Back in the main kitchen, over at the big steam tank, the big bain marie, Jimmy told Bill there was one more thing they needed to do. It was to make Hollandaise Sauce. He showed Bill that there was already a bain marie with melted butter in it.
“If there’s no butter here when you first come in,” Jimmy said, “you need to put two pounds in to melt.”
Then they went on the next odyssey. Jimmy led Bill to a big walk-in where they got a flat of eggs and a couple of lemons. Next he led him to a completely different part of the labyrinthine whole-floor kitchen, a separate room of sorts where was the largest supply of anything you might need in an institutional grand ballroom banquet kitchen. From huge stock pots to tiny bain maries, everything was there in multitudes. Everything. Anything. Everything and anything in every size imaginable.
They took a clean small bain marie. They took a stainless steel mixing bowl, a whip (a whisk), a small ladle and an extra set of ladles to bring out to their room. While they were there, Jimmy left their things and led Bill into a room beyond this room. Here was a line of sinks and counters. “Where they defrost vegetables,” Jimmy said. “Sometimes for thousands of people. You’ll see.”
Then he led Bill to another room, a whole department in and of itself, the dish department. Here people were busy at work, a whole slew of them. Huge dishwasher machines, two of them, were working, each machine manned with people doing their jobs. There was a separate pot washer room too with multiple sinks and two pot washers working.
It was gargantuan. It was impressive. It was fascinating and overwhelming.
The last thing Jimmy showed Bill was the line of stock pots. These were huge, self-tilting floor models with tilt wheels to turn them for pouring their contents. There were four of them, only two of which were in use. In one was veal stock. In the other was chicken stock.
“Forty gallons each,” Jimmy said. He laughed. “Wait, you’ll see everything.”
Next they went back to pick up their truck. They went over to the big steam tank where Jimmy proceeded to crack the eggs and separate whites from yolks. He did this over a garbage can, in his bare hands without having washed them, not something Bill would have done, and he cavalierly threw away the egg whites, also something Bill would never have done. Mary P had taught him first to be clean and second, waste not, want not.
Jimmy dropped the yolks into the mixing bowl. He did a dozen eggs and threw in three for good luck. Bill would learn later in his cooking career that Jimmy needed the luck because he was doing it all wrong.
That done, he placed the bowl in the steam tank and slowly ladled in clarified butter while mixing/whisking it into the eggs. (Bill would later learn that you had to cook the eggs first, not cook them with the hot butter, praying all the while it came together.)
When it was done, Jimmy put the sauce on their truck. Then they went on another odyssey with the truck to a walk-in where the meats were. Here, off to one side, was a section labeled for the Falstaff Room. In this section were separate pans with: filet mignon, NY strips, T-Bones, filet of sole, salmon steaks, lobster tails and frogs legs (which were still thawing out).
Together, they stacked the pans on the truck.
“Ya,” Jimmy said. “That’s it. That’s everything we need and how we’ll do it every day, except after the first few times we can split up and do it faster.”
Bill looked at Jimmy as if he were crazy. “This is a big place,” he said.
“You learn everything first few days. No worry, Jimmy said.
