Spiced

by Dalia Jurgensen

  I loved the bouquet the garlic released when it first hit the hot pan. I loved the magic of mussels and clams opening up from the steam of white wine pooled beneath them. I loved sautéing head-on shrimp and steaming lobster tails. I loved the thrill of mounting in whole butter (stirring it into a hot liquid to create a sauce) and melding the flavors together with just the perfect amount of salt and pepper to create the finished dish: Seafood Couscous Royale.

  I developed a very close relationship with the deep fryer, into which I fed a seemingly constant stream of the insanely popular (and delicious) curried crab rolls. The smell of hot canola oil seeped into my clothes, my hair, and my skin, and stayed there until I showered the next morning. I was usually too exhausted from drinking late into the night after work to do anything but fall into bed when I got home.

  But odors weren’t my only souvenir. Burns became an inherent part of my life once I started working on hot app, and I quickly learned to accept the blisters, scars, and pain as simple occupational hazards (unlike my crème brûlée burn at Nobu, which was the result of sheer carelessness and distraction). We all had them; every cook does.

  “Nice one, Doll,” Joey said one night, nodding approvingly at the forearm I’d just splattered with hot oil. I had dropped an order of falafel into the fryer without first lifting its basket out of the oil (I was trying to save time). The impressive burn was amorphic, the size of a silver dollar, red-rimmed and already bulging with liquid. It was my first bad burn earned on the hot line and worthy of recognition. My only purpose in life was to prepare the food as efficiently as Joey demanded, without compromising a single detail. I’d gotten all my food out on time, I had worked cleanly, and my plates had looked beautiful. The food off my station had gone out well, and my freshly burned forearm was evidence that I’d prioritized the food over my own safety, and Joey had noticed. His approval was everything to me, and his acknowledgment was nothing less than a verbal pat on the back, a congratulation, a brief moment of common ground. I’d worked on the hot line with the other “real” cooks, and I’d done all right. I was one of them.

  Outsiders often wonder why we don’t use oven mitts. The thick, awkward mittens would turn our hands—our most important tools—into useless padded lobster claws. And though the use of insulated mitts might prevent a burn or two, the teasing they would spur would far outweigh their benefit. You might as well wear a sign that says I’M AFRAID OF FIRE! You, along with those clueless softies who use extra-long tongs in order to stay a safe distance away from the heat, would be dubbed a “pussy.” And worse, if you were a woman in a room full of men (or women like Mina, who dish it out as much as they receive it), there would be a resounding Figures, and your efforts to prove yourself would be further thwarted, as if it weren’t already difficult enough.

  Burn cream? Even if you could take the time in the middle of a rush to do a little bit of self-tending, creams do little to ease the pain, especially when the wound has hours of close proximity to a flame to endure, and even then you’d have to worry about the cream getting into the food. Any attempt to prevent scarring would be futile anyway and vain—and vanity has no place in the kitchen. Burns are instead worn proudly like badges of honor, symbols of service in the line of fire. They are reminders that we remained tough with our kitchen team through the heat and sweat, and did it all without complaining. Complaining is for sissies. And waiters. Once I became a more seasoned line cook, waiters lost some of their charm.

  Most cooks believe that while they’re working hard pursuing dream careers in the kitchen, waiters are simply biding their time working in restaurants to fund their own dream careers elsewhere. Waiters are frustrated actors, artists, dancers, and, in the mind of most cooks, whiners. They complain about everything: They don’t make enough money, they’re tired, their feet hurt, they feel too sick to work. God forbid one of them gets a paper cut or breaks a nail punching in an order. Every complaint is an insult to cooks who, nine times out of ten, work longer, harder, and for substantially less money. During work hours, cooks have no patience for whining waiters, and more than one kitchen I’ve worked in has had a NO CRYING IN THE KITCHEN sign posted. Of course, none of this stops all kinds of after-hours contact. Once work is over and the drinks are poured, the playing field is leveled.

