A foreword. If you are offended by words at all. Stop reading. There are swears and other mean things. And I'd rather have you not read my amazing story than complain that I say the word fuck.
From the beginning:
I was asked by my brother inlaw, Josh, to be his sous chef in a cooking competition on thursday, Thirtieth of July, the year two thousand ten. The cooking competition was to be an Iron Chef style, secret ingredient, challange. The competition was to be held at Josh's workplace, Camp Bethel, a Christian Camp. Josh is the chef there, and the camp has hired unskilled workers instead of letting him have a hand in the hiring process. I agree to help.
I speak with him a couple days before the competition we go over general game plan, try to calm nerves, psych each other up, etc. I also mention that Kit, my wife and his sister, will be coming to take photos of us and our food for our cooking portfolios. The three of us are all excited for the day of each doing what we love. Cooking and photography.
Josh calls me back the next day and tells me that Kit cannot come because one of the Board of Directors had closed off the camp to outsiders, and he had to fight tooth and nail to not lose me too. I wish I hadn't even had mentioned it. So I planned to bring Kit anyways! She is my wife after all, and no one has the right to keep us apart from each other unless it is something we want. Quite annoyed by all of this.
I figure the worst thing that can happen is I am told I can't cook because of her, and I tell whomever that they are ridiculous and go from there, and leave graciously if they really object to my wife being with me at what was going to be a challenging event. We thought it had to be a weird joke or they've had kid's taken.
We (Kit) calmed down and made the reasonable decision to not cause any problems for Josh because we had heard of how tough it is for him, his staff, bosses [and their bosses (everyone has like 4 or 5 bosses)]. And on and on, just a tough place.
Day of the competition, I drop Kit off at her mom's house so they can sew and do girl stuff. I head out to the camp. I take the long way to avoid construction and arive at the camp at 11am one hour before lunch is served and the competition will be introduced as well as the secret ingredients. That's right plural.
When I arived at the camp and into the kitchen, it was chaos, a bunch of "kids" using knives in ways i've never seen and gross shit everywhere. I spent my first hour cleaning up after everyone, because they are all terribly unsanitary, and yes even Josh, but Josh is also trying to get these people to do any work. So he ends up doing it for them, then they take it places. So he has no time to manage any sort of "station"
I make bleach water in a bucket, find a rag and start scrubbing everything i can. there was stuff on some counter tops that i don't know. There was mayonaise in a drawer. Not mayonaise in a jar in a drawer. Mayonaise in a drawer! It had been there long enough to need to be scrubbed. I did everything short of mopping the floor and scrubbing the bottom of the drawers aside from actual goo.
I could now work in this.
There were five secret ingredients: skirt steak, whole wheat penne pasta, black berries, green beans, and fingerling potatoes. Holy almost...
We sit someplace quiet to brainstorm. There needed to be an entree and a dessert. Josh is exhausted he's already been up cooking since 5-6am. So he tells me to fire off ideas. I do so, we right down good ones. Green Bean Beef is the first thing I thought of when I saw them together. The Viet Hoa makes an excellent Green Been Beef (and everything) but I digress. Josh clings to that one, I like that. We planned to use the potatoes as a garnish in a thin sliced fried chip form and put garlic + salt on them in hopes of making it a bit more asian to go with the rest of the plate.
For dessert we were thinking a blackberry pasta salad. but... meh. We hated the idea of two starches, it made the whole dish hard, and we'd hate to only use one ingredient in a dish. We didn't even mind a repeat ingredient.So I started the think of all the ways to cook pasta. You can: boil it, boil it, or boil it.
But the thought of ruedas came to mind. If you are not familar with ruedas they are a 1 inch diameter, red wagon wheel shaped mexican pasta then when put in hot oil expand into a 3 inch diameter chip. Taste great with salsa, hot sauce, lime, sour cream, anything you'd put on nachos really. So we went into the kitchen to test deep frying whole wheat penne. We found out if you soak them for 30 minutes they fry the best, they do not poof up, but they taste like wheat croutons, and the water has softened them. so you aren't deep frying something hard, you are deep frying something sort of plump and moist. So how to apply that to berries? Crust? filling? TOPPING! We Crushed the penne however it would, not grains, mostly strips. and mixed them with copious amounts of brown sugar. We used this mixture to put on top of our whipped berry salad containing not only the blackberries but strawberries too.
Okay so we are out of the kitchen until 3 when the competition starts.
Josh shows me his place, we play music, he introduces me around, it's all pleasant and nice, most of them are excited christian teenagers working at camp, I don't know how else to describe them right now. But there is one girl that rubs me the wrong way all the way. The best word I can use to describe her is bitch. And she tries to hide it but just barely, but since it's a christian camp everyone thinks she is so amazing and buy the idea that she isn't a bitch, but i fortunately see right through it. I also noticed I was more intellegent (this comes into play later). After meeting her I pull Josh aside and ask if she is normally like how she just was. He unfortunately confirmed that yes she is a bitch by simply saying "Yeah she's kind of a bitch all the time." I tell him that I won't be able to take much more of her and I bit my tongue that whole time but don't know how much more i can take. He says he understands and he will do what he can, but asks me to keep cool. I tell him that if she's around again that I'll try my hardest.
