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04/01/2002 Entry: "The Carrot Dick"
I’ve been hanging out a lot more with Siro now, trying to learn his pasta dishes. The first was the simple pomodoro, made with the heavenly simple yet delicious tomato sauce that I’ve seen bubbling and boiling, and later pureed with the restaurant sized handblender that Siro uses like a jackhammer. Things are done very different at The Restaurant when it comes to pasta dishes. Pasta is made earlier in the day, and boiled to within a minute or so of being complete. Filled pastas and gnocchi are not cooked ahead of time, but lay in the bin, floured and ready to drop in when the order comes in. In either case, the main action all takes place in a saute pan. Before Siro even takes the pasta out of the bins, he starts with the sauce, heating up the pan, either empty or with a little oil in the bottom over high flame. Next comes a flurry of ingredients into the pan all at once. Garlic, pepper, salt, various spices all hit the hot oil at once, erupting in a hiss of heat. Once all these ingredients are bouncing around, a ladel of the pomodoro sauce goes in next, and the pan finally goes back onto the flame to bubble for a few minutes. Only then does Siro open the bins and pull out a handful of spaghetti, already cooked and glistening with a light coating of oil. When I questioned him how much, he had been unable to give me an accurate measurement, he had been grabbing it in his hand for seven years and just knew, at that point. But he said when he started out, he put his handfulls in the bowl that it would be served in and eyeballed it.
As I watched Siro open his two levels of bins, checking the levels of all the pastas, I noticed a mound of foil next to the ravioli, with a note attached to it. I almost asked what it was, but didn’t, thinking it was, like most covered labled things, leftovers or specialty items reserved for or claimed by a person whose name would be found on the note. I wandered back to the pantry to help Enrique with twenty two mista salads for a party that evening.
It wasn’t long before Siro came running back into the pantry, holding the foil package. He stopped and thought for a beat, before walking over to Enrique, proffering the mystery package.
“Here, it’s for you, from your lover!” Siro winked and pushed the foil package into Enrique’s arms. Enrique goes along with most things. He is so nice to me, so friendly, it’s hard for me to quantify him as being like the rest of the guys. He’s far more subtle in his humor. While the other guys go over the top in their humor, Enrique will point out to me how the plastic board where the desserts are made is always askew after Lucas leans against it, his large gut pushing it out of the way. Maybe his relative lack in height in comparison adds to the sweetness of him, or his initial shyness with me. He has a mouth on him, like the rest, that’s for sure, and he will always point out a joke about the guys in the back to me, so I don’t feel left out when the language is over my head, but there seems to be an Enrique outside of the one that shoots the breeze in the pantry. It was this Enrique that grudgingly opened the foil package, looked inside, and then immediately tried to push it back into Siro’s hands, laughing and smiling as he protested.
“No no no....” Siro refused it, and the the package landed on the floor with a metallic thump. By this time, Lucas and Juan had showed up, drawn by the escalating noise and protest. Lucas picked it up and looked in, then looked at me and grinned.
“Maybe, he said, it’s for you.”
“What does the note say?” I asked.
Enrique translated it for me. “A present for my one true love forever.” But what was it? What was left in foil and so vehemently rejected by him? Lucas finally lifted it out of the foil, and while I had had no preconceived idea of what it could be, I still was floored.
Lucas was holding a lifesize, if not larger than life, orange penis, artfully carved with a fair amount of attention to detail. Two round carrot balls were attached on either side, someone had put two small toothpicks in either end to hold it all together. The carrot dick flared at the end in a generous head, also very lifelike in shape and detail. Everyone broke out laughing, and it was loud enough that finally S_ appeared around the corner. His face registered a look of amusement that was touched with a twist of “I can’t believe I work with these people who are supposed to be adults.” He shook his head as Lucas handed it over to him. “What are you guys doing? Who made this?”
S_ was quite the sight, the executive chef standing in his whites in the center of the room, while customers dined perhaps a dozen yards away, holding a giant carrot dick in his hands. “Guys, guys....what is this...” he looked at me. “There’s a lady in the room.”
I exploded immediately. “S_!” I yelled. “Just last week you said I was one of the guys! I am one of the guys! Bullshit!” I had just finally achieved some level of debasement of status, something I actually wanted, and I did NOT want a giant orange dick to take it away from me!” I stared at him fiercely, I was taking his comment quite seriously.
He nodded, then turned back to Lucas, trying to give it back to him. “Here.”
Lucas backed off, “No way, Jefe, I don’t want it.” He started walking backwards towards the short entry corner back out of the pantry. S_ immediately stuck with him, walking with the carrot dick pointing forward like a small sword, jamming Lucas into the corner. It was a Kodak moment, the giant Lucas yelping and holding his hands over his head, as the smaller S_ held the carrot overhead, as if to bring it down and pierce Lucas’s ribcage.
“You want it back, Lucas, you know you do!” Lucas continued to fight and protest, until his back banged against one of the clipboards hanging on the wall and knocked it loudly off the nail and onto the floor with a clatter.
“Look at what you did to my clipboard, Lucas!” exclaimed S_. He backed off and allowed Lucas to return the clipboard to its nail, placing the carrot on a high shelf nearby. By now, everyone was in the pantry, including Ivar, the dishwasher. The crowd dispersed, but over the course of the evening, the carrot dick disappeared from the shelf several times. As I packed up to leave, I noticed on of the carrot testicles laying on the floor.
“Hey Lucas!”
Lucas looked up from the soup he was taking out of the ice bath in the utility sink. “I think you lost a nut!”
Lucas smiled and shook his head. “No, SG, that isn’t mine.”
“Well, I know it’s not mine!”
“I think it is Rye’s,” he said. “It is the wrong color to be mine. Mine would be brown with just a little hair.”
I inwardly shuddered. Too much information. I lacked a response, other than “Aaaaaaah.” I retreated back towards the walk in, but was inwardly pleased. Lucas was really starting to accept me as one of their own. It took half a year to get him to start asking me about my sex life.
Replies: 2 comments
Ahh, good tips. I have tried to shortent the time at home between pasta and sauce, just because it is what I learn at the Restaurant. Now I know why. Thank you so much for explaining!
SG
Posted by SlaveGirl @ 04/10/2002 01:13 PM PTZ
Hey SG, how's it going? It's been a while since I visited; very busy with work and other items going on in life. Glad to see you are doing so well. Hope everything is good w/ boy and you. I tried to read all the entries since I last visited; you've been a busy girl!
I am glad you are enjoying the gig.
Just an item to mention I learned from an old Italian, he never put oil in his pasta because his theory was that if the pasta had oil it would not absorb the flavor from the sauce, which makes sense to me. When you are cooking big quantities it's hard not to put oil on it without sticking, after you drop it in the boiling water to re-heat most of the oils should wash off but, at home never cook the pasta until you need it and drop it right in the sauce, the porous pasta will absorb the flavors of the sauce more efficiently since the pores are not full of oil or as much water as when the pasta is re-dropped in the pasta to re-heat.
If you notice the pasta dishes, they may sometimes get a water run-off on the edges, that is a big no-no when you want a flavorful dish.
Anyway, enough of that. I hope to keep visiting the site more often. I am going to assign my cooking students to visit the site and keep me abreast of what's going on!!!!
Good Luck with everything
Manny
Posted by Chef Manny @ 04/02/2002 05:16 PM PTZ
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