Days 20 & 21: Mise en place

A few of us decided to reward our efforts over the week with a nice meal on Friday night. If a restaurant charges €12 for its starters and €29 for its mains, I expect certain things. Actually, I demand them. Having to catch the waiter’s attention after ten minutes to ask if we might be able to order some drinks is not one of them. Having my main course of pan-fried brill expertly cooked is, and they oblige. Having it smothered in four ounces of butter and a mound of lemon zest, sadly, is not.

It wasn’t all bad. I had confit duck to start, which was excellent, except someone had inexplicably added a crust of cheese to it, which I had to peel off before enjoying the remainder. I was actually looking around the table trying to work out where the smell of melting cheese was coming from, when I finally looked down and realised it was me. Well, it was my starter anyway. The wine waiter stepped in with a strong recommendation, a superb Spanish white from a grape none of us had heard of: Albarino. It didn’t quite atone for his smug swagger but it helped soothe some of the irritation.

We skipped dessert, loaded up on espresso and headed to The Blackbird for a few liveners. Since I didn’t have to be in the kitchen until 1pm on Saturday, I gave myself license to knock back a few hefeweizens. I was secretly hoping it would piss down all day Saturday so I wouldn’t be missing much, but woke around 11am to find glorious sunshine burning through the narrow slits that had taken the place of my eyes. I was feeling a bit sluggish after two boozy nights in a row, and regretting my decision to work instead of resting.

When I was in the hotel kitchen last week, I saw service. Service is the bit when people come in, order food, and the kitchen sends it out to them. Watching this is mesmerising. It looks almost choreographed. Little metal containers sit at workstations with chopped onion, tomato concasse, sauces, garnishes, herb butters, nuts and leaves. Hands dip in and out of them, plucking ingredients in eloquent, flowing motions. Pots and pans are flipped and turned and filled with fillets of fish, quails, pork belly. If one were to take away all the little pots and pans and just see the hands, it would be like watching a conductor at work.

You know something? It is choreographed. There is a conductor at work. The chef. You walk in the kitchen at 6pm, an hour before service. He has been there for at least six hours. He has been working on his mise en place. Literally, this translates as ‘putting in place’. Actually, mise en place is French for getting your shit together. It is the key to a successful service - having everything exactly how you want it, right where you want it. I have volunteered for Saturday afternoon because I want to see this happen, and I want to be a part of it.

Take one of the second course dishes from the menu: Confit Pork Belly with Pickled Carrots and Hazelnuts. The day before, the chef salts the pork belly. The carrots are sliced thinly and gently cooked in carrot juice, oil, white wine and sugar, with star anise and coriander seeds. In the morning the belly is washed, covered in fat and slowly cooked. The hazelnuts are roasted and glazed with local honey. Come service, the pork is cooked and cut into portions. The hazelnuts wait in a pan ready to be warmed and added to each plate, and the carrot sits in a cold bain marie. To order, the belly is thrown in a saute pan and heated through in the oven. The dish is assembled effortlessly, the carrot forming the base for the pig, hazelnuts scattered lazily around the fringe and the carrot marinade drizzled over the ensemble. This is one of six dishes this guy is making.

I spend my cherished Saturday afternoon like this: I segment oranges, ball melons and slice grapes for a Melon Grape and Orange Cocktail. I fillet smoked mackerel for Mackerel Pâté and also help make the Pâté Maison which happens to be the same one from the other day that I will be making again on Monday. I wash salad leaves, I finely (think finely, then treble it) chop onions, olives, capers and herbs for the pâté garnish. I am treated to a demonstration of how to debone and roll a shoulder of pork (it was half a pig when I walked through the door). I somehow manage to skip pushing ten boiled egg yolks through a sieve for Mimosa Salad and someone else carries the can for me.

One of the guys is using a Japanese turning slicer to create long shoelaces of potato, which he coils around old baked bean tins and cooks in the oven to create a nest for one of his salads. I have to have a go at that. By the twentieth or so he is really in the swing of it and has refined the process. It has been years since he made them he says, but found the attachment for the mandolin that morning so thought he should give it a go. That is mise en place.

Service was underway when I left the kitchen around half seven, and I tucked into an instant ice cold Boags Premium as a little treat to myself. Followed by another one. The afternoon had flown by. Which meant the day had flown by, since I didn’t get up until 11. So one half of my chance to unwind had been relinquished, but it was a sacrifice I’d make again, though maybe not next weekend. I took it easy Saturday night and was tucked up in bed by 1am.

I turn down a trip to West Cork this morning to afford myself a lie in and to get my shit together for the coming week. I file recipes, hoover, wash and iron and generally bring the practicalities of my haphazard life under control. The filing is a nightmare - we are bombarded with pages and pages of recipes and you file them however you want. Sounds pretty straightforward? So where do you start? Starters, mains, desserts. Breads. Pastries. Cakes. Vegetables. Soups. Salads. Preserves. Accompaniments? Okay then. Dressed crab - starter or main? Mayonnaise - accompaniment? Sauce? Apple and Clove Jelly - preserve? Accompaniment? Do you file Mint Sauce with the Lamb recipes, or under accompaniments? And what about that recipe for pancake batter that has Oatmeal Biscuits printed on the back? I spend half an hour looking for a recipe for Redcurrant Jelly that isn't there before admitting defeat, and spend the next two hours playing table tennis.

I definitely need to formulate a plan for the weeks ahead. There are a number of things to contend with. Tiredness is one. I need more energy. That means controlling my diet and exercise. Diet and exercise? I’d forgotten about them. One of the disadvantages of making dessert every day is that you eat dessert every day. You cook all morning, so you taste all morning. And at the end of a hard day, well, you treat yourself to a little drink or two. This is fine, up until now. But I am now a quarter of the way in. One down, three to go. It is time to take control. As any chef will tell you, the secret is in the preparation. Take the hard work out of things by thinking and planning ahead. Keep clean and tidy. If you know me, you’ll know how hard this is. But it is the secret. It is the magical, unattainable mise en place, and without it, we are all fucked.