NovoTales: Cuts and Burns

Chefs are inked by choice, unlike the ‘tattoos’ I am talking about, which are earned, either through valiance and experience, or they’re just really dumb to use a wet ladle in hot oil.  It’s a normal occurrence in a professional kitchen to cut yourself while trying to slice jagged bell peppers, being delusional about using a blunt knife to slice ultra-thin onions for a salad, or trying to separate two frozen onion rings by shoving a knife 1/4th of the way into your index finger so much that blood starts spurting out everywhere and you have to be taken to the emergency room while the other and only cook in the kitchen takes care of the rushing orders, and it’s been hardly a month since he joined.

What I’m saying is…

Chefs cut themselves all the time. Luckily, this wasn’t new to me when I entered the field. If there was anything that drew me to cooking, it’s those damned reality shows where chefs shred cabbage like angel’s hair. Before I was a cook anywhere, I started out as a garde manger in my home kitchen. If there is one skill that I have and to this day practice, it is KNIFE SKILLS. I love knives. I like sharpening them and using them to stab vegetables in front of people who cross me. I also like taking care of them and maintaining their edge like cool emo people. By the time I stepped into a culinary institute, I could confidently say I was good with this primal tool. I never cut myself with a knife in any major way. Touchwood.

But I got burned several times. Either because of our pet volcano in the kitchen (Tandoor) or because of the screaming handles on stainless-steel pans, and, as I foreshadowed, using wet ladles in hot oil. One time, our fryer wasn’t up to the heat mark yet, and the time was ticking on an order. So I heated up a Kadai, which was kept for deep frying other stuff, and threw some frozen fries. In a professional kitchen, you can’t keep going to the sink to wash your utensils for every little stain. So, we have a container filled with water where turners, ladles, spoons, and other secondary weapons are half-submerged. I picked it up as I was being distracted with something, and instead of doing a healthy swoop to throw away the excess water, I punched the bottom of the kadai with the ladle, so much so that boiling hot oil would splatter on both my hands, and cause marks that would last proudly for months. I couldn’t put my right hand near any hot, warm or sub-tropical things for a few days. I still have a tiny oil mark below my left wrist from that incident, even after a year. I just hope it doesn’t fade away soon. I need as much validation for being tough as I can show off.

But this post today is about a specific story. One that will always be easy to remember and brought something in me that day which made me feel like, “Maybe I could be a good chef if I wanted to be.”

So, there is another character in my story. His name is Bhuvan. Bhuvan is a lean, kind of silent guy, who has a cock-eye. I am not asking you to judge Bhuvan on looks. I am just telling you his most noticeable features first, which also made him look pretty dumb in front of other people. But, in fact, I didn’t think he was dumb at all. Bhuvan actually taught me many of the things while working in the kitchen. He appeared introverted, but actually he yapped a lot….to me at least. He studied only till 10th grade and started working in hotels and restaurants soon after. His entire knowledge was completely based from his experience in kitchens, which was exactly what I lacked as a fresh culinary graduate. So, I was patient with him and respected his decisions in the kitchen, eager to learn. He was also just good to work with and we built quite a rapport, although my other fellow fresh meat would disagree with me here. (Hey, Surya! What’s up? Let me know how it’s going over there if you read this) 

*whispers* he still works there. He also comes in the latter part of this story.

One fine calm evening, it was just me and Bhuvan in the kitchen, passing time, and yapping….mostly him. Ironically, for someone who worked in hotels his entire life, Bhuvan mostly talked about how he wanted to leave that hotel because he hated working there. He began his usual yappology which caged my ears but my hands were pretty free to do some mise-en-place (prep work). Bhuvan gets a video call from one of his friends, and the kitchen gets a ticket (an order). I check the order and confirm with my fellow careless colleague that it’s something I can finish by myself. So I proceed to do so. Done. Back to prep work.

