Under the Table (17 page)

A
t last it was our turn for the trial by fire—the next three days would be spent in the family meal rotation, fixing lunch for the 250 students, kitchen staff, faculty, and administrative support who kept the school humming each day. Lunch for two hundred is quite a daunting prospect, especially if the largest dinner party you've ever thrown was for eight.

Complicating the issue was the fact that the entirety of the waitstaff at the school was comprised of devout Hindus, whose religion forbade them from indulging in certain beastly delights. This meant that in addition to the green salad that was always on offer, there must also be enough side dishes of a substantial enough nature to provide these men, and any closet vegetarians (there were a few in addition to Marita, though they mostly were in the pastry program), with a hearty lunch.

Even more burdensome than these dietary restraints on our potential family meal planning were the cost prohibitions placed on each serving. Because the school paid for these meals, we were obliged to make them as cost effective as possible. Each serving should cost between $2.00 and $2.50—less than a venti drip coffee from Starbucks. For this reason, things made from ground beef were a popular choice: we had eaten everything from spaghetti Bolognese to meat loaf to some truly unique casseroles that could only have been dreamed up by the students from the Midwest. Chicken was also popular, because the “industrial” chickens ordered by the school were incredibly cheap, and they were easy to prepare in bulk—roasting fifty chickens in the convection ovens was a snap compared to
some of the more labor-intensive recipes we had learned to prepare. Time was the final burden placed on students in charge of family meals. Class started promptly at nine o'clock each morning, and the first staff began to line up for lunch at quarter to twelve. Even with the most simplistic recipes, the sheer bulk of food requiring at least a minimal level of preparation—from washing salad greens to chopping tomatoes to trussing chickens—took at least a few minutes apiece. Multiplied by the hundreds of vegetables to be washed, diced, and cooked, the dozens of chickens to be prepped, and the meatballs to be formed, that meant a lot of man-hours were needed to get everything ready in time. Want to serve barbecue? No slow-roasted pork shoulder here—no time. How about a cauldron of chili? No time for that, either. We needed something cheap, quick, and filling.

As usual, our little band of four was going to find the rotation through family meal to be particularly stressful since we were short-handed. Despite a spirited pep talk from Chef, we were glum as we perused the order sheets and tried to come up with something quick, tasty, not religiously offensive, and cheap. I suddenly began to understand why working parents so often feed their children frozen dinners or simply order out—not even a pan to clean up! It was starting to sound like heaven to me. I am not sure if that's what the rotation in family meal was meant to turn us into—enthusiastic proponents of the Kentucky Fried Chicken family meal bucket—but I was definitely becoming a convert.

Thoughts of ordering in for 250 were reluctantly shelved as we began to discuss what we should prepare. Like every other station, we knew that family meal was a secret test of our abilities, a competition among the students to see who could churn out something even more delicious and inventive than the brigade before them. It was an Iron Chef competition on the grandest of scales. No kitchen stadium, but performing in front of everyone was even more of a challenge, especially on a tight budget.

After much discussion, we decided to eschew pasta on our first day, as the brigade before us had made nothing but macaroni and cheese, baked ziti, and a truly awful rendition of tuna casserole. Making a selection of cold cut sandwiches was frowned upon, as it didn't give us nearly enough to do, but component meals, where the hungry masses were able to pick and choose among various things to create their own individual version of lunch, had proved extremely popular. It was a useful lesson in giving people what they want—they crave something tasty, of course, but they like to fine-tune the details themselves. For this reason, taco day had been a particular success, but since Imogene's group had done this less than a week before us, it was definitely out. We had to find a crowd pleaser, especially for our first day.

