Who said you need 10 fingers?

If I told you that your knife was shit and you should throw it away or cut off a finger and save yourself some pain in the future, would you believe me?

I had a "culinoob" (culinary school kid that doesn't know shit and only works to buy things, not pay bills) at my last job that was in love with his Henkel knife.  The tip was gone, the blade was bowed because he put it in the dishwasher. (Note:  Unless you bought your knife at the checkout counter at a No Frills supermarket, don't ever fucking wash your chef knife in a dishwasher, it destroys the blade.)  When cutting with it, you could feel it pull you in different directions, and cutting a pepper was as dangerous as running through Afghanistan wearing only an American flag.

This culinoob, we will call him Rick, had everything, his family was loaded, and when he finishes school, his family will throw money at him for his own restaurant, which will fail in 9 months and leave his family broke.  Rick was a know it all 22 year old without a care in the world other than cooking boring French food and telling lies about the women he had been with.  

On Thursday nights, we would prep all of breakfast mirepoix for the next two days, and he always worked that night, so I would sit and watch as he slowly prepped peppers, onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, and different fruits.  Slowly was a nice way of putting it.

I almost needed to chew my fingernails in a nervous fit due to his cutting abilities, or the lack there of.  He would cut the peppers skin side up, which is kitchen rule # stupid, never cut a pepper skin side up.  I would watch the knife struggle to cut through a tomato, and peel the skin off an onion, instead of cutting through it.  

Every Thursday, I would watch him do this, and then I would tell him when he was done to throw that awful knife away before he looses a finger, and he would laugh and say he was a pro.....

"Rick, what the fuck!  Are you alright?"

"Sorry Chef, the knife slipped."

"No shit, donkey fucker, I told you that was going to happen, but no, you wanted to be a brave badger and now you are missing the top of your finger."

"Will you take me to the ER, this really hurts?"

"Will I take you to the ER and fix something that I told your rocket scientist ass would happen every Thursday for a month?"

"Please?  It really hurts."

"Not as much as your pride will hurt once you realize that you could have avoided this.  Now grab your finger tip, put it on some ice in a bag, wrap your finger in a towel, clock out, and get your noob ass to the fucking ER before I decide mend this situation with some salt, and a nice sear on the flat top."

"You're an asshole."

"I'm not the one who looks like they need a tampon for their finger tip, fuck stick, now get."

Rick came back later and apologized, and I told him he was an idiot, and that I threw his knife in the fryer, and then in a bucket of ice, and it snapped in half.  By the way, that is a really fun way to destroy something, just in case you ever feel like it.  Rick lasted a couple of weeks after that, but eventually quit.  Shame, maybe.  Pride, very likely.  Me making fun of his situation and the tampon on his finger, most definitely. 

Brulee torches for all!

So I have a new friend, her name is bruleé torch, and she is amazing.  I have found so many uses for her that it's almost sad I found her so late in life.

If you don't know what a bruleé torch is, check out the Bonjour 53336 Chefs bruleé torch. 

One of the best uses for the torch isn't for cremé bruleé at all.  I have been toying with the torch at home and have came up with some very happy results on many types of dishes, from searing fruit for cocktails, perfectly melting cheese on burgers, lightly roasting almonds, and glazing sugar on a strawberry.  You can also put the perfect finishing sear on a piece of salmon or add a peppery crust to a nice rib-eye.  So many possibilities.  Never enough time.

New Strange World of Unemployed Food

It's been a while: It's been a long while, and a lot has happened and a lot has changed, but we will get to that.  

First off, I no longer work at Granite City.  The inevitable happened.  They fired me.  I knew long before it happened that it would happen, but lets not skip over it; let's get to bullet points on this.

Strike 1.  I had an argument with my director and VP in October.  Things were going very poorly and they wanted someone to blame, so did I.  So they decided they would yell at me, but I didn't back down.  They wanted someone to kiss up to them and tell them that it was everyones fault, and I told them it was the two people in charge of the buildings fault for never being there.  They didn't like that.

Strike 2:  I hate paperwork.  Granite City had a lot of meaningless paper work they liked to have filed and have lots of notes taken on said paperwork for every shift.  They pay someone to create paperwork like this just to justify having a job.  Guess what, if you come in to your job and are immediately behind because the person who ran the first shift of the day doesn't do their job, why the fuck would I waste time filling out paperwork that doesn't matter.  Granite City's paperwork was all about routines and how you should work your shift.  It was a suggestion, but it never worked out and was written by someone who worked in a larger store where you could do your job and not have to worry about cutting hours or not having enough staff on hand.  Presumptuous corporate America, writing rules they themselves cannot follow but expect others to do so.

Strike 3:  Valentines Day 2011... It was on a Monday this year.  I closed the night before and wrote what was a large prep list of what we needed and didn't do over the weekend because other people decided that it wasn't necessary and would rather work 15 hour days instead of doing what was right... Anyhoo, when I came in at 3, they had removed most of the list saying it's a Monday Valentines Day and wouldn't be as busy.  They were very, very, very wrong.  We went on a wait at 4:30 and by the time that I was able to get off the line and start doing my job, we were out of everything that was on list.  I went back to the office and screamed at the people who make more money than me and are supposed to know what they are doing.  I told them to get the fuck in the kitchen and dig out of this mess before we have to comp the entire night due to their poor judgement.  It didn't matter, it was to late.  We were fucked.  The night finally ended, I threw all of my paperwork away, and went to bed.  The next day was slow, I got my paperwork done, and did some reorganizing throughout the kitchen.  It looked great.  The following day, I came in to work, and they tried to sit me down and fire me, but I laughed at them, told them they have no idea what is about to happen, and walked out with my check.  

Since I have been fired from Granite City:  13 cooks of 25 have quit, 27 0f 37 servers have quit, lowest performing Granite City in the company (27 stores), worst P&L, worst cost metrics, worst turnover, and dropped over $20,000 in sales in just 5 months.  The entire corporate support team is there on a weekly basis trying to figure out what's wrong, but they don't see the two pairs of eyes staring back at them that is the real problem.  It's not all me, but my parting statement to my managers and to the director who didn't have the balls to come fire me himself, was this:  "I was the glue of this restaurant, you guys are fucked, and you have no idea what is about to happen."