So much for Semper Fi do or die!
I’m spending my first day at my new position as Chef de Partie staring at the ceiling, flat on my back, sick in bed. How do you like them apples? This is such a bad joke, it’s not even worthy of a three tap drum roll.
Despite the onset of ma crève yesterday I ironed my chef’s jacket and my chef’s pants too laying them aside for a quick morning exit. I even trekked out in the rain to the 14th arrondissement to get all my knives sharpened.
My knife guy does everyone’s couteaux in Paris including the staff at Hotel Crillon and Le Meurice. He grinds many a galley cook’s knives to razor sharp precision – and he’ll be happy to do yours too. (address at the bottom of post). It’s a lot of fun to see his enormous five foot grinding wheel turning while he holds the blades against it, sparks flying everywhere.
Every time I go he tells me to be careful with my freshly sharpened knives. And every time without fail I slice one of my ten doigts without even noticing it. That’s how crazy sharp they are. You don’t know you’re cut until blood gushes everywhere and you realize it’s your blood that’s making the mess. The nice thing about smooth cuts (as opposed to cuts from serrated knives) is that you really don’t even feel them. Until you start cooking…
I had my first chef’s knife professionally sharpened twelve years ago while working at Ristorante Ecco in San Francisco. I was so darned proud of that knife. It was a beautiful enormous Wüsthof chef’s knife (Global who?) I didn’t have a satchel of knives like other cooks, just had that one German workhorse and at a whopping $64, it was all I could afford. In hindsight it was too long and heavy for me, but I didn’t care. I just loved the weight of it in my hand and the power it wielded.
After a month at the Garde Manger station my trusty steed began to dull past the point of a sharpening rod’s aid. Since everyone’s knives were dull he Head Chef, Wendy, called the knife man to come in and grind all of our blades. She warned me that my knife would be very, very sharp afterwards.
Yeah, okay, thanks for the tip Chef.
Slicing beefy red tomatoes horizontally into rounds, I noticed a burgundy color juice running all over the cutting board. I thought it was the tomato. Nope, it was my finger squirting blood everywhere. I unknowingly swiped the inside of my left index finger, which was holding the tomato steady, with my right hand and the tip of my knife across the inside bone joint down to my finger’s base.
I should have gone to the hospital for stitches right then and there. The cut was deep tearing across the bleeding wouldn’t stop. Wendy came over with wads of papers towels holding them around my finger applying pressure in between my deep gulps for air. We bandaged it tightly and put a finger condom on it. The clock struck 6 – time for dinner service to start.
The restaurant turned out 60 covers a night, with a bare bones kitchen brigade of four cooks. There were no stagiers or apprentis dying to take over and prove their worth. There was no Grand Chef standing at the pass cleaning plates and calling out orders to step in. The Head Chef was also the meat & fish cook and the Sous Chef was also the pasta & vegetable cook. I was the garde manger and pastry cook and there was one pizza guy. And that was that.
I made some beautiful insalatas at Ristorante Ecco: spicy rocket salad with sweet fennel ribbons, bitter endive, peppery radicccio and sliced pears tossed in a tart champagne vinaigrette and garnished with a crisp lacy cheese wafer. Or, my favorite, the baby spinach salad with roasted beets (gold, pink, and crimson) and smoked trout mixed with an aged balsamic dressing. Not to mention our signature Ceasar salad and the butter lettuce with tarragon starter.
But, mixing those salads required the use of bare hands. Each ingredient was dressed separately and then added artistically together on the plate. And plastic gloves weren’t very popular back then – they certainly weren’t practical in the kitchen in any case. Think about it, you would have to change your gloves every time the different beets were dressed in order to keep the juice from staining the shaved fennel or pears. Who has time for that nonsense?
Orders flew in like witches gathering for winter solstice and I was out of my mind trying to get cold entrées finished in time before the dessert orders started up. Whipping together salads in record speed, I felt my index finger bitterly stinging. I looked down in horror to discover that both the bandaid and the finger condom were missing.
