Honestly, Beautifully : honey blade
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2002-09-29 - 3:05 a.m.
Just as I suspected they would earlier this week, tonight they dragged me into the kitchen to make starters. Lucy was ill, apparently, which means that of the four days she was meant to be doing this week, she only managed one.
In some ways I have to offer her my thanks, as this now more or less seals my most-versatile-member-of-staff label, and provides me with a platform from which I can demand a pay rise.
On the other hand... boiling oil! Hot! PAIN!!
The starters I had to deal with were almost all frozen and almost all had to be fried. Some were more accommodating than others. Thai fish cakes and onion bhajis were fine as all they really needed was to be heated and crisped up a bit. And they were dead easy to fish out of the oil, because they're huge.
Spring rolls and vegetable samosas were rather less accommodating, although admittedly this was probably because they took a lot longer to cook, since they were raw and frozen. As opposed to the bhajis and fish cakes, which were already cooked and not frozen.
Prawn toast, on the other hand, was determined to be evil incarnate. I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with prawn toast, in that I'll eat it, not like it but then forget that I don't like it a few months down the line and order some more. After tonight though, it's just a hate relationship.
Our prawn toast portions consist of six little toasts, which are in turn made from one piece of bread. This is made in advance but has to be cut before frying, which is fine up until the point where you have to brush all the pieces onto your hand and then tip them - face down - into the oil.
I was initially worried that I'd drop them in and they'd turn over while they were submerged. I eventually learned, however, that this was not likely to happen, as prawn toast can not and, furthermore, will not be turned over. Not without a huge struggle, at any rate.
You tip the toasts in face down, so the prawn and sesame seed layers cook. Then you flip them over in the oil to let the bread side cook. But prawn toast does not flip. It rolls. And rather like the butter-side-down phenomenon, no matter how lightly or heavily you try to flip prawn toast onto the other side, it will always roll and eventually end up face down anyway.
I noted over the course of the evening that prawn toast has an interesting tendency to turn over by itself, too.
Tonight was made even more fun by some joker ordering 11 pizzas, which basically brought the kitchen to a standstill so that three out of the four kitchen staff could make all these bloody pizzas. This, of course, resulted in massive pileups in terms of other orders and there was no shortage of complaints from customers towards the end of the evening.
I'm glad I have next weekend off, I truly am.
Anyway, time for bed. Tomorrow I'm going to have a long bath, do some more drawing, watch TV and maybe do some more laundry. Have to get some relaxation in before term starts, after all.
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