Hoodwinked Part 4

Chapter 223-3

Hoodwinked

Part 4

 

It felt good to work in the kitchen as myself… Chef Phillips had Greg bring over a stool for me to sit on, so if my legs got tired I could have a place to sit. Mostly he did it for appearance, because of Kirk's three friends. Even though I was up and about, I still had to look like I was on the mend. After all, it was the 3rd day or so since the Holy Queen healed me. Miracles are one thing, but everybody needs to catch up after some kind of illness. My job today was to sit, watch and take note of how the kitchen runs. Yet I had one other job and it was to make gravies.

It was the first time I got to use the table top kettle. Chef Phillips wanted me to make. One: chicken gravy, one beef gravy, one cream sauce, and one red sauce. All of it made from scratch, not a mix you would buy in the store. He went over the basics with me in regards the portions and the recipes he normally uses. He only gave me the list of ingredients for each sauce.

It was my job to calculate how much sauce I would need and season accordingly. We started with 10 servings, so it didn’t cost much if we threw it away. The idea was to get me used to making everything from scratch and using the big table size kettle that could hold almost 5 gals of water or sauce.  To me, it was the best thing since sliced bread. Because I could do so much in this kettle, without having to uses so many pots and pans that I would normally use at home. I stated many times that I needed to get one of these for our home.

He quickly broke it all down from the main ingredients, Butter, and floor to make a rue. 1 lb of butter makes, in theory, enough gravy for 25 people. Then I would season accordingly and constantly taste it until I had the flavor I wanted. Once I did Chef Phillips and Chef Mack would taste it and evaluate it before I moved on to the next sauce. Or start over. Sauces were easy for me because I had made them all the time at home. The part I liked best was using the table top kettle because it was almost burn proof because it used steam for heat.

I learned quickly what happens if I had the temperature to high as it scared the hell out me and everyone in the kitchen. Watching it blow off steam like a train engine until I had it under control. At first, I thought I had broken it as the steam kept blowing every 2 two to 3 minutes until Chef Mack explained to me why the kettle kept doing it. I only had to start over twice doing the white sauces which was the most difficult because it was all milk and cream base. It would either be too thick, too watery or it had broken.

It wasn’t as easy to just add some corn starch and thick it up. Normally I could have just done that or make a fast rue and added to it. But that would mean I had failed the main goal portion control.

I was only to make no more than 10 to 15 servings no more, no less. They would have me take a two-inch serving ladle which was the common serving size they use for each dish unless it was for the meat and potato then it would 3-inch ladle. After they have told me the sauces were good. I was too empty and strain the sauces into a half pan, and they would ladle it out counting each of the portions.

Once I had completed the exercise I had to clean my own pot. To give me the experience of cleaning up my own mess and keeping my station clean, before my kitchen stewards did it. A kitchen steward was like my third arm. They were my work mules if I needed something from the coolers they brought it to me.

If I needed my station clean it was their job to clean it, if a garbage can need emptying, or the floor needed swept or mopped it was their job to do it, or placing my food either in the hot carts or bain-marie which was hot water bath to keep my hot food hot that needed attention. They were also my prep cooks.

I was only to use the dish room crew as my last resort, and only use the ones that were being trained to be prep cooks and no one else. On slow days they would double up as either dishwashers or janitorial crew cleaning things that got a deep cleaning once a week. Stating a clean kitchen was a happy kitchen. Every station had there own prep cooks and kitchen stewards.

Prep cooks wore a brown jacket with a green strip. Stewards were yellow and the lowest level was ones that wore the white strip. Macs wife wore a gray Chef Jacket like mine, and so did all the lead cooks, The white Chef jacket was reserved for the head Chef and serving line, then once the line had been closed they would switch to a gray jacket or a brown jacket with a green strip.

The black jacket was reserved for the Sous Chef with a red strip that said if the other two are busy or not there he or she was your boss and was in charge of the kitchen.  Plain black like Chef Mack wore said the only one he answered too is Chef Phillips and is second in charge as Head Chef. Every kitchen has some sort of hierarchy. This was the one that was in place here.

Today I was doubling as Sous Chef, and prep cook. Until I have completed my training as a prep cook, I skipped over the kitchen Stewards job because I knew everything, and had been in that position most my life working in the school cafeteria; which meant I had done my time, and earned my position like everyone else had learned theirs; which was only fair and why I got paid more than dish crew, and the stewards as well as the prep cooks.

In Kirk's eyes and his three friend’s eyes, I had it soft. So every once and while when I was waiting for my sauces to finish I would help Kirk with his long list of prep work so he and his friends could see that I had earned my position the hard way plus it gave me the chance to use my brand new knives.  

I smiled as they gasped as I made their job look easy, even in a sitting down position I could work them under the table. Mack would lean over watching me as I helped them cut up vegetables and sneer. “You are making my little brown mouse job look to easy gray mouse. Back to your cage, so you can impress me with making me some soups; now that I know you can make sauces; I want a vegetable soup, a chicken noodle soup, a beef noodle soup, and cheese or chowder soup. For 100 people using two table top kettles, Start making me a two big kettles of chili for 8 hundred.

“The soups are for the workers down at the housing project that is responsible for building Kirk's new home and his neighbors, plus it will give a chance to feed a large crowd. If you don’t finish it by 5 you can come in tomorrow and finish making all the soups and finishing the chili since you will have short days on Friday and Saturday. So you can go to the high school dance and spend most of the day with Mr. Tate on all three days all except Friday.