Oh fuhhhhhhhhhh-dge.
Waitresses grabbed salads off the ledge of my station before I had a chance to delicately poke through them. And more servers ran back yelling: “Where’s table 5? Where’s table 7?”.
I frantically turned back to the salads I was preparing searching for any remnants of plastic, but none was to be found. I spent that whole night in fear that sooner or later a customer was going to chew my bloody bandages, report it to the server, who in turn would tell the head chef, who would then fire me on the spot.
I waited.
Luckily for me nothing happened. I would hate to think that a client ate the bandage and the finger condom. I dunno, maybe they mistook it for calamari? It must have been awfully chewy. Hopefully it magically found its way to the garbage can, but I still can’t be positive. My finger eventually healed although it took a good long month and I still have the fine white scar to remind me. But, at least it’s a neat bulging line and not some jagged saber tooth monstrosity.
Don’t worry, that was a good long time ago and one of my first real cooking jobs. I would never do that to your food today. Never!
So, tomorrow I intend to start my new position assuming my fever comes down, my throat isn’t blistery, and my head stops threatening to explode. Luckily for me, they only laughed when I called at 7 A.M. to say “I’m sick”. They told me not to worry and that my post will still be waiting for me.
Did you want that knife guy’s address in Paris?
Coutellerie D’Allésia
Affutage & Reargenture
161 Rue D’Alésia
Paris, 75014
Metro: Plaisance, line 13
Tel: 01 45 42 39 67 (you must call in advance to make sure he’s not on assignment)
P.S. If you tell him that “Amy the American” sent you he’ll be happy. I don’t know if it will get you a discount, but I told him I’d mention him on my website. He asked me to send my friends 😉
Don’t you just love sharp knives?
My Father and I were cleaning game once. He stabbed me, by accident. We both felt the tip of his knife hit the bone on my right index finger.
He stopped, looked at me and asked, “Was that your hand?”
I wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t hit bone.
Good times.
I still have a lovely scar.
YIKES. Shivers all the way down to the back of my knees… I’ve noticed that cuts from ultra-sharp knives heal VERY quickly though.
Sorry to hear you’re sick — get well soon and go show ’em your stuff!
Hope the eventual first day in your new position goes well. Those freshly sharpened knife cuts are the worst–I usually notice it when I start working with peppers (yow). And good thing the missing finger condom story had a happy ending! 😉
Hmmm….maybe I will have to send mine over. They could use a good sharpening. I know how to do it but have no desire to do it. Trying to find a good place that isn’t just going to use some 10 dollar sharpener is hard these day!!! I hope you feel better.
Dave
I was in the knife department of BHV last september, and the special tomato knives caught my eye (so did the flirtatious vendeuse, actually, so I was motivated to stay and discuss… er, sharpness). When I finally got to deploy it as part of my batterie de cuisine, I wished I’d bought more to give to all my friends. That baby really works!! Farewell for evah to that nervy moment as you saw back and forth wondering whether the blade will eventually pierce the tomato skin or slide off and pierce you. Highly recommended.
I feel your pain. Many many years ago I worked in the kitchen of a summer camp. While using the deli slicer to make platters of turkey and salami, I sliced the tip of my finger off. A few bandages, a finger condom, and a little, okay, a lot of bleeding, I never found my finger tip. I’m sure an unsuspecting camper ate it – or maybe, wishful thinking here, it ended up in the slop bucket and ended up in the pig feed at the farm down the street that we sold our food scraps too.
Amy, that’s so funny. I go to the same knife guy. He is such a lovely person ! I wrote about him on my blog too, with photo :
http://moveablefeast.typepad.com/a_moveable_feast/2007/02/cutting_edge_te.html
Sorry to hear you are sick, that is not so funny. Hope you get well soon for a good start as party-chef 😉
Ulla
Mad William – Yikes! He hit the bone? zoot alors! At least he didn’t stab you in the back 🙂
Tinfoiled – I’m back at it now, and believe it or not I slice my finger just pulling my knives out of the case. Talk about accident prone. Definitely felt like a big idiot asking for the bandaids after ten minutes of my first day.
