Talking with My Mouth Full (8 page)

SIX

Coffee, Baguettes, and Borscht in the Culinary School Kitchen

I ARRIVE AT
8:30 a.m. and change into my whites. Someone’s making coffee. I never really drank coffee in college, but now I’m on my feet all day and out all night and can’t believe it hasn’t always been in my life. When morning comes I crave it. I pour in whole milk and a heaping spoonful of sugar. In the kitchen, alongside the day’s
mise-en-place
, there are French baguettes from the pastry kitchen and a block of Gruyère cheese set out on the rolling racks. We rip off chunks of the baguette and lop off hunks of nutty, buttery Gruyère, with its slightly crystalline texture. With our chef knives, we make rough sandwiches, and happily gnaw on them as we start the day’s lesson.

We were one of the first classes at Peter Kump’s New York Cooking School’s shiny new location on West Twenty-third Street. Our class was fifteen people, representing nine different countries. Welcome to New York.

The first day, I received my knives and tool kit, a briefcase full of all the major items a chef could want. There was an eight-inch chef knife, a boning knife, a paring knife, a serrated bread knife, a tournée knife, spatulas, a lemon zester, wooden spoons, pastry scrapers, a melon baller, a metal spoon, a slotted spoon, and a pair of kitchen shears.

We started with fundamentals: knife skills, food safety, culinary math and equivalences. We learned about seasoning and ingredients. Then we moved on to stocks, soups, and sauces. We learned the five so-called mother sauces, the foundation of French sauce making, like béchamel and hollandaise. Finally, we got to actually cook, to learn about direct heat and indirect heat, dry heat (pan frying, grilling, and roasting) versus wet heat (poaching, braising, stewing, and steaming).

Once we’d been taught the foundations, we moved on to vegetables, grains, and eggs. We did a month-long section on pastry, starting with essentials like dough, bread, custards, fruit-based desserts, and chocolate work. And we learned cake-making, plated desserts, ice cream, and confections.

The theory came easily to me. I loved the academic aspect of it, the why and the how. The hardest lesson for me, which I think is true for many people, was learning timing. Patience was not something that came naturally to me, but in cooking it is the quintessential skill. Consistency was another attribute I discovered needed work on my part. When I diced vegetables, it was painstaking work to make sure that every single piece looked the same: ¼-inch cubed for small, ¾-inch cubed for large. It’s a matter of practice and precision.

My class was a microcosm of politics and opinions. Students from Latvia to Japan. Edward was an ex–postal service employee whose knee injury had taken him off his route. He’d been given a desk job but quit, saying, “I can’t sit here. All I want to do is cook.”

Anna was from the Philippines, via Hong Kong, a corporate consultant, who took a year sabbatical just to live in New York and learn how to cook. There was a guy from the Dominican Republic and a girl from the Bronx. It was inspiring to learn their backgrounds and reasons for being there, so different from my own.

We started at nine in the morning with a lesson about what we’d be cooking that day. Then we cooked from ten to two, whether it was making bread or pastry or eggs, or learning how to sauté or braise. Between us all, we’d put together a multicourse meal. Then, from two to three, we’d sit down and eat it together.

I took so much pleasure in finding explanations for things I had never taken the time to learn before, things that made cooking so much easier. The biggest revelation was how little I actually knew about food. I loved the jargon, the language of a kitchen, which was all completely foreign: bouquet garni, mirepoix, fumet, forced meat, consommé, gastrique. But most of all, I loved the logic that I found in the details. I learned what kind of shoes to wear (loose, close-toed, and easily removable, in case anything hot or sharp falls on your foot and you have to kick the shoe off quickly). I learned that there are buttons on both sides of a chef jacket so that a chef can get one shirtfront dirty in the kitchen, then rebutton it to present a clean shirtfront to the dining room.

I reveled in the most basic rules and techniques that are the foundation of professional cooking. For example, it is essential to use a sharp knife: the sharper the knife, the more fluid and precise your work and the less likely you are to get hurt. Dull knives are a danger—they slip far more often. Or this: the first step in cutting up any fruit or vegetable is to create a flat surface on it; split your onion in half and put the flat side down so that it doesn’t roll around on your cutting board. Eureka! A whole world of knowledge became clear, one lesson at a time. Even the simple act of putting a wet paper towel under the cutting board every morning so it would stay in place made me feel like I was part of a special society. I learned to use a hand towel to create a base for my mixing bowl so it didn’t slide around as I whisked sauces, mayonnaise, and vinaigrettes with one hand and poured ingredients in with the other. Cooking, it turned out, was completely rational and scientific! I was in love.

