 |
| These were my salad days... |
Though the original portion of the building was built of stone and leaded glass, the newer portion was mainly built for function with the nondescript appearance that is typical of a production facility. It housed two kitchen sets that were meant to replica Martha's homes, a set that was for intimate interviews, table, chairs and bookshelves. There were editing suites that would eventually accommodate 10 editors. There was a fully equipped gym with state of the art exercise equipment that was open to all. There was even a huge room of crafting materials stored in hundreds of plastic sterilyte bins, all perfectly p-touched to state what the contents were. There was a massive kitchen of shiny commercial equipment with two work islands and every kind of tool that one could ever think of to use in the preparation of food. There was a whole wall of neatly stacked Le Creuset and All-Clad pots and pans in every conceivable shape and size, the envy of any guest chef who saw it. This was the test kitchen, where recipes were developed and all food to be shot on the show was prepared. It had a huge, glorious window that looked out to the property. A mural of green lushness in the summer, a snowscape in the winter. Around the corner from there was a small laundry room, then the storage area for the props, which included tablecloths, napkins, dishware, glasses. Some were antiques, eventually more and more would be produced and sold through the "Martha by Mail" catalogue. Flowers were cut and arranged there, anything that had to do with the look and set design. There was an area that had numerous pastel colored button down work shirts on a clothing rack, next to an ironing board. Then casually behind this area was a large corner office. It too was filled with windows. There was a very plain desk that was white with "Martha green" accents. In fact everything was industrial looking. One might think that where Martha would be producing her lifestyle media would be full of antique prints and chintz and depression glass, but actually it was downright stark. Most of the chairs in the place were aluminum. The desks were parsons tables with small cabinets underneath. It was clean and minimalist. The office had it's own private bathroom where she would have her hair and makeup done.
The "bullpen" was an area of desks in the center of a large room, surrounded by small offices where mainly producers sat. In the early days we would have a weekly meeting, where everyone stood and we'd talk about company news. It was informal, there were not that many of us then. If there was a new employee it was there that they would be introduced to the team. When I was first brought on and introduced, Martha jumped right in because we had known each other in the past. This was my introduction:
"I've known Margot for years, her father and I were good friends. In fact I catered her wedding which was beautiful (accent on the "beau, pronounced "byooo-ti-ful"") at Waveny House in New Canaan. and was in the original "Weddings" book. But- she is one of my failures because Margot is divorced now!"
It was a little TMI, but you had to have a thick skin to work there as I learned early on.
At this point, I must share my own opinion concerning Martha...
For all of these years, I cannot tell you how many people have said in these exact words, "What was it like to work for her? Is she a bitch?" My answer is this, she's tough.
Nobody who is a self-made success is going to be a pussycat. I don't care who they are. "Bitch" is a sexist term. No, Martha was not easy to work for in many ways. There were some very hard days and many challenges. She is also brilliant. Creative. Strong as an ox, with non-stop energy. She's up at 4 am and her brain is on full blast. At her estate in Maine, I would be working in the kitchen and she would be in the there at 6am on a Sunday morning in her wet-suit, cappuccino in hand, speaking into the intercom to all of her guests to get up NOW if they were going to go kayaking with her. She reads everything, she loves movies, she goes to all of the great restaurants and knows all the great chefs. Being in her orbit is a fascinating place to be. Sometimes a little scary, her expectations are high. I have always said though, that if she gives you a compliment it is for real. She has no reason to blow smoke up anyone's skirt. She let me know if she didn't like something I made, and she let me know when she did.
When you work as a private chef, which I did upon occasion for her, you must be a little bit in love with your client. Being a private chef is a very personal, in fact intimate relationship. You are in someone's home, privy to their arguments and conversations. You see them in their pajamas, in their bathing suits. You see when their kids act like brats and talk back to them. You are behind the scenes, feeding them, perhaps travelling with them. There must be an element of trust. When working for hideous and nasty clients- the hours are long and miserable. You talk back to them inside of your head and your spirit is bruised and beaten.
When you are a little bit in love with your client, you come away feeling accomplished and happy. With Martha, I usually did. There might have been moments during the weekend when my heart was in my throat and the pressure was on. It was tempered though, with seeing beautiful places and dealing with interesting and famous people. Flying on the private jet, along with the dogs, the luggage, the food and her friends was fascinating.
