Time

Everybody has a plan... until you get punched in the face.

One of the reasons I decided to enroll in a culinary education program is because I wanted to better understand the intricacies of cooking. That means more than just cooking techniques, recipes and ingredients. 

It means process. Learning how a chef thinks from start to finish. Anyone can conceive a meal. That’s the fun, creative part. But like any creative endeavor, the rubber hits the road when it’s time to execute those ideas. And in the kitchen, that often comes down to managing time. 

Time is a chef’s biggest challenge. Time is not your friend in the kitchen. Time management is a chef’s secret weapon, or biggest foe. The best conceptualized dish in the world falls apart when rushed, under pressure, under planned. 

We had a test this week… In two hours we had to: 

• Make a cream anglaise and spin it into ice cream

• Cut onion, celery and bell peppers into uniform, small dice

• Paste garlic

• Use the vegetables to make a red pepper coulis

• Break down a whole chicken

• Cook a piece of that chicken to perfection and serve with the coulis

Totally doable. I was confident. But one little bump in my plan caused a slight spinout. Although I recovered from it, the result was a serious omission that hurt my score. And through it I gained a valuable lesson.

From the start I was strangely on edge. Knowing there’s a clock ticking somehow messes with your head. Yet at first I was calm, steady. Good dice on the vegetables (or so I thought. The next day chef gave us all a scolding on how our small dice was actually closer to medium). Mixed and tempered the anglaise properly. Got the cream into the ice cream mixture just as I added the stock to the coulis in perfect multitasking coordination. 

I was saving the chicken to the end. I felt I had time, so I added a quick mincing of fines herbs. The ice cream was even ready early, so I started scooping it out, planning to get it in the freezer, then moving on to the final step of breaking down and cooking the chicken. 

Now for the chicken, we were going to be judged both on the fabrication part and how well we cooked it. On the fabrication, chef John said he specifically would check how well we cleaned the drumette on the chicken breast. (The drumette is the part of the wing that is attached to the breast, and has the most meat on it. When you order chicken wings and some of the pieces look like little chicken drumsticks… that’s actually the drumette.)

Proper chicken fabrication involves keeping the drumette attached to the breast, “frenched” — meaning you scrape the meat away so the bone is exposed. An airline chicken breast is the breast with the drumette still attached. That’s what we were going for and being judged on. 

So, that’s the task left for me to do as I was scooping out my ice cream. And then the hiccup occurs… my ice cream was really stuck to the sides of the ice cream machine. The ice cream itself was perfect. But I had to clean it out for the next guy to use. 

Usually that means just scraping out the ice cream and wiping it out with a warm towel. But I had a really thick layer of ice cream frozen to the side of the machine. And I’m that guy who obsesses over getting every last bit of whatever out of whatever it’s in before moving on. So I’m scraping the side of this frozen ice cream machine with a soft spatula, which is barely separating the ice cream from the metal. 

This is now pissing me off, so I turn off the machine to let it thaw and better get at the ice cream. Meanwhile time is ticking away like the tyrant it is, oblivious to my obsessive need to scrape out a clean bowl of fucking ice cream. 

Then I see the time. I’ve only got about a half hour left to break down the chicken, cook it, and let it rest. So I go into high gear. Screw the ice cream machine… I’ve got plenty to serve for the test. So I just blast the cold bowl with a steaming hot towel (which I should’ve done from the start), wiped it dry, and rushed to the chicken. 

Now I’m pretty confident in my fabrication skills. So I grab the boning knife and get to work. First step, remove the wings and clean the drumette. In two swift, practiced moves, I slice off both wings and put them aside, then I move on to the breast and drumette and…

Dammit! I sliced off the entire wing, drumette included! Both wings. So now I have two chicken breasts with no drumette to review for my score. It’s like burning a page of a test before it’s turned in for grading. Just nothing there to review. 

I stop to collect myself. This is bad. It’s a mistake I can’t correct, and it’s gonna affect my score. Score aside, I absolutely hate making stupid mistakes like this. And there’s no way to fix it. 

But it’s not a disaster. Interestingly, the impossibility of fixing it provides a strange sort of peace. I spent the whole test until this point with a faint sense of unease… don’t make a mistake, don’t lose track of time. And now, both those things happened. I lost track of time on the ice cream machine and that led to making a big mistake.