After lunch, from three to five, there would be a workshop. We’d learn about international cuisine—Chinese, Thai, Italian, Spanish—or wine studies, restaurant management, or menu planning. I would practically skip home each night at six, elated. I adored my teachers. I was using my hands and thinking, too, in a new way. It was a relief to not be in front of a computer. And suddenly, for the first time in my life, I was one of those people who had a calling. I wanted to work with food.

One day our teacher suggested we each prepare a dish that represented our heritage. One person made
tres leches
cake. The guy from Japan made tempura. My friend Anna taught us about dim sum. My teacher, a New York Jew, suggested I make something reflecting my East European ancestry. She gave me a book of recipes and I decided to make beet borscht with flanken (pronounced “flunken”), a strip of beef from the chuck end of the short rib.

When I was growing up, my mother made cold borscht with dill and crème fraîche, but this borscht was hot, with turnips, parsnips, and carrots, and far more substantial. I peeled so many beets that I was stained bright pink from head to toe by the end of class. It was hearty and delicious. I made so much that my roommate and I lived on it for days.

With Chef-Instructor Frank Garafolo at my culinary school graduation

I thought I would be in New York for six to eight months for my classes and then return, triumphant, to Canada. I could not have imagined how easily I would fall in love with the city. Perhaps that in itself was a sign of my naiveté.

I have a theory about Canadians. They’re great world travelers, but they don’t tend to move around a lot inside their own country compared to Americans. That’s mostly because there are only a certain number of cities in Canada, only a handful of urban centers worth living in when you are young, and therefore fewer options for something new. In the United States, there are countless major cities, endless choices for university or job opportunities.

Like many of my friends, I went away to college but returned after graduation. This is understandable: if you are going to leave a city like Toronto for school, you’re probably going to go back when school is done, as the city provides the most opportunity. Of all my friends from home, I’m one of about five who aren’t still there.

I also imagined I would go back to Toronto because my family was still in a bit of turmoil, mostly connected to Alan’s struggles. Everyone’s proud of me and they are all very supportive, but because I left, I’ve missed a lot of what has happened with my brother. Leaving has come with its share of guilt, mostly self-imposed, although my mother has chipped in, whether she has meant to or not.

I guess I don’t blame her. For a while, I’m sure she thought I would move back to Toronto and become a lawyer and live next door to her. All my girlfriends in the last several years have had children and moved back to the neighborhood we grew up in. Maybe she believes if I hadn’t left, that’s what I would have done.

My first apartment in New York was in Murray Hill, on Third Avenue and Thirty-third Street, above La Pizzeria. A friend from summer camp, Jamie, an equities trader, had this tiny apartment with a second room. You could barely call it a bedroom; it was off the living room, roughly eight by nine feet, with one small alley-facing window, through which I would lie in bed spying on the neighbors.

He had been using it as his office, but he was never home. He started work at six in the morning and was asleep by ten each night, five, or sometimes six, days a week. He barely saw anyone. He told me to just pay him a few hundred bucks a month until I found something better. I stayed almost two years.

When I finished my course work, I had to pick an externship, a job in the food industry, to complete my degree. I was convinced I would naturally get a job in the test kitchen for
Gourmet
. My dreams of being a food writer would be realized, as easy as that.

I went to the career services director at school, Steve, to talk about my plan, telling him proudly, “Now I’d like to work at the test kitchen for the Food Network or
Gourmet
magazine.”

“That’s nice, Gail,” he said, “but my advice to you is, don’t do it. You’ve only ever made every dish once. No offense, but you still don’t know how to cook. The only way to truly solidify your skills is to work in a restaurant and cook on the line. You just can’t get that experience at culinary school.”

He was right. Real-world experience is something I lacked. It’s the same with any schooling, really. Completing law school isn’t the same as working in a law office. Just because you’ve taken a course in obstetrics as a medical student doesn’t mean you know how to deliver a baby. No one is a chef after culinary school. You’re barely a cook. You need practical experience. Begrudgingly, I took his advice.

