While the ribs roasted, after the fish was set up and ready to pop into the oven, they did the chicken. Jimmy Banquet Chef and Bill did the sauté work while Victor cleaned up and put away the breading station. They breaded all the chicken for all the parties at one time, by exact count but always with a couple of extra to spare. The breaded chicken for the evening parties was trayed, wrapped in film and set in a walk-in box.
Jimmy Banquet Chef and Bill talked while they worked. Mostly, the banquet chef explained about how things were done, not the cooking part of it, but the organizational and work part.
“If we had a really big volume,” the banquet chef said, “I would have kitchen help to do the breading. Today we don’t need that.”
“Understood,” Bill said. He worked his pan of chicken with a kitchen fork, as did the banquet chef, but he had his spatula close by and at the ready. There was always a stubborn sucker that refused to be turned, one that stuck to the pan, that required the extra TLC of a spatula gently slid under it, to tickle it, as it were, and coax it onto its other side.
“If it was really a lot,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said, “like getting up toward more than three hundred, I’d have had it done a day in advance. I knew you were here. I wanted you to do it with me.”
“Gee thanks,” Bill said.
“I want you familiar with every part of all of this.”
“And why is that?”
“In case I can’t be here. In case I really need help at any given time. Victor’s good. He and I have talked about it with the chef. We can really use your organizational skills.”
“This is only my fifth day here,” Bill said. “What do you know about my organizational skills?”
“You’re an ace,” the banquet chef said.
A metal splash screen ran down the row of stoves. Jimmy Banquet Chef worked one pan of chicken. Bill work the other. These were huge roasting pans, about nine square feet in size.
Rule is always flip toward the back, and if that’s not possible, never toward the person working next to you. So as the breasts were down long enough to be browned on the bottom side, Bill flipped them. He flipped toward the back, away from him and toward the splash screen. He was wholly unconcerned of grease hitting the splash screen but he tried to flip the chicken without any splash. That was a matter of pride. A good cook did not splash if he could at all help it. A good cook was always conscious of what he was doing, especially when he was working with hot or sharp things.
They did two pans apiece, and that was that. The browned chicken breasts were set onto sheet pans and the sheet pans were set into the rotary oven. Timing was set for them to be done and ready to come out at the same time as the ribs.
The lull.
There came a time when for the first two parties, the afternoon ones, everything was working and there was nothing more to be done. In this time period both the banquet chef and Bill went off to the side to smoke a cigarette. Before they did this they checked what was in the rotary oven and how it was looking. The banquet chef made sure all the vegetables were set and ready, all the salads were done and the potatoes, baked potatoes for these parties, were working as they should be.
“I’d like you to help me carve when these parties come up,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said. “Whatever set up is still needed for The Falstaff Room your partner can do. Be about time that lazy Greek did some work. I may have to take care of him, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know he’s lazy.” Jimmy Banquet Chef laughed as if to himself. “I see everything,” he said.