We finally decided to make spicy sausage heroes with sides of gooey melted cheese, grilled onions and peppers, lettuce, and red, ripe tomatoes. September is the season for street fairs in the city, and every weekend my classmates and I scouted out a new venue at which to gorge ourselves. The “street meat” featured at these festivals ranged from pepperoni pizza to hot dogs to lamb souvlaki and corn on the cob with lime and
queso fresco
. But the biggest and best street fair in Manhattan had just begun—the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy, just a few blocks from school. In addition to all the T-shirts proclaiming Italian pride and shoot-the-freak games, there were stalls selling everything from prosciutto with melon to veal parmigiana to
fritto misto
(clams, oysters, and whitefish dusted with flour, fried, and served with big lemon wedges) to zeppoles (sweet yeast dough balls fried and dusted with confectioners' sugar—divine). But everyone's favorite was the sausage hero with all the fixings—a delicious, intestinally challenging mess of spicy pork sausage heaped with charred sweet peppers and onions and smothered in melted provolone. Sinus-clearing hot sauce was available upon request. We had a secret weapon: we had conned the bread kitchen students into making our sub rolls for us. The prospect of hot, freshly baked
bread was a sure winner—starch gets them every time. A big, greasy, gut-busting hero (the vegetarians could have the grilled veggies on a roll with cheese), plus a big green salad and maybe a dessert or two donated by the pastry students, and we would be golden. It was a natural choice for our debut at family meal. It had everything: it was sure to be a major crowd pleaser; it was cheap; the ingredients were within our budget; and we could get everything ready in the time we had. It was also a quintessentially New York meal, a conglomeration of flavors and textures that screamed “Little Italy,” the neighborhood crammed with delicious eats only blocks from school. Perfect.

We blithely put in our order for two hundred Italian sausages (one hundred hot and one hundred sweet for a nice balance), ten pounds of cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses, three dozen tomatoes, a case of peppers, a few sacks of onions, and a lot of lettuce. The rolls were free. We were way under budget and thrilled. What could possibly go wrong?

Our first day in family meal saw the four of us washing vegetables at eight o'clock in the morning. Not even the chef-instructors were in the kitchens yet—just us and the guys in the storeroom. We were way ahead of schedule, making more than a gallon of salad dressing in the industrial blender, when Assistant Chef Cyndee finally showed up. Since coming with us to Level 2, Cyndee's main job, other than to make our lives miserable with her nasty comments and her howling laughter, was to help run the family meal station. Tucker and I shared one long look as Cyndee began poking her fat finger, which bore a striking resemblance to the sausages we would be serving for lunch, in our work so far.

“You know, you shouldn't have started without me” was the most scathing comment she could come up with.

Ben, Tucker, Junior, and I shared a big, happy grin. Things were going well. Then Cyndee began unpacking the rest of our order, which had just arrived in the kitchen on the broad back of David. That's when the shit really hit the fan. A piercing shriek rent the
quiet air of the kitchen that sent shivers down everyone's spine. Cyndee was screaming at us, her mouth opened so wide it was easy to see every single one of her graying smoker's teeth as she waved our order form around like she was learning to semaphore in a high wind.

“Who did the order?” she crowed, unable to modulate her voice into anything other than a booming death knell.

Somehow, whatever had gone wrong, I knew that it was going to be my fault.

“I did,” I said, furious that I was unable to keep the slight quaver from my voice. She smirked, little knowing that my voice cracked from building rage, not fear.

“Well,
smartass,
it looks like
you
totally fucked everything up.” It was hard to take insults from Cyndee, especially since I was dealing with someone who had a total of three brain cells, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was still clutching my paring knife, covered in the bloodred pulp of the tomatoes I had been dicing. For just a fraction of a moment I let my mind ponder the statistics of how many obnoxious and overbearing chefs had been stabbed in their own kitchens, but I let that thought go quickly. The cleanup would be horrendous.

Tucker must have caught the passing homicidal gleam in my eye because he quickly moved between the two of us and tried to steer the conversation back to whatever had gone wrong. Using his most ingratiating voice, he asked to see both the order sheet and the order itself, still in its crate. Calling out everything in methodical order, Tucker made his way down the list of supplies for lunch, crossing things off the list until we came to the last, the most important part of lunch—the sausage. What if the meat men hadn't gotten us the sausage? We would be sunk for sure—we couldn't have sausage sandwiches without the sausage. No fear, we got the sausage. Oh, man, did we get the sausage. But instead of the links we had ordered, we had seventy-five pounds of ground sausage, in one very
large plastic bag. Crap. This was a mistake, a big mistake. The meat purveyor that filled the school's order didn't have Italian sausage links in stock, so they sent what they had. Cyndee was actually right for once—we were in deep shit. My God, seventy-five pounds of loose sausage, all (metaphorically) on my head. “Fucked up” was putting things mildly. What were we going to do?

“Use an ice cream scoop.” In a stroke of brilliance I didn't think he was capable of, Junior galvanized us into action. Using all our combined brawn, we emptied the huge sack of sausage into the biggest stainless steel bowl in the kitchen. Battered from use, the bowl was big enough for me to take a bath in, and easily contained the wad of sausage now huddled in the bottom of it. Using big handfuls of salt and pepper, chili flakes, and dried oregano and thyme, Ben and I seasoned the meat, up to our elbows in ground flesh as we mixed in a few dozen egg yolks to bind it all together. Junior returned from the pastry kitchen, where he had borrowed four large ice cream scoops. With them we began to make hundreds of balls of sausage, the size of a hefty snowball, but much more delicious. We filled tray after tray after tray with the sausage balls and slotted them into the monstrous convection oven to cook as we kept going, churning out spherical hunks of sausage like demented automatons in a Jimmy Dean factory.

