Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Hell’s Kitchen: We Have The Final Two Edition
I have many thoughts about Monday’s episode of HK. First, go read Jay’s and Beth’s posts - both are heavy on the spoilers. Then come back and read mine, which you will find behind the link…
***SPOILERS***
I have a slightly different take than Jay and Beth and it comes from having worked in a commercial kitchen setting - both at culinary school and during my internship.
Culinary school involved preparing and serving food for various functions at the school including receptions for graduating classes that occured every eight weeks. If I remember correctly, we prepared food for about 300 people for these graduation functions.
My internship was a month at Young Life camp where I was an AM cook (breakfast and lunch) and we prepared meals for up to 400 people everyday. This was not cafeteria food, but very good food that was served family style to the tables of campers and camp staff in our dining hall. My parents and the Cooties can attest to the quality of the food and the service in this camp setting.
I was middle management of a sort while I was there. I served under the Food Service Manager and the two sous chefs (one was the AM sous, the other was the PM sous). I was sort of like an assistant sous chef with the volunteer college (2 people) and high school kids (we had 5 for the AM shift; PM had more because their food was more complicated) as the line cooks. Not that I didn’t do my share of cooking on the line - we all did. However, for one week of the month, the two sous chefs were away from camp and I was the AM sous chef for that week - I learned quickly how important it is to have and be a good leader in the kitchen when guests are counting on delicious food served all at the same time because of our tight program schedule each day.
We had the same menu each week, but the change ups came with the random number of vegetarians and food allergies we got with each new group of campers. As such we had to accommodate those special needs with each meal, depending on what was to be served. Also, the AM cooks had to prepare the breakfast kits for what we called the “canoe breakfast” - leaders would sign up their cabins for canoe breakfast, which meant that they would canoe out to a remote spot on the camp property where college volunteers would prepare a great campfire breakfast for this small group. We had to make sure we had enough food for each group every morning (they were never the same size) and we had to make sure we have enough hot beverages if it was a cold morning, too.
So our mornings started anywhere between 4:30-5:00am, depending on when breakfast was to be served that day. Breakfast was different each day - pancakes, French toast, breakfast pizza, scrambled eggs, Egg McSaranacs; each served with sausage or bacon, hash browns, fruit, cereal preset on the tables. There’s nothing more tedious than standing at the griddle for two hours flipping pancakes or French toast. I would go back to my room reeking of breakfast.
Then came lunch. No kidding, as soon as breakfast was done we started work on lunch. We worked on that until about 11:00am when the PM cooks would come on shift and they would take that over. At that point we would start prepping for the next day’s breakfast. For French toast and pancakes, that meant making the custard and the batter. Do you know how many eggs go into a custard for French toast for 400 people? A lot. We would have two people cracking eggs for about 90 minutes. Everyday we cracked huge quantities of eggs. We would prepare the bacon or sausage onto sheet pans so that all we had to do in the morning was slide them into the ovens. The potatoes were always made from leftovers from dinner the night before - we would dice them, mix them with peppers and have them ready for the griddle in the morning. Breakfast pizzas meant thawing the pizza crusts overnight. French toast meant cutting the Texas toast slices in half to let them get stale overnight. And also prepping the canoe breakfast pizza stuff, which meant more eggs, potatoes, meat in a separate storage area. On a good day we were done prepping by 2:30. On bad days it took until 3:30. Doesn’t seem that late until you remember that we’ve been working since 5am.
OK, all that to get to my perspective of the happenings on Monday’s HK episode. I think Keith got a bad rap when he was expediting. Sure he could have been stronger in his orders to Virginia and Heather, but I don’t think you need to shout to be heard or to berate like Gordon does to get results. In my experience, the week that I was the leader in the kitchen was our best week in production and it all came down to leadership differences between our regular sous chef, who was a bit gruff, and I, who was firm but kinder. The kids all told me that they loved working for me that week and wished I could be their boss for the last week. In that week things ran smoother than they had the previous two weeks - there was no bickering, they were focused on their tasks, they were motivated, and we were able to end most days early because of that.
That said, I do think that Virginia did very well at expediting and she deserved to stay over Keith for her great performances at that stage. But overall I think that Keith is still the better chef of the two.
Who do I think will win HK2? I have no clue - it’s a complete toss up.
Done Speaking...Blogolalia • Gourmandery • TV - It's a Good Thing • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

How I came to be Lintefiniel Musing
Bead Wedding Bouquet Instructions
Whiny Complaints - the original p-blog
Harkening To ...
Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me. -- Frederick Buechner
Terror Alert Level
Ernie: All commercial flights
Bert: Everything else

Ephesians 2:10: For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
international justice mission
usa freedom corps
freedom alliance
soldier ride
fisher house
feed the children
salvation army
operation blessing international
samaritan's purse
young life

Questions? Email Me:

- Adventures of Annie and Mr. Kitty
- All By Myself
- Blogathon 2005
- Blogolalia
- Bookish Things
- Complaints Dept.
- Crafty Business
- Do You Hear What I Hear?
- Gourmandery
- Hilarity Ensues
- Ho Hum - Yawners from Life
- If It's Not Scottish It's Crap
- In the News
- It's Not Like The Fugitive™
- Joining the Smug Marrieds
- Let's Talk Sports
- Life in the Spirit
- Movies Schmoovies
- My Freakin' Family
- Technophobia
- Things That Make You Go Hmmm...
- TV - It's a Good Thing
- Vocabulary and Grammar Lessons
- Wedding Mania
- Which is Better?
- Who Cares?
- Yes, I Vote


Links are listed in alphabetical order...this list will be modified from time to time as my mood and interest changes.
Family Blogs
Speaking! - updated in last 2 hours
Must Reads
Speaking! - updated in last 2 hours
Regular-to-Occasional Reading
Speaking! - updated in last 2 hours


Updated October 26, 2008
Out of the Park
Echo Park by Michael Connelly
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The Overlook by Michael Connelly
The Last Jihad by Joel Rosenberg
At Bat
Fiction - Nothing at the moment.
Non-Fiction - The Unvarnished Jesus by Jared Wilson.
On Deck
15-Day DL
Fiction - New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.
The Firefly by PT Deutermann.
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly.
60-Day DL
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Empire of Lies by Andrew Klavan
Long Range Plans
The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis. (This includes all seven novels.)
Randomnosity from Library Thing
Wish I May, Wish I Might
Feel free to buy me something!

Dialed In
WMAL AM 630 -- home of Limbaugh and Hannity
WTNT AM 570 -- home of Ingraham, Beck, and Miller
WGTS - 91.9 -- CCM
WPER - 89.9 -- CCM
WJFK 106.7 -- Don & Mike
In The Playa
Updated September 11, 2007
Audiobooks galore!
imdb - movie database
fox news
command post
newsmax.com
get hannitized!
laura ingraham
ann coulter
junk science
mandarin design (for blog tips/tricks)
tongue tied
wikipedia
samizdata blog glossary
xhtml entity codes

leviathan
reality blurred
lark news
chronicles of george
baby's named a bad, bad thing
cute overload
lord of the peeps
secret diaries of lotr
lotr written by others
television without pity
my ox is broken
the lost blog

fairfax community church
bead on a wire
something simple art
tea for all reasons
young life
international justice mission
pobox.com
books-a-million.com

- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
- August 2003
- July 2003
- June 2003
- May 2003
- Category Archives



Gmail Icon Generator
Masthead Fonts from:
Who Fonted?
or
fontdinerdotcom
Masthead Graphic from:
FreeFoto.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.