  After a few months on hot app, my forearms were riddled with burns of varying degree and size. My father wondered if, taking the subway home late at night, smelly, dirty, and with forearms full of scars, people weren’t afraid to sit next to me, since I looked like a junkie. But I didn’t care about the burns, the sweat, the dirt, or the smell; I was cooking.

  NINE

  Ladies’ Night

  Not long after I started working on hot app, Meany became the sous-chef. This led to some temporary tension between her and Jessie, who had been working at Layla longer and had also wanted the position. It was a tough decision, Dolly, Joey confided in me, during another one of his enigmatic monologues. Jessie is creative . . . has a good eye, good ideas. But Meany, Meany is such a hard worker. If I could just put them together I’d have the perfect person. I took this to mean that I could learn something from both of them, that I should try to be that perfect hybrid. Meany’s promotion also meant that the grill station position would be available.

  “It won’t be easy, Dolly,” Joey said. “This is the hard-core stuff. The Wild, Wild West of restaurant cooking.” He paused for effect. “It’s a busy station. You gotta learn your temps.”

  I considered this. The entrées on hot app did not require cooking meat to a desired temperature, which was precisely why they were relegated to the hot app station. The lamb shank was braised (cooked for almost three hours until the meat fell off the bone), and the shellfish was, well, shellfish. It just got cooked: Clams and mussels opened when they were done and shrimp turned opaque. Meat temperatures were mysterious.

  “And it’s fucking hot over there, and I mean HOT. You gotta be able to take the heat.”

  How much hotter could it get? I was already sweltering over the fryer and burners in hot app.

  “But,” he finally said, dangling the position in front of me, “if you think you can handle it . . .”

  He was challenging me; I knew it.

  “I can handle it,” I said without hesitation. Any insinuation that I wouldn’t be up to the task only made me more determined.

  It turned out that the grill was a whole other level of cooking. It was fucking hot over the grill, so hot that I sometimes felt like I was working over a volcano. There was no escape from the fire and smoke, only the respite of gallons of cold water to drink. Virtually every item on my station could be cooked to a variety of degrees. I had to keep all the information organized in my head, and all my proteins on my grill organized too. Toughest of all, as I had been warned, I had to learn to judge temperature by feel.

  “You just gotta get used to it, Dolly,” Meany, my grill coach, told me. By then everyone was calling me Dolly. I listened closely to any advice she offered.

  “Try to just get used to the amount of time it takes for the salmon to reach medium rare. And learn the feel.”

  When she saw me comparing my closed fist to a piece of meat, pressing on the meaty part of my palm below the thumb with my fingers closed in a fist, she rolled her eyes.

  “That’s how they taught us at school,” I said sheepishly. It was an old trick: Well done is a fist; rare is an open, relaxed hand. I hadn’t been able to perform the trick back in school, either; I should have known better than to try it at work.

  “Forget that,” she said dismissively. “You don’t have time to sit there and decide whether your lamb kebab feels like your stupid hand. Just get used to the feeling. Don’t think so much.”

  The more hours I put in actually working as a cook, the more I realized how little practical knowledge I’d gained in cooking school. Meany and Jessie were patient with me while I regressed back to the land of insecurity. Is this medium? I would ask for a second opinion, holding a
lamb kebab out for them to touch. This is mid-rare, right? pointing to a salmon. Well done was the only temp in which I had confidence (just cook it until it’s too done to eat) but also the least likely to be ordered. Meany taught me how to use the different parts of the grill (the hottest spot in the center-right, the relatively cooler outer edges) to control my timing. After a while, I finally got the hang of it. I just touched. And felt. I had no other choice; the pace on the line on a busy night left me no time for thinking. I became a machine. Joey yelled out commands, and I executed them without emotional attachment—most of the time.

  One busy night, Joey called out order after order as Layla’s dining room filled up. When we were really busy, the new orders began to overlap with those that he’d already yelled out. Three chicken, one sauce on the side; three lamb kebabs, all medium; five salmon—that makes seven salmon all day, three mid-rare, three medium, and one well done. Two swordfish kebabs. Three octo. Two merguez. Make that four chicken all day. Order fire! He did us the favor of giving us the “all day” number, which included previously called orders, so we’d have the total number of orders that should be in the works. I could barely get the food out of the lowboy and onto sizzle platters before he started piling on more orders.

