Sandwich, Soup and Salad Days

Part 2 of "Cafeteria Lady"

In one way I wanted the head chef job. The money would have freed me from being at the mercy of my ex-husband's sporadic child support payments. I would go on salary and have benefits, sick days and all of that good stuff.
On the other hand, my kids were just too young. Bad enough that they had to travel between two households, they needed to have stability. I was the primary parent and could not have a job with unpredictable hours. Not to mention that Martha and the coven were getting under my skin.
I would go along for a few days and things would be alright, but then out of the blue, they would take a downward turn. One famous episode was when Martha was roaming in the commissary area when she saw the bowls of fresh fruit that we kept out all day for the staff to snack on.
"Why do we have bananas?", she asked. Not as much curious, as suspicious.
"Well, um, people enjoy them.", I said. Then, thinking that I would show her how resourceful I was and that I never wasted anything I kept going.
"We never throw anything away", I proudly stated. "I always make banana bread out of the overripe ones".
Oooohh. I went too far with that one.
"We do not need to waste time baking banana bread. No more. Bananas are a useless fruit!"
And so it was. Bananas were banned from then on.

The bread for sandwiches was another issue. Sandwiches had to be mainly filling with very little bread. Also, we were not allowed to bake bread so we had to purchase it. We were told that Eli's bread from New York was what we should be buying. I had to do an interstate search to find a purveyor who would bring it to us out in Connecticut. In those days, it wasn't easy but I finally found one. Trouble was that they wouldn't deal with us. Apparently when Sally was the chef, they never got paid. I remember piles of invoices all over the place in the kitchen then, so it made sense. I worked my charm on them and made promises of C.O.D. for a month until we earned their trust. My life was dependent on that bread!
One day though, when the atmosphere was a bit heavy because of a rough shoot, the bread was not going to save my ass. The ratio of filling to bread was not right. Too little chicken salad between the slices. I was called out to the dining room. Martha was standing on the other side of the counter. She was not happy and she let me know it. The room was quiet, so all could hear. I saw the bobbing heads of the coven behind her in affirmation. The last thing I remember was being told that the sandwiches were "insipid". I was completely humiliated.
That afternoon I sat out on my stoop at home and started to cry. I had reached my limit. This was a very challenging job on a good day, but it was just too much, too early in my career. I thought about quitting.

Shortly after the insipid sandwich day, I had an idea.  What if I could hire my own boss? What if I recommended someone that I liked that was dependable and talented? If I had to step down at least I wouldn't have to deal with another Sally or worse.
So I called my friend Dave. We had also met at the Elms. He was skinny and tall, newlywed with a pregnant wife, funny as hell and just lovable. He was currently working at another restaurant but he had freelanced at Martha's occasionally so he knew the drill. A job like this would be a great move for him. When you have a wife, you can be the head chef and still have your children cared for. I had no such luxury.
And so it was that Dave ended up getting hired. My life for the next few years was filled with laughter and camaraderie.

To be honest, it did sting a little to give up the title. When MSO went public everyone was invited into the city for a big party, given stock shares and amazing goody bags. That is everyone who was on staff. I and a small handful of freelancers roamed around the empty hallways of the studio only to watch our coworkers and Martha ring the opening bell at the stock exchange on the tv monitors that hung from the ceilings everywhere.
Dave was great to work with. He was respectful to me and never ever pulled rank. He had classic training from the CIA which was much better than mine so he had a good handle on service. Together Dave, Francisco our Brazilian dishwasher/prep cook and I put out a lot of food over the years. Everyone loved Dave, well almost everyone. Unfortunately the one person who was not quite on board was Martha.
Dave was not polished in the way that she liked. Well mannered and polite, but sometimes his food was heavy on the garlic or portions were too big. He stayed away from JB's abbodonza type meals but somehow Martha never seemed to totally buy into him.
This was hurtful to him. Nobody ever tried harder to make people happy than Dave. I felt protective of him and did everything I could to keep things on track. It was such a relief to have him there that my job became a pleasure. The days when it wasn't such a pleasure I had someone who I could bitch about it with and laugh at the foolishness.
Every Friday the two of us would sit together and make a menu for the following week. We were given a schedule of shoot days, VIP's who may be there and any off premise catering at Turkey Hill.
Lunches sent to Turkey Hill were some of the most angst-ridden meals that either of us had to deal with.
Though the show was primarily all done at the studio, there were occasional segments filmed at Martha's home in Westport on Turkey Hill Rd. A crew would be there from call time on and we were expected to cook and pack lunch that would be picked up by a PA in a company van and brought over. It would be set up there and when the crew got a break they would eat. Later we would be brought back all of the nice, dirty containers and whatnot.
Craft services Martha style was not your average craft service. Martha hated chafing dishes, so anything warm was a challenge to serve. Especially since lunch was always served outside, even on chilly November days. We were still within the confines of "soup, salad, sandwich and maybe cookies" but being that it was off-premise we couldn't control portions or presentation. At the studio we could monitor how much food was put out at one time. At Turkey Hill we had no control. If we ran out of food we were in the shits, if we had too much we were also in the shits because it looked like we were wasteful and spent too much money (and people could get fat).

