He was in at eleven the next morning. When he got home, Bill found that his wife was asleep. Very often she was asleep when he got home and now that she was working and up early, she went to bed long before he got home even on an early night which was about one in the morning.
Jimmy Banquet Chef and Victor were waiting for him. Jimmy G was not in yet, but Bill would discover that later in the day that the banquet chef would sign his time card so that he was in at the same time as Bill.
Millie met Bill with a smile at the laundry. She didn’t say much and kept her distance because it was mid-morning and people were all around. Bill turned in his dirty uniform and didn’t take a clean one. He told Millie he already had three. She said she would keep him a nice supply off to the side. “The rack we were behind,” she said with a wink.
First thing, Bill took himself a mug of coffee. Room Service used mugs, so Bill got himself one. He also picked himself a light-colored croissant from off the tray set aside for breakfast customers in the hotel dining room. The dining room served breakfast and lunch out of the main kitchen. Jimmy Banquet Chef told Bill he would be learning their menus too but there was no hurry since the room service cooks did that service. Dinner in this hotel was exclusively in The Falstaff Room.
“Stocks today,” the banquet chef told Bill. He took Bill to a row of stoves that Bill had been at before. Inside two of the ovens were big, square roasting pans filled with beef bones.
“You get them at the butcher,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “Then you have a runner cart them up here and you roast them the way I’m roasting these. A little oil in the bottom of the pan, a high temperature, and you let them brown. Takes a good hour or so. No big deal.”
“Same thing for chicken stock,” the banquet chef said. “Just different procedure. You get a case of hens and you put them in water to boil. You add onions and celery cut large and some bay leaves. You never put anything in that will color the liquid, so no tomatoes, no carrots, etc. Lots of bay leaves and some garlic and seasoning. All that will get filtered out.”
He led Bill over to the room where the tilt-kettles were. One was filling with water. Inside already was a case of hens. Once the hens were cooked, the breasts would be used for chicken salad and then the bones would be put back into the stock pot to cook until, like whenever.
Cans of whole tomatoes, stewed tomatoes and all the scraps from the vegetable department and cold food stations were being thrown into the meat stock kettle. While that was happening, the kettle was being filled with water and the steam heat was turned on. The browned and seasoned bones would be put in there along with several roasting pans of mirepoix, onions, carrots and celery cut large and browned in seasoning, thyme, oregano and basil. Whole heads of garlic were thrown in too. The bones would be added and that liquid would be cooked forever too. As it cooked and stayed cooking, anyone making brown sauce would use this stock. Anyone making white sauce would use the chicken stock.
First lesson. That took an hour. Jimmy Banquet Chef and Bill didn’t have to do much, so while it was getting done, after Bill had seen what he needed to, he and the banquet chef went next to do vegetables.
The banquet chef had a clipboard with all the banquet and party menus on it. They sat a moment and read off the vegetables, figured how much of it—most actually—was broccoli. There was some asparagus, some cauliflower and some mixed vegetables too. So Jimmy Banquet Chef showed Bill how to calculate the number of boxes, and once Bill knew, he left it to Bill to figure out.
Lesson two.
