A funny thing hapened on the way to the Kitchen

[Nicko]

Was working at my Uncles Pizza place and a couple of guys were making pizza dough in the large hobart mixer. When I came in a while later one guy was gone and the other guy was rubbing the top of the mixer with a towel (the mixer had been turned off). I said "what the heck are you doing?". He replied "Jim said the mixer was getting too hot and that we need to cool it down, so he told me to rub the top gently with a towel to cool it down".
-True story!

one time my pastry chef & I decided to play a joke on the front of the house. we got some store bought pastries. i.e. Ho-ho's, ding dongs & Twinkies & hostess apple pies we cut them into odd shapes and dressed them up with creme anglaise, bruleed sabayon, Caramel sauce & raspberry sauce. We presented these wonderful creations to the waitstaff & low and behold they loved them. one of the staff even said to me bri this is the best chocolate creme roulade I have ever tasted.

[Pete]

In one of the restaurants I worked in the pastry chef had a problem with the staff sneaking snacks when he wasnt looking. We decided to fix the offenders. We made cherry vinegar (for a dish on the menu) with cherries, rice wine vinegar and a little sugar. After we boiled this mixture it would sit for 5-7 days before we poured it off the cherries. We stuck those cherries in the pastry cooler. Hours later many of the cherries were gone, but we never had many problems with the staff again.

Those were some good ones... I'll share some of my stories here...the pan streachers, and stuff works good, but are too obvious, try a mushroom hammer, water thinner, and the "bucket of steam" is pretty neat. _______________ I had a guy try to kiss my a** alot and so I let him help me make a recipe, I gave him the recipe and told him to get the mise en place together and that I would return showing him what to do next. The recipe called for 2 cups red pepper, 3 cups red pepper, and some more items.....I returned and I found a case of each product sitting on the counter!!! See if you get this one.......I get a new server or a guest some times and they ask, "How does your meat come???" (mail me if you don't get it) ______________ One classic is this.....A fry cook of mine noticed that I would send back some of his products like "fried mozzarella" since it was still cold in the middle. So he breaded his finger in a beer batter and attempted to see exactly how long it takes for the center of the product to get hot!!!!!!!!!!!! TRUE STORY!!!!

Oh, Bri, I like the cherry trick, I think I may use that....

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Happy Cooking!!!
Chef Jerome

Hello Folks,

Here's a couple of good ones.

1) I had a student in from the culinary coolege . I told him that we had a shortage of paper for the computer printer. We use the Squirell computer system that prints up the waiters bills. Each bill has a number. Any way, I told the student that we needed some more paper and that we had to recycle. I made him go through all the bills and tape them all together, In order. I stopped him after about 1/2 an hour.

#2

It was month end inventory and I told the same student that we had to count the coffee beans that were in the coffee grinder. I let him get about 1/4 the way through.

Very early in his career while working in a large hotel in London, celebrity two star michelin chef Marco Pierre White was told to strain the veal stock kept in large buckets in the walkin through a fine chinios. Two and a half hours later when he had pushed the gelatinous mess through, the saucier casualy reccommended he heat the stock next time.

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