They weren't very gorgeous, but they were tasty, and as we sandwiched them between halves of the crusty, still-warm rolls delivered from the bread kitchen, I thought our sausage balls would probably pass muster. We wouldn't win a James Beard award, but we did manage to feed several hundred people on time. And Junior saved my ass. Wonders would never cease in the kitchen.

W
hile every morning of Level 2 was nothing less than all-out war against the clock and sometimes against the recipes themselves, after the stress of preparing and serving the chefs' table lunch, or the even more grueling family meal, the afternoons were more relaxed. Instead of preparing for an evening meal, as would be traditional in a real restaurant kitchen, we peons in Level 2 were in charge of preparing hors d'oeuvres for the dinner service. Because the school ran two shifts of students a day—the day shift that ran from around eight-thirty in the morning to three in the afternoon, and then an evening shift of students from five to ten at night—each shift prepared only one meal. Because we had more class time each day than the night students, we were able to learn a bit more of the esoteric tricks and tips from our instructors. One of these things was the hors d'oeuvres course from Chef Pierre.

After serving lunch to the chefs' table and making certain our workstations were spick-and-span, we were allowed to have lunch. Once our lunch break was over, we reconvened for our afternoon lecture, where the critiques of the dishes we had prepared for the chefs were read aloud and further commented on (read: ridiculed) by our fellow students. After this ritual had been performed, and everyone had had their fair share of embarrassment and praise, we moved on to discussing the art of the bite-size morsels we would be learning to construct for the evening's dinner patrons in the restaurant. Chef Pierre eulogized what he believed to be a lost art, before launching into a truly passionate discussion about the art and
architecture of a proper hors d'oeuvre, or just plain hors as we called them for short.

The concept of hors d'oeuvres was hijacked, like so many other gorgeous French ideas in food, by the nouvelle cuisine movement of the 1980s. While the movement itself was French in origin, Chef Pierre admitted, he faulted the American chefs of the New York restaurant scene and the yuppie clientele they served for the perversion of French ideal concepts. The cocktail parties catered by these same chefs were the true culprits in the death of the proper hors. During the decade of excess, these little bites had grown far too large, far too filling to be anything less than a legitimate course at the dinner table, and it was therefore inappropriate to eat them standing up, with one's fingers.

In the early nineties, the fashion for overblown hors became a passé habit of the outgoing Republican regime and the parties they threw for their friends. No longer would filet mignon on potato crisps be a staple of political fund-raisers. Beef was so un-PC, as were seared foie gras on figs and braised pig jowls on tiny cheddar biscuits. It was an era of earnestness in both the political sphere and the kitchen, as chefs began to pare down their ideas and their imagination, and served hors only reluctantly and then with a heavy sauce of irony. The horrifying appetizers from fifties cocktail parties made a heavy reemergence, and upscale caterers would often serve pigs in a blanket as a deliberate tongue-in-cheek reference to a more halcyon era. Chef Pierre shrugged his shoulders sadly. There was a time for irony in food, but not perhaps before the guest has had a chance to sit down and fully appreciate it,
non
?

Chef continued, his agitation mounting ever higher as he came down the home stretch in his discourse on the rise and fall of the hors d'oeuvre. We were now in the age of the techno-hors. Chefs seemed to think that if it could be served in a glass beaker or perhaps with a syringe, then it must be magnificent. Flavored foam has become an hors d'oeuvre now, as have the smoked remains of
a vanilla bean, kept in a tightly sealed vial and then inhaled. Chef shook his head. Things were indeed in a sad state. But, he said, raising his head, the light of a true zealot evident in his stare, we were here to save the hors d'oeuvre from itself. We would be taught the dying art of constructing something delicious, stable, and economical, or he would die trying!