The PA was usually a "dude". Someone who might have gone to film school and somehow stumbled into this job, usually smoked a fair amount of weed and basically wore a headset during a shoot and could drive a van. We would get a call that he was on his way and we would start packing. We had Cambro containers specifically for these days. Sometimes we'd lug them out to find that the Dude never washed them out after the last shoot and they would stink of rotten food. Once we took care of that we'd wrap our trays of sandwiches, our bowls of salad (sauce on the side), the fruit, perhaps potato salad or fresh sliced tomatoes and basil...something seasonally appropriate. We would send baskets of cookies, sometimes in individual wax paper wrappers. They had their own coolers with beverages there but we often sent iced tea too. We had a specific recipe given to us that was from Martha's housekeepers at home. Members of the coven were on shoots there as well, so the evil eye was upon us. It always got back to us, reviews good or bad. If one stupid little thing was not just so- it could ruin our day. God help us if we ever got a phone call from the set that something was missing or that they ran out of it.

At the studio I learned how greedy people can be when when it comes to an open buffet of free food. My crew and I would watch people load up their plates. They would be lined up at the door and make their way, amicably chatting with each other and serving themselves from the platters we put out. No chafing dishes, ever! The mounds on their plates got bigger and bigger. When you have a limited amount of food to serve, this is a very stressful situation. We were between a rock and a hard place because we could not run out of food but we could not have too much.
We would try little tricks like putting less out on the platters, not piling it too high. Making the portions smaller, cutting meat or chicken slices thinner and fanning them out more. Lots of greens underneath them to look fuller.
The worst case scenario would be if the staff got to lunch first and went nuts and we still had to feed the crew. They were the ones that we were never supposed to let go hungry. They had a firm 30 minutes to break for lunch. If the staff filled their plates, made extra ones that they would save for later, come back for seconds- we'd start to sweat. The fact was that we really liked the crew too. They were men and women who were low maintenance, nice people who really appreciated what we did for them. Since I was permitted to bake cookies on shoot days, it was my challenge to limit them to the staff to be sure that the crew got their fair share.
Often food from the set was brought over for us to put out with the meal. Sometimes it would be something that Martha or a guest chef made along with the extra food that was used in the demo. People would jump on this stuff! The coven would make a bee-line straight for the truffle pasta that Lidia had just made. Sometimes though, that food would sit...for a long time. It would sit underneath the stage lights while it was photographed. It would sit while the producers would discuss whether or not they had all the shots that they needed. It would sit while Martha would leave the set for a phone call and everyone had to wait. In other words, the coven was more than welcome to have that lovely plate of chicken that was in that temperature we refer to as the danger zone.
At the end of the week the production side would send over all of the food that they didn't need from the walk-in. Fridays were relaxed as they were rarely shoot days, Martha wasn't there and we would just cook everything we had and put it out. I christened it "leftover Friday". It was my favorite day- we got to be creative and play. People learned to love it, they never knew what they were going to get.
Usually a couple of times during the warmer weather we were instructed to hold barbecues for the staff. Everybody loved barbecues! Everybody except us.
The commissary led straight to a stairway that went to the rear of the property. There were Adirondack chairs where people could sit in the sun or the shade of the lush trees. Nearby was a garden fenced in with various herbs and vegetables growing. It really was lovely.
First we had to drag out all of the grills. We set them up in the asphalt area so the picnic-ers wouldn't have to tolerate the smoke. That was only for us cooks to get in our eyes and make us sweat with the heat of live coals. We set up tables and covered them gingham cloths and all the fixin's to go with the grilled food, plates of salads, cookies and fresh fruit (no bananas!). These days were meant to treat the staff, as a reward for those tough shoot days and Martha had left town for the week.
For the most part, everyone appreciated the barbecues. Even though it was extra work for us and we did not enjoy the reward of relaxing too, such is the life of the cook. It would have been more tolerable if the coven still had not criticized everything. Whether is was being subjected to using plastic utensils, or the cut of the damn watermelon. We did our job, afterward cleaning up behind them, including the seeds of that fruit, spit out on the ground.
Martha had some Brazilian male landscapers and female housekeepers that had been with her for many, many years who worked at the studio. Neicy and Edina were sisters, Neicy having moved into working with the set designers and flowers, Edina on housekeeping and laundry detail including Martha's tv wardrobe. Their brother was known as "Tucca" who mainly did gardening and fixit stuff, he was gruff and kept to himself. The other set of brothers were Fernando and Paolo. They did the odd gardening, custodial and miscellaneous jobs. Fernando was nice but on the lazy side, Paolo was not nice and completely on the lazy side. Occasionally if Francisco had to call out, one of them would be assigned to "help" in the commissary during service. If it was Paolo, he would come in at the very last moment possible, grunting as he reluctantly had to wash the dishes. Fernando, though slow was more pleasant but we had to get on him about his sanitation habits. There was one day when Dave saw him running his fingers through his lush, black hair as he looked at his reflection in the paper towel dispenser. As Fernando started to reach for some food to begin plating, Dave stopped him.
"Fernando! Wash your hands!"
"Why, Dave?". Fernando was completely perplexed.
"Because you just touched your hair! You can't handle food without washing your hands." Dave explained.
"But Dave, my hair is clean!"

