Thank You Thibaut

July 10, 2013. 10:52pm.

Firstly, for dinner today we had salmon and broccoli, which was delicious :) As well as some of my leftover rice salad from yesterday.

Oh yeah, yesterday at lunch I was assigned to make lunch for everyone. Jean-Baptiste told me to make a rice salad. We have that quite regularly. Basically it's rice with some combination of cucumbers, tomatoes, tuna, corn, cilantro, mushrooms, and avocado. When I made it we were missing tuna so there was no protein (ugh) but everything else there was. Though there was a story with the corn too: the can opener was kind of broken, and I couldn't open the corn. So I said it wasn't working to Chef and Jean-Ba. Chef came over, tried to open, it and kind of angrily said, "Merdre! Il est cassé!", kind of throw down the can opener, and stomped away. I was a little afraid he thought I broke it (which I'm quite certain I didn't), but he got over it quickly. Jean-Ba came over to try, and first got a little bit open with the can opener, then took out a huge knife. Chef looked over and said "elle va te donner un bisou si tu peut l'ouvrir", or something like that, meaning, "she'll give you a kiss if you can open it". Oh Chef. Anyway, Jean-Ba started skillfully working his way around the lid of the huge corn can by jabbing the huge knife in. Aaaaanndd he got it! It actually was quite impressive. But even after Chef looked at me and indicated it was the time to give him his kiss, I never did give Jean-Ba his bisou.. But that wasn't why I wasn't talking about making lunch. So first he told me everything I was to cut up and put in, and how much rice to do. Then when I cut up the cilantro he kind of looked at in and nicely asked me to cut it more finely, please. Dammnit. After the rice was started he put his finger in the water, licked it, and told me I hadn't salted the water. Fuck. (By the way, yes, I've actually even watched them cook rice before...) And even after that, I mixed all the ingredients together with the rice, then went to get butter, and Jean-Ba stopped me, saying no, it's a salad, so you can't put butter, went over to the mixture, touched it, and told me I was supposed to chill the rice first - it's a salad. I started to ask, "should I..." and he said, "No, it's too late. Just put it on the table." Uuuuuuuugggggghhhhh. HOWEVER, when everyone was eating, Battiste specifically commented to Jean-Ba that the rice salad was good! I don't know exactly what he said about it - maybe that the rice was a little al dente...it was actually Jean-Ba who took the rice off, sooo.....but whatever. Jean-Ba agreed, looked at me, smiled, and said "il est bon!", or "it's good!" PHEW. I embarrassedly said merci.

Ooookay, onto the rest of today. Oh, during the break between day and night shift, I came down to make myself an egg, and Chef was in the living room, with the TV on, on the couch...fast asleep. Teeheehee. It was really funny for some reason. I've actually never seen him at the house because he's always at his girlfriend's. Then I studied Duolingo some.

Okay, so onto night shift. Well I got there before Thibaut, helped set up, washed some dishes, and was about to start peeling fava beans when Thibaut came. Yay. I started a dough when it was time for dinner. Then after dinner, I was about to continue with fun things with him, wheeeeennn...Jean-Ba asked if he could borrow me for five minutes. Five minutes my ass.

Well, there's this huge, huge thing that you can heat large amounts of...stuff in right next to the patisserie (it's in a room that's part of Thibaut's area because it has the flours, sugar, a bread mixing thing, the oven, and a freezer). Well Jean-Ba has been cooking up a stock in it. He drained it and then basically asked me to clean up after him. It seems like one stock wouldn't be that big of a deal. But it was a LOT. First I had to ladle all the chicken, onions, carrots, leeks, etc from the machine thing into a trash bag and take out the trash. It was HEAVY. Which tells you how much I had to ladle out. It was also leaking to a had to put it in another bag. Then I had to wash out the big machine thing, which just took a long time. And then quickly squeegee down the floor. Maybe it doesn't sound like a lot. Maybe it shouldn't have take much time. But it took me awhile. Ugh. During it, Thibaut again commented, "they should make you do all their shit work?" I said, "Exactly." I loved that he made that comment. It's just nice that he disapproves of it.

ESPECIALLY since his disapproval of those kind of assignments for me means he doesn't leave them all to me :) Sure I do some dishes and cleanup. So does he though. And I do SO MUCH real stuff. I'm still slow. The slowest thing for me is actually wiping the plates down. You should put some vinegar on each plate and use a paper towel to quickly wipe it down. You should have to make sure there aren't a bunch of streaks on the plate after. You always do that before preparing a dish or dessert on a plate. It takes them all like 10 seconds. And it takes me like a minute. It's pathetic. But I just can't to it more quickly because at first there are always streaks! Argh.

But anyway, today I did the entire presentation of so many plates! He demonstrated one for me, but then had me do the rest. There's not one particularly way to do the decorations, and he just decides on the spot - I may sometime be able to design some myself - he tells me sometimes it doesn't matter if it's exactly the same, just make it pretty. But I'm not sure where the line is between having a little liberty and having to match the first one - particularly for multiple desserts at the same table they have to resemble each other pretty closely. So I feel more comfortable copying his first one pretty exactly for now. But like I said, I did the presentation of the full desserts - quite a few of them. And it was so dignifying...particularly compared to what I'm more accustomed to in the kitchen. I asked Thibaut if he could give me a ride home after work again today if I waited for him (he was just finishing something up real quick after he told me I could go). He told me if I gave him one dollar. I looked pensively and he took out a euro and said for a euro. Well that's a deal - I get a ride and I euro and he gets a dollar, which is less than a euro (as he well knows haha). So I said deal. When we got to the house though I told him to wait, took out a dollar, and gave it to him and just didn't ask for a euro. Then said "for having confidence in me!". I told him when we first got in the car that I like working with him. He asked why and I basically said because it's always fun - I get to do more in general than in the kitchen. He said, "You always do the dishes there?" I laughed, "often".

But not in the patisserie. So thank you Thibaut.