News:

Got a few minutes to kill? Try the Doom Flash Challenge :afro: - http://www.cafedoom.com/forum/index.php/board,36.0.html

Main Menu

Chef of Doom's entry for anniversary comp

Started by Chef of Doom, October 16, 2005, 08:48:25 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Chef of Doom

MISE-EN-PLACE  - 1,448 Words

Mise-en-place. Get that right and everything else is easy. It's all in the prep work. A basic principle that works just as well for murder as it does in the kitchen. Mise-en-place, everything in its place, preparation, preparation.

I'm Hungry feed me.

I've eaten every dish, every delicacy, everything world cuisine has to offer and more. I've eaten it all. Now I'm hungry for that one last untried delicacy. Forbidden fruit.

I'm Hungry.

I never stop eating.

As soon as I wake, food is the first thing on my mind. Rich artery clogging breakfasts like Eggs Benedict, or plain artery clogging breakfasts like a full English. See I'm no food snob me, I don't just do the posh nosh. People think I would because of the restaurant, but I love to gorge on fast food. Pizza, pie, crisps, chocolate bars, burgers and fries, fish and chips, cheese on toast, chip butties; dripping with melting butter and ketchup, kebabs   No mate no salad, yeah plenty of the chilli sauce ta  chicken chow-mein and egg-fried rice, chicken tikka. It's all good stuff; it all makes for nice little snacks between proper meals.

I've eaten the world.

I started in France as a skinny seventeen year old, an apprentice in a Parisian Bistro. When I left two years later, to tour Italy, I was starting to fill out, to look healthier. First Northern Italy with the flat pasta and Jotta of Fiorentina. Where the beef is cooked like British beef. No accompaniments, no herbs, no spices, no sauces, just roasted to perfection. Then down into Roma where the veal is sweet, served with spinach and pine nuts, and the pasta comes in every shape. Finally finishing in Palermo Sicily. In the day I worked for master Gernarmo, in the evening a small café owned by two sisters, who served unpretentious peasant food to Palermo's more discerning gourmets. Their rabbit and olives in chocolate sauce, was to die for.

At twenty-one I headed home for England, I weighed twenty-two stone.

In the 80's I took the piss and made my fortune on Nouvelle Cuisine. I charged chinless yuppie Merchant Bankers a grand a head, to eat tiny morsels of half cooked meat in rich sweet sauces, served with single asparagus spears, and Julienne of paprika pepper dusted and glazed.

I counted the money and went home smiling, to eat huge platefuls of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, with creamed potatoes, roasties, roast parsnips, buttered carrots and peas. All drowned in thick, meat juice rich gravy, followed by apple pie, with double cream, rich home-made custard, and a blob of designer ice cream.

France had left me hungry for something more.

Yesss hungry for something.

Sick of London and its Cruditie lifestyle. I sold my two Michelin star restaurant and headed for the world again.

First India, to sample the best the Raj has to offer. Tiffin and Kedgeree in Bombay's finest hotels, then I became more adventurous and travelled to the Punjab, for its rich ghee heavy dishes, to Gurjurati for the hot and sour dhalls, across the border into Pakistan for food fