Routine

I'm not gonna lie. I'm kind of stumped. Kind of blocked. Intellectually constipated.

It's been two weeks since I've posted anything and all I have to show for it are 3 half-finished posts I find unsatisfactory. I'm not necessarily an anal-retentive perfectionist with my writing (though with some things I am, and these things include the cleanliness of my room and my stove burners). I think these are 3 potentially good topics to talk about. Sustainable seafood, my ascension in the ranks to chef de tournant, an analogy of music and cooking. But for some reason they are fleshed out poorly, and I think I have the banality of a post-college lifestyle to blame.

It is said that the human perception of time accelerates as you age. This is due to the fact that there are less major changes to your overall conception of a year, less changes to your daily routine. And routine is exactly what work is all about. Doing the same damn thing over and over again. What we doin'? Makin' money, what chu doin'? Makin' money.

But that's a part of current human society, it's unavoidable and not necessarily unwelcome (how many negatives?). Some people really like routine and enjoy having a stable rhythm dictate peace throughout their lives. Others prefer to throw off the saddle that a domestic lifestyle can bring, others constantly seek to break the reins. Now the last sentence aside I consider myself something in the middle. I don't enjoy a vagabond lifestyle without structure, but I am easily bored as well. I think this is why cooking is such a good fit for me. It is an intuitive balance between routine and growth that can keep my attention long enough to promote a good pace for improvement (does that sentence even make sense?).

Let me simplify. Cooking is actually completely about routine. Doing something so much, so often, so accurately that eventually after years, maybe a lifetime, you attain mastery. Excluding the rarest, most prodigious talents the human race has to offer, it takes decades to truly "master" something. So you would think the monotony of cutting mushrooms, of cleaning shrimp, of blanching tomatoes would be unable to entrance someone who gets distracted by the Victoria's Secret billboards downtown to the point he wanders 9 blocks off course. Not that that's ever happened. (I thought I was walking east, alright? Turns out it was south). Moving on...

But in fact all those rote mechanics, all that monotonous work actually intrigues me. A cook's life is all about speed. How fast can you learn, how fast can you cook, how fast can you achieve success before the lifestyle breaks you? So every time I clean a shrimp, every time I cut a mushroom I try to do it faster and better than the last time. The never ending quest for robotic perfection in the mechanics of cooking actually fuels me every day in the kitchen (we can't all be like you, Christopher Schro-bot).

But I am human. I am fallible. I am prone to break down upon my own ethos. There is such a thing as comfort and humans enjoy it above almost everything. And I fear I am reaching a comfortable point.

I am generally doing very well on pasta station. I haven't had a complaint about undercooked ravioli or underseasoned sauces for weeks. My chef has stopped making fun of me for being slow, and yelling at me to hurry up on Saturday night. I have earned a degree of respect on that station (saute, grill ... not so much, but that's another story). I work saute and grill once a week and am improving at a noticeable rate, but not an impressive rate. I feel I have gotten complacent and it is slowing down that constant alertness, that cutting edge focus that I was once used to harnessing. The routine of the daily working life is dragging me down despite the everyday challenges of the kitchen.

So that's where the other part of the equation comes in. As a cook you can focus on improvement everyday, use the everyday mechanics as a means of interest and personal betterment. It can keep your attention, fuel your drive. But eventually some people slow down, lose sight of the goal. I don't know what it is. An existential crisis? The natural complacency that confidence (and then overconfidence) can bring?

There are two rules of three I like to adhere life to. One by Malcolm Gladwell and one by Elvis Presley.

Malcolm Gladwell has a rule of three for job satisfaction. You need,

1) Autonomy - meaning you have some control over what you do, you are not a peon who is being slave-driven.

2) Complexity - something that doesn't numb your brain in to submission with it's monotony or simplicity

3) Connection Between Effort and Reward - seeing results from your hard work

Now working in a kitchen satisfies a lot of these criteria for me. Granted, I have close to zero autonomy right now because I am a minor peon in the Va Pensiero kitchen. Sometimes when I'm feeling rebellious I make chicken stock my way by starting with cold water, adding aromatics late in to the process and using a bouquet garni and making sure it never boils. Taste it, Chef. But eventually the goal is to ascend to the rank of sous chef somewhere, then maybe executive chef, until finally I am ready to own my own restaurant and call all the shots. To build an empire of my own is a foreseeable goal and any minor assertions of my independence can satisfy me until I can reach that point.