So no, not a bitch. She's tough and a bad-ass. As stressful as that job was, I was paid well, had lots of creature comforts and perks. It was an amazing period of my life and a great opportunity.
Beyond the bullpen and offices was my domain, my world, The Commissary. A simple area with heavy duty white picnic style tables and benches, six of them. Plain cement floors as was the rest of the building. There was a pass through counter where meals were served buffet style. There was a very expensive cappuccino machine that was for anyone to help themselves to. Actually, everything was free. There is such thing as free lunch, at least there was at the studio. There was a large reach-in refrigerator that was stocked with beverages. Coffee and hot water dispensers next to that.
The whole idea was that because the studio was in a somewhat remote area and the fact that many employees came up from New York (transported from the train station by a complimentary shuttle van) and the time allotted for lunch was limited, particularly for the crew, that there would be lunch provided every day. On shoot days with an early call-time there would be breakfast too.
Behind the dining room was the commissary kitchen. It was about a quarter of the size of the test kitchen. The walk-in wasn't even in there, I had to go across the building to get to it. But my kitchen had everything else.Two stoves, ten burners, 20 qt Hobart mixer, reach-in refrigerators and a freezer. Plenty of storage space and eventually our own convection oven. Prior to that I was pushing speed racks through the facility with dozens of hot trays of cookies after baking them in the other kitchen where they had a double stacked convection oven. People would follow me, well not me- but the delicious scent of fresh baked "Alexis's Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies".
We produced a lot of food out of that small kitchen. Early on I was the assistant to the head chef and we had a dishwasher/prep cook. We only had about fifty employees to feed. The chef who was very talented and an Italian from Brooklyn only knew how to make large amounts of food. He would make fresh lemon-meringue tarts, or home-made ice cream sandwiches composed of mint ice cream (not green, but flavored with fresh mint leaves) between two cookies, Chilean sea bass baked in a puttanesca sauce, among other outstanding dishes.
However, this abbondanza displeased Martha. Her concept was that it should be simple. Soup, salad, sandwiches and perhaps a dessert, such as cookies. There were always bowls of fresh fruit on the counters for the taking. We were to make unsweetened ice tea, or lemonade with simple syrup on the side so that people would sweeten it themselves. Only 2% or skim milk available, not whole milk. She didn't want to fatten any body up. She herself would spend a lot of time trying to keep herself in shape. That's not easy for someone who loves food and is around it all of the time.
It was a really tough job in some ways. We had to cater to so many different demands.It seemed that everybody had an opinion on lunch. I could never figure out why is was SO important to so many people. I mean, it was just lunch after all.
For example- we were given a daily budget of approximately $2.50 to spend on each person. This included cappuccino. As stated before, Martha wanted simple. Not fattening, not expensive but with great presentation and must be delicious. We were encouraged to use recipes from the Living Magazine or from the show, but many of those ingredients were very expensive. Though she did not want us to bake bread in house, our bread had to be up to par. She was a fan of Eli's Bread, and finally I sourced a distributor who would bring it up to Connecticut for us. To Martha, a perfect lunch would be a simple tuna salad on Eli's Health bread, perhaps a light soup, a green salad with fresh in-season vegetables and a bowl of cherries along with an iced tea made of a recipe from her housekeeper Luisa, that was a blend of red zinger and citrus fruit. No sugar of course.
Now for big, burly men who worked on the crew with their bulky utility belts, in their cargo shorts and construction boots- a tuna sandwich was not gonna cut the mustard. You're looking at meatball sandwich kind of guys.
It was a constant battle.
The worst part was the group of female executives, Martha's minions who made it their life's work to suck up and to second guess Martha. These women could be downright nasty. The comment made most often was "Martha would hate that".
It always blew me away how much "the coven" (a name we later came to call them privately) focused on lunch. One would think that if they were producing a national television show there might be more important things for them to spend their overpaid time on. I mean, it wasn't like we were serving franks 'n beans every day. And when you are limited to only one entree-it is hard to make something that everyone likes. On days that they didn't like whatever it was that was served (again, FREE), there was a buzz that could be felt throughout the building. One day we were even summoned along with our facilities manager to endure a meeting with an executive producer to discuss lunch. Her brilliant idea was chicken salad with dried cranberries. Fine, but what about every other day? DON'T YOU HAVE A SHOW TO PRODUCE??