We had three separate garbage containers in our kitchen. One, was for trash, the second was for recycling and the third was for the chickens. We were to put certain items into a lined trash can that would be delivered to Martha's famous Arucana chickens at Turkey Hill. By the way, those chickens lay the most gorgeous eggs. They are light green and brown look like they were designed for a magazine. The chickens would get things like corn-cobs or pineapple skins ("Chickens love pineapple", Martha once exclaimed as she dropped the rinds into the chicken garbage can). When we would get busy it was easy to throw something paper into the chicken garbage by mistake. "Fucking chickens!", was often heard at these moments.
When the garbage went out the bags would be tied, garbage and recycling would go to the appropriate dumpster and the bag for the chickens would be left under the outdoor stairwell in a locked area. It was the Brazilian's job to bring it over to Turkey Hill.
We started noticing the smell first. Then the vermin.
While Paolo and Fernando would happily help themselves to lunch, they wanted nothing to do with the chicken garbage. It was a constant battle to get the food over there. It often ended up being Francisco, our kitchen assistant who would load it up in his truck and bring it over there. Francisco also had a landscaping business on the side. Martha became his client so this chicken food delivery business worked out very well for him in the long run.
Dave and I often felt that we were the only ones who saw how lazy these guys were. They really got away with doing as little as possible. One day, when we had some down time after service we saw Paolo through the window. He was raking leaves, very slowly (Tucca was using the blower, otherwise he would never expend all of that energy). He would do a sweep, sweep on one side, switch hands and do another sweep, sweep. Dave and I were making fun of his technique when we saw him lean the rake on a car. He walked over to a tree. Dave and I looked at each other, he's not..he wouldn't...
Yes, Paolo was relieving himself behind a tree.
We mentioned this to our supervisor of the Facilities Department. "You guys..." she said and shook her head at us. Yes, we were known for joking around but this was fact and not fiction.
"No, really! Paolo peed on a tree out in the parking lot!". But it all fell on deaf ears. It was like the "Twilight Zone" episode where the one passenger in the airplane saw the monster on the wing but nobody else could see it. In this case though, the monster was peeing on the wing.

Time is the only way to gain perspective. As much as we bitched to one another about everything, we were very, very lucky. We worked in a beautiful place, the hours were fantastic compared to working in a restaurant. Sure, the coven tortured us. Martha was not easy at times, but she was brilliant and could also be generous. It turned out to be a wonderful place for those early years when my kids were young. Once Dave took over, I could leave at 3:00 and meet my son at the school bus stop. Bananas or no, those truly were my salad days.