Aaaand complexity. Seeing as how much of a novice I can be at cooking, complexity and being challenged daily are not an issue. Before I said I was getting comfortable, not that it was becoming easy. I work a Friday night well because I'm on my toes every second until we get the "all in" call to denote we are done. Everyday is an exercise in efficiency. There's no such thing as too much free time. It's the way I imagine a runner would feel as they shave seconds off their mile time from week to week. Everyday just before employee meal if I can take the time to have coffee and a cigarette, then I have succeeded in managing my time well. But sometimes, and often times, I will have a very quick coffee and a cigarette and FREAK THE FUCK OUT that I'm going to run short of something during service. You learn and get better, or at least you hope, every day.

The connection between effort and results is an easy thing for cooks to see. Well, kind of. But it is what drew me to the profession in the first place. Every plate you put out can be perfect, but only the best can produce that every time on command. Sometimes I know things aren't right. The plate is dirty, the ravioli might only be 98% cooked, there's a slightly overcooked edge on the salmon. You have 15 other orders to take care of, you regret it inwardly, but alas mistakes happen and you can't fix them then and there. But there is such a thing as "the zone" for cooks. Some nights, and thankfully they are becoming more frequent, every plate I put out looks good, some look perfect. I know the seasoning is on point, the balance between sharp parmigiano-reggiano and luscious emulsified butter is perfect, the plate is clean, the pasta is a beautiful mountain of silken starchiness sitting reflected in a sheen of reduced chicken stock (What up, similes). When you prepare every component to a dish, when that took you hours of work and focus, and when you're crushed in the middle of an 8:00 dinner rush and you put out a perfect plate of onion pasta? THAT'S a fucking sense of accomplishment. Nothing gets me more jacked up when I put up a hot plate in the window that I know someone is really going to enjoy, and then I get to working on the next thing to make it that much better. Well almost nothing...

Again there is a foreseeable goal in the future. Cooks never get to see when guests are really enjoying something. Generally they only see when they hate something. A plate gets sent back, your whole dish gets shoveled in the garbage, a bloody piece of meat is staring you in the face because it's way undercooked, your chef is yelling at you to fix it, you dumbass. But as a chef, a restaurateur you get to go out there and talk to people, see the smiles on their faces, the pure enjoyment they are having from food your staff is putting out. That is something to definitely look forward to. That is a dream worth having for me.

So there is job satisfaction to be had, so why all the existential crises?

Maybe it has to do with Elvis' rule of three, which is far more simple and something that really boils life down to its basics. What do you need in this life?

"I believe the key to happiness is: someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to."

Maybe I've lost sight of that as spring shines on Chicago, and I'm stuck in a kitchen. Maybe I'm starting to realize that I've barely begun to sacrifice for my career, and the biggest sacrifices are yet to come. Maybe I'm scared that I don't have what it takes.

Greatness is a matter of ambition. I think personal ability makes it easier, sets you apart for a little while, but in the end what separates the cream from the milk is the passion, the desire. Journalism, business, science, whatever the hell you want to do in life, but especially cooking. Everybody can cook, it's not like there's some kid out there who is the next Lebron James of the kitchen. Everybody can understand the tenets of food and the intricacies of the restaurant biz. It's all about how bad you want it. It's inspiring because that means there is no ceiling except the one you build for yourself.

But many do indeed build a ceiling for themselves. This is not an easy lifestyle. Maybe you can find a balance, but many sacrifice friends, families, relationships along the way, and at some point they say "Stop, I can't sacrifice anymore." They accept and are hopefully content with what peak they could reach, and then they try to work it out from there.

I've never been an exceptionally hard working person and I admit that to my chagrin. I have underachieved all throughout life and I blame it in retrospect on having not found my true calling in life. I never was going to be a 9-5 person I tell myself, I never was actually going to be a cellist even if I could have, I tell myself. I've concluded that it's possible this is a positive quality I have, a stubbornness to do nothing but what is right for me, and a passion ignited when set to the right flame. But is that really so? Sure, I go to work everyday, I enjoy it, but something about this routine bothers me. Bothers me to the point that I've actually written a Jiwon-esque emo-rant about it in public (Sorry buddy, you know it's true).

So maybe it's time for a change. I love Va Pensiero, I've come to love the cooks, the chef, the staff, the opportunities it is giving me. But maybe what I really need is an injection of something new, something substantial to give me back the edge, give me another glimpse of the dream.