  And he sounded uncharacteristically on edge. Maybe Drew, owner of the restaurant group of which we were a part, was in the restaurant. Drew had enough restaurants that he couldn’t possibly spend every night at Layla, and since we had been open for over a year and had already received an excellent two-star review from the New York Times, he only stopped by occasionally. Though Joey was not an owner of the restaurant, he took full responsibility for its success or failure. His reputation as a chef was at stake. Still, he ultimately answered to Drew, who, as owner, had final say on any and all decisions. As far as I could tell, they had a good relationship and aside from insisting that kebabs be on the menu, Drew gave Joey the flexibility to run the restaurant the way Joey saw fit.

  Drew was generally jovial and even willing to help out in the dining room during a rush. Still, when Drew came around (Heavy D. we lovingly called him, on account of his superior girth), everyone got a bit tense. He had an uncanny knack for face and name recognition, which only made everyone more nervous; if we fucked something up, he’d remember forever. Until I actually saw Heavy D., though, I had no way of knowing if he was in the restaurant. And with all the orders Joey was yelling out, I was too busy to ask.

  My grill quickly filled up and was wall-to-wall meat and fish. Joey just kept calling out more orders. Add on another chicken and an octo. Where was I supposed to cook all of it? Couldn’t he see that my grill was full? I thought he was pushing me once again, testing me, on the busiest night I’d ever had. I became frustrated, and I let it show.

  “Oh, come on,” I mumbled in exasperation, quietly but audibly.

  I talked back. I complained. I questioned my chef, who heard me and then—worst of all—called me on it. In an instant I was horrified at my show of insubordination.

  “Is there a problem,” Joey said sternly and then paused before saying my name, “Dolly?” He had the tone of a reprimanding parent using an impetuous child’s full name: Is there a problem . . . Dalia Therese Jurgensen?

  “No, Joey,” I answered, not turning around to face him, not stopping for a split second. “There’s no problem.”

  Joey had the unique ability to discipline any employee with no more than a stern tone. It wasn’t so much that we feared him; more that we feared disappointing him. We all wanted his approval, and he knew it.

  “How long on thirty-five, Dolly?” asked Jessie, saving me from further distraction.

  She was referring to table thirty-five, whose order had been called what seemed like hours earlier. It was a four-top with two of the entrées coming off of my station: two grape leaf-wrapped salmon with chickpea pancakes and tahini vinaigrette, medium rare. It was a recent addition to the menu and one on which Meany and Jessie had collaborated. Joey liked their idea of wrapping salmon in grape leaves so much that he worked with them to create the full dish, making sure that it fit with the rest of the menu and still had his touch. He was secure enough in his own talents and abilities that he was ready and willing to teach and encourage his cooks to experiment with food, a trait sadly not always present in accomplished chefs.

  That night, Jessie was working the sauté, or middle, station. She led the line, controlling the timing of the pickups, organizing the various entrées and tables so that everything went out in a controlled and timely fashion. She timed her entrées to be ready when mine and Meany’s were (Meany was on hot app that night; as sous-chef she rotated through all the stations, covering other cooks’ days off) and vice versa. I gently squeezed the sides of the two dark rectangles of salmon that were close to being done.

  “One minute,” I answered, moving the salmon to a sizzle platter so they could rest on the edge of the hot grill. Even away from direct heat, they would continue to cook, and by the time we picked up the table, the salmon would be perfect. I was thankful to free up a tiny bit of space on my grill.

