On downsizing

and maturing.

I remember when I was in the process of getting my certs for back of house, one of the first sessions was on knives and cuts. At the beginning of the course, we were handed a red, plastic toolbox filled with all the shit we would use. There were piping nozzles, spatulas, offset spatulas, peelers, scissors and a lot of knives.

Paring knives, a filleting knife, a boning knife, a chef’s knife, a serrated knife. I feel like I am forgetting a few.

I am definitely forgetting a few.

As we were learning, we did what all rookies did and became fascinated with toys. Some kids in the class became obsessed with vac sealing everything, the sous vide machine, powerful fucking blenders and super crazy chillers before they knew how to cook eggs properly.

I wondered why some kids were so into the sous vide machine when they couldn’t even poach fish without boiling it to smithereens. It may be my strict upbringing and respect for slowly acquiring knowledge, but I always believed in crawling before running. All these machines had a use-these-if-you-can’t-actually-cook vibe to them.

Naturally, these kids who were into these toys came from money. They did their restaurant placements based on reviews, their parent’s network, and inevitably ended up peeling potatoes for a fortnight under a huge brigade of chefs. I knew fuck about shit and barely had money for coffee, let alone a meal in a fine diner, so I got piffed to some nothing restaurant with a team of three chefs. This was a blessing in disguise because on the first day I was already prepping food for the lunch service and learning about how to properly handle and cut meat. As the days went on, they forced me into different sections and eventually had me on the pans with them during service. I was fucking terrified.

Our final assessment for our certs was to put together a three-course meal, prep and cook it for a table of four. A lot of kids went down like a sack of bricks, but by the time my last plate hit the table, my station was already cleaned down. For the entire meal, I only used one knife from my entire kit because it was the one that I had the most control over. It suited my hand, my grip, and my body size.

My two-week placement taught me to unlearn all the stiff rules that were drilled into us because every body is different. I ignored spatulas, scissors and other distractions and learnt to minimally handle things with my hand.