Maybe it's time to end this scatterbrained post, because I feel a lot better. Maybe it's time to put up or shut up. Anyway, my time at Va Pensiero is limited. My unofficial contract is nearing it's end. I should enjoy it while it lasts because another unknown reality looms on the horizon.

Someone to love ... hmmmm. Something to do .... okay. Something to look forward to ... let's go.

EP6

Bad Habits

Everyone has bad habits. How much these habits affect your life is a whole 'nother matter. I've never really worked an office job so I can't say how your corporate habits will present themselves, but in a job that requires a lot of physical efficiency of motion, bad habits can kill. Even a minor inefficiency in a golf swing could have untold effects on a tournament. How else do you explain Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant, veritable masters of their sport, retooling their bread & butter motions every so often? In cooking you could get by with bad habits, but you may never excel. At best you will last long enough in good restaurants to graduate to a point where you no longer need to work on the line. At worst, you could kill someone. Okay, maybe a bit melodramatic as that is quite unlikely, but you could seriously hurt someone, starting with yourself. You are most likely to hurt yourself, and if anyone has seen my forearms recently you would know that I haven't developed a heroin habit, I've just been burning and cutting myself a lot.

I think a lot of the appeal of being a professional cook is that there is a bit of danger to it, isn't there? Not only is there the adrenaline bomb of service, but there's fire and knives everywhere and at any moment you could maim something. You're just hoping it's already dead and had an organic diet of natural whole-grains. I went to a cooking exhibition by Grant Achatz and he had his assistant, then sous-chef, demonstrate how they prepare their "Sweet Potato Pie" dish. It's kind of complicated by normal food standards, but fits right in with the current molecular movement at Alinea. Imagine a cinnamon stick used as a skewer of some sorts. On the skewer are three cubed components. A cube of creamed sweet potato, a cube of brown sugar candy, and a cube of gelatinized bourbon whiskey. These 3 cubes are bunched together and battered in tempura. Now the only way to fry it is for a cook to hold the cinnamon stick between his fingers and dip the business end in to hot oil. And since the cooks at Alinea will often need to make several of these at once, the most seasoned fry guys will hold up to 7 or 8 Sweet Potato Pie skewers between their fingers just inches above a pot of hot-hot oil. The finished product is served in the unique "spider" service ware that Chef Achatz developed (imagine a many-pronged antenna with the prongs all reaching towards the sky), and the cinnamon stick is lit on fire, so when the dish is brought to your table your nose is enticed by a hint of smoldering cinnamon.

Needless to say the oil sputters and pops and burns are commonplace. Chef Achatz went on to say, "Yeah ... all cooks like to think they are street warriors. We usually put the rookies through the Sweet Potato fry test to test their mettle."

Anyway the point of this tangential anecdote was to illustrate that yes; cooks do like to think of themselves as something of badasses. You move fast, your profession moves fast, there is the possibility of danger at every turn. In a kitchen, bad habits can seriously hinder you when you are trying to prep as quick as possible. I am not without my own fair share of bad habits, and though I try to fix them, they remain difficult problems to solve.

I have issues with finding things. I don't know if it's because I'm blind or I give up easily on searches, but whenever I need to look for some ingredient and it's not exactly where it should be, I either take a long time or I come back with news that I couldn't find it. At that point one of the cooks will immediately storm back to the cooler or the dry goods area, immediately find what I was looking for, grunt and make me carry it back. This grunt is usually followed with the question, "Necesitas lentes? ... Pinchi Eric" (You need glasses? ... fuckin' Eric). To be fair, they've been working there for years, many of them for a decade plus. They know where to look for things that have been misplaced slightly. But still, I'm kind of Magoo-esque with my inability to find anything. I don't know why this is the case, perhaps it's a lack of persistence. But I get the feeling this might be what I am remembered for by the Mexican cooks. They always talk shit about the last sous-chef, also Eric, who used to leave his stirring spoons everywhere. Or this other gringo named Dave who they always used to call a bitch for being a hapless suburbanite from Des Plaines, IL. I hope I won't become "Asian Eric Who Couldn't Find Shit." I'm hoping more for "Asian Eric Who Made Good Family Meals."

