Short
version: loved it, got on great with the chef and everyone else, can't wait to
go back tomorrow, knackered.
Longer
version...
It's
great not starting work until 9 am, and then in a place that's a two-minute
drive up the road. I didn't have to get up until 8 and it was already light.
Chef was just arriving when I rolled up - he rides a big BMW motorbike, a 1200LT
with all the fairings, paniers and so on if you're interested.
And
straight to work, really. It's a quiet week until the weekend, when the groups
start arriving - mostly people celebrating the holidays I guess, and in fine
style too.
So this
week I'm working through a number of cleaning jobs, starting today with the
dustbins and then the copper pans.
The
dustbins are those giant wheelybins they use in factories; dumpsters, they call
them in the States. Five of them, wheeled round the back, hosed down and then
scrubbed out with a special cleaner, a broom and lots of elbow grease. It takes
me a good hour.
Then mix
up a special 'pate' to clean the copper pans, all 30 of them - gros sel (coarse
sea salt), flour and vinegar: equal quantities of the dry and then add vinegar
until it makes a paste. Use this to scrub the pans until they gleam in and out,
handles too.
This goes
on all day. We do a very small service for lunch, just half a dozen people, but
I'm fully occupied until I finally get home at 4. And I really enjoyed it. We
had a great lunch, eating up what the customers haven't scoffed so today it's
terrine de foie gras, terrine aux pistaches, lots of turkey steaks and pasta,
and some of chef's fabulous chocolate mousses - there's a secret ingredient in
them which he says is absolutely not chopped up grapes. Hmm. Delicious anyway -
and if this is how the staff eat just imagine what the customers get.
Back this
evening; chef points out that because I haven't dried the saucepan handles
properly each one has a very fine film of rust on it already - mild steel
handles, you see. I say I'll go and do them again but he says not to bother. So
I ask myself what I should really do, and throughout the evening take them all
and clean them again. Now they gleam. This, I think, was the right thing to do.
We eat
again this evening, finishing up what we couldn't manage at lunch and really I
have to waddle afterwards. This stuff is good.
And it
was that easy and non-eventful really; no bollockings, even when I made a
mistake, no shouting, nothing horrible. Just smiles, compliments, pleasant
greetings. All really weird.
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