Brandon Jones
May 14 2018
My last week spent at Steel and Rye has been one of progression and increased trust and responsibility. After a short period of acclimation, Chef Brendan has allowed me to take part in more complex parts of food preparation and cooking. I’ve had the opportunity to look through his recipe book and work alongside him creating new dishes for the menu. On Tuesday, it was a classic day so to say. I did my usual daily prep — de shelling fresh garbanzo beans, English peas, steamed mussels and clams. Then, I worked specifically with chef Jeff to prepare his pasta station, which would primarily be serving crab spaghetti with ramp basil pesto and macaroni and cheese with sausage and breadcrumbs. With him, I learned how to make several types of pasta. By the end of the night, I had earned chef Brendan’s trust to make a specific type of pasta— spinach cassarecce— that would be served later that week with a ragu made from a whole boar. On Wednesday, I worked mostly in the back of the kitchen on appetizers, where I learned to butcher chickens and to prepare a series of appetizers ( fried green tomatoes, fried olives, duck legs, etc.) For Thursday, Chef instructed me to come in early to work with Chef Kezze in receiving fresh produce and meat orders. Together we received and prepped about dozens of pounds of ribeye steaks, duck wings, chickens, fish, mussels and clams, pork belly, and dozens of types of produce, from ramp weed to wild morels, from wood sorel to purple garlic. We then made more pizza sauce. That night during service, I worked with chef Brendan to make more cassarecce pasta and we started butchering the pig for the ragu. At around 11pm that night, the pastry chef abruptly quit, leaving us in the lurch regarding the baking of breads and prepping of desserts. Chef Brendan again called me in early to help out and ease the load. He handed me his recipe book and instructed me to cook lemon curd, rhubarb jam,
several batches of brioche and English muffins. For my first time preparing any of those recipes, Everything came out really well. I worked that night almost exclusively with chef Brendan, butchering salmon and striped bass, slicing different cured meats for our charcuterie boards, making different breads and pastries for the weekend. As the week went on, I felt that I became more trusted and relied on in the kitchen and it felt really rewarding. There are some really talented chefs in that kitchen— some that have even worked in Michelin Star restaurants— and to have them rely on me for certain things, no matter how menial or important, gave me confidence about my own skills in the kitchen. As I look forward to his next week, I have a bunch of new experiences to look forward to. I may be able to work with the manager of finances, learning how to restaurant makes a profit and how it sources it’s ingredients and prices it’s meals based on demand and supply. I may also get to travel to steel and ryes sister restaurant, prairie fire, in Brookline mass to experience working in a smaller kitchen and expecting new culinary skills like butter, cheese, and ice cream making along with learning how to butcher different cuts of meat. I look forward to building on this increase responsibility and hope to advance my learning even further through new challenges.
First Impressions of the Townshend
Claire Raposo
May 6 2018
On Friday, I made donuts. I did not know I was making donuts until halfway through the process and I used an industrial sized mixer for the first time. Apart from that and making the house focaccia, which has rosemary and fleur de sel and extra virgin olive oil, nobody really seems to know what to do with me in the kitchen. All the chefs are male and except one either new or temporary line cook, they are all white. I watched a lunch service done by just one chef who had just gotten into a car accident and talked to me for three hours straight. In between explaining food safety, bacteria, and viruses, he explained that there is a difference between cooking because you like being in a kitchen and cooking to pay the bills. Everyone should respect everyone in the kitchen and a lot of the time, head chefs are allowed to be verbally abusive towards the rest of their staff and this should not be the case. Chef John also said that the Townshend kitchen is different. Colin (the head chef) treats everyone with respect and is a creative and kind person. Apart from that, the rest of the kitchen staff seemed apprehensive about asking me to do stuff. Maybe they did not want to ask because I’m a young girl and lacked the ability or maybe they were wary because I was new. Either way, every single chef apologized for swearing in front of me. I did make donuts and had a lot of fun learning how to use various gears and safety mechanisms of the mixer and weighing out flour and sugar on a bakers scale from enormous rolling containers on the floor of the pantry. Sage, the man helping me make the donuts, seemed very concerned that I might injure myself and I did not actually put the donuts into the fryer because he was worried that I might burn myself. The donuts were delicious and I ate the test one which came out beautifully. You could taste the vanilla bean and mace (nutmeg like flavor) and the outside was crisp whilst the inside was soft and pillowy.
Earlier, I had been told that while most restaurants worked their interns to death, I would have a very different experience. I had spent the previous day researching the chemistry behind using a levain (sourdough starter) as the rising agent in breadmaking. My textbook, which I carried to the bus stop and waited with for about about weighs fifty pounds, was about the size of a watermelon, around 1000 pages long, and was the first volume in a set of six. I think that I would learn a lot about chemistry and hopefully the other cooks in the kitchen will learn to see past the fact that my chef whites falls below my knees.
First impressions of Steel and Rye
Brandon Jones
May 6 2018
First Week (2 days) Reflection
To summarize my first two days at the restaurant in 3 words: it was amazing. The first day I was there, chef Brendan immediately sent me upstairs to get changed into my chef whites. I was partnered with a young female chef Carolyn, whose main job that night was working the fish and vegetable station. To assist her I peeled dozens of artichokes, shucked hundreds of muscles, and prepared shishito peppers for the appetizers. As we got closer to dinner service the palpable excitement in the kitchen grew. Chef brendan was pacing about barking orders and the rest of us did our respective duties as quickly as possible to prepare for service. Luckily for my first day, the fish station was relatively straightforward. The two main menu items for that station were mussels sauteed with white beans, clam sauce, and white wine and seared sea bass with confit fingerling potatoes and braised artichokes. During service on my breaks, Carolyn had me try three separate appetizers: fried green tomatoes, fried green olives with black pepper cream, and jerk duck drumsticks. They were all delicious. The most difficult part of the night was certainly juggling multiple orders being shouted at you at once. For example, I would be halfway through preparing an order of seabass when chef brendan would yell “Two orders of shishito peppers stat!” I would have to quickly organize myself to prepare the peppers (grilled on a poncha and then tossed with olive oil and pecorino cheese and served with a smear of harissa). I completed service without any major mistakes and my reward was a freshly woodfired pizza with fennel sausage and fresh buffalo mozzarella. What a night!
The second day was harder and I got a better sense of the in-kitchen dynamic between staff. For three hours straight, chef had me deshell literally hundreds of green garbanzo beans for the octopus dish as well as shave asparagus spears for the burrata salad and shell an additional hundred or so english peas. I spent no time cooking that night, and in fact I had more of a spectator role during service which allowed me to better view the social dynamics. For one, I noticed that all the dishwashing staff were Haitian black males. Knowing where we were geographically and the demographic of Milton’s own service staff, it did not surprise me that the majority of the chefs are white. There were overall less women, and both of them were white, another two white men, and the rest of the kitchen were male minorities. I was pleased to see everyone in the kitchen was treated with respect and everyone was held to a high standard no matter what the role was. I realized that the Steel and Rye kitchen staff is truly a family. Being a dishwasher, line cook, or server makes no difference because all roles are integral to the success of each other. I hope to learn more and experience more about this dynamic next week, when chef will have me assume more roles, hopefully assume more responsibility in the kitchen, and become closer to them as a member of the Steel and Rye family.