central kitchen

We cooked for real people today, and it filled me up with all the goodness of why I chose this life for myself. Bustling teamwork, excitement, a sense of urgency, finesse in the face of frenzy, a certain degree of improvisation in order to make things work - I was in the middle of making 16 liters of bechamel sauce (which is a huge quantity) while simultaneously trying to fine-dice 25 spicy red pepperoncino peppers, and I looked up and saw my fellow friends and cooks at different stations throughout the kitchen searing chicken, filleting fish, making fresh pasta dough, and doing who knows what else to get us ready to serve lunch for 200 people. And I smiled at my friend, and I said, "I love this." "Good," she said, "because this is why you're here."

We were in Central Kitchen today, cooking lunch for the entire school. It felt like all of our previous days in the kitchen were simply practice for days like today. Today is what we want to do every day. Feed people, feed them well, and have their food arrive exactly when it is supposed to. I was on pasta station, and we made a traditional lasagna with bechamel and meat ragu, as well as orecchiette in a broccoli cream sauce. In order to cook these dishes, we first broke them down into their tiniest parts. For example, even the simple task of blanching broccoli for the sauce, when multiplied by 200 people, becomes something quite significant. and so we all became responsible for tiny parts of each dish, and because we worked quickly and accurately, because we communicated as a team and helped each other out, all of those disparate parts came together smoothly to form dishes that were flavorful and of a very high quality. We've been practicing in a room somewhere for a while now, eating our own food, presenting dishes one at a time. And today we brought ourselves and all we have learned to the kitchen, and we cooked on a much greater scale then we ever have before, and we did well.

At the very end of lunch today, we sat down and ate the food we had cooked. we sat in chairs, at a table, and ate the food leisurely. and i realized that pretty much every dish i've cooked so far has been eaten while standing, rushing, cleaning, or continuing to cook another dish. It is very rare for me to be able to really sit and comfortably eat my own dishes. To be able to do that today, to really enjoy my own food, only increased my sense of triumph.

We had a slow afternoon of playing cards while waiting for a late wine class at 5:30 in the afternoon (we have classes to learn about regional wines). We play an Italian card game called Briscola. There's a tiny coffee shop on the grounds of our school, and this shop is always filled with old Italian men sitting around tables, drinking coffee, and playing cards. We show up in our chef's uniforms, we sit at a table off to the side, and we play cards too.

I was glad to come home today feeling hungry (which is fairly rare after a long day of cooking and eating) and also feeling like I wanted to do some cooking for myself (this dorm-style housing we live in has made me feel less inclined to cook). I sauteed eggplant with spring garlic shoots and basil, and topped it with spicy chili oil and grated smoked scamorza cheese (scamorza is somewhat similar mozzarella). I also made bucatini pasta with fresh garlic, tomatoes, black pepper, and stracciatella cheese (stracciatella is like shredded strands of fresh mozzarella swimming in cream, it's the filling for burrata cheese which i described in a previous post). It was nice to feed my friends. We climbed to the roof and saw sunset. I am very lucky.