I am a strong, smart woman!
I told myself. I refused to fit the stereotype of the girl who can’t handle a high-pressure kitchen. I thought I wanted to stick with French food, and when Steve listed restaurant choices, I stopped him at Le Cirque 2000. The name to me was mythical. At the time, it was one of only a handful of restaurants in New York awarded four stars by the
New York Times
. It was an institution. Sirio Maccioni, the owner, is still one of the most renowned front-of-house men in existence.

I went for an interview and handed chef Sottha Khun my résumé. He had been the restaurant’s sous chef under Daniel Boulud in its original location at the Mayfair Hotel and had taken over as chef when Daniel left in 1992 to open his eponymous restaurant. He barely glanced at my résumé, but he hired me on the spot.

I would go on to work in two kitchens: Le Cirque for only six weeks and Vong for a few months. In that whole time, I was the only woman in both. It was amazing and disappointing, but not unusual. And I would soon learn why.

SEVEN

Working the Line

MY SHIFT AT
Le Cirque lasts forever. At midnight, I am soaping down the steel countertops. I feel beaten and exhausted. I steal through the prep areas into the pastry kitchen. There are actual women here, and there is a modicum of calm. They’re still putting out dishes, moving methodically. They speak softly. I must look pathetic. They slide me a blackberry soufflé, that night’s special. It comes out of the oven stiff and steaming, deep purple, with incredible height. A brisk wind would cause it to collapse, but in front of me at that moment it’s still standing. I perch on one of the countertops and pour crème anglaise into it—a traditional whipped French custard of eggs, sugar, vanilla, and hot milk, in a little creamer. The blackberry seeds crunch in my teeth, the tartness mingles with the cream. I finish it and lick my spoon. The night that’s just passed suddenly seems bearable. I pack up my knives and head home.

Ow!” I screamed, as I accidentally grabbed a scalding pan barehanded off the counter.

“Take it like a man!” another cook yelled back.

But I’m not a man! And what does that even mean, asshole?

Of course, I knew what he meant, because I had heard variations on the theme as long as I’d been around cooks: “Shake it off.” “Get back in the game.” “If you cut yourself, cauterize the wound on the stovetop and get back to the business of cooking.”

But damn, that burn hurt. Someone had put a metal sizzle platter on top of the stove and said, “Hot! No one touch this,” but I wasn’t paying attention. Seeing it so close to my station, I instinctively grabbed it to throw it into the sink, scorching each one of my fingertips in the process.

I worked through service with the searing pain. The next morning when I woke up, I had large, gruesome blisters on every single finger of my right hand. I looked like an alien, or a frog, with those crazy finger pads.

That morning I realized: I don’t want to work in this world. Not because of the wound, or because of the other cook’s gleeful response to my injury, but because I didn’t want to work in a place that could not respect me for who I was. I’m never going to be a man. And even if I were, I would want to work around people who, if I screamed in immense pain, would ask, “Are you okay?”

Did that disqualify me from kitchen work? It could not be that simple.

Anthony Bourdain’s sadistically delicious bestseller
Kitchen Confidential
would say so.

It was the first book that opened a door into the modern professional kitchen for the world to see. He was dead right about the dark humor and machismo that exist in so many kitchens. He nails the intensity and difficulty of being a young cook, working long, hot, difficult hours for very little pay.

At Le Cirque 2000, I worked six days a week. My day off, if I got one at all, changed all the time. Sometimes it was Wednesday, sometimes Monday. It was certainly never Thursday, Friday, or Saturday.

Le Cirque was at the Palace, a stunning hotel built as a private residence in 1882. There were so many cooks it made my head spin. There were butchers and pasta cooks and prep cooks and vegetable cooks. Dinner service prep started no later than eleven in the morning and usually ended well after midnight.

Let me back up for a moment and explain a bit about professional kitchens. The terminology of a kitchen was adopted by Escoffier from the French military. There’s the chef (the chief or boss), and then there’s the line. Usually there’s a fish line and a meat line. There’s the chef de cuisine (chief of the kitchen), who relays the chef’s vision and oversees day-to-day kitchen operations. Under him (or her) are the sous-chefs, who manage each line of cooks in the kitchen as the chef’s deputies.

You need to become proficient on both sides, at every station, to become a sous-chef. There’s the saucier (the much respected sauce cook), the rotisseur and the poissonnier (meat and fish cooks), and the entremetier (who cooks soups and vegetables). The garde-manger handles the cold station. That’s usually where a cook starts, with the terrines and pâtés, salads and cold appetizers. Then you work your way up the line.

