Time flies when you're chopping garlic scapes

I was the second person to arrive in the kitchen today. Second only to David, the Chef de Jardin. David told me that the other guy that works with us in the morning won't be with us today, so we'll have more work to do. However, I got to take over his station!

My station for the day

David also told me that I would be picking up where I left of with the garlic scapes (which I was incorrectly calling "garlic shoots" in my last post because I couldn't remember what they were called) from yesterday. This was not very good news because in the two hours that I worked on chopping garlic scapes yesterday, I had only managed to get through about 1/3 of a bag. We HAD to get through four bags of them today. FOUR BAGS! The garlic scapes had to be finished today because we were going to make them into a jam. So, knowing the task ahead of me, I started chopping and didn't stop until 3:00 (5 hours later). So, if you ever need someone to chop garlic scapes, I'm your guy.

I knew that chopping up all those garlic scapes would take a while, so I used the time to get to know David since I would be spending a lot of my time working with him.

David is a tall, thin man that never seems to be in a hurry to get anything done, yet works at a deceivingly fast pace (I would later find out that he is 40 years old when gave his opinion on something and followed with, "but that's just me being cynical, and I'm 40, so I can be cynical."). He talks softly, but still loud enough to be heard, with a high society quality of voice. Picture the restaurant critic from Ratatouille, only younger, less hunched over, and A LOT less judgemental.

David is a self proclaimed military brat and grew up all over the world, though when asked where he is from, he answers with Augusta. David told me that he has a sister that lives in Dallas. I said, "Oh, that's cool!" David answered with, "Not really. It's a filthy city." That is when I decided to ask the question that would determine how well we would get along with each other this summer..."So, how do you like Atlanta?" David answered with "When I first moved here, I really liked it. Then I opened a business (a restaurant) and had to deal with the county and corrupt politics and I didn't like it. But now, it's growing on me again." Phew!

After I finally finished with all of those garlic scapes, David and I gathered and measured out everything else that we would need to make the jelly. For this jelly (a pepper jam recipe), we combined 8 quarts of apple cider vinegar and 8 quarts of sugar in a large pot and brought that to a boil. This mixture has to reduce by half before we add the almost 9 pounds of garlic scapes (taking place of the peppers) and simmer for 5 minutes. Then we add apple pectin and simmer for one minute. Finally, we portion the jam into sterile jars and move them into the fridge only after they have cooled to room temperature.

Now that I had everything for the jam going, David pulled out a huge case of Lambs Quarter for me to prep for the line.

I was under the impression that I had to pick off the leaves of this entire case of lambs quarter, but I would later find out that I only had to pick enough for tonight's service.

While I was picking lambs quarter, 4:00 rolled around. Everyday at 4:00 we have Family Meal. Often times people don't even think about it, but the people in the kitchen are working through whatever meal you are there to have. They don't get to eat when you eat, other than tasting food to make sure that the food that you're getting tastes good, but that's not enough sustenance for a person. That's why we have family meal, for the kitchen to have something to eat and still be able to do their job.

Earlier in the day (while I was still chopping garlic scapes), I overheard the sous chef say that we were having lasagna for family meal today. I LOVE LASAGNA! I couldn't wait.

Finally it was 4:00 and I went and fixed my plate...

Oh yeah, we had some other stuff too like sauteed swiss chard, a salad with a peanut vinaigrette, and a roasted garlic and parmesan crostini. But I didn't care about all of that, I was there for the lasagna. When I got around to taking my first bite of lasagna, I realized that this wasn't your every day lasagna. They had used they leftover pulled pork that was used for a demo yesterday in place of ground beef. Now, I've heard of barbeque nachos before, but barbeque lasagna??? This is something I will have to remember for later use.

Now that I had finished prepping the lambs quarter for the line, I was still waiting for the jam to reduce when we got two huge baskets of peaches...

I now had the task of placing all of the peaches, stem side down, on a baking sheet and then onto a cooling rack for them to ripen. While this didn't take very long, it reminded me of how much I love peaches. I can't wait to see what we get to use the peaches for!

The jam never reduced far enough to continue. I had about 30 minutes left before I had to leave and had cleaned just about everything that I could find when the sous chef told me that I would have to move the jam to make room on the line for the nights service. I was pretty bummed. I worked all day to be able to make this jam and I had everything ready to go, but it would have to wait till tomorrow when someone else who didn't do anything would get to make the jam.

Now that I wasn't making the jam anymore, I had 20 minutes to kill. I asked around to see if anyone had anything that I could do or help them with, but there was nothing for me. With nothing to clean and nothing to do, I decided to observe the beginning to the nights service on the line. Even though it wasn't hectic right away, there was still a lot going on. This is what I wanted to see, a real dinner service in one of the best restaurants in the city. I was in awe. Unfortunately, I started to feel like I was getting in the way, and it was already after 6:00. So, I said goodbye and wished everyone a good service and weekend.

Till next time,

Ben

384 hours left