Professional chef for an afternoon

I was offered a chance to work with Chef Harding Lee Smith at The Grill Room and Bar in Portland as part of an insider's look in to a fine dining kitchen with The Switch magazine. I thought it was an opportunity to do something totally different and I knew both Shannon and Karen (also signed up for the project) were not gourmet foodies. I figured I wouldn't be the only one unfamiliar with the workings and cuisine of a professional kitchen.

It was both a humbling experience and a whole lot of fun!

Part of the deal in being allowed to play chef for the afternoon was to contribute to a feature about my time in the kitchen for The Switch. Below is my story but you can read the whole feature (both Karen and Shannon's parts are very amusing) on  The Switch magazine's website.

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I might be familiar with a kitchen as a mother of two children but I cook in the style of family dining (i.e., casserole dishes to accommodate leftovers for lunch boxes the next day).

So when Karen identified me as “knowing how to cook” to Chef Smith, I cringed. Then I clarified.

"I know how to cook for a family. I don't really know how to 'cook.' "

I knew I was in for a completely and utterly unfamiliar kitchen experience when I looked around and noted the absence of my usual kitchen tools. Where were the measuring cups, glass mixing bowls and food processor?

After a quick introduction by Chef Smith about our menu plans and workstation assignments - for me that was mostly prepping sauces - I jumped right in with my first task.

Chopping shallots for the bacon-truffle vinaigrette set off my panic alarm initially. I wasn’t sure what a shallot was.

After a quick check in with Shannon, who was also unsure about the identity of a shallot (this made me feel better), I figured it out by process of elimination.

One stupid question bullet dodged (with an anticipated hundred more to go).

Chef Smith's demonstration on how to dice a shallot on my cutting board lasted about 15 seconds. His hands and knife worked in a blur of motion. When he asked for confirmation I understood his instructions, I nodded a bit uncertainly and then got to work.

I cut the shallot in half, then laid one half face-down on the cutting board to slice it. Then I made a cut parallel to the cutting board before turning and making the final dice cut.

The dicing took me more than a few minutes and I was midway through the second half of that shallot before I started cursing it.

But I was not the only one struggling with chopping. Shannon had her own troubles with the chives.

Oh where oh where was a darn food processor when I needed it? 

I finished dicing two shallots before moving on to slicing the next ingredient in the vinaigrette, the bacon. This involved cutting the layer of skin off the top of the uncooked slab before slicing it. While I was trying to get over the unsettled feelings I was having about touching the pig's skin and cutting it off the meat, I had my first kitchen crisis.

I failed to watch the pot with the base for the blood orange gastrique and it boiled over on the stove.

Oops.

Chef Smith came to the rescue and moved my pan to a cooler part of the stove and scraped off the sticky overflow.

I went back to slicing the bacon with hopes that was the last of my mishaps. I put the bacon in the oven, set the stove timer and went back to my kitchen bane (aka dicing shallots).

Once the bacon was crispy (which I taste-tested per Chef Smith's suggestion - it was delicious), I was charged with dicing it.

At that point I had a better handle on how to properly hold my knife (none of that one finger on top of the blade stuff per Chef Smith’s coaching - a full grab with thumb and finger on the blade’s neck with my other three fingers on the handle) and the bacon dicing went much more smoothly than those darn shallots.

During my time dicing, I was also cooking hard-boiled eggs on the stove and I managed that without a boil-over mess. 

Working in the kitchen is nothing if not a test of your multi-tasking abilities.

My last job, which I did with Shannon, was shredding the egg whites for plating the Tartare. This required the use of a tool unfamiliar to me, the microplane grater.  This skinny shredding-like tool took a minute to get used to but the final results of the shredded egg white looked nice on the plate even if it was a time-consuming task for a couple of novices.

I spent a lot of time cutting and dicing various sauce ingredients and by the time my stint in the kitchen was over, I had a nice callous starting on the lowest knuckle of my first finger.

I was not the only one who had a lot of chopping and dicing on her hands in this kitchen. Shannon had her share of challenging tasks to face at her workstation next to me.

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Oh, and if you're unfamiliar with tartare, it's diced raw meat mixed with a few spices. When it was plated I commented (in a whisper) to Shannon that the meat wasn't cooked and asked her if she thought they were going to cook it. We discovered that no, it's served cold and uncooked. It took a minute for me to get my head around that before I ventured a bite. Yeah, the tartare tasted good but it really wigged me out that it was uncooked meat so one bite was all I could do. I whole-heartily concur with Shannon's thoughts as I am also, "an unabashed carnivore with a raw meat aversion."

We were on a tight schedule in preparing dishes and we amateur cooks were only about 15 minutes over the time frame set for serving. Must be that writer thing - we know how to rally to get the job done on a deadline.

Shredding the egg whites on the microplane grater took a heck of a long time. It looked nice when plated with the tartare but not something I'd ever take the time to do at home.

I did a whole lot of laughing in the kitchen, mostly because I didn't have a clue what I was doing and I tend to get silly in situations like that. It turned out that Karen and Shannon have similar "styles" and Chef Harding was a good sport about our silliness.

The grilled meat was oh so good! I don't have any pictures of the grill but it's a really interesting set-up in the restaurant and one you have to see for yourself. The hardwood used in the grill gives the meat an extra tasty flavor.

Originally published in The Maine Switch, April 16, 2009