Okay so we get back into the kitchen and the girl that rubbed me the wrong way is the sous chef for the competitor. This does not look good for me. So it is 3pm, dinner is at 5:30. Two and a half hours, I can do this without freaking out. (this turns out to be true) We cook, I ignore her, it works well, she's kind of bumbling around the kitchen but she's not terrible and not too much in the way. I can deal with this. She complains, I ignore, she talks, I ignore. Unless she is clearly coming around me I ignore. IGNORE IGNORE IGNORE. Perfect. It's working.
In the kitchen it's hot, and fast paced, and there is a fat guy with a pony tail taking pictures. Josh introduces us, it was the guy who forbade my wife from attending and yelled at Josh about being a snake for getting me to come. I was mad.
With the biggest smile he says something like "Hi there! I'm so glad you're here with us for this event, and helping us with this event!"
I respond, "Yeah, I've heard you've been saying that!" Also with a big smile. At this point he should probably know I know he's mad about me being there. He then reaches out a hand to shake mine. I turn back to my cutting board and start working again. He, a little beaten down, says, "I guess you're busy." I affirm that with a, "Yep." The fat man with the pony tail taking pictures leaves. I am pleased with how this went.
5:30 comes (I made it without losing my cool! HUZZAH!) we are done and ready for plating. It turns out the other team isn't quite done yet, so we told them we'll serve ours and by the time that's done theirs should be ready, they are fine with this. Then the director (not the fat pony tail man) forbids us from serving until the other team serves so they can be judged side by side.
So we put our food into hot holding, a box much like a refridgerator but it's around 165`F to keep bacteria off food, and (hopefully) not over cook food too much if used for short periods of time.
Josh and I clean and get ready to plate again, get a system ready for plating and Wait.
And wait.
And keep waiting.
6:00 rolls around and we're both quite annoyed. We ask nicely that they hurry up, so our food doesn't stay in hot holding any longer for fear that it will be over done. This is when I stop ignoring the girl that rubbed me the wrong way. She makes a joke about how they should take longer so they win by destroying our food, and I spoke very loudly, directly and forcefully at her "How about you hurry the fuck up! And stop letting our food go to shit!"
"Watch your mouth!" Is what she said to me, as if I am some child who's being babysat.
"You have no right to tell me what I can or cannot say!" I respond forcefully.
Other things were said here. Anger still clouds my memory. Nothing too violent though. I know I didn't call her a bitch, because that never works out how you'd like (women really don't like being called bitch or cunt, it just makes them angry so it's bad policy to use those words to their face, only behind backs will you get away with it.) Josh all the while is saying "Steev. Steev. Steev." Like he's trying to wake me up without me flinching and hitting him. He sounded like he was a million miles away but got closer and closer then he told me I need to calm down and be quiet. As my chef, i told him "I respect you, and will." This isn't a saying in the culinary community or anything, it's just what I said to him. I shut the fuck up. I am quiet for atleast 30 seconds. I am still mad but doing a breathing exercise and trying to calm down. Josh asks me quietly "You okay Steev?"
I should clarify now, that in my regular kitchen someone else would have lost their cool long before I had and it would have been much more violent. My reaction to her "fucking around" (industry term) was not unorthodox or even the worst it could have been.
So Josh has just asked me if I am "okay", the bitch yells at me again. "I said watch your mouth!" And I hadn't said a word for atleast a half a minute. This is when I got really mad.
I asked very loudly and with faux sympathy "Oh my, am I going to hurt their little christianties?" (They don't have children campers at the time it's a teenage camp)
She threatens to kick me out of the camp if I continue. This is where me knowing I am smarter than her pays off, I knew that if I just got bigger and louder she would shutup and go into her shell. So I shout "Then go ahead! My food is already done! I have no reason to continue being here except to wait for you. Now she shut the fuck up.
Josh tells me again to knock it off. I do. We are both pissed, I know what I'm pissed at and I'm pretty sure I know what Josh is pissed at (everything) but I didn't know if it was more at her for being a bitch, or me of not putting up with her being a bitch.
So they finally get done, they have a huge plate of food, they took about 45 minutes extra time with our stuff over cooking in the hot holding. Meat getting tougher, greenbeans and carrots getting soggier. They added an extra starch, rice, to the mix, and heaped up the food home style. we served a nice 5 oz portion, because we figured the campers would be getting 2 dinners and 2 desserts. Whatever Quality > Quantity.
We get done serving both courses. I leave before they vote, I just don't want to be in this place anymore. I am not embarassed by the way I acted, but I am disgusted with quite a few people here, Hate with a smile and God on their side.
I miss a call from Josh on the road, so Kit calls him back at the camp a girl answers the phone. Kit identifies herself as Josh's sister, and the girl on the other end says "Oh you're his sister? We loved his food way more!"So I got a chance to talk to josh we got LOTS of creativity points for the deep fried pasta.
So in the end we got 75% of the votes. Even with food that was definitely not as good as if we had served it on time. But since it's a christian camp, to preserve feelings, it was a tie.
It has been a whole week since the event, and I still feel no sort of guilt for yelling at this young woman, partially because of the fact it was a competition and we had to suffer. Also the fact that we won with dishes I helped come up with even after suffering 45 minutes of hot holding helps me remain guilt free, because our food was clearly better even after becoming a shade of it's former self, I just wish they could have had it when it was it's best, we could have had 80 or 90% of the vote. But I am happy with 75% Still a landslide. And that's how Steev wins cooking competitions.
