Anticiplate

I was holding out on you. A lot of you knew I had a new cooking job, but I was mum on the subject. I just didn’t want to jinx the amazing opportunity.

The new job is three days a week: Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday. It doesn’t conflict with my “Stage” with Ethan Stowell which I do Friday, Saturday, Monday. My total cooking time each week is tipping the scale at around sixty hours a week. You see why my husband and I spend the mornings together now? Don’t you.

The best part about this new job, though, is that I run the garde manger. The station I had been working most of the summer at Anchovies & Olives. And, it is my station. Nobody to look over my shoulder. Nobody to organize and prep my mise en place. All mine. I set it up, cook at it for a solid five hours, and I clean my mess at the end of the night. My workload for cleaning depends on how much grated cheese I sloppily get on the floor, or how many radishes ricochet off of my prep table when slicing them with the mandoline. If I don’t prep enough baby greens, then it is my fault, and I don’t have a “Stage” like me to run and fix my mistake. I will have to wash them “on the fly”.

And, can I be quite honest? I love running my own station. It feels so liberating to know that each dish is 100% mine from start to finish. But, it is a lot of responsibility, too. I got trained by this amazing woman, who basically created the station from start to finish with her beautiful, yet simple ideas behind starters and desserts. She needs to get back to writing, as we all want her to do, and I am her replacement. Three days a week.

It is beyond an honor.

Her husband is also amazing, and has greeted me with open arms. He and his sous pizzaola are going to teach me to stretch the amazing, tender pizza dough that Brandon has perfected and work the giant wood burning oven that has to be tended to like a newborn baby. But, meanwhile I stand at my own station and plate buttery burrata with pink sea salt and little olive-oil toasted baguettes, an “abundant”  baby green salad with spicy red radishes and Grana Padano and Brandon’s champagne vinaigrette, and Zoe’s coppa with pickled padron peppers. I bake off Molly’s famous chocolate chip cookies with grey sea salt, and I put cannelle-like dollops of creme fraiche whipped cream on fudgey brownies fresh out of the oven.

I am now the new pantry cook at Delancey.