“If he doesn’t like it tough; there is no way Chef Phillips or I going to allow him to kidnap our little mice. This is a job, not a vacation and Chef Phillips will be telling him that at dinner tonight. Do I make myself clear?”

I said. “Yes Chef and thank you Chef; would like the noodles made from scratch sir or a box?”

He said. “For now do to time restraints will go for the box so you can cook them off and cool them and added to your soups at the last minute? Making them from scratch for 500 people would take most of the day just making the noodles. So we decided to make large pot of chili for them and tons of cornbread and cheese toast for the crew down there as part of our contribution and we can use the chili on Friday for dinner making it light day so we won’t miss our mice as they will all be going to the high school dance; giving them plenty of time too clean the kitchen and close up shop early that night. Stringum is giving us all the night off that night and taking our entire crew out for dinner that includes you little mice.

“He and Bishop Bradbury are providing it, considering we had met his deadline to have the houses built to where they would have been gutted to the bare bones if they hadn’t knocked them down in the first place. Now get to work. While the rest of us all go out and have a nice hot meal before the dinner rush starts. Since you and Kirk and your friends will be dining at some fancy place. Well except Kirk's three bodies they are the lucky little mice that get to find out what a dinner rush is all by their little own selves and plus clean the entire kitchen before we all go home tonight.” He left the moment we had both given him our respect.

Kirk said. “That should make Mr. Tate mad since he wanted all those days just for him.” We laughed as we continued our work.

Soups were easy compared to sauces, even more so because I didn’t have to do much prep since Kirk had done it for me, plus the clear soups were all water base and seasonings. The tricky part was doing two at the same time plus the making the chili where I had to use the big floor kittles that could cook entire person inside of it, it too worked the same way as the table top kettle which made my job easier.

Chef Mack gave me the basics on how to make chili their way, Which required 15 10 lb bags of ground beef and 6- ten pound bags of beef tips and 30 lb of freshly diced onions and seasoning as I was told to cook that off first and have him taste it before I emptied it into very large slotted hole pans and the large deep long hotel pans, as I separated it all evenly between the two kettles using giant rowboat cooking handled paddles to stir it all like big witches brew.

Letting the grease strain overnight in the cooler and covered with clear wrap plastic wrap with a date on top of it; once I had completed that I was to fill that same two kittles without cleaning it with 300 pounds of sorted red beans to remove the small rocks and the beans that looked rotted.

Then fill it up to a line he wanted me to use with nothing but water and leave it there to sit overnight. So it can bulk up and use the dripping off the meat that remained on the sides; then tomorrow it would be the first thing I would finish making, which would require me to use both floors kettles to make all that chili not only for the work crew here, but also the ones building Kirk's house and his 4 neighbors houses.

It was hard work regardless that it was clear soups, because I had to cook the meat first for each one, Using small beef tips for the vegetable soup and shredded diced chicken that I had to dice up after I had steamed them first then put it into my kettle that I was making the chicken noodle soup. While I was waiting for the chicken to cook in the steamer; I had to cook the noodles first make the other soup first after cooking the beef tips first. Then spend time sorting beans as the chicken cooled enough so I can handle it without burning myself, plus break down and clean the steamer because I had just cooked raw chicken it, making it unusable until I had cleaned it.

As Chef Mack’s wife was waiting to use it to cook her eggs for her salad prep.  Teaching Greg how to work the steamer and break it down to clean it. So the other Chefs in the kitchen could use to steam off their frozen vegetables for dinner. The steamer was the busiest piece equipment in the entire kitchen not too mentions my four kettles working at the same time. It was like I was running my legs off having to go back and forth one thing to another.

Mack was enjoying himself as he watched me do it, leaned over said. “Being the Head Chef is harder then it looks my little gray mouse. Wait until you are in charge of the entire kitchen, plus your cooking duties, plus the paperwork when the trucks come. That’s why we get paid the big bucks, because of the responsibility. Cooking is just one part, of it.”

He tasted my soups telling me they had very good flavor and that I had done a good job today and finish up and get the hell out of his kitchen. He’ll have the brown mice clean up my mess. Once I had put the soups in the hot water bath until they come and get them to take them down to building crew.

I took a seat in front of my locker tired and beaten, after working for 4 straight hours as I cringed that it was 5:30 as Greg, Eli and Kirk soon joined me just as tired and beat as I was. Kirk mopped his head with his sleeve telling me he thought I had the easy job, but in reality, I looked like I was the one working just as hard if not harder because I had so much to do making several things at once.

Eli and Greg both stated they agreed with that statement. As Chef Philips and his two boys, all came into the locker after handing the kitchen and their stations to Mack and our little brown little mice as they were busy having a nice hot meal in the dining room. Stating they all looked like drowned rats and they still had to get through dinner services and clean up the kitchen tonight with the rest of the kitchen stewards that wouldn’t be any nicer to them or easier on them. None of us felt bad about it.

They had earned that after what we had been through over the last few days. Kirk was more than happy to let them suffer for it because of the way they had treated him when he needed them the most. Man, we were tired and none of us was really looking to go to a fancy dinner. Instead, we just wanted to go home and die into a nice hot tub or bath and climb into bed and sleep for a week. But we couldn’t. Not without dealing with Mr. Tate.