Recently I haven’t been the new girl at work.
It’s a nice change, but I’ve had another thing added to my daily mise en place list: help train the new girl.
She’s Chinese of course, and I can’t help but feel envious that she understands everyone. But communication isn’t always about language, and sometimes the girls feel like she doesn’t quite understand them either.
She makes the same expression when she doesn’t understand something. It’s a cross between sad puppy eyes and how someone is after just coming out of a long nap and hasn’t a clue where they are. “Huh?” She’ll say softly, in response to something you’ve told her or reminded her about more than once already.
She’s been with us for about two and a half weeks now. After her first three days, my sous chef confided in us, “I don’t think I’ll keep her.”
“Really?” I asked. “It’s only been a few days.”
“Yes,” She said, “But we’ve trained so many people. You can tell if they are good or not after the first day.”
We all managed to convince her to give the New Girl some more time.
“She wants to learn,” we said. “She’s just not used to it yet,” we justified. It got increasingly harder to make our case.
A few days ago, I was in charge of watching over her while she made pastry cream.
Pastry cream is pastry 101. It’s one of the first things you learn in cooking school and something every aspiring pastry chef should be able to do with their eyes closed. It’s not hard to make, but the technique is important. It’s elementary and fundamental. It’s the Mother cream.
At Robuchon, they are very particular. Even with something as simple as a pastry cream, someone will show you the first time. And the second. The third time, you’ll make it with them watching. It’s their way of making sure everyone is always on the same page about how something is done and that the end product is consistent.
The New Girl had already been shown a couple of times how to make our pastry cream, but she had only done it once before with supervision. My sous chef asked me to keep an eye on her the second time.
We made the pastry cream three times over that day. She wasn’t whisking fast enough the first time and the cream clumped and burned. The second time I watched in horror as she dumped all of the hot milk into the egg mixture at once, without tempering it. She said she wasn’t comfortable with doing it little by little since the pot was too heavy for her. It was obvious that she needed another demo on how to properly make pastry cream.
So I showed her. Exactly the way I was shown my first time, exactly the way she was shown already but seemed to have forgotten. “Huh?”
Our pastry cream method is standard except for it’s finish. Start by thoroughly whisking the eggs, sugar and cornstarch in a bowl. In a pot, the milk and vanilla beans are brought to a boil, then slowly streamed into the egg mixture while being whisked, until all of the milk is incorporated. The cream is strained back into the pot, whisked continuously until it thickens and eventual boils. This is where ours is a bit different. Normally, the cream is whisked vigorously for 2 minutes after it’s boiled to fully activate the starch. At Robuchon, they like it a certain thickness when it sets, so we continue stirring it much past the normal 2 minute point. There is no exact time- it’s done by eye and touch.
NG holds her whisk wrong. She makes sloppy circles in the mix, not really incorporating anything effectively. My sous chef tells me to have her watch how I hold the whisk. She was messy when she made the cream, so I tell her to make note of how I stir and run the whisk along the sides to avoid the messy build up. I try to teach her the signs of when to know it’s finished, but it’s something she’ll have to know with experience. I’ve already made the pastry cream here about 70 times.
We make it every single day, and its important that it gets made right. I was surprised by the texture of the cream the first time I saw it set. It was less like a cream and more like a hard gel. Then I saw it’s function in making up other components. It gets whipped, paco-d, paddled into something greater and more delicious. If it’s too soft, it won’t hold up.
NG has been having a difficult time getting used to how we do things. Here, we even have mise en place for our mise en place. Equipment and ingredients must be set up properly before starting a new recipe. There are specific bowls for specific ingredients for specific jobs, even though one stainless steel bowl may look identical to the other. The pots also only look slightly different in size, but each recipe is calibrated to fit perfectly in its designated pot.
It’s important to move fast and efficiently in a kitchen. Time is precious and space is even more so. NG bounces around from one end of the kitchen to the other haphazardly, trying to figure out what she’s doing. Everyday she drops something. She can’t seem to hold onto a piping tip while putting it into a piping bag. She lost one of our important tips today. She always forgets to put things away when she’s finished with them. Her workspace is always a mess. She’s been scolded at by everyone, and some days I feel bad for her.
Other days, I wonder what goes through her head as I watch her pile up two pieces of delicate-as-hell puff pastry and attempt to slice both at once to size.
“Are you serious?!” I burst out from more than a few meters away. E should’ve been watching NG, but she was busy decorating entremets. She shakes her head at the disaster that almost occurred and I know she’s grateful I caught it.
“One at a time! You’re going to break it. Don’t be lazy.” I tell NG as I felt the heat in my cheeks.
In the 2 weeks she’s been with us, her jobs have been simple. Cutting pate sucre. Separating eggs. Scaling and blending almonds for the macarons. Assembling the tea set, soaking the baba, that sort of thing. She’s been struggling with all of them.
It takes her too long of a time to punch out just 2 trays of pate sucre. Her hands and station are egg-covered when she’s separating the eggs. A 10 minute blending job on the Robocoupe takes her 30. Twice she’s inaccurately scaled the macaron recipe for the sous chef and despite taking lots of photos on her phone, she still decorates the tea set improperly.
The pastry cream is the first and only thing we’ve taught her how to make and she couldn’t do that without supervision. We always have to keep an eye on her. It’s difficult to do our job when we constantly have to make sure she does hers. It slows everyone down.
Truth is, since I’ve started here I’ve seen a lot of different new people. They don’t last because they decide they’re not used to the expectations or they can’t handle the workload.
NG seems like she really wants to work here. They were really hard on her especially the first few days, and I didn’t expect to see her come back. She comes in a little earlier in the morning to give herself more time and sometimes she’ll even take a 20 minute lunch instead of 30.
But does it really matter when her work habits are just not up to par? She’s trying but her progression is just not fast enough. It’s a tough kitchen and it isn’t school. There are only so many mistakes to make.
My sous chef let her go today. I feel a little bad for her, but I think a part of her is relieved. The reality is if you can’t do your job properly, someone else will.
avec chantilly 