Somehow I was more excited than nervous the morning of my first day working in carnes. I think this was largely due to the fact that I wasn’t dealing with so many unknowns as I was the very first day I started at the restaurant. I have been perpetually sleep deprived since January 12th, but I actually woke up before my alarm (or any of the other five that go off in my room every morning) Thursday morning. OK, so clearly, I was really excited—new mis-en-place, new recipes, new methods, new techniques, new chefs. In all honesty, I couldn’t wait. And this feeling supplanted any other that I might have had.
Being a woman in a kitchen is difficult. I don’t say that to elicit any feelings of pity or even empathy; I mention it simply as a matter of fact. When it gets down to it, there just aren’t that many women in the kitchen—anywhere—and I don’t think there ever will be. The sheer amount of hours required of a cook and atypical schedule (working when everyone else is playing, playing while everyone else is working) poses a challenge for women if they want to have a family. At the end of the day, this is how I see it. I can get over and put aside the grueling physical demands of a kitchen, the inherent boys club and the perverted nature of restaurants. For women, there is no question that these aspects certainly make working in a kitchen a more challenging and perhaps less desirable environment, but I truly believe that women pursue other food industry endeavors to permit the space and time to have children.
In any event, as a woman in a kitchen, I am constantly hyper aware of my sex. I was the only woman in the kitchen at db (aside from those that worked in pastry) and I constantly felt an added pressure when it came to proving myself. I spent the first months doing everything for myself when it came to physical work—climbing on top of counters to reach stuff, lifting crazy heavy buckets and pots, and most importantly, refusing help of any sort—in order prove to the guys that I worked with that I was capable of doing what they could do. After a certain period of time, when I had made it clear that I was strong—physically and mentally—the guys at db cut me some slack and help was forced on me. Interestingly enough, I’ve been shocked by the ways the men in this kitchen insist on doing more physical work than the women in the kitchen. In fact, when it came time to take our very heavy bucket of pots and pans to the dishwasher (it always takes two people) in primeras, for the most part, it was always and only a job for the hombres. But what’s shocking to me is how un-sexist it felt. I’m sure that if I analyzed it enough, I would realize some inherent sexism in this, but the attitudes of my coworkers and chef instructors indicated otherwise.
What’s different about this kitchen is that there is definitely a feeling that women can’t hack it at the top. I would be very interested to know just how many women have been offered a contract (i.e. a paying job) in the restaurant, in the back of house. Aside from one woman who works in carnes and one who works in pescados (whose responsibilities are limited to carrying trays to the front of house drop off point), the remainder of women work in primeras and pasteleria. I know this is not by coincidence.
So this was my trepidation heading into carnes. I would be the second woman to work in the station and my chef instructor and chef de parti are both incredibly and very powerfully masculine. I didn’t want to be cast aside or regulated to some seemingly unimportant, boring task. Lucky for me, Canario, the former mini-sous chef of primeras, now works in carnes. He always used my mis-en-place as examples for our partida, commenting (positively) on my knife skills. I guess, in some respects, I have some “kitchen cred” with him. He knows that I am capable despite the language barrier (and despite being female). I was nervous that I was going to have to spend the day watching my new partida-mates doing mis-en-place as opposed to doing any actual work, but Canario immediately took me under his wing. He called himself the boss and me, the assistant.
Canario works on the egg dish (“huevo” is how it’s referred to), which they’ve changed completely this past week. The dish is comprised of a paper-thin slice of a bresaola looking meat, a sous-vide cooked egg, two half-dollar sized mushroom slices topped with olive oil and salt, a pea shoot, truffle royale cream, and codorniz (small bird)-based caldo.
The caldo has been going through a lot of trial and error. Our executive chef just hasn’t been pleased with the results. Canario was working on version X (think 42) when I arrived Thursday morning. Our first task? Brown ground pigeon and codorniz meat in a casserole pan the size of a saucer that kids use for sleds. We weren’t allowed to use but the tiniest amount of oil, which meant that we literally couldn’t walk away from the pan for a second. We had to constantly scrape and scrape and scrape the bottom of the pan to make sure that nothing stuck or burned. The stoves that carnes and pescados use are Charvets and make two opposing islands on their end of the kitchen. You can access and work from all four sides of the burners, grills and salamanders. They are amazing. I regard them as true pieces of art and places of worship. Canario and I were on opposite sides of each other, which allowed him to simultaneously watch my pan and his. I wanted so desperately to be doing everything right, which was difficult considering that my chef instructor was lording over me and my pescados friends kept coming over to comment on how red and sweaty my face was (it was my first time back in front of the hot line!)—no one was going to make my first day on this new station easy, but they teased me in a semi-loving and gentle manner.
After we browned the meat sufficiently, we removed it from the pan, sweat shallots, star anise and black pepper in butter, deglazed with sherry and added in “caldo Monday” which is the general chicken stock that Monday, the chef de parti of Monday (remember detention for primeras?) makes. Once this liquid came to a boil, we removed it from the flame, added it to the pot of meat and cooked it in a pressure cooker for two hours. When it had finished, we strained the mixture, reserved the liquid and reduced it down to the desired consistency. I. Couldn’t. Believe. I. Was. Really. Cooking.
Canario speaks less English than I do Spanish (practically impossible), but the remarkable thing is that we are able to communicate with each other really well. This requires a lot of effort on both of our parts—I’m talking broken English and Spanish, some Spanglish, wild, over-exaggerated gestures, Pictionary, and lots of noises. It also necessitates a complete casting aside of inhibitions and embarrassment. For instance, when we stared on the umpteenth batch of the huevo caldo this week, which involved cleaning out the pigeon and codornices and then grinding the meat, our “conversation” went something like this:
Canario: “AHHHH-LEX!”
Me: “Si?”
Canario: “Yo (pointing to himself) areba (pointing upstairs), tu (pointing at me) aqui (pointing to the floor).”
Me: “OK.”
Canario: “Tu, medico codornices (holding a codorniz in his hands, miming cleaning its guts and insides out, which he likes to mime because it looks perverted). Despues, tu brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (raising his clasped hands in the air and pushing down through it as though it were incredibly heavy and pushing back).” And then, holding an empty hotel pan under the meat grinder, he motioned to it saying, “One, choo, chree! Valle?”
Me: “Si. Despues film?”
Canario: “Si! Siempre! Muy bien.”
Me: “OK, are you coming back downstairs?”
Canario: “No entiendo.”
Me: “You (pointing at him) areba (pointing upstairs) ahora. Despues, you (pointing at him) aqui (pointing at the floor) conmigo?”
Canario: With raised eyebrows and wide, comprehending eyes, both arms pumping in the air, “Si! Si!”
Me: “Hasta luego.”
Canario: “See you latcher?”
Me: “Si.”
Canario: “Yes, we can. Obama.” His favorite phrase.
And that’s pretty much how we converse. In sum, Canario wanted me to clean and grind the meat while he went upstairs to do mis-en-place.
Because the new huevo caldo is a process and takes such an enormous amount of time, Canario and I stayed in the downstairs kitchen cooking most of the way through the lunch service. I was slightly bummed—I didn’t have a chance to see the dishes and how they were plated or—at the very least—the way the station gets set up and where things are hidden and stored.
But I didn’t have much to complain about. I got to cook for real. I was working on a new recipe and being given the chance to develop it based on the feedback of the executive chef. So really, I had nothing to complain about. And—everything to thank Canario for.