  Side towel in hand, I pulled down a stack of sauté pans from the top of the sally, short for salamander, the overhead broiler that ran a third of the length of the hot line. Always on, it provided the perfect hot spot to store pans and plates to keep them warm. After months of working on the hot line, my forearms had taken on a new shape as a result of the palm-up lift I used to retrieve an entire stack of sauté pans from the top of the sally. Meany, Jessie, and I often compared muscles, proudly flexing different parts of our arms and hands; no one could top Jessie’s biceps. Catching sight of my own bulging forearms, a tangible symbol of my growing strength, was always satisfying, even in the midst of being slammed.

  “Ready, Dolly?” asked Jessie without a break in her movement.

  “Ready,” I answered, anxious to clear the order for table thirty-five and focus on the monster pickup that was monopolizing my grill.

  I moved the two salmon onto my cutting board and, side towel in hand, pulled down two dinner plates from the shelf that sat above the flattop (strategically placed to keep them warm). I may as well have had folded side towels surgically attached to my hands since I needed them to touch virtually everything on the hot line.

  I set one of the chickpea pancakes, studded with small squares of tomato and chopped black olives and cooked in brown butter, in the center of each white plate. Now the salmon. With my sharpened chef knife (a sharp edge is absolutely imperative; you need to cut, not tear), I sliced each rectangle of fish on the bias with one smooth motion. Then, fingers proverbially crossed, I pulled the two halves of the salmon apart to check the color: perfect. The deep coral-colored center gradually gave way to the pale pink of the fully cooked outer edges of the fish. It didn’t matter how long I’d worked on the grill, I always crossed my fingers before cutting open a salmon. If the salmon was too rare (which happened a lot in the beginning) I had to smoosh the cut sides back together and put the fish back in the oven on a sizzle platter to finish cooking, which never resulted in the perfectly graduated glow of color I was aiming for. At least once a week I had an anxiety dream in which, no matter what I did (even if I barely set it on the grill for a second), every salmon I cut open was well done—overcooked and useless. Garbage. It was only marginally better than my recurring stress dreams from garde-manger in which I woke up in bed with an enormous bowl of tabouleh on the pillow next to me.

  But those salmon were perfect. I placed the two halves atop the chickpea pancake, showcasing the beautiful pinks, and spooned the tahini vinaigrette around the outside of the plate. A drizzle of deep brown veal sauce (an unlikely but delicious pairing) contrasted with the thick, sand-colored tahini and finished my work on the plate. Joey would put on the final touches: a tiny quenelle of thick yogurt and a salmon skin chip—the fishy version of a pork rind. As Jessie was putting the final touches on her roasted cod and pan-seared monkfish, we set our plates on the pass for Joey to fin
ish, wipe clean, and hand off to a waiter. He barely looked at me as I passed him the plates. I hoped he’d forgotten my earlier grumbling.

  With so much food to put out, more than I’d ever had at once, I didn’t have time to worry about Joey. My grill overflowing, I had to access all the techniques and skills I’d been honing to get the food out. I needed to be “in the zone.” I went into serious automatic pilot mode: I spun into action, arranging everything in the appropriate places on the grill. Anything well done went on the hottest spot, while swordfish kebabs that cooked more quickly stayed near the edges. Zaatar-spiced chicken took the longest, even though I had “marked” or par-cooked each portion at the beginning of service, so I put them on first. I had my own system to keep it all straight, so that the well-done salmon was finished at the same time as the medium lamb kebab and so on. I’m not even sure how I developed this system; I just did. I intuitively knew what was what.

  I filled sauté pans with enough curried bulgur wheat and orzo salad for all the plates, and sautéed eggplant pancakes (reminiscent of latkes) for the chicken and chickpea pancakes for the salmon. As soon as the octopus legs were ready, I passed them down the line to the new garde-manger cook to get them out of my way. I grabbed a stack of plates and lined them up along both my counter and the small stainless steel edge that abutted the grill and flattop. My entire area was white with plates, with only hints of stainless steel peeking through between them. My heart was racing, Joey’s reprimand a distant memory, quickly fading into the haze of steam and sweat and smoke. We all wore undershirts to soak up the perspiration, but also to protect us from the starchy roughness of the chef’s jackets, and the amount of sweat running off me was astonishing.