my writing and I will always be thankful for that and for everything I learned there too (bien sûr!)

So here’s to New York and a new adventure! May it be just as tough, sweaty, and exhausting as the last one and filled with even more grit, grime, and elbow grease.

I’m drinking to that…

The post From Paris to New York, New Work first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.

First, watch the video (4 minutes). It’s the first part of two videos (the second on how to beignet oysters coming next week). I filmed it myself so you’ll have to excuse the low lighting and the unintentional body shots. I got a little carried away with the Brittney Spears opening too. No regrets, oysters are an aphrodisiac after all… or are they?

I bought a box of 50 oysters on Sunday (my day off) for this video and throughout the evening while I shucked them and dipped them in batter to beignet, I ate about half raw and deep fried.

Monday rolled around and I met some friends that were visiting from San Francisco and the whole day I just felt groggy. I kept thinking it must be fatigue from cooking double shifts each day day. I felt so sleepy that I had to cut our date short.

Tuesday morning I returned to work at 8AM and felt like a tractor had run over me. Looking for a shred of sympathy, I told another cook: “You know I feel really tired, I don’t feel so good”. He responded: “You don’t come to cook at a restaurant like this to be tired.”

Well, no shit sherlock.

Right before our afternoon service I could feel my intestines rolling around and I knew something was wrong. Then came the sensation that I was being knifed repeatedly in the lower gut. It came and went throughout the lunch service but I managed to withstand it.

I should say, I managed to withstand it while totally messing up every order on the planet. I heard more than my fair share of, “Ah Amy, c’est quoi ça?” (Ah Amy, what is that?) It’s really hard to hear all the long menus coming in when you’re doubled over in pain. And you know we do everything verbally. Everything has to be memorized – no point of sale system – so you’ve got to listen and be sharp. I made it through the dinner service, but just barely.

I came home and slept and returned Thursday morning to work. This time the knifing in my stomach returned accompanied with some terrible side effects. Everything started coming out of me. I mean everything and everywhere. I felt like some one was taking my intestines and tying them in knots.

Now you have to understand that when you cook in a restaurant you don’t get sick. It just doesn’t happen. If you are truly sick then you better have pnemonia or the plague or something incurable. So I was back and forth to the toliet praying that my body would soon finish evacuating itself before the lunch service began trying not to make to big an issue of it.

Of course no one even asked if I was okay. They just kind of looked at me like maybe I drank too much or something the night before. I know I’m older, a woman, and American but, if some one is really sick don’t you think you’re going to ask if the obvious: Are you alright?

Thankfully one of the excutive chefs took interest in my well-being and asked if I was okay and offered to get me some medecin. I explained in my best French/American sign language that everything was coming out of me. “Tu as le Gatro” he told me.

I find this name for malady Gastrointestinal really funny because in Paris gastronomical restaurants are nicknamed “Gastros” as opposed to “Bistros”. So yes, I had le Gastro while I was working at un Gastro. (no fault but my own though, they were my oysters)

The ever-kind chef, brought me back pills to stop me up and they worked. I managed to pull off another day of two services, lunch and dinner, thanks to the pills and basically slogged my way through Friday. However, I found out later that when you have “gastro” you’re not supposed to take these pills while you’re body is trying to rid itself of problem. It only prolongs the pain. Which it did. Enough said.

So now I’m okay. And what I’ve come to conclude is that I think I must be allergic to oysters. I always seem get sick when I eat more than three or four.

But honestly, I do love them. And I love to pop them open and eat them raw straight from the ocean with just a squeeze of lemon. I only wish that my stomach would be more supportive of this habit.

Technorati Tags: how to shuck oysters, oysters, video

The post Oysters: How to Shuck ‘Em first appeared on Amy Glaze's Pommes d'Amour.