Yes, Chef!

My terrifying and exhilarating first year in the culinary world

I loved school- three words I never thought I'd say. I loved it from the moment I looked in the mirror as I buttoned up my brand new, bright white chef jacket on the first night all the way to the champagne toast in a room full of classmates, our instructor and our families at graduation.

Peter Kump's New York Cooking School at the time was in an old walkup on the upper East Side of Manhattan. I bounded up the three skinny flights of stairs, passing everyone else in their uniforms on the way to my assigned kitchen classroom. 

When I entered the room I saw a long center island for demonstration with a cook top. Standard kitchen equipment, commercial refrigerators, both regular and convection ovens, bowls, mixers and various utensils. I took my seat at a large communal table among fifteen other students.

Our Chef instructor was a tall, thin bearded man named Allen. He was from Texas, had trained at La Varenne in France and was funny and sarcastic as hell. He turned out to be a no-nonsense instructor and  I was lucky to have him.

The first night was knife skills. The rest of the week we had our lecture then practiced blanching and refreshing vegetables, the proper proportions in making a vinaigrette, compound butters, sauteeing, theory of cooking protein and macerating.  Every night we split into groups to execute a recipe. When we were finished we set the table, sat down together opened a bottle of wine and ate what we had prepared. We discussed the evening's lesson, cleaned up and left.

Now I was one of those people in class that I had always despised as a kid. I raised my hand all the time to ask questions, I took copious notes. I was mesmerized and shot dirty looks at people who insisted on talking during a lesson.  Although Chef would always give a biting remark that would shut them up right away.

I was the 2nd oldest person in my class. There was one guy older than me who had a rich wife with a successful career, sounded like he was a bit of a flounderer and wifey wanted him to do something. There were a few young, pretty girls who thought they might want to get into food writing, another one a little older, an actress, wanted to do food tv.  A couple of Spanish guys who worked in restaurants already wanted to get some more technique under their belt and the others weren't quite sure. I knew I wanted to be behind a stove. Somewhere, like a lunatic and certainly not like the other normal mommies, I wanted the heat, the noise, the adrenaline. Even though I had not experienced it yet, like a moth I was drawn to the flame.

Three nights a week I came in full of excitement and anticipation to learn the craft. How far away I felt from my suburban mommy divorcee life. Nobody knew anything about me. Chef would push us along, "hurry up, look at the time! If you were catering a giant party in the Hamptons and The Queen of England and Martha Stewart were about to land in a helicopter in their evenin' gowns what would y'all do?" Get a move on!". As students we were a little slow. We had no idea of the pressure of what it felt like to cook with a deadline. 

I learned about the mother sauces, white sauces, brown sauces, red sauces and all their variations. I learned about duxelles, quenelles, ballatines, gallatines and how to make a raft of egg whites to clarify consomme. I tried rabbit, sweetbreads and frog legs for the first time. How to de-bone a duck from the inside out. Classic souffle, rolled souffle, frozen souffle. We were taught how to choose fish properly (red gills, clear eyes, firm to the touch and smells fresh like the sea). Boning, stuffing, rolling, sauteeing. I soaked up a new technique every night. Then over the weekend, I'd try it out myself, for my friends and my kids. They were happy to be guinea pigs. 

Every two weeks we would have a test. My eight year old daughter and I would sit on my bed at home and she'd quiz me. Sometimes I'd go to a coffee bar and study. Since I took so many notes I was on my game. I aced all my tests because my goal was to graduate blue ribbon status which was the highest level. 

After the first culinary unit came baking. We had quickbreads and yeasted breads. Genoise, buttercream- how to use a pastry bag the proper way, we tempered chocolate, made custards and pastry cream. 

When it came down to the last few classes I was sad, I could have gone on and on. There was so much to learn and I felt I had only scratched the surface. What I came away with then was that when you graduate from culinary school you are not a chef. You have learned basic technique. It would be years before I felt I could actually call myself a chef. It's all about experience. From bottom to top. You must have humility, learn to take a beating, do menial work and practice, practice, practice till you can do your job in your sleep, and with the hours of a chef you might just be doing that. Frankly, the real world is nothing like school. Ask any chef, much of the time we'd rather hire a cook with experience that worked their way up from dishwasher than a culinary grad. 

