More culinary faux pasesCookery is a lot like a beautiful woman, you know: The more you learn, the more you realise there is to learn. For example: Chris, wash those lettuces ready for service this evening, said chef. What are you doing, Chris? said sous-chef Greg. Ah, right, well fill the sink, rip the leaves up, rinse them well and bring them over to my counter. Done. Then chef wants to know how come I've ripped the leaves up? Well, er, Greg asked me to. Chef obviously doesn't believe Greg would make such an elementary mistake and points out that the leaves are now ruined, or many of them are anyway. Ripping them up bruises and discolours them, making them un-servable. Now, on one level this doesn't matter - half a dozen lettuces, total value about three euros, not many dead. Take it out of my wages. On the other hand it's 19 heures 30, the shops are shut and this is all the lettuce we have. Ah. See? Even washing lettuce isn't easy. Washing up, sweeping the floor, beating eggs, saving profiteroles which you've mistakenly covered with Chantilly cream because when the waitress said "No Chantilly" she meant No Chantilly on the profiteroles and not No Chantilly on the crème caramels as you thought. And then I bought a book on the waitering side of this business, because I thought I knew a lot about the kitchen and wanted to learn a few of the basics out the other side of the swinging doors. So this book covers the CAP and BEP exams, roughly GCSE level, that sort of thing. There's a suitably young spotty youth in a DJ on the cover holding a covered tray, slicked back hair and a shirt two sizes too large. That sort of thing. The very first question in this book is, "In the 9th century the culinary arts changed in five principal areas, describe them." What? There's more. "Name the eight cheese families and give an example of each." Yes, I know - cheese has families? My favourite question is the one that gets you to replace negative expressions with something more positive - so, 'Je ne sais pas' becomes 'Je vais me renseigner' and 'Impossible' becomes 'C'est difficilement réalisable'. The best, though, is that 'Non' becomes 'Oui mais...' Bwahahahaha. Ahem. So, this is what your average French waiter will learn. They take two or three years to do it, too. Blimey. What it also tells me is that, in fact, I know sod all about cooking and kitchens. I know, now, where the ladles are kept, and I can robot my way through a couple of dozen tiramisus, but that's about it. So, I thought, I should do a proper apprenticeship and called whatever the acronym is for the bunch who look after apprenticeships. "You're too old," they said. "You need to be under 26". Ah, I said. So who looks after continuing adult educations? This is, I think, the first time I've ever heard a shrug down a telephone line. Bah. Click here to make comments, rude or otherwise, on this stuff
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