Stu – Gotta love tomatoes knives. After my little mishaps I always try to use a serrated knife for tomotoes. Either you cut yourself if your knives are sharp or if they’re dull they slip of the skin and you cut yourself because your pushing down so hard to make the incision.
One Food Guy – You slice off your finger tip??? I hope not too much of it! That happened to guy I was working with at Ecco on the meat slicer too and was working right next to him and saw it happen. he sliced off a little more of his finger tip. We rushed him to the hospital with the remaining piece. I never saw him again so I don’t know if he was alright.
Ulla – Can’t wait to talk with you and get the dirt on Helene DaRoze. Hope your hanging in there.
Your story of the missing bandaid and finger condom reminded me of a funny episode in Chef – the BBC series with Lenny Henry – if you have not yet viewed this hilarious series, do so, it is really funny and I think chefs will doubly enjoy it.
The recipes are delicious – thank you so much.
ugh im feeling nauseous jus thinking about chewing on that bloody finger condom… lol
what do you have against global knives?
Ouch! When I was a baby, my Mom made a deep cut in her finger with a butcher knife when preparing lamb. Now the strange fact is, she usually almost faints at the sight of blood. But because she was home alone, she wrapped her bleeding finger in bandages and alcohol, and drove herself to the hospital!
That makes me paranoid about double checking my salads from now on… especially things that might look like calimari with tomato sauce.
and that knife guy sounds awesome. i wonder if he names customers from other countries all the same way.
For the longest time I always ordered salad dressing on the side because people used their bare hands. But now the times have changed (in the U.S.) and most people are required to wear gloves at all times.
As for the knives. I loooooooove Global knives. Anyone who cooks all day long appreciates their thin precision blades and their light weight. But twelve years ago there was really only two choices: Henkles or Wustof. All I meant, was that Global wasn’t around to choose from.
And I thought I was the only one to serve bloody band-aids to patrons in a high-end restaurant! I was on garde manger duty at a prominent hotel in New York, preparing salads and the very same thing happened. Nobody mentioned it either. I just can’t imagine where that band-aid ended up.
Ok, my fingers are hurting and my stomach is churning! I read all of your post, but couldn’t finish all the horror stories in the comments 😉
Blood is something nowadays that really worries me. What if someone with a disease did that and then someone else ate it? Do you think this is common? Yikes!
As for knives, I have never used Global, but I recently used a top of the line Wusthoff (sp?) bread knife to cut a hard, crusty round loaf. Oh.My.Gosh. It went into the bread like BUTTER! I started cutting paper thin slices just to see if it could. It did!
I had soooo much fun with that knife that I would be oh so happy if I even had the small version! Now I realize why it looks soooo easy on TV…because they use the right tools!
Great post!
Hi Ms Glaze your post prompted me to sharpen my knife last week. I got out my wetstone and new sharpening guide and ground away. I was quite disappointed with my results. I thought I might give the steel a go and it seems to have done the trick. Hardly professional but good enough for me.
I bought a cooks knife from a catering equipment shop which seemed to be okay. I can’t remember the make, I think it was Spanish.
OUCH
OUCH
OUCH
! ! !
Hi Amy,another great story! I laughed and gasped as I red it,but this is a part of the makings of a Chef! it prolly won’t be your last as there are many years ahead and the circumstances will all improve your talent of becoming a true Samuri Chef, LOL
Even though I no longer work professionaly people are amazed every time I pick up a knife and use it,and so they shall with you. Give it time and you’ll “Nip it in the bud”
Big Grins,Buckley
It’s actually 181 Rue D’Alesia 🙂
la coutellerie d’alesia vous remercie d’avoir parlé d’elle
merci pr les recettes !!!
a bientot
Yes the right tools make all the dofference in the world especially when it comes to cooking. I saw a comment above mentioning Wusthoff knives. I think they are some of the best around. There quality and durability are unmatched, in my opinion. Good old German design!
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