Read Part Two here.

After a couple of months, I started training with the kitchen manager, Jennifer, to work lunches. Blonde, burley, intense. A bright and capable, strong woman, just like Chef Mef. Not afraid to rip into someone and tell them how much they sucked. My training with her was instantly controversial, as the common time period was supposed to be at least six months of prep before being let onto the line but Jeb had made it well known that he enjoyed his prep work and didn’t want to move up the ladder. I also leap frogged a few people. Yup, the new guy. Instant tension. But the moment I grew accustomed to the weight of the cleaver, I flew through my prep.

My work ethic at that time had been honed into iron during my previous job landscaping. “Landscraping” we all called it. As the new guy, I had rarely gotten the chance to ride atop the sit down mowers like the others. Instead, I spent most of those hot and humid summer days lugging a gas powered weed whacker or hiking and trudging around properties with a large, heavy leaf blower “backpack” like something from a science fiction movie, sucking in fumes from the exhaust. Push mowing. Shoveling dirt. Raking leaves. Chopping out stumps with an axe. Pounding concrete into chunks with a sledge. Going up and down hills and into the back of a truck with a wheelbarrow. Using insanely heavy devices like a power broom to move piles of gravel. In comparison, working in a kitchen was a vacation. While the others toiled, I breezed. I was thankful for many things, but in kitchens, you’re not assaulted by swarms of insects.

I was also a born cook. But I hated to admit this to myself because the cook life meant working nights and weekends. I was great at it and despised myself for it at the same time. For whatever reason, no matter how many tickets poured in, I always stayed focused and never lost my cool. I can thank crazy Chef Kevin, the guy I worked for in my first real kitchen for this. He was not the person you wanted to have around you during any busy day. He screamed and threw temper tantrums and when I had seen him go ballistic on a daily basis I had swore to myself I would never let that happen. Sweet Tomatoes was an insanely busy restaurant. One of those places that did 300 covers for lunch and 500 for dinner. It sat 130 in the dining room and another 60 or so on the patio during the summer. The pizza was great and everyone wanted one. The doors would open and fifteen minutes later the ticket machine would churn out Santa’s Christmas list. No other kitchen job would ever compare to it.

In the first part of my training with Jennifer, I noticed that she had these same “Kevin” qualities. A palpable nervousness about her that rose toward the opening of the doors at 11:30 for lunch. She spoke fast and seemed to not want to explain much to me as we went through her morning preparations. I took no offense. It was hard enough to do the job day to day with the clock ticking. Having to talk about every movement you made and why made it so much harder and more stressful.

Despite all my experience, the second part of my training–the memorization of the dishes and their ingredients–became challenging. I recognized nothing except for the common vegetables. There was a veritable smorgasbord of weird sauces and pastes from all over Asia and many of them to me at the time were disgusting. Crab paste was one of these. A pungent chunky red oily sauce in a glass jar, that, when opened, filled the room with its fun which resembled the odor under a fishing boat dock. I fought the urge to vomit into my chef coat the first time I smelled it.

There were so many other ingredients like this. Something labelled “preserved vegetable” that came in a tin can with an acrid stench that ripped into my delicate nasal passages. Dried shrimp, the afore mentioned fish sauce, oyster sauce, shrimp paste (much like crab paste), dried shrimp, dried squid, funky dried Chinese sausages, fermented black beans, weird cans containing wheat gluten (for the vegetarians) suspended in a brown sludge…It went on and on.

But the one that made the job hardest of all, sambal chili paste. One of the Five Spice’s claims to fame was heat. Spicy dishes on the menu were labeled from one to four with a small illustration of a pepper. That meant one, two, three, or four forkfuls of sambal into the wok. The spice would atomize instantaneously into the air as soon as it hit the bowled sides with the hot oil and whatever else crackled in there.

It was strange enough to grow accustomed to using a wok and the two long handled utensils–a large spoon and a paddle to cook and plate with–but the first time I threw a forkful of sambal into the blistering mix, I choked and had to remove myself from the line, my sinuses blowing up along with tears in my eyes. I wanted to leave, the urge blossomed in me. Learning this all was hard enough without dealing with the smells and violence of cooking. As she trained me, Jennifer would just rapidly shout the ingredients out as she cooked, throwing them into the wok, cooking several dishes at a time.

“Evil Jungle Prince! Coconut milk, Chicken, basil and evil aromatics first, let it simmer! Then celery, snap peas, cabbage, zoomers, corn, shoots! Reduce it down, black octagon plate, inside a circle of rice. Veggie Kung Pao! Oil first! Garlic, peanuts, four Thai chilis, one fork of sambal in the spoon! Mix it! Throw it in! Then the fried seitan, toss it a bit, add cabbage, carrots. Toss, toss, toss. Big rectangle, rice on one side, kung pao on the other! Pad Thai! Oil in the wok! Garlic, sambal, preserved vegetable, a good squirt of egg! Six shrimp! Make a pancake! Throw your inchers on top! Mung beans! Big handful of rice noodles! Pad Thai sauce! Cook the noodles until they’re soft! Glass bowl! Top with crushed peanuts and cashews, scallions, cilantro! Give it a lemon wedge on the side of the plate!”

This went on and on for weeks. Her just shouting out and me trying to keep up with the menu which was massive. Everything was eyeball measured in squirts, and with forks, or she would say “This much of this!” and continue on. There were also weekly specials to keep track of but at least those were on laminated recipe cards tacked up on the side of the hood fan. When it came time for me to cook a dish myself she hawked over me and would say too much of this or too much of that when I measured into the spoon. All the sauce were kept above the vegetables in plastic cylinders with screw caps and it was imperative to tighten the lid back on after every use lest they spill but I had a hard time doing that and focusing on the woks in front of me which encouraged Jennifer to yell more.

Once service was over and we all went out into the alleyway for cigarettes she told me what a good job I was doing. Her entire demeanor changed as well. She invited me to go out for beers after work. She was quite sweet. A pre law student who lived with her boyfriend and one of the other cooks, Evan, in a big house a few blocks away.

“You’ll toughen up,” she said. “Over time, the spice has no effect. It happens to all of us.”