The Last Two Years, Part I

So, it’s no secret that I am not exactly the best at keeping in contact with people. I am very sorry. Because of this fact, I bet many of you are wondering what I have been up to for the past two years. Well, let’s start in September 2007…


In September 2007 I started looking for an apprenticeship in a kitchen. I had some trouble finding something appropriate, so I started coaching at the Indianapolis Rowing Center. It was wonderful being back at the boathouse and being able to pass along my passion and knowledge to the Novice Girls. I was there five evenings a week, and on the weekends I traveled with the team to regattas. I filled my days by sending out letters and cold calling restaurants. I was willing to work whenever they needed me and work for free, so I thought it would be easy. Turns out, I was wrong. This is when I learned my first culinary lesson: use the connections that you have. A friend of my step-dad’s, Steve Peters, is a member at a country club just north of Indianapolis named The Hawthorns. The Executive Chef at The Hawthorns was Chef Michael Powell who is also a graduate of the CIA. Steve told me about Chef Michael and told him that I would be calling.


At the end of the rowing season, the last week of October, I called Chef Michael. Thankfully, he sounded interested and willing to take on an apprentice. Later that week, I went into The Hawthorns Golf and Country Club for a face-to-face meeting and a day of trailing the chef. I spent my first afternoon in a professional kitchen watching Chef Michael and Sous Chef Erick Freeman prepare a ten course tasting menu for a Wine and Food Society dinner the next day. Then the chef asked me to help him. I was so nervous and so excited all at the same time. I will never forget, the very first thing I did in a kitchen was shred ten pounds of sweet potato on a box grater. I also rubbed ribs with a spice mix, trussed racks of lamb, and did mise en place for crème anglaise. At the end of the evening, I talked to Michael and was invited back the next night. That next evening, I was in complete and total amazement. I watched all the food that was prepped the day before become a ten course meal for twenty people. I was also given the honor of tasting all the courses. I tasted things like pumpkin and sweet potato dumplings in beef consume, lamb lollipops in a cherry and vinegar reductions, and frangipan pastries with an oatmeal anglaise sauce. I was given the task of wiping down the rims of plates before they were taken out. I was honored that I, as a 19 year old boy with zero kitchen experience, was even allowed to touch the finished plates. This night, the kitchen that this was being prepared in was also busy with Friday night dinner service in the bar and restaurants that the kitchen serves. I was in awe. I watched the three line cooks, who later became some of my best friends, pound out about one hundred covers. They moved so qucickly and with so much purpose. There were five cooks in the kitchen, one dishwasher, three club managers, three bussers, four banquet servers, three restaurant serves, and five bar serves, and me. The kitchen was hot with the heat from seven convection ovens, 40-some burners, two salamanders, two gas deep-fryers, one grill, three warming ovens, four hot food windows, and two broilers. It was chaotic and full of loud voices. Tensions were high and the pressure was on. I left that night exhausted from just watching and hotter that I had ever been. I knew this life was for me.


I talked to the chef the next week and he and I were both interested in starting an apprenticeship. I was to shop up the next Wednesday and get everything sorted out. At first, there was lots of confusion because the HR woman was nervous about taking on unpaid staff. I had to write and sign several statements about not seeking payment and take a drug test before I could start in the kitchen. When that was all done, I officially began my culinary education. On that Friday afternoon, I was given a locker and a set of chef’s jackets. I went up to the kitchen and was assigned a knife and a prep area. I got a brief introduction on how to set up a station and basic sanitation form sous Chef Erick. I then made 200 mini cheeseburger sliders for a kids buffet later that night. I was assigned to the Head Line Cook in the main kitchen, Abbey Houston. She answered the millions of questions I had about the sliders and then I spent most of service watching her cook. I learned the basics of how to set up a grill, oil it up, and keep track of what piece of meat has been on the grill for how long. You may think that the cross-hatches are there for visual appeal. You are wrong. They are there to help the Grill Cook. They next day I was assigned to help and learn from Allison Campbell, the Garde Manger Cook in the main kitchen. It was in this position that I would stay for the next five months.


Every day when I came into the kitchen, I would stop by the Chef’s office and look at the BEO’s (Banquet and Events Orders) for the day and upcoming days. Then I would meet with Allsion and talk about what we needed to accomplish that day. The main kitchen, where we worked, was responsible for three main tasks. We did all of the work for the banquets, parties, and events that the country club hosted. We also served the fine dining restaurant at the club, The Overlook. Finally, we served the bar at the club, The Players Lounge, which also had a full menu. The total number of cooks for this kitchen: three (four, if you include me). Granted, we sometimes received help from Michael and Erick, but not often. They were kept busy with bureaucratic issues and paperwork. Basically, the four of us were damn busy all the time. While working with Allison, I learned more than I could possibly remember every day. I learned how to do the mise en place for our station, which included assorted knife cuts on over 40 different types of produce, how to make 10 different salad dressings, 13 sauces, the fabrication of our meats and seafoods, as well as 4 new and different desserts and 2 soups every week. She and I, as the Garde Manger Station, were responsible for every soup, salad, sandwich, appetizer, and dessert that the kitchen sent out to the two restaurants and all the banquets. I was over whelmed. After I started getting the hang of the mise en place (or all of our prep work), Allison started showing me how she work the line. “Working the line” is what a cook does when they are cooking the food that is being ordered in a restaurant. I learned how to plate all of our salads, cook all of our appetizers, serve the soups, make the sandwiches, make set-ups for burgers, plate our deserts, manage my time, be efficient, and most importantly work with the other cooks on the line to time our tickets properly.


I went home every night at around 11 or midnight just bursting with excitement. I made notes of what I had learned that day and wrote down any recipes that were interesting to me. I couldn’t stop thinking about food. All my family heard about was the food I made the night before, or how many carrots I had julienned for a banquet, or how Chef Michael showed me how to make a perfect braised short rib. I was absolutely in love with the life of a cook. I was surrounded by my passion, food. I was working from noon-11pm, Wednesday through Sunday. I went home cut, burned, bandaged, and exhausted. Sweat covered my face and grease covered my pants and shoes, but I loved it. I was sure that I had made the right decision.


After a busy December, filled with holiday parties and events and packed nights in the Overlook and Players’ Lounge and more work than I have done in my entire life, the club shut down for the month of January. I enjoyed some time off and was able to move into my dad’s house. The move shaved more than an hour of my daily commute. Early in December, our sauté cook, Francisco, quit and got a job elsewhere. This had left a hole in our kitchen that Erick had helped to fill in until we came back in February. Well, the chefs had a surprise for me and Allison when we returned. Allison was promoted to Grill Cook. Abbey was promoted from grill to Sauté Cook, and I was given the Garde Manger station all by myself. Chef Michael himself told me that he had faith in me and knew that I could handle it. I have never been so proud of myself in my entire life. I couldn’t wait to tell my parents and friends. I was now a cook….a real cook. Yes, I was still an unpaid apprentice, but I was no longer just an assistant. I had my own station. I alone was responsible for my produce orders, making sure I was prepped for service, filling BEO’s and keeping up with dinner service every night.


Things stayed like this for the next few months. Abbey, Allison, and I would pound out freakish amounts of delicious food every day. I continued to learn. I got faster all the time. When I first started on my station in November, it would take about 6 hours to do all my knife work on produce. By April, I could do it in about 2.5 hours. I could grind though all my tickets during service. I gained a muscle memory of where each and every ingredient for each and every item was. I never had to look; I just knew. I fell in love with the rush that comes when you are ten tickets deep and new item keep printing, you have seven sauté pans going, three baskets in the fryer, and two items finishing in the oven, yet you are still able to keep a clear mind and turn out perfect plates. I knew I had made the right decision and started my life as a cook.


As summer was approaching, the club started to get busier. It is here that my story takes a bit of a turn and gets confusing and a bit upsetting. This post is long enough, so I will leave you with this for now. I will write and upload part II tomorrow.