My second day at the restaurant, La Grange de Labahou; I enjoyed last week so very much that I'm almost more nervous today, worrying that I won't like it as much, that last week will be a fluke.
I shouldn't have worried - it's even better. Frank lets me have a go at a couple more things and I make some more mistakes and learn a lot more, including where some stuff is.
I've taken the precaution this week of wearing trousers that actually fit me, and so I get to do up my chef's tabard properly this time. There's special.
First up, five kilos of potatoes to peel. This is exactly what I figured I'd be doing when I started out in a restaurant, and only worry that I'm not doing it quickly enough. They don't appear to use vegetable peelers of any kind here so I do it all with the knife Frank uses to demonstrate potato peeling. And as they're all straight out of the potato bin they're all filthy, so I get to take even more time than I think I should rinsing them off.
And then there's a few kilos of salt cod to de-bone; Frank has been soaking this Spanish stuff for the past couple of days to get the salt out of it, and it's all nicely gooey in the bottom of the soaking vat. This is real up-to-the-elbows, get-it-under-your-fingernails stuff; I even contemplate hanging on to a bit of fish and pulling bones out with my teeth.
Finally, it's all done and flaked into a tray (after Frank asks a couple of times, pointedly, 'Finished yet?') and Frank inspects; he pulls out two bones immediately, of course, then says kindly that it's impossible to find all the bones. He fries up a few of the garlic cloves I chopped earlier in some olive oil and then we add the potatoes, now boiled and mashed, and the cod and stir away. And stir and stir and stir. 15 minutes of stirring about 10 kilos of this stuff. Blimey.
And then it's lunch service, and I get to do the brandades de morue, the salt cod with mashed potatoes I've been working on this morning. Take a couple of serving/soup spoons (a French soup spoon looks like an English serving spoon) of the mixture and flatten into a serving bowl, add cream and a handful of grated cheese and bung it in the oven. Then take it out again straight away when Frank says there's not enough cream or cheese so double both quantities and stick it in the oven for 15 minutes.
We do a few of those for lunch and I get to listen out for the waitresses saying, "Brandade..." when they read out the orders. I can't read their handwriting and don't understand the order of putting things up on the kitchen peg board, though. I'm supposed to be able to work out who's had their starters and who's ready for pudding and so on but frankly, this is a clue-free zone to me.
Lunch with Franck and Isabelle - spot of salad with duck gesiers, foie gras and smoked duck - and home for a nap, then the evening service.
Where I get even more confused with the numbers of brandades that have been ordered, something I don't realise until Frank counts the number of them cooking in the steam oven and wonders who the extra one is for. Ah, that'd be me. Or rather, my fault. Sorry. I'm reminded of John Belushi's Albanian Restaurant sketch. Hmm, closer attention needs to be paid, but this has never been my strong point. I can see room for a monolithic computerised system keeping track of this for me eventually, all linked in with a back-end database, the computerised wine list on Tablet PCs, all that stuff. For now, I just have to try to pay attention.