Free Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line by Michael Gibney Page A

enough truffle into it. Truffle can be dangerous. Too much can be pungently overwhelming, but just enough can give the right dish an ineffable warmth. The boquerones sauce is done. It is not overly fishy, not overly creamy, not overly salty. The monkfish roulades are done. They are wrapped and sitting in the fish box. The endive is done. It is sitting in a hotel pan on the stove’s piano, steeping in its braising liquid. The sapori forte is done. All its ingredients have been incorporated, with the exception of the tarragon butter, with which it will be mounted, à la minute, on the pickup. The agnolotti are done. The turnips are done. Basically everything is done. And you still have half an hour before the premeal staff meeting.
    It’s important to use this time wisely. All the food might be ready, but it still needs to be organized among the stations. Typically, a line cook won’t fuss over mise en place for a special, because technically it’s not his responsibility to do so, it’s yours. You need to break the food down into a manageable storage format—quart containers and third pans are often best, because they don’t take up much space on the station—and deliver it to him. Plates, too, need to be collected. Catalina will definitely be picking up the terrine off the garde manger station on a wooden board, Chef’s standard approach to charcuterie. VinDog will pick up the agnolotti off meat entremet (which tends to double as the pasta station), and you can’t imagine it would go in anything other than a bowl. Raffy will pick up the sardines and the monk off fish roast, probably on an oval and a large round respectively. Julio’s got the pork, probably on large round as well.
    When it comes time to pick up the show plates, Chef will demonstrate how everything is to be plated. He will not, however, give you much direction in the way of descriptions for the floor. You are expected to gather that information yourself. And since he hates talking to the people out front, you are expected to dispense it to the waitstaff as well.
    Every new dish will prompt certain questions from the front of the house. You need to anticipate these questions and provide good answers.
    Foreign words and obscure ingredients will come up straightaway. You need to know that
boudin blanc
is a white sausage made of ground pork, whole eggs, liver, milk, and pig hearts. You need to know that a squab is a pigeon. Youneed to know that confit means “preserve,” and that the standard method of confiting savory foods is to slowly poach them in fat. You need to know that verjus means essentially “green juice,” and that it is made from the juice of unripe grapes, and that even though it is very acidic, it is not technically a vinegar because it hasn’t undergone the fermentation process that vinegar undergoes. You need to know that a filbert is a hazelnut. You need to know that rocket is arugula. You need to know that quince, also known as
marmelo
or
membrillo
, is a fruit not unlike an apple. You need to know that herring are native to the North Atlantic, and that they are small oily fish with immense nutritional value. They are rich in protein, vitamins D and B12, and omega-3 fatty acids, and, unlike their larger relatives, their heavy metal and contaminant toxicities are infinitesimal at best. You need to know that ramps are wild onions of incredible robustness from the Appalachian region of North America, which are available only in limited quantities for a very short amount of time beginning at the end of April, which is why we pickle them. You need to know that boquerones are white anchovies cured in oil with garlic, parsley, and vinegar, and that they are far more palatable than their salty brown counterparts. You need to know that agnolotti are a sort of oblong ravioli originally from the Piedmont region of Italy, which are filled, in this case, with a mousse made of braised veal tongue, lemon thyme, and garlic confit. You need to know