VeraBlue
Executive Chef
I'm one of three executive chefs at one of New York's largest universities. There are three campuses, each of us ruling one. I am the prettiest
, naturally, and quite possibly the most outspoken. That doesn't come without it's own set of setbacks, but that is quite the other topic, indeed.
For the amount of students, faculty and staff I serve, I have the largest kitchen. I have the most work space, and the most square footage of refrigeration, freezing, and storage space. I cannot understand the language of easily half my staff, but that, too, is quite the other topic. I've even got a working bakery down in the basement with a oven that is larger than my home kitchen, with seven shelves that rotate like a ferris wheel from a Hansel and Gretel nightmare. I've got a double level steamer, 2 30 gallon kettles, a swiss braiser, an impinger, 2 flat top grills, 2 fryers, a double oven and 2 free standing mixers. What I don't have is a stove. Well, I have a stove, but not in the conventional sense that you turn on the gas and then you proceed to cook on it.
No, my 6-burner stove looks like giant Tinker Toys now. Please permit me to paint a better picture. Last week, between christmas and new year, it's typically slow. Good time for kitchen work. On Thursday, the facilities engineer, the fire code dude, and assorted sundry worker types came to upgrade my fire prevention system. It's got whistles, bells, blinking lights and a funky white liquid that comes showering down in the event of a fire. (I thought I actually encouraged the fire, since I cook with it....
). Then they all take a look at my stove/oven. Yes, it has an oven beneath the stove, but again, not in the convention sense that I can light it and bake a cake in it. Instead, we store a few pans in there that we like to keep warm for service. The oven hasn't worked since the same year Michael J. Fox's clocktower was stopped by lightening. It might actually have been the same strike that killed the little oven that could.... Anyway, it can't, any longer, and there really is no hope for resusitation.
Back to the stove top. Of the 6 burners, only two pilots light when you turn the knob. The other 4 will light, but only after you rub two sticks over it. (I should mention that while all the fire equipment work was being done, one of my cooks completely dismantled the stove for serious cleaning of individual pieces, hence the Tinker Toy observation) Only the shell was left. Now, the biggest problem with the stove/oven isn't so much that 80 per cent of it doesn't work or leaks gas, no, that doesn't seem to concern anyone other than myself. No, their problem is the small backwall and shelf that comes over half the stove top. It acts like an umbrella, preventing the funky white cancerous material from putting out any flames...(again, don't I want flames?????)
So, this circle of worker men and everyone else jockeying for position start rubbing their chins and scratching their heads, all saying the same thing. "That stove has to go". Oddly, I'd been saying the same thing since I got on that campus a year ago. Since all this is happening during a holiday, more or less, there really was no one above me to further this situation along. Yesterday was the first day someone could assess the situation. Naturally, I did my own assessing....the oven was last used by Martha Washington, normally you take your life into your own hands when you use the stove top, and currently, it was doing it's best impersonation of a pile of junk on the floor. That pretty much summed it up. What does my boss do...? He calls his boss. Another execise in futility, if you ask me. Unfortunately, all that being outspoken I mentioned earlier keeps some people from actually asking me some things
.
Now more people are thumping their chests and waving their arms around and the brilliant solution is to simply cut the metal top off, making it 'up to code' for the fire dude to sign off on it. Somehow, they believe that if they do this (and they did it today, by the way. It looked like a bone saw trying to get a body in half, head to groin. The guy slicing it had fancy ear plugs, too...all we had was reverberating sound that could be heard in Long Island from the beautiful Hudson Valley), everything will be fine.
I'm left with an oven that never ovs. A stove that just went through surgery and seriously needs the Nip/Tuck guys to fix all the sharp edges left behind, and the works left all over the floor, just beckoning me to make a ferris wheel out of them. I always like making that ferris wheel....
, naturally, and quite possibly the most outspoken. That doesn't come without it's own set of setbacks, but that is quite the other topic, indeed.For the amount of students, faculty and staff I serve, I have the largest kitchen. I have the most work space, and the most square footage of refrigeration, freezing, and storage space. I cannot understand the language of easily half my staff, but that, too, is quite the other topic. I've even got a working bakery down in the basement with a oven that is larger than my home kitchen, with seven shelves that rotate like a ferris wheel from a Hansel and Gretel nightmare. I've got a double level steamer, 2 30 gallon kettles, a swiss braiser, an impinger, 2 flat top grills, 2 fryers, a double oven and 2 free standing mixers. What I don't have is a stove
. Well, I have a stove, but not in the conventional sense that you turn on the gas and then you proceed to cook on it.No, my 6-burner stove looks like giant Tinker Toys now. Please permit me to paint a better picture. Last week, between christmas and new year, it's typically slow. Good time for kitchen work. On Thursday, the facilities engineer, the fire code dude, and assorted sundry worker types came to upgrade my fire prevention system. It's got whistles, bells, blinking lights and a funky white liquid that comes showering down in the event of a fire. (I thought I actually encouraged the fire, since I cook with it....
). Then they all take a look at my stove/oven. Yes, it has an oven beneath the stove, but again, not in the convention sense that I can light it and bake a cake in it. Instead, we store a few pans in there that we like to keep warm for service. The oven hasn't worked since the same year Michael J. Fox's clocktower was stopped by lightening. It might actually have been the same strike that killed the little oven that could.... Anyway, it can't, any longer, and there really is no hope for resusitation. Back to the stove top. Of the 6 burners, only two pilots light when you turn the knob. The other 4 will light, but only after you rub two sticks over it. (I should mention that while all the fire equipment work was being done, one of my cooks completely dismantled the stove for serious cleaning of individual pieces, hence the Tinker Toy observation) Only the shell was left. Now, the biggest problem with the stove/oven isn't so much that 80 per cent of it doesn't work or leaks gas, no, that doesn't seem to concern anyone other than myself. No, their problem is the small backwall and shelf that comes over half the stove top. It acts like an umbrella, preventing the funky white cancerous material from putting out any flames...(again, don't I want flames?????)
So, this circle of worker men and everyone else jockeying for position start rubbing their chins and scratching their heads, all saying the same thing. "That stove has to go". Oddly, I'd been saying the same thing since I got on that campus a year ago. Since all this is happening during a holiday, more or less, there really was no one above me to further this situation along. Yesterday was the first day someone could assess the situation. Naturally, I did my own assessing....the oven was last used by Martha Washington, normally you take your life into your own hands when you use the stove top, and currently, it was doing it's best impersonation of a pile of junk on the floor. That pretty much summed it up. What does my boss do...? He calls his boss. Another execise in futility, if you ask me. Unfortunately, all that being outspoken I mentioned earlier keeps some people from actually asking me some things
.Now more people are thumping their chests and waving their arms around and the brilliant solution is to simply cut the metal top off, making it 'up to code' for the fire dude to sign off on it. Somehow, they believe that if they do this (and they did it today, by the way. It looked like a bone saw trying to get a body in half, head to groin. The guy slicing it had fancy ear plugs, too...all we had was reverberating sound that could be heard in Long Island from the beautiful Hudson Valley), everything will be fine.
I'm left with an oven that never ovs. A stove that just went through surgery and seriously needs the Nip/Tuck guys to fix all the sharp edges left behind, and the works left all over the floor, just beckoning me to make a ferris wheel out of them. I always like making that ferris wheel....