We were in a state of awe at this speech. It was not unusual to see our instructors worked up, but rarely did they actually come to the brink of declaring a holy war, especially after lunch. But Chef 's zeal seemed only to burn more brightly the later in the afternoon it got. I knew things were truly serious when Chef pulled out a dry erase board and began making what looked like architectural drawings on it, complete with mathematical equations detailing load balances and stress factors. I believe he may even have said something about cantilevered suspension, but I may have been wrong. We studiously took notes in a state of silent bewilderment. I had come within an acute angle of failing geometry in high school and had never bothered to take physics—was it finally going to come back to haunt me? I snuck a glance at Tucker, but found that he was already deeply diverted, and was sketching what looked to be a miniature ziggurat made from toasted pita and cucumber rounds in his notebook.

Chef managed to rein in his drawings and his mumbled calculations and begin at the beginning. We must first learn the construction of a proper hors. All hors should be small enough to fit neatly in the mouth in one bite. A lengthy bit of chicken tenderloin threaded on a skewer was
not
a proper hors, no matter how delicious or unusual its flavor, as it required more than one bite to ingest and the use of more than one hand to eat. This brought up the other key point of construction. The hors must be well constructed, with a stable base on which the flavorful components must be securely perched. To this end, cream cheese is often used as edible cement, stabilizing errant bits and pieces so that the whole may be conveyed
to the mouth without danger to the diner's outfit. Chef paused for a moment here to discuss the recent fad of foods on skewers. While so deeply ingrained now as to be acceptable, ideally an hors should be made from only edible ingredients. A skewer that could be theoretically eaten was acceptable, like a sprig of rosemary or even sugar cane. A bit of sharp bamboo was not—too much like a weapon, Chef said, and, besides, what to do with it when one was finished? Stab fellow guests? Better to learn the proper way of doing things—the refrain we heard over and over again at school.

Secondly, every hors d'oeuvre must be beautiful to look at, as well as delicious to eat. There must be a good use of color—ideally at least three of the five or so colors found in nature should be used in the tiny morsel, even if it is merely the tiniest hint of red from finely diced red pepper or pomegranate seeds sparingly arranged as garnish. The cool, elegant celadon green of a tiny cucumber cup could be enhanced with a minute scoop of red from tuna tartare, perhaps, and a splash of bright acid green from a spear of fresh chives. The golden yellow of a small corn fritter would pop against the deep green of a bell pepper, the subtle pink of caramelized red onion, and the snowy white of a liberal crumble of
queso fresco
.

Most important, a good hors is boldly flavored. It should, in the words of Chef, “really make the taste buds say
‘Bonjour.'
” An hors d'oeuvre should not be merely filler before a meal, or, even worse, be eaten instead of a meal. It should merely prepare the diner, prime his taste buds, and give him some hint of the delights yet to come. Because it is bite size, a mere morsel of food, the flavors and their combination together must be big—all the power of a well-hit bass drum, a resonating note of tantalizing deliciousness that lingers on the palate after the food has been swallowed. To make such a small thing so delightfully memorable, a deft hand must be used to season and balance the flavors. Unusual herbs and spices are in their native element here, as are delightfully unctuous flavored oils and tangily unusual vinegars.

Here is the perfect stage for a single, highly flavored ingredient, like a wafer-thin slice of truffle balanced on a Parmesan crisp, with no other distractions. Here also is a chance for the chef to try out various flavor combinations on a small scale before attempting to create an entire dish around them. Do dried cherries sing when dusted with Hungarian paprika, or are their chewy texture and hint of sourness muffled? Would a creamy dab of mascarpone add richness to the austere toast and prosciutto with tiny slices of candied kumquat, or would it overwhelm the bright citrus flavor?

For the first time in chef school we were being given a bit of free rein, a creative moment to express our own tastes and thoughts about what would taste good together, and how each little bite should look. It was like a wedding cake competition, each of us madly innovating within the strictures of a tightly controlled medium. The hors d'oeuvre must conform to Chef 's idea of what a proper hors should look like, but the garniture was up to us. While we were also free to experiment with new spices and could go as far afield as we dared with ingredients, they must not be too expensive, and we must also incorporate some of the scraps left over from the kitchens, in order to be economical, in the hors d'oeuvres tradition. So seared foie gras was definitely out, no matter how delicious a nibble it would make, and cured salmon was only possible if there were sufficient trimmings left over from the fish station. The Level 3 and Level 4 students would often swing by the Level 2 kitchens to drop off the leftovers of one of their specials from lunch that hadn't sold out, and we also benefited from frequent donations from the bread kitchen. All of these goodies went into a large plastic tub that was hauled out every afternoon. It was very reminiscent of a dress-up box, crammed with unexpected pieces of clothing, except we would be using these edible odds and ends—the leftover quail, the crispy salmon skin, the excess roasted pineapple flowers—to deck out our little creations.