The only solution was to put it behind me and move forward. Time was ticking. Worrying about the mistake wasn’t going to slow it down. I still had to execute the chicken and the sauce, both of which I could still control. I had to put the drumette mistake behind me and not let my disappointment over what I can’t control result in even more mistakes with the steps remaining.

It’s like skiing… you can’t un-fall. You just keep turning. And like skiing, after that first fall of the day, this mistake has the counterintuitive effect of putting everything into focus, and I just relax. I can see all the steps that I need to take in front of me, and I just go to work. 

Looking back on it now after the fact, I can see the entire kitchen was in the same state. The friendly banter is gone. Everyone is just moving and cooking. There’s a flow that’s balanced somewhere between rushed desperation and fluid efficiency. 

Which is good, because there were more hiccups to come. I had the coulis still simmering and reducing on the clickburner at my station, so I grab a carbon steel pan and get it going on the big kitchen stovetop. My plan is to sear off the chicken, finish it in the oven, and let it rest.

D’oh… oven’s not on! And I realize there’s no time for that anyway… no chance that it’ll come to temp in the oven and have time to rest before serving, so I’ve got to cook it fully on the stove. That’s another problem, as I’d planned to (calmly) finish my sauce while the chicken cooked undisturbed, then cut the herbs, then blend/strain/balance the sauce while the chicken rested. Instead I’m actively searing and basting the chicken on the stove, trying to ensure it gets cooked fully without overcooking it so it’s not tough. 

And then I noticed the click burner ran out of gas, so it’s not simmering/reducing anymore. I grab the pan and put it on the bigger stove next to the chicken. Now I’m basting and turning chicken, while stirring and keeping an eye on the sauce, while checking the chicken temp, all while keeping an eye on the clock to make sure I have time for the chicken to rest. 

That’s a lot of adjustments to make in the last 30 minutes of a timed test. Welcome to cooking. 

At that point, time suddenly becomes your friend. It’s an immovable factor. It can’t be adjusted. You can only adjust to it. That means your choices become limited, and by that I mean they become more clear. There’s no discussion or debate. There is just doing what needs to be done. 

It’s like being back on deadline as a reporter. There’s no time to rewrite a lede 20 times to make the pithy pun land just so. On deadline, there’s just bang it out and turn it in. It requires a degree of focus, tunnel vision, that while on the surface seems restrictive, is actually highly liberating. You’re freed of second-guessing, analysis, reconsiderations. Instead you just… do. 

As it turned out, I got the chicken finished in time to let it rest, so I was able to blend, strain, and finish the sauce undisturbed and mince the herbs. This is where establishing a good mise en place is essential. Everything I needed was already there… no need to run around searching for tarragon or whatever. 

In a time crunch, searching for things becomes harder. You forget where things are. You forget the elements you need. You forget to check on whatever is cooking while you’re searching for things. It’s an icy road that will cause you to slip out of control if you’re not prepared in advance. 

So that was my saving grace. Everything I needed was at my fingertips. 

Despite the drumette misstep, I was able to properly rest the chicken and get it sliced to show it off. The sauce was at the consistency and flavor I wanted. I got it plated and ready for tasting with the minced herbs a few minutes before time was up. 

Overall feedback was positive. Maybe a bit more salt on the sauce (and the next-day dice lecture), but save that I think I did OK. Except, of course, for the drumette. 

In the end, this turned out to be less of a test and more of a lesson in time management. That’s not a lesson you can teach, only experience. 

All the components of what we cooked I’ve done successfully several times before. I wasn’t even using recipes. But the time lesson is one I’ll not forget. I omitted (ruined?) a key element of what needed to be reviewed simply because I let my mind get seized up by the time pressure I felt. And… I was saved by preparing my mise en place in advance. 

Chef John didn’t quite come out and say it, but I suspect this was the lesson all along… to gain an appreciation of how time can be as big a factor, if not more, than all the other variables involved in cooking (like heat, ingredients, flavor). Time is the ultimate leveler. Preparation is your best defense. Presence is the key to success. 

I feel like this test was a turning point in the program. We’ve been given plenty of tools. Now it’s time to use them. Forcing us into an uncomfortable scenario was a deliberate move to break our routine… to test our resilience and expose our illusions. To discover where our sharp corners are so we know where to smooth them. 

You don’t learn anything until you push yourself and discover the outer reaches of your abilities. That’s where you need to be to grow. 

After all, if you can’t stand the heat…