Kitchen Chronicles: Your kitchen provides a fertile vineyard for sour grapes!

Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it? (Mark Twain 1835-1910)

I had a week from hell which ended on Friday. It’s a complicated story of trying to run a kitchen on an isolated island with a very resentful staff. One of my clients was footing the bill and they insisted on having me in control of the cooking operation. I agreed on the hotel's promise of the kitchen staff helping me prepare the meals for this large group. The hotel also agreed on providing all of the necessary ingredients we have requested. Needless to say they didn't provide the promised help, and 60% of the requested ingredients were missing. So, I had to run the show by myself with the only help of two of the best students from the Academia de Artes Culinarias I took with me. We re-designed the menus to use the limited ingredients we had on hand. It was tough task.

Although at times I though we were not going to make it, I can proudly report that we performed a miracle through all the foot-dragging, antiquated equipment, and sabotage.

My client's team doesn't have the foggiest idea of the vivid inferno we went through. We worked non stop from 5 AM through 10-11 PM at night almost every day. At the end of the last day, we could barely stand up. One of my helpers suddenly fell on his knees while he was preparing some fish. I asked him, ..."what are you looking for down there?" With a pale look and still holding tight his chef's knife he told me he could not stand up, his legs were failing. He was exhausted.

There was a point when I forgot my own exhaustion. My automatic pilot was on, run only by the love I was putting on my work and the compromise we had with the client. I was not going to run away, it is not my style. It was obviously not an option.

Trying to get some fresh air, I headed out of the kitchen a few times, looking to find some comfort with the fresh air caressing my hot sweaty face. And always when the saddened tear was coming out, growing with despair, feeling abandoned by the mean hotel's kitchen crew, there was a moment lost in time when God whispered to my ear that everything was going to be fine. And it did.

To my helpers Luis and Eliécer:

I thank you from the bottom of my heart because you both worked by my side all the time. I feel proud of you, and now you have proved you are capable of working under fire, under the worst possible conditions. Creativity and love are the secret. Always love what you do, otherwise do not do it, OR you will end like those disgraceful cooks at that hotel who turned their backs on us hoping we would gave up and fail. But, we didn't.

Isn't that beautiful?

by Chef Melissa - CookingDiva · March 18, 2007 · 02:48 PM
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