Our group said goodbyes with promises to keep in touch, which we never did. Once in a while I'd go to an alumni party but rarely ever saw anyone from my class there. I'll always be thankful that I had Chef Allen, because he left for a leave of absence after that. He helped to instill the professional values that have lasted throughout my career.

 Next step was doing my externship. Graduation was dependent upon working in a real kitchen for required amount of hours. Usually these were unpaid positions, but they provided the opportunity to work with the finest chefs in top notch kitchens. In my fantasy I'd work in a kitchen in Sicily, an old inn with a room for me. My parents would come with the kids where they'd play on the beach and I'd cook with the Italian ladies, making pasta and picking ripe and luscious tomatoes off the vines in their garden.

That was never going to happen. Not at this juncture in my life. I had to come up with the next best thing. I'd been watching the Food Network and had been intrigued by one particular chef. His name was Mario Batali, a robust guy around my age with an bright orange ponytail and orange clogs to match. He always wore shorts and his belly would pull at the buttons on his chef coat. American by birth, of Italian heritage, he'd spent much time traveling, cooking and living out my fantasy in Italy. He had a very small trattoria in Greenwich Village called Po, that had become hugely successful. He was about to come out with his first cookbook and open another restaurant. But the fame that he was starting to get was not what drew me to him. It was about the food. Everything he did on tv spoke to me. Simple Italian food. Few ingredients but great flavor. Using the bounty of those places I adored like Sicily. If I couldn't go back to Italy, I'd make it happen in Greenwich Village. 

The school hooked me up. Chef Mario and I spoke and arranged my schedule. No more commuting in with my classmates, I was a big girl now. I was scheduled from 3- close, which was roughly around 11 o'clock with clean-up afterward. 

The restaurant was tiny. It held a tight 34 seats with a small bar. Through a curtain there was the kitchen. To the right was a mini salad station, a dishwashing machine, one sink and going counter clockwise was a window with spices jammed on to the windowsill, the range with a flattop, 6 burners, two ovens below. A little table-top grill, a slicer,two lowboys with a skinny cutting board, the board for the tickets above then back to the doorway. Right at the doorway was a little freezer with a shelf below that had 3 bowls and a food processor. That was it.

It wasn't pretty either. Yellowed, run-down, beat-up and not the cleanest place I ever saw. Later on I learned that this is not uncommon in New York. Space is at a premium and some of these buildings are really old, therefore grandfathered when it comes to code.

There was a back door that led to a little yard where the air conditioning unit was. Sometimes we'd put cutting boards on top of it to do our prep there. Only we'd get shocked constantly because the damn thing wasn't grounded properly.

Much of the prep was done in the basement. It was also used for dry storage and the changing area. There was a walk-in refrigerator that was probably 3' by 3' so it barely qualified as a walk-in at all. More of a "stand-in". 

Po was where I was thrown out of the frying pan and into the fire. Chef Allen had not been kidding. There was pressure and deadlines. When I came in at three the lunch crew was finishing up and I was to help with the dinner prep. I was under the tutelage of Andy, the night sous chef. Skinny, tall, also wore shorts all the time but had great legs as opposed to Mario's pasty white chubby ones. Andy had a great sarcastic sense of humor but got nervous during service. Many cooks are. It's such a high pressure job.

I met the Mexican crew. New York is fortunate to get so many Mexican immigrants as a work force. These guys have a hard life, usually living in large groups in one small apartment. They work all the time, they left families behind. They get horny and lonely and often drunk to let off some steam. For the most part, in my experience they are usually great guys and great workers. 

So among mis compadres I would set up my cutting board in that dark windowless basement. When guys came in they changed into their kitchen whites right there. I usually just turned my back. I was in boys town now. I always came to work already dressed. I never wore shorts either. I did wear lipstick, a dark color that led Mario to christen me, "Downtown Brown". 

Otherwise I kept it low-key. 

I'd chop vegetables, onions, carrots, celery for stock. Herbs for the dinner mise en place. Now that I was really working and doing some volume I started to get blisters on my fingers that eventually turned to calluses. Chef would give me veal breast to butterfly, anything he gave me to do would totally intimidate me. He'd have me bone out 40 rabbit legs or stuff 50 chicken thighs for that night's special. Maybe fillet a salmon. More blisters, more calluses.

