Friday, September 23, 2011

How We Turned Roast Beef Into An Apple Fritter

*drool*
This is just a fluff piece...but you know, not a porn fluff piece. Yeah. We didn't all think that was funny either.

Today at work we learned a lesson. Wait. Lesson? Maybe. In so much as we know how shit works, but this time we put the theory to the test.

We turned roast beef into an apple fritter.

What?!

Yep. We sure did.

We work around a huge array of foods; different departments in our work place make different foods...all departments share one dishwasher though. 

The dishwasher pretty much has run of the food being made, always sneaking buiscuits and bacon, donuts, muffins, whatever he pleases. Why? That's how it works...despite what people realize, one of the most important people in a kitchen is the dishwasher. A top quality one anyway; and as such he gets treated well, if his fellow employees are smart, and not full of themselves.

Why, you ask, is the dishwasher important?

For one, the dishwasher does the shittiest job, cleaning up after morons (us included) who don't have to worry about using too many dishes, don't think twice about how much of the dishpit fills up with pots, pans, hotel pans, bowls, utensils, dirty equipment; in addition to dealing with the mindless cooks, the dishwasher knows where shit is. You need the measuring cup...the ONE that an entire staff shares for some stupid reason (why is there not more than one in that fucking kitchen?!)? The dishwasher knows where it is. 

We know this first hand because we searched on and off one day last week when we needed the measuring cup to make creme brule, and the dishwasher was off sick. So while the dirty dishes piled in the dish pit (it wasn't in the pit though)...we unsucessfully tried locating the measuring cup. The next day dishwasher was there, we inquired about the measuring cup and he took us to it, the place where he figured the evening dishwashers probably put it.

See, they are important. They know where everything you need is located.

Today we were shaving a baron of roast beef - (a large, important section of beef containing both sirloins, or rather a giant cut of good quality roast) - this one was about 10lbs, after cooking. Anyway, we decided to try an experiment today...and so we took a few nice thinly shaved sliced of fresh roast beef over to the dish pit.

"Psst" we said, and the dishwasher turned to see us set the roast beef on the drying rack.
"Thanks sweetie!" he says, all smiles, and later he told us about how he had took the beef, some mustard and a biscuit, and made himself a tasty sandwich.

He's watched us eye the donuts a lot at work over the past few weeks, trying to encourage us to partake (which is techinically theft, so we don't because donuts is not our department) and we always decide not to, because we also don't want to ask the guy, or the woman, who make the donuts, if we can have one for free...we don't like "begging"... or "asking for things".

So today, after sharing roast beef with the dishwasher, he saw us eyeing up the apple fritters in the rack to be sent to the sale floor, we started to reach for one, then pulled our hand back. He saw us do it and tried to get us to take one, we shook our head to indicate we were not going to, so he went ahead and asked the donut maker for us, asking her if it would be alright if we had one.

Of course it was, and so we got to eat our first free donut at work.

What a lame story, right? But if you think about it, it's really a story about scratching each others back, and "who you know"...even if you are only a lowly kitchen worker; and sometimes you should be nice, because nice things can come back to you....even if it's just an apple fritter (just an apple fritter?! Who said that?!)

Have a happy Friday, friends and readers...we're off to do a little public drinking, shopping and going out to eat ... somewhere. It's still up for debate. When you cook professionally, and are educated in food costing, it's an exhauting thing to decide where to eat, where to put your hard earned cash, when you know what the raw materials cost, and what pay cooks make in the city where you live...and realize that the people doing the hardest work are not the ones making any profit...and are barely scratching by...but probably on drugs, and drinking heavily with whatever is left over.

~Ivy, Frank & Cassandra

P.S. you should read yesterdays blog entry too! 

1 comment:

  1. I think it's a very sweet story, Frankie. Not just sweet, like donut sweet...but sweet, like human interaction can so often be! Glad you finally got your fritter! (and you taking the dishwasher some roast beef seriously almost brought a tear to my eye. that's just doggone nice of you and i love it!!)

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