Eventually I got smart. I would find Martha if she was on premise that day. I'd go back to her office, perhaps she might be in her bathroom under the bright lights getting her makeup done. I would just ask her what she thought of a certain dish. Never mincing her words, I always got a straight-up answer. She might add a twist to it but I got a yes or a no. This way when the coven would start up about what Martha would hate, I would chime right in and let them know that it was Martha approved. Ha!
Within two months of my working there, the aforementioned Commissary Chef was sent to Siberia (the New York office). He wasn't fired, as Martha recognized his talent but his excessive, fattening and pricey meals were spoiling the staff and she'd had enough.
Next chef was a woman that was a flavor of the month in the Martha-sphere. I'll call her "Sally", a short name for salmonella. Not a compliment.
Sally had also catered for Martha in her home. (this was before I got fully into that circuit). As I said, when you work in someone's home it is pretty intimate. Sally had made one major mistake though. She thought that she and Martha were friends. Important lesson here, the client is NOT your friend. You may talk, joke with them, upon occasion dine with them, but it is a business relationship. Perhaps this is another reason why I did not take criticism from Martha personally. She was the boss.
I think one of the things that Martha liked about Sally was that she worked in small batches. In Martha world, food should be delivered in wicker baskets, herbs freshly picked and gently wrapped in cotton cloth. Brazilian gardeners mind the plants and trees, the gardening tools are kept at hand at all times.
The truth of the matter is that when you are working in a commercial kitchen making a lot of food for a lot of people and on a budget, it is kind of hard to carry it all in baskets. More likely it is in cardboard boxes brought in by a truck. It's more economical and efficient.
Sally would meander in, with baskets and grocery bags. She would have stock pots going and every utensil out, every bowl in use and dirty. She used portobello mushroom stems in her vegetable stock...unwashed with the dirt chunks on them. "Oh it goes to the bottom anyway and the germs will just boil off!".
Thinking that she was a "friend" and not just an employee, she would chat with the coven and everyone else. The kitchen was always a mess and lunch was never on time. The whole point of that kitchen was to be ready so that when lunch was called on the set, immediately there needed to be food out and ready to go. The crew had a half hour only, so time was of the essence.
She would make five little sandwiches at a time, rustic and just so. She knew nothing of production and frankly not much about technique. She said that she had been trained at a culinary school in England. All I can say is that I had the most horrific food poisoning experience of my life in London. Coincidence? I think not.
Of course, the complaints started up. Food was too slow, food was not enough. Food was weird. Food was dirty and people felt sick afterwards. Sally would sit down at lunchtime with the guys on the crew that she thought were cute instead of overseeing lunch service. She was threatened by me, so I laid low and let her hang herself.
Sally went to work up at Skylands (the Maine estate) for a few days and I had to cover. I had never been the lead chef before. I was to say the least, a little terrified. Luckily I was coming off of the heels of Sally so the threshold had gotten pretty low. My taste level was more like that of the original chef except that I understood what it was that Martha really wanted. I got the fact of keeping it simple.
That first day on my own I had a freelance cook to help, along with our dishwasher/assistant. I grilled chicken, made a platter of grilled vegetables, an arugula and tomato salad and fresh baked cookies for dessert.
Lunch was on time and when I came out of the kitchen they gave me a standing ovation!
When Sally got back, still under the impression that Martha was her friend and couldn't understand why she had gotten yelled at for a)bringing her badly behaved dog with her b) serving meals late c) being incredibly messy- she was fired shortly after.
I was formally offered the job of Head Commissary Chef. I had only been out of culinary school for a year. This had happened very fast.
On one hand I wanted it. The money would really make a difference in my life. It was prestigious and took me to a whole new level.
On the other hand, I had two young kids that I was raising as a single mom. They needed me. The hours would be longer now and very unpredictable. I wasn't ready for that. The pressure was high and my experience was very limited. The honeymoon was over quickly, I got in trouble for "insipid" bread one day. And for having a bowl of bananas on the counter because they were a "useless fruit". (I said she was a genius, I did not say that she was always easy to deal with). I was very torn.
I sat on the front stoop of my house one afternoon after a long day. I kind of wanted to cry. It all had happened too fast and I didn't know what to do.
To be continued...