Sometimes inspiration simply refused to strike, or, while we
had myriad suggestions for fantastical creations, Chef vetoed them all. This usually happened when there was something we had to use up lurking in the box on the edge of funking, and Chef had his own ideas about how best to utilize it. A large jar of rosy pink salmon eggs was reaching the end of its usefulness, but there was still an ocean of it left. We all made suggestions for new creations—I thought a wafer made of crispy salmon skin, topped with a tiny sliver of our own house-cured gravlax, garnished with a piped rosette of crème fraîche, and topped with the eggs would be just the ticket, but Chef only shot me one of those powerful X-ray looks of his, and I quickly fell silent. Finally, Chef decided we would beat cream cheese until it was soft and then fold in the eggs, which we would then use to top dark pumpernickel toast rounds. We would add a garnish of tiny fronds of chervil and that would be it. Repeated sixty times and labeled and wrapped and stuck in the giant fridge for the evening classes to serve to the dinner patrons in the restaurant, and we would be done for the day. Sometimes it was nice not to be trapped in the mire of a creative idea that didn't have a lot of practical application, and so my group volunteered to churn out this easy, if unimaginative, hors d'oeuvre.

I should have noticed the wicked glint in Chef Pierre's eye, but I was intent on getting the cream cheese and salmon mixture properly mixed and seasoned and on the toasts and out the door. The afternoon was draining away and we had had a difficult time in the
saucier
station earlier—our chicken
au sauce diable
had been roundly criticized at the chefs' table, and the comments about our lack of technique and taste were still ringing in my ears. So I wasn't at all prepared for what happened. My attention was far away from what I was actually doing, which is why Chef Pierre chose such a moment to strike. We had called him over to taste the cream cheese and salmon egg mixture for proper seasoning before we began smearing it all over our prepared toasts, set out in even rows of ten like a well-ordered Roman legion. Ben had prepared the chervil,
and sixty minute, perfect sprigs stood at attention next to the toasts. The cream cheese was the last thing. Chef picked up the extra-large industrial spatula I used to fold together the ingredients and took a big whiff.

“Ooh la la,” he said, the French verbal equivalent of a disappointed head shake.

Uh-oh,
I thought to myself,
the salmon eggs have already spoiled and I have just ruined two pounds of cream cheese. I am definitely in for it this time.
With a pronounced expression of distaste, Chef held the spatula, loaded with the mixture, up close to my face so I could smell it, too. Without thinking, I bent close, inhaling deeply, trying to get a whiff of the distinctive funk of old fish. WHAP! Chef hit me on the nose with the spatula, spreading cream cheese and salmon roe all over my face. Tucker, Ben, Junior, and Chef exploded in great gusts of laughter, while tears welled up in my eyes—that blow to the nose had hurt!—and I tried to expel the squishy eggs and slippery cream cheese from my nasal passages. I could feel everything sliding off my face and dripping onto my chef 's jacket, leaving long, faintly pink trails before dripping onto the floor.

Yuck.

Cheddar Biscuits

These biscuits make great hors d'oeuvres spread with spicy whole-grain mustard and topped with some Bayonne ham, or a dab of crème fraîche topped with tart Granny Smith apple slices. In fact, these tasty biscuits make a perfect base for any number of toppings. And served hot from the oven with even more cheese melted on top and a smear of spicy mustard, they are a perfect midwinter meal paired with some
saucisson sec,
a simple salad, and a pint of extra dry hard cider.

For the egg wash:

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon heavy cream

Pinch of salt

For the biscuits:

2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for shaping

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon dried thyme

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled

¾ cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

¾ cup buttermilk

1. To make the egg wash: In a small bowl, whisk the yolk with the cream and salt.
   
2. To make the biscuits: Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
   
3. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt, baking soda, and thyme in a bowl. Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter (or use a mixer fitted with a paddle) until the mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Add the cheese and mix well to distribute evenly. Add the buttermilk and mix just until combined—the less the dough is handled now, the lighter the biscuits will be.
   
4. Pat the dough very gently on a well-floured work surface until it is ¾ inch thick. Cut out 20 small or a dozen large biscuits. Place the biscuits on the prepared pan, well spaced, and paint the tops with the egg wash.
   
5. Bake for about 10 minutes, until mightily risen and golden brown. The little biscuits will take a bit less time to cook, the larger biscuits a bit longer. Let cool on a wire rack.