Today was the day that my mom and brother left for Europe to watch my youngest cousin compete in the Special Olympics in Athens, Greece. I was kinda bummed because I was being left behind on what is going to be an amazing trip to Italy and Greece. But the good news is that we got power back at 4am in the morning and that with them gone, I can just use one of their cars to get to and from work instead of having them give me rides every day.
Today, we had to make more pickled green tomatoes, so that is what I immediately got to work on.
As I started doing conversions to scale up the recipe and gathered the ingredients for the brine, David said that he would help out by prepping the green tomatoes which was a big help because prepping the tomatoes is a fairly time consuming task.
While working on the green tomatoes, I noticed that most of the line cooks and Chef Hopkins were already on the line and preparing things. This was unusual as it was still barely noon and the line cooks normally don’t show up until 2:30 or 3. I asked David (who was himself working on a dish) what was going on and he told me that Atlanta Magazine was there for a photo shoot. So, if you subscribe to Atlanta Magazine, keep your eyes peeled for an article about Restaurant Eugene!
Once finished with jarring, processing, labeling, and storing the pickled green tomatoes, I got to work on peeling more beets and potatoes. Peeling the potatoes ended up taking me the rest of the evening because I had a lot of potatoes to get through, but I stayed until I was finished with them and they were cryovaced and stored. Before I left, I made sure to ask if there was anything I could do before I left since I hadn’t had a chance to help prepare for service, but everyone was all set.
When I got home, I was ready to start getting caught up on all the blog posts that I had missed due to not having power. But when I tried, my laptop would not connect to the internet. I asked my dad if there was something wrong with the internet and he gave a short laugh and told me that the tree had knocked out the phone lines too. He called AT&T earlier that day and they said that someone would be there to fix it by next Monday. Great, another week of falling further behind on my blog.
267 hours left
WEDNESDAY
Today was crazy. We had a ton of ingredients delivered today. We received everything from various mushrooms to peaches to six types of potatoes to zucchini to beets to lettuce to radishes to kale to leeks to fennel to tomatoes. Like I said, a ton of deliveries.
Needless to say, consolidating produce, finding containers, and finding storage space took up the better part of my day. And to make matters even more difficult, David was running errands most of the day, so it was up to me to check and find a place for everything. A daunting task, yes, but not impossible.
I did get a bit of personal validation while receiving ingredients because I was able to identify items like crowder peas and purslane without having to ask anyone for help, so I am definitely learning. Also, when David returned from his errands and saw the literal pile of produce we received on our bench he told me that he was impressed because a lot of people would have given up by now given the shear volume of items we had, but I was still finding places and containers for everything. Then David managed to free up even more space when I was almost certain that we couldn’t fit any more in the walk-in. Obviously I still have more to learn.
David informed me that he would be going to Asheville, North Carolina for vacation Thursday through Monday, so he wouldn’t be at work Thursday or Friday. It would be interesting to see how I would handle being at work without David’s guidance in the mornings.
Gavin has developed a routine of coming to me at about 4:30 with things that I can do for him for the night’s service. Today, his task for me was to stem and wash tatsoi (which we just received that day), wash arugula (which we also received that day), and chiffonade and wash collards.
While prepping and washing all the above-mentioned greens for Gavin, my mind started to wander, as is usual whenever I am doing something that will take a while. This time though I was inspired by one of my surroundings to come up with a very very corny joke because I have never heard anything like it before. So, for your amusement, here is my joke:
“Why didn’t the farmer want to sell his tomatoes?”
“Because they were Heirlooms.”
259 hours left
THURSDAY
When I got to work, I realized that I had no idea what to do. I went to the walk-in and tried to organize things, but that didn’t last long. I asked Keron (one of the prep cooks) if I could help him with anything, but he was making pickles all day and there was nothing I could do. However, Keron did tell me that the line always needs lemons cut, butter cubed, shallots peeled, and parsley minced, so that’s what I got to work on.
After I finished with the lemons, butter, and shallots, Woody found me and said “Boy do I have a project for you.” I was relieved because I really needed something to do, I was running out of butter, lemons, shallots, and parsley. “I want you to make the mini BLTs for the bottle shop tonight.”
Sidenote: The H & F Bottle Shop will regularly have wine tastings with food every Thursday and the musical wine tastings every Saturday, so on those days I will likely be working on things for them.
This is not my first experience with the mini BLTs, but it is the first time that I will be making them by myself. You may recall from a few posts ago that I helped Jackson with making the mini BLTs for the banker buyout. All that I did for those, though, was slice all the cherry tomatoes. This time, I will be doing everything. I sliced and baked the bacon, sliced all the cherry tomatoes, and assembled all the sandwiches.
While I was working on the BLTs, we received our shipment of seafood for the day (we receive seafood every single day). Jason took this opportunity to show me what to look for while checking in seafood so that I could do it by myself from then on.
First, check the eyes for clarity. The eyes should be clear and not cloudy. Next check the gills. They should be clean and not slimy or anything like that. Most importantly, smell the fish. Fresh fish should NOT smell like fish, it should smell like the ocean. Lastly, check the firmness of the meat; it should be firm and not mushy.
Admittedly, I had hear all of these checkpoints before, but I had only remembered about the eyes and the smell, so it was good to get a little refresher course in checking the freshness of fish.
Once I finished with all the BLTs, I was asked to portion and cryovac the fish for tonight’s service. I kinda like doing this job because it’s pretty simple and quick. I slide the already portioned fish into the small cryovac bags, squirt some oil into the bag, and finally cryovac the bags and take them to the line. Simple and fun.