The term “executive chef” is American. It’s usually interchangeable with “chef de cuisine,” but many in the industry don’t like to use it. I once used that term in conversation with acclaimed American chef Thomas Keller, who said, “ ‘executive chef’ makes this sound like a corporate office. This is a kitchen—not a corporation.”

“Got it,” I said, only slightly mortified. And I never used the term again.

Surprisingly, Le Cirque didn’t start me in the garde-manger job, the usual spot where young cooks enter the kitchen. My theory is that they figured it looked good to have a woman on display. The kitchen was open and elevated from the dining room, almost on a stage, offering diners glimpses into our work area. They positioned me at the hot appetizers, pasta, and risotto station, right out in front, on the hot line, with a clear, front-row view of the extraordinary dining room.

Rest assured it couldn’t have been because they thought I was cute: I was in my full cook’s garb, with a toque, and big tortoiseshell glasses. I was always disheveled and tired, my hair pulled back in a sweaty bun.

Le Cirque’s kitchens were massive. There was an entire second floor of prep space, and an immaculate open-service kitchen. I was the only woman. There were a handful of women in the pastry kitchen, but I rarely saw or heard from them while I was working. They were tucked away. The only reason I knew they existed was that I would sometimes sneak back there for something sweet after the main kitchen had closed and they were still getting dessert out. Like a stray dog begging at the back door.

If I’d had a really terrible night, one of them would take pity on me and slip me a soufflé. There was a soufflé special every day. Blackberry was my favorite. They were miraculous, every time.

Jacques Torres was still the pastry chef then. He is a genius at his craft for many reasons. At the restaurant he created these spectacular desserts that gave the customers a sense of magic, intricate beauty, and a deep sense of emotional satisfaction.

The signature dessert of Le Cirque was a layered opera cake in a perfect rectangular slab, about five inches across. On top was placed a tiny chocolate stove, and on the stovetop were two minute chocolate pots. In one, there was a raspberry or strawberry coulis and in the other was a mango coulis. In front was a tiled floor. It was precious, perfect, and edible!

On Sundays we started early and usually closed a bit early, too, and every Sunday it was someone else’s job to cook breakfast for everyone in the kitchen, as we were usually nursing hangovers. Often they said, “Give the job to the new kid!” It was trial by fire, a fraternity-style hazing, except I was the only one who didn’t have balls. Imagine where that puts you in the pecking order.

I had few triumphs from my time at Le Cirque, except this one Sunday morning, when everyone was especially hurting and beaten by the week. Someone said, “It’s Gail’s turn to make us breakfast!”

I made scrambled eggs with onions, fresh herbs, and cheese on buttered toast for the whole crew. It was the simplest food, but it was for almost forty guys, all of whom were just waiting for me to screw up. Thanks to my days in the chicken house and the kitchen on the Israeli kibbutz, I was certain I could make great eggs for the masses. And I did.

“These aren’t bad,” one of them said in a shocked tone of voice.

“Nicely done, Simmons!” I put my head down and went back to my work. Victorious. Suddenly, they had a bit of respect for me.

The front of house at Le Cirque was magic to behold. Sirio is probably the most legendary maître d’ in New York. He certainly has had the most longevity. Now his sons run the show, but he is still watching closely from the sidelines. When you dined in the grand room, who you were determined where you were seated. Like Michael’s or Elaine’s, it was one of the most famous power scenes of the time. But unlike those clubhouses, Le Cirque had four stars, so it felt even more like the center of the world.

From my station in the kitchen I could see all the drama unfold. It was the greatest show in town. There were three of us looking out on everyone from Barbara Walters to Sarah Jessica Parker, Rudy Giuliani, the head of every bank. Every major food and fashion magazine editor. Martha Stewart came the day that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public.

The menu was mostly French, with a few Italian accents, but it wasn’t so much about what was on the menu as what
wasn’t
. Insiders knew we had a secret menu, and all they had to do was ask. One of my favorite items was the restaurant’s twice-baked potato. We would bake it once on a bed of salt, then scoop out the inside and mash it with butter, cream, and a heaping spoonful of canned black truffles. We would stuff the filling back into the potato skin, bake it again, and then place a seared piece of foie gras on top. It cost $90.

Another remarkable dish my station was in charge of was a ten-vegetable soup, with carrots and green beans and peppers and celery, that the sultan of Brunei’s son would order.

