Thursday, December 11, 2008

Why you must not get too excited for the party...

Warning: You can choose not to proceed.

As I was saying... this is not really a food blog but all about what is going on in my so- called cooking life.

I have never been wounded by knives ever since I started cooking by heart. Butcher’s knife, boning knives, Japanese knives, twelve- inch knives- Food Huntress always comes out clean. I confess to having a number of second degree burns (especially when I was working on a French pastry shop), but never getting knifed. But on that very same day while me and the chefs were preparing for our company Christmas party, all of that cutting history was defied.
And no, by the way, knives are not the culprit this time. I was preparing the salad that morning while going clack-clack-clack- clacking with the chefs, laughing while preparing eight entrees… and suddenly… Blood Type B was trickling down the cucumbers. My saliva started to collect on the insides of my mouth. The world was still as my hands started producing these little globules of perspiration.


No time for the classic cursing this time. That would be too ordinary. I just swallowed hard and grabbed the towel tied on my apron and pressed hard as I recalled my sins and those that I loved… was it my dying day?

One of the chefs dressed the wound while joking if they’d call the ambulance. “You are shaking”, I heard him say. “No, I’m not shaking.” Of course.

Anyway. I put on some kitchen gloves and did the trussing of five kilos of chicken for roasting and five kilos of beef for roulade while the others worked on Creole Jambalaya (while singing Jambalaya), stuffed fish, rotini alla carbonara, Chinese pork stew, fruit fondue… The laughing with the team continued and the show went on.
But foremost in my mind was that one thing that really screwed me up: not the knives, but- you’ve guessed it -
- the mandoline.

*************
By the way, we got great comments from the diners. Yeah, right! Blood and sea salt have the same chemical composition, right?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hope you're okay Foodhuntress!
Those mandolines can be treacherous, especially the Japanese ones. :-) hehe

You're a trooper anyway. You won't let a cut stop you.

Manggy said...

Ouch, that must have stung like a bitch! I'm glad service went off without a hitch otherwise, though :) The cut should be healed in no time at all.

1Northeast said...

ZC, how did you know I was using Japanese mandoline? You sneak in my kitchen when I'm not looking! :p

Doc Manggy, can you feature kitchen first aid some time? Thanks. :)