Another bad habit I have is actually the lack of practicing a certain good habit. Whenever you walk behind someone in a kitchen you have to say "Behind you" or in Spanish, "Atras." This is to notify someone you are right behind them so that they don't turn around with that giant pot of hot stock, or don't turn around with that case of potatoes, or they don't turn around with that knife facing out. The Mexican cooks have all been conditioned to say this literally every time they pass behind someone. Usually it's unnecessary but it's a good habit for them to practice. They tell me sometimes when they go out and while they are sidling through the masses to get to the bar they are constantly telling strangers, "Atras, guey!" I just don't think it's necessary most of the time and I don't like to bark it out like they do every time. I'm generally very quiet in the kitchen so I guess that silence remains in most situations. In American kitchens they seem to have even more verbal signals to alert everyone, like "Coming down the line!" to tell the cooks you are coming through with something, or "Reaching!" to tell them you are stretching out behind someone, or the ubiquitous "Hot!" to tell someone ... something is ... you know, hot. I try to say it more but I forget or say it too quietly most of the time, so when a cook bumps in to me they get kind of annoyed. This has kind of lead to an unfortunate nickname. Chuy was once walking behind me and he let "Behind you, Pikachu!" slip for some reason. I then decided it'd be a good idea to tell them that I was kind of obsessed with Pokemon as a child. Pikachu is starting to stick. FML.

Because professional cooking requires so much efficiency of your usage of time, standing around doing nothing is a no-no. Even in the extremely unlikely situation that there is literally nothing for you to do, don't look like that's the case. So that means no sitting, no leaning. Ever. No exceptions. Leaning makes you look lazy and ranks high on most chef's shitlist of pet peeves. Sitting would be even worse as I've heard being caught sitting gets you a nasty nickname or a hard time for the rest of your duration at that job. So I tend to lean sometimes. I don't do it out of laziness, it's just I don't like standing so much (does that make sense?). I mean I started playing cello because it required sitting, whereas violin would have required standing occasionally. The choice was obvious. But I actually am quite a busy body in the kitchen. Because of my borderline OCD-nervosa I am constantly wiping down my station, my burners, sweeping off crumbs, sweeping the floors, wiping containers. Because I am one of the few native English speakers I often label all the sauces and stocks in the walk-in. I hate, hate, hate messy kitchens and unlabeled stocks. But of course it's human nature that your constant good habits go unnoticed, but one instance of an infraction will brand you forever. I hate people.

But those are pretty obvious habits, right? I'm sure Lebron, Kobe, Peyton Manning, Tiger Woods, have spent hours upon hours of watching tape to figure out the small inefficiencies in their respective playing motions. To fix them probably took even more hard work and study. Unfortunately I don't have hours of tape available to me. I have about one hour of footage that doesn't even capture my stove. Unfortunately I don't have a dedicated trainer studying my every move. I have a few cooks and one chef who occasionally give me pointers. But it is said the best cooks are ones that are composed and make the fewest, smoothest motions. Though it looks like the busy, perpetually moving, twitchy guy on the line may be a faster cook, they are often messier, less efficient and in the long run, slower (not to mention they disrupt the line with their helter-skelter playing style). Good cooks don't move fast, they move smoothly and intelligently.

So with that as my guideline, the best I can do is watch myself. Just scratched your hair or touched your face? Immediately wash your hands. My hands are becoming raw and chapped from washing so much (given my itchy nature, you can imagine how much of a problem this is becoming). My chef constantly tells me not to wipe plates if I make them messy. Let the runner do it, your dirty side towel will just grease up the plate. I do it anyway though because of that OCD-nervosa I was talking about. I am trying to break that habit and I'm trying to just put out cleaner plates. Less spins of the tongs to make a perfect pasta mountain, less flips of the pan to saute mushrooms, no more spilling mushrooms out the sides. Cutting vegetables faster, cleaner. Making less trips to the walk-in cooler or the bakery. All these little time saving elements that are a product of a constantly efficient mindset will save you hours over a week, and years over a lifetime. You will do everything stronger, better, faster, and any kitchen would love to have you because you are so clean, so quick, so goddamned efficient.

I learned this lesson especially with learning how to ladle a sauce. You'd think that ladling a liquid on to a plate required a little practice, not anything too complicated. I was schooled pretty hard in sauce ladling by my chef.

You hold a ladle like you hold a pencil at about 2/3 up from the bowl. When you collect sauce you don't scoop sideways, digging at the liquid. You dip the ladle in vertically, you don't fill it completely and you let the bottom 1/3 rest in the liquid for half a second. For some reason I could probably divine after thinking about it for a minute, the liquid then does not drip from the ladle as you are trying to sauce a plate.

As simple a motion as ladling a sauce could be refined to perfect efficiency so long as you took the time to think about it and execute it as a habit.

Shit. Lot to learn.

EP6