Learning About Food

I was pretty amazed by what you could do with a wok. Bit of oil, meat, then after just a few minutes, vegetables. Add a few noodles and serve. Within a few minutes you had a full meal. And the vegetables were cooked, but crisp! (Sorry mother, but your English cooking methods just didn’t do crisp vegetables, unless the power went off). I still see it as the most efficient, healthy, tasty and fast method of cooking (and for cleaning up), particularly for single people or couples. The wonderful ease of creating a flavour-some meal, in just a few minutes, with one pan, one heat source and a few ingredients. Marvelous. I was always trying to watch what the chefs were doing, and how. And not just with the Wok. The amazing, effective techniques of preparing, cooking and importantly, presenting the wide variety of dishes which were part of the tourist hotel we worked in. Occasionally I was distracted to the point of stopping what I was supposed to be doing to watch.
In fact one of the classic lines I recall, which caused a bit of an uproar in the kitchen, was when the Executive Chef (having yet another bad day), lost his temper with me for standing and watching two of the working chefs one day. He yelled out as he flung a saucepan lid across the kitchen (probably a little dangerous), which not only clattered into the overhead rack, dislodging various utensils and other pans, smashed into the wall (and cracked a tile it was discovered later) and crashed to the floor. The noise from that wasn’t so bad, except the doors had just swung open as a waitress entered the kitchen from the dining room, carrying plates, holding open the door for another waitress who was following. Just in time for the voice of the Executive chef to scream at me “You’re not in this kitchen to learn how to cook!” in a very loud voice.
Everyone froze. The saucepan lid clattered to the floor and didn’t just crash as one would hope, but did the full rolling round in an ever decreasing circle on the ceramic tiles like a rolling cymbal crash, speeding up and banging to a close. The chef glared at me. There was movement from the open door to the function room as the Maitre de and the Function Executive both entered and pulled the swing door closed. In a cool clear voice the Function Executive said, “Well, I hope someone ‘can’ cook, as we have a full house who now know people in this kitchen are not here to ‘learn’ how to cook.” Everyone (except myself and the executive chef) started laughing, before  continuing on with their work once they saw the face of the Executive Chef. I don’t recall my head coming up from that kitchen sink for the next three hours. And I am sure the saucepans and pans were thrown at the sinks in a dirtier and messier state than they normally would have been.