The trial shift

Basically, how to impress me

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Upon arrival

I mean, firstly at least try to put your jacket on correctly, the buttons corresponding to the right holes for instance.

And don’t wear an untucked football shirt underneath it, that’d be a good way to start.

First impressions and all that.

Honestly.

I will likely be able to work out your skill set level within about thirty seconds of you setting foot in my kitchen. Many little things that you do will tell me all I need to know, that if the next twelve or so hours will be fruitful, productive and likely the beginning of a connection that will hopefully last many years, as my staff retention rate was very much measured over years not months (there have been exceptions), or that we are actually both wasting our time, that this will likely turn out to be a disaster and it’s probably better if you just go now. I will already have read your CV in detail mulling it over as to your strengths, and as we probably have had a meeting (seeing as you’ve turned up), I’ve gauged that you must be either competent or at the least keen to work with us. What your resumé though may not tell me is that you are also an adept fibber, that you have not actually worked for Marco, and were merely peeling vegetables in Monaco for a year before being allowed to wash the baby leaves for a month, leaving to come back to London, now telling me that you worked for Ducasse.

I would rather a keen cook with little experience, than a blinkered diva.

I will know from the second that you stand at the bench whether this is going to work or not from your general demeanour and stance. How you set up a section will tell me enough. How you place your knife roll, your selection of the correct chopping board for the task in hand, how neat your uniform is and if you have tweezers clipped onto your apron bib. On the metal bench in front of you, how you arrange your board, spoon-pot, cloths and knives will let everyone know what to expect. Everything you’ll need to make yourself feel at home in the kitchen, enabling you to work cleanly, efficiently and safely, set up neatly, ready to begin. I would expect at the least that you start by anchoring your board to the section with a wet paper towel to stop it from sliding.

Many cooks don’t.

It will wobble.

I won’t like it.

I want to see that the board is straight as well, with no paper towels poking out from underneath that will trap bits and pieces of rubbish as you work, the edge of the thick plastic, parallel to the side of the bench would be best.

Not wonky.

Kitchen towels folded neatly and stacked in a small pile will boost my confidence in what is basically a stranger in my kitchen for the next few hours. Now if you’ve made it this far, then I’ll expect that you’ll be able to cook so I’d like to see evidence of that. This is indeed the purpose of the trial shift. I could just fill the position without seeing how you work, as chefs do usually out of desperation to fill the role, but you might for instance have a terrible attitude, lacking the positivity I need to complete the team once again. You might call Gregoire my commis chef (the one who looks like Fred West the serial killer) a donkey for instance, as once happened with a guy on a trial shift as he wasn’t happy with the cup of tea that he had been made. The same guy who was two hours late for his trial with some bullshit excuse about a bus. Now that simply won’t do.

He also had a hangover, so I sent him home.

Selecting a candidate that will need to work together with us as a team, day in and day out, with early starts, late finishes and hours upon hours of slowly building pressure that needs us all to be focused and try to get along, whilst being respectful of each other’s work. That respect must be given to all members of the team, from the guys who work in the pot wash (no throwing the copper pans at the boys in the sinks please) through the hierarchy of chefs and the front of house, all the while making sure that the job gets done, carried out to exacting standards. If you can’t be bothered, are not really interested or are a prima donna, it will become apparent very quickly.

You will likely be asked to prepare lunch for the cooks. It’s a good skills test. (Staff food is a subject that can fill a book on its own, a subject that is prone to rigorous debate between cooks and the front of house. I have once had to physically separate a sommelier and a chef from each other after one put the other in a headlock for putting basil in a sauce for a lasagne. Waiters often treat each meal as what they hope might be a gastronomic experience, perhaps with a cheese course or a dessert, to be enjoyed at leisure, sat in the restaurant at a table, napkin folded on their laps, then muttering obscenities as a tray of spaghetti with meatballs is placed on the pass for the second time in a week. Cooks on the other hand are generally happy with a plastic gastro-tub of anything warm to eat, wolfed down with a spoon whilst standing at their station, crouched on the floor on tired feet or sat on a doorstep for a few snatched minutes of peace).

