Kitchen Duty, Day 1

First, we talked about management styles (authoritative/political/bureaucratic/evaluative/participative/laissez-faire), more or less an overview with some "worst boss ever" anecdotes. Then we moved down into the Bistro kitchen, where we'll spend most of the rest of the week, in preparation for Thursday's buffet benefit lunch. Right now, we're only planning for about 50 attendees, so our class of 14 is somewhat undertaxed (of course, rare is the day when 14 people actually show up -- five people were missing today).

Peter is definitely a FOH guy. Sam's been working closely with him on the room decor and she said "I feel like I'm on Project Runway and Tim Gunn just told me that my dress was hideous." Several parts of the room have been decorated and re-decorated. Lots of standing on chairs, then climbing down to get the long view.

In the kitchen, we first put away the grocery order and arranged the walk-in refrigerator. We had three rolling carts filled with produce (cases of lemons, avocados, and peppers), dairy products (milk, buttermilk, cream, and a case each of butter and eggs) and dry goods (big bags of powdered sugar and rice, smaller bags of cocoa powder and cayenne). After stowing away four loaves of bread for french toast, tomorrow, Alex set to work making today's breakfast: he parboiled some potatoes, then sautéed them with bell peppers and onions. And he scrambled some eggs in more onions and peppers, and threw in some avocado and cheese at the end. Meanwhile, Fitz made the compound butter which will garnish the grilled chicken, adding grated orange peel, orange juice, minced chipotle chilies and chopped cilantro to whipped butter. Then we rolled it up into cylinders and stuck it back in the walk-in. And I made the cookie dough for Mexican wedding cakes, which was also refrigerated for later use.

Peter only came into the kitchen a couple of times. I told him that Alex was going off-plan and making family breakfast, and he said, "Oh, good!" Later, he sidled up to me and said, "I can't tell you how glad I am that you're in charge back here."

In charge. Ha!