*buzzzzzz* *buzzzzzz* *buzzzzzz*

We get a below-average string of orders, which moves me from my comfort zone to being on my toes slightly. Bhuvan is still taking it easy at this point. We get an order for onion rings. Easy. Frozen pre-prepped rings from the freezer into the fryer, take’em out, peri-peri mix, and mayonnaise. Served. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. 4 minutes later, it comes back to the kitchen with the customer complaining they weren’t crispy enough. Mostly because they have been sitting under the hot lamp too long. (classic F&B service shenanigans) They tell us those golden words, which are code for “Hurry the hell up!” a.k.a a “Running order”. Bhuvan, who was pretty into his conversation with his friend about how copulating with his girlfriend inside a bush feels like, is suddenly all pricked up in his ears and decides to move now. He cuts the call and grabs the tray of onion rings from the freezer. 

I don’t exactly remember what I was doing here. I was either trying to take out Thai curry paste for a Wok Basil Chicken or plating a Chicken Tikka that was drenched in cholesterol, or I was just wiping the table half-heartedly. But I was on Bhuvan’s left when it happened. He took a bunch of frozen onion rings, which were stuck together by thick ice, and tried to separate them with his hands. He picks up a knife. A service guy comes in and yells, “IS IT READY YET?! GUESTS ARE ANGRY!”

“ONE MINUTE!” and then boom.

I see a shot glass amount of blood almost spew from his left index finger onto the spice box located to his right on the worktable. I see a brand-new, white handle, German Chef’s knife covered 1/12th of the way on the top in blood, 6-7 broken onion rings inside a deep steel pan garnished with most probably B or O+ blood (I’m guessing), and the guy whom I looked up to till now for any kind of solutions in the kitchen when panic strikes, rush to the sink to wash his knife wound which was, honestly speaking, a PRETTY FRICKING DUMB WAY TO GET AN INJURY! I understood by the sheer amount of force and sharpness of the knife that the wound was pretty bad. Surprisingly or not so surprisingly, Bhuvan didn’t yell or cry. He didn’t even make a facial expression…until he looked at me, winced, and said, “It’s pretty bad actually.”

I tell him to rush to the hospital and before I could react, he leaves the kitchen to tend to his wounds. It’s a good thing that at times like these, we have a  couple of people ready to take care-OH, WAIT A SECOND! There are still 3 huge tickets left for me and I don’t know how to make half of the dishes here still! And I have 90 milliliters of B or O+ blood to clean off of ingredients and equipment, which it has blessed gracefully. I can’t do this alone! *beep beep boop boop beep*

“SURYAAA! I NEED YOUR HELP IN THE BAR KITCHEN! RUN HERE AS FAST AS YOU CAN!”, said I as I held the phone between my right clavicle and ear and a Wok with a questionable-looking chicken appetiser in both of my hands. He says, “Yo! I can’t leave the Conti kitchen. I was assigned to work here.”

“TELL’EM IT’S AN EMERGENCY!”

5 minutes later, Surya enters the kitchen to either save me or drown together. We looked at the tickets and divided the work amongst ourselves, and realized that was a dumb plan later, so we started just putting our fingers in each other’s processes. We both set out to prepare the orders which we were most comfortable with making and eventually, we started pulling through. We had a good dynamic, and I don’t know if he was feeling it that night, but I felt like a trained machine. Figuring out things as you go without having time to second-guess yourself. I felt pretty invincible for those 3 hours that we were in the kitchen serving food to rich drunks who were calling it a night at 8:30 PM. As this was going on, I kept in mind not to use any equipment or ingredient which had Bhuvan’s DNA on it. (We were cleaning it up as we went)

We finally make it through somehow. Surya was even surprised by a curry which I winged in the middle of this panic when an order arrived because neither of us knew how to make it. “It actually tastes good, I don’t know how”, is what he said. That condescending dream boy. But all in all, it was the first night where I came closer to being part of the culture in a professional kitchen. I knew that I would be ready to face the unexpected whenever it came across my face in the kitchen. However later that night, a bunch of Chinese orders came as we were closing the kitchen, and we had to call another chef to take care of them, but that’s irrelevant to this story.

This was the first night of service that brought me confidence that I could be a chef if I wanted to be. I can actually survive here if I wanted to, not that I did. For the longest time, I wondered whether I would suffocate under pressure or withstand it. Turns out, I never thought I would even enjoy it sometimes. It resolved many a doubt in my head about my competence as a line cook. Hmm….apparently, cuts are not so bad after all, especially if you get to learn something on behalf of someone else’s pain. 

Thanks, Bhuvan.

*whispers* also….thank you, Surya.