Next on the agenda was to clean chanterelle mushrooms. To clean chanterelle mushrooms, I have to take a paring knife and scrape the first layer of skin from the stem of the mushrooms. Then I have to scrape the gills off and any dirt off the cap of the mushrooms. Finally, I simply pull apart the mushroom and put them in a container for the line. Sounds simple enough, but there are a lot of mushrooms and most of them are small, so it can become a time consuming process.
Then, Gavin found me and asked me to prep, wash, and dry collards, arugula, and tat soy. By now I have become pretty good at this job.
251 hours left
FRIDAY
When I got to work, I got started on the butter, shallots, lemons, and parsley since I didn’t know what else I could do. After a short while, though, Jason told me that he had some jobs for me to do.
First job was to make potato chips, fried shallots, and crisp parsley, which will all be used as garnishes for the evening. Jason told me that he wants me to do this every day from now on to make the load easier for Ryan.
I use a mandoline to thinly slice small potatoes and shallots before taking them to the fryer. The fryer is kept at 275 degrees because apparently it is the perfect temperature for frying because it is hot enough to give items that golden brown crisp, yet it takes a long time for items to burn. This was reassuring to know because not I don’t have to worry as much about pulling the potatoes and shallots out at the before they burn.
Next on my list (and what ended up occupying the rest of my day) was making the new amuse boush, pimento cheese fritters.
Now, I am not a fan of pimento cheese, so they could not have picked a better person for the job. I say this because according to my friends (and how often the other chefs come by and take some pimento cheese) the pimento cheese that we make is very very good. But I am not tempted to eat it, so perfect job for me.
For the pimento cheese fritters, I have to use a melon baller to scoop out the right amount of pimento cheese, roll them into balls, then flour and bread them. Sounds easy enough right? Wrong.
I have to keep the pimento cheese cool because it scoops better (not an easy task in a hot kitchen). Also, I have a pint on pimento cheese, which roughly translates to 120 pimento cheese balls. I wish that there some way that I could make the pimento cheese fritters in the walk-in.
Next is the breading process, but before I get to that, I have to tell you about the breadcrumbs. At restaurant Eugene, we make our own breadcrumbs. Under Ryan’s instruction, I sliced the bread into cubes, and put them into the food processer to chop them up into breadcrumbs. Luckily, before I had made breadcrumbs out of all the bread, I took some of them to Ryan to get approval. Ryan said, “Yeah, that’s good. Now just take the tammy (a drum siv) and a bowl scraper and force it through the mesh to get it nice and fine.”
This took forever. I had a mountain of breadcrumbs and I had to force them almost individually through wire mesh. I definitely didn’t expect all of this, but it’s the way they do it, so I’d better get good at it.
Now that I have breadcrumbs, I can start breading the pimento cheese balls that have been chilling in the walk-in. the breading process for the pimento cheese balls goes like this: coat with flour, dip into egg wash, back into the flour, back into the egg wash, and finally coat with breadcrumbs. I had to do this over 100 times.
Initially, I was only breading two or three of the pimento cheese balls at a time, but James came over and gave me some tips on how to streamline the process. James said that usually he’ll coat them all with flour, then take groups of six or eight into the egg wash until they’ve all been coated with their second coat of flour, and then take groups of six or eight into the egg wash until they’re all finished with their coat of breadcrumbs. This made sense, so I started using larger groups of pimento cheese balls, which definitely made the process go faster.
As I was finishing breading my last tray of pimento cheese balls, Jason came over to check on how everything was going. He said that it would probably be a good idea to go back and pack more breadcrumbs and reshape each pimento cheese ball because after sitting at room temperature for a while they sort of melt. So, that’s what I did until I was finished reshaping all the pimento cheese balls and by that time, it was time for me to leave for the day.
243 hours left
SATURDAY
Today was pretty much a carbon copy of Friday.
When I got to work, I got the fryer filled with oil and turned on so it would be ready to fry the potatoes, shallots, and parsley. Then I got to slicing the potatoes and shallots on the mandoline. Once I finished with the potatoes and shallots, Ryan told me that I needed to do twice as many shallots because we had 90 reservations this evening.
To put that in perspective for yall, 70 reservations is a very busy night for Restaurant Eugene. AND we also accept walk-ins, which there is no way to prepare for except to over prepare.
So, I got to slicing more shallots on the mandoline and crisping the parsley, then it was on to the pimento cheese balls.
The pimento cheese balls didn’t take as long as they did last time because I had worked out a few of the kinks in my system. Also, I had leftover breadcrumbs which was a blessing. I was also able to scoop and shape all of the pimento cheese balls in one go, so there was no waiting around for the cheese to get firm. Lastly I worked in larger batches, so the whole process went quicker. We had 161 pimento cheese balls ready for service by the time I was finished.
Next was to make a squash au gratin. I’m sure many of you are familiar with potatoes au gratin and squash is the exact same thing, except with squash instead of potatoes. The most difficult part about this was definitely the layering of the squash, but eventually I got all of the pieces on there and into the oven.
The last thing I did before I had to leave was clean chanterelles for Chris (the newest line cook). I talked about cleaning chanterelles in my last post, so I won’t bore yall with that again.
Like I said, today was like I was reliving Friday, except this time I didn’t need anyone to explain anything to me because I already knew what I needed to do and how to do it.
235 hours left
Till next time,
Ben
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