Because it was Le Cirque, the vegetables had to be cut to a perfect
brunoise
, each exactly an eighth of an inch squared. The prince would come in for dinner with no warning and we would have to have this soup ready to go, along with the simplest spaghetti with a very specific, fresh pasta sauce made only with tomato, onion, garlic, and basil. We had to make it fresh every day and have it ready in my lowboy, on the off chance he would show up. If he didn’t, we would have to throw it out.

My station was also charged with making a beggar’s purse appetizer. It was a crepe, gathered up like a purse, stuffed with leeks and carrots sweated down until tender, resting on a yellow curry sauce. And it had a flash-seared giant prawn on top of it.

Crepe batter needs to rest for a couple of hours after you make it, so it was always the first thing I did in the morning when I arrived at work. There was one specific, seasoned crepe pan that was perfect for it and was passed down to whoever was in charge of the dish.

When making crepes, it is customary to throw out the first crepe made each day, as it usually sticks to the pan and does not cook evenly. From then on you find your rhythm and the crepes come out well. There I would stand with my rested crepe batter, at this insanely hot stove that was barely off before it was fired up again. You get in a groove with it, carefully spooning crepe batter with a small ladle, swirling, cooking, flipping, and spooning again.

There were times when I thought I was never going to be good enough or strong enough or fast enough to keep up. I felt anxious, not knowing what this job would lead to next. On occasion, I would cry out of frustration.

But the oven where we prepped those crepes was so hot that my face was already bright red, and the heat immediately evaporated any tears I shed. Anytime I needed to cry, I would go for the crepe pan and work at that stove. I’m still pretty good at making crepes.

At Le Cirque I could not help feeling that having a woman in the kitchen put the other chefs on edge. No one was outwardly aggressive, but I never quite belonged. When I walked in, I always felt they were annoyed that they needed to adjust the way they were talking or acting. It wasn’t like they were on their best behavior or anything around me, but I think they resented me a little for being there, for being in “their” space.

I found the cooks who were the toughest were usually the ones closest to me in age and position. They seemed to have the most to prove. Chef Pierre, the head sous-chef at the time (he later became the chef when Sottha left) and his sous-chefs were always professional. They were past the competitive stage in their lives. I wasn’t a threat. Either I could do it or I couldn’t. They didn’t give me a free pass, nor should they have, but they treated me with respect and took time to teach me what I needed to execute their food. I was always grateful for that.

Part of it may have been cultural—Sottha was Cambodian and didn’t speak much English, so he often talked about me and the younger chefs only in the third person. He rarely looked me in the eye the whole time I was there. If he had an order for me, he would tell someone else, like Pierre, and that person would relay the message. We used to call Sottha the Shark. Because it was a four-star restaurant and an open kitchen, we all had to wear classic French white toques. Ours were round and high, but Sottha’s toque was different—it came to a point.

He was quite a small man, and in the middle of service, he would weave down the line checking on everyone. All we would see was this pointed toque getting closer and closer. Someone would usually whisper the
Jaws
theme, da-dum-da-dum.

What I loved about Sottha was that he always made us taste things. This was a great lesson and one I hold dear to this day. It allowed me to experience so many flavors I would otherwise never know, like fragrant white truffles from Alba, bright pink lobster coral, and perfectly crispy Peking duck.

The guy barely even knew my name, but he would come over to our station and throw down in front of us this huge platter of beautiful, lacquered Peking duck that he had made for a private party. He would rip off a piece and put it in my mouth with his own hands.

It was nothing like the duck dishes we had prepared in culinary school. The skin was paper thin. The fat had been completely rendered and had dripped over the meat. It was salty-sweet. It had a delicious dark, almost caramelized glaze. The meat was tender and moist. It was exquisite.

Still, despite those rare moments of discovery, after only six weeks I felt defeated. I now understood why there were so few women in four-star kitchens. There was no overt harassment, nor was I ill-treated compared to anyone else, but I was definitely unhappy. I was in an inhospitable environment and I was a manual laborer, sort of like working in mining or construction—fields where there will probably never be an equal number of men and women.

Around the same time, my brother was hospitalized again. It was coming up on Thanksgiving. I knew I wouldn’t get a vacation. Rather than suffer any longer or risk ridicule if I asked to go home to see my family at the busiest time of the year, I quit. If becoming a four-star chef was my goal, that training would have made sense, but ultimately I wanted to be a writer, and I could learn the same thing in a smaller, friendlier kitchen.