Bill felt really pleased at the chef’s confidence in him. He also felt really pleased because this seemed to remove any doubt about his job security. He didn’t say anything, but he was thinking he was surely gonna take it.
“It’s about whether or not you want it,” Jimmy Banquet Chef said after a while. He looked at Bill. “We want you to stay in The Falstaff Room because you’re really good at it. What’s been missing there is nothing more than a regular cook who can handle the business and keep it consistent.”
“But you can also be an assistant to the banquet chef,” the chef said. “And me too. We can start to work things out so we can have you where you’re most useful to us. It’s good for us and we’ll make it good for you.”
“Okay with me,” Bill said.
“Good,” the chef said. “I’ll be talking with the F&B director next week. When we get it started, not only will you have more hours and more overtime hours, but we’ll be adjusting your hourly rate too. Handsomely.”
“See,” the banquet chef said, “good for me and good for you too.”
They went to work. It wasn’t hard work in the sense that it was difficult or complicated. But it was hard work in that it was arduous, tedious and non-stop. They had a lot and a lot of chicken breasts to sauté. They had the filet of sole to roll. The fish would be one of the last things to get done.
First task and most arduous was browning the chicken breasts, five hundred of them and a few more. Like the time before, Jimmy Banquet Chef, Victor and Bill each stood over a big roasting pan. They started in the back of the pan and worked across, row after row, the breasts lined up like soldiers. About the time they had the last ones in the pan it was time to start flipping the first ones in.
This was not an exact science. The heat under the pan was not always uniform. Most often it was not uniform and that meant not all of the breasts browned evenly. Herein was where experience and skill entered into the matter. You had to keep track of the ones not ready to turn and make sure to get back to them before they burned.
Then there were the pops and splashes. Always the pops and splashes.
Similar to how the pace went in preparing a banquet start to finish, doing the chicken and beginning the flipping started slowly. You put the breasts into the hot oil somewhat gently, careful not to create your own splash. The flipping started slowly, but then the pace increased until the work was rapid. You flipped one, then the next, then the next, skipped the ones that needed skipping because they weren’t ready and then came back around to them. All the while you hoped that a pop did not occur just where or next to where you were reaching. This was why here they wore long-sleeve chef’s coats. This was to save the cooks’ arms from burns. A grease splash or pop that splashed grease up on your arm meant an immediate burn and most often a second-degree burn which was a blister. If you carelessly wiped the grease off, you took off the skin too.
Bad enough Bill had burn stripes up his arm from the Garland. Working a broiler invariably meant brushing your arm along the top or the bottom, and each touch left a stripe.
Stripes and pops and burns, oh my!