One day as we were all jammed into the kitchen upstairs I misplaced a vegetable peeler. I looked all over for it. Mario asked me what I was doing and I told him. "Keep looking" he said sharply. I did, but to no avail. He looked me right in the eye and said "look in the garbage till you find it". This is where you answer "yes, Chef" and you do it. I felt my way through the potato peels, the fish skin, the egg shells, the cigarette butts until I found it. That was a great lesson for me. There was one peeler and it was not to get lost carelessly. Throwing things away is like throwing away money.

The first few nights during service they had me stand near the small freezer and watch. I hated doing this. I felt like a little kid who was in the way. The waiters would come flying in and I'd have to move, the salad guy would have to run past me to go downstairs to get something he'd run out of. They had me scoop gelato and that was it. That week Andy and Mario decided that they'd talk with Scottish accents, they'd say in their brogue, "She's a scooo-perrr, she is!" and laugh heartily. The gelato was really firm and it was hard to get out of the bucket quickly. But I never said a word about it. I never, ever play girly in the kitchen, to this day. When I talk to women who want to get into the business it's what I tell them. Do not be a priss. Do your own lifting, get your hands dirty, no nail polish. Be one of the guys if you want respect. And never, ever let them see you cry.

After a couple of weeks they put me on the line. I was terrified. I was pre-menstrual and a nervous wreck. Right before service I went into the walk-in by myself and shut the door. I did some deep breathing. I tried to calm my shaking and let the cool air dry off some of my sweat.

I was right beside Andy at the stove. BAM! We got hit all of a sudden. The tickets were coming in one after another. It was June in an airless, hot New York kitchen and it must have been 100 degrees. My job was to start certain dishes. Grab the saute pan, squirt some olive oil then add the first couple of ingredients. Andy would call out the order, "Clams!". Okay, olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes. Cook till garlic is just soft but not brown. Add ladle of stock. Bring to simmer, hand over to Andy. The hardest part was doing more than one dish at a time, such as a party of four. Also learning hold and fire. Holding is when you start a dish but don't finish it till the party has finished their appetizer or salad. Fire is what the server says when they're almost ready and the dish can be completed. Because the range was so small we'd stack saute pans one on top of the other on the flat top with the food in them while holding. Andy's hands were practically a blur in my eyes as he moved so quickly and kept track of all the orders. I was slow and clumsy, he snapped at me a couple of times. By the time it slowed down my chef coat was soaked with sweat all the way through the elastic in my checkered pants. The atmosphere lightened as we started wrapping and cleaning up, I drank a Peroni with the guys. I was no longer a virgin.

 After some time I found my niche in the boys club. I started to remember my high school Spanish and could converse with the guys. I learned how to say dick, asshole, son of a bitch in addition to caliente, atras and limpiado por favor. It was all routine. We'd crack jokes while we made the ravioli sheet by sheet, or cooked and peeled utterly disgusting black lamb's tongues. Work was always very therapeutic for me too, as I still had some tough times with my husband while we went through the divorce. I worked out many things inside my head downstairs in that dingy basement as my knife would slice through a leg of lamb, humming along with the Spanish radio station. On July 1 my divorce was finalized. When Mario saw me next he congratulated me and said I was like a "fresh fig on the tree, ready to be plucked". As much as I did not relish the sight of him in his boxers when he would change in the basement, he was a huge influence on me from that short time I was there. He went on to great success. As did Andy and others who have been kissed by his star.

On my last day they gave me a book, "The Art of Eating Well, an Italian Cookbook", by Pellegrino Artusi, signed by everyone there. I walked out head held high. It had been a tough road, literally- commuting in and out of the city. Coming home sometimes at 12:30 at night, having to get up early in the morning and get the kids to school. I was exhausted. On my feet for hours and hours, grabbing a nap when I could. But I did it. One day I hoped to return to Greenwich Village with Murray's Cheese, Ottomanelli Brothers and all the other great food places, the life and the people. For now though, it was time to go back to Connecticut, my family and the next stage in my career.

The young, skinny, dark-haired culinary student working hard on a duck breast.
Standing behind me and the hanging pots is a vigilant Chef Allen.