A living wage in 40 hours may elude most cooks working one job. While riches may be in short supply, bravado is not.
After mastering a tight brunoise, step two is to let your fellow line warriors know. When you don't work normal hours. Ever have weekends off. If you haven't seen mom on Mother's Day, in a few years... you better have pride in what you do.
This cockiness most cooks display, isn't to be an asshole.
Imagine one of the landing crafts approaching the beach on D-Day. Bullets and shells whizzing by. Who is likely to be most effective on the beach? The guy cowering, kissing his rosary? Nope. It's the badass banging his helmet, calling out how many Nazis he's about to mow down. This, however is the guy I would want flanking me.
On a Saturday at 4pm, in any busy kitchen in America, a cook is in the landing craft. You are prepping your station to survive the onslaught. A trip to the cooler at 7:30, will not be an option.
After you survive a few dozen shifts like this, confidence permeates. You attack every function of a professional kitchen with gusto. Not only did you clean, organize, and mop the cooler. You did it faster than any one else. Oh yeah, you did the produce order too.
The second mentor along my journey, was a chef named Chuck. Most chefs have a presence that separates them from you. In some ways they must, in order to lead cooks on to the beach.
What makes an effective leader for me, is the ability to have that presence, and know he can scrub pots better than me. Most importantly, in a jam, he will. It's a trait I learned from him, that I continue to practice. One of many good and sometimes bad traits I picked up from Chuck.
One day in particular, we were out of skewers for a nouveau shrimp and grits. The dish used very large prawns. The skewers prevented the shrimp from curling up too bad. During the hectic chaos of the line, Chuck layed the prawns on the cutting board.
Like a surgeon calling for a scalpel, he requested a pairing knife. He studied the anatomy of the underbelly for a second. Then he made two quick incisions. He removed a tendon from each shrimp. Into and out of the broiler came two flat shrimp.
"How did you know that would work?" I asked.
Chuck steps back, under one of the halogen can lights over the line. His head cocked slightly, hands in a the pose of a religious icon. Like he was St. Chef of the Hot Line.
He replied, "AGCC... Another great culinary creation."
I laughed. It wouldn't be the last time he wielded that acronym. His confidence was strong.
However, while Chuck seemed to just be a cocky badass, I learned something. He added a little knowledge to my arsenal. I would go on to drop a few AGCC's on the world.
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