If I was to ask you to prepare something elaborate to test your skills, I would likely lose you to the intricacies of fiddling for an hour or so and it wouldn’t be representative of what I need to see from you. Take Stephane for instance who ruined a recipe for Tarte aux Citron within half an hour of arrival, scuttled off to get changed and ran away, never to be seen again. I only noticed he was missing when I saw him shoot past the kitchen door in his raincoat apologising profusely.

If however, I asked you to cook us all a roast lunch, then I’ll see everything I need to in the space of an hour or two. I’m English, so a roast lunch is something very dear to me. The chefs will be so excited they’ll think it’s Christmas, so hopefully everyone will be pleased. This is also an excellent example of how a cook will show how they might utilise their various skills at the same time. Butchery techniques, accurate meat cookery, clever and correct use of seasoning, good knife skills, organisation, time management, the preparation and care of ingredients, steaming, roasting, braising and sauce making. Excellent I think, though you’d be surprised at the mistakes, which in reality are not exactly deal breakers, as the whole exercise is in letting the cook get used to the environment, creating something nice that works for everyone.

Usually, staff food is prepared according to a rota by one of the cooks whilst setting up their own section, so with only this to take care of, there should be no room for error from the candidate. There’s nowhere to hide with a test like that, you’ll also (or not) ingratiate yourself with a bunch of tired hungry chefs who you could more than likely be working with full time, who will also be very grateful to you for preparing something decent for lunch, cooked well and efficiently without fuss, the loss of fingers or setting the kitchen on fire. The team as a whole must also be convinced that you are the right candidate to work alongside them every day in the pressure kettle that is a busy professional kitchen.

Occasionally someone might fool me, as Morgan did by hiding the fact he had a recently broken leg (fractured the previous week) not yet seen by medics and he masked his injury by taking vast amounts of tramadol. He was very keen, stoic, stubborn to the point of madness, and an excellent cook, but hobbled quite dramatically as the fracture to his femur wasn’t exactly helpful. It didn’t work out.

The trial shifts exist to show both the prospective candidate and ourselves whether we are a match. It is usually a morning or a day’s work. Time is given for free by the candidate, and is a chance for the new cook to show you their skills, work alongside your cooks and see if you can all get along together without the sous chef wanting to murder them in the walk-in fridge in a week’s time.

Turning up hungover, is a sure sign that the day will not go well. Other warning signs of the potential for vexation are lateness, scruffiness and the cardinal sin of not bringing any knives to the shift, expecting to borrow hundreds of pounds worth of treasured tools from potential colleagues who wouldn’t lend knives to family members, let alone a stranger. And then there are those who bring knives that are blunt to the occasion.

Now that is unforgivable.

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In addition, an update on our Cider Vinegar.

This coming week I shall be testing the two hundred litres or so of raw cider that we pressed from the apples we harvested from the old orchard here last autumn. It has sat quietly since last October, busy only with itself. I shall take a small sample and test it with a hydrometer for its Specific gravity, a measurement that tests for density. This I have been assured by the esteemed Andrew Lea is likely to be at the correct point by now, as during December my failure to comprehend the vagaries of reading a hydrometer correctly, resulted in him sending terse responses to my emails whereby he suggested that I was in fact a buffoon.

The vats have settled and fermentation is likely finished, and the last time I checked my erratic measurements, I now fully believed the cider to be at around six per cent alcohol. I took a small sample home and drank a little glass, the familiar numb legs and slightly wobbly sensation gave me cause to believe that I have successfully made farmyard cider.

In vast quantities.

The deeply pungent smell from the fermenting golden juice has intrigued me for the last few months, that rich heady haze from the fermenting yeasts and sugars, bubbling and belching along its fermenting journey, escaping from the little airlocks in the tops of the vessels where it rests in an old stable. It will be soon enough that I’ll need to rack the cider off from its lees, transferring the hundreds of litres into wide-mouthed glass vessels, exposing the liquid to aeration, covering it tightly with rubber bands and cheesecloth to begin the second part of the story, that of the conversion from alcohol to acetic acid, namely cider vinegar.

It has been suggested by many of you who come here to read these words, that this process in itself might be something I might write about, to explain the transformation from picked orchard fruit to apple cider vinegar, from beginning to end.

Yes, I shall do this as the year and the journey of the vinegar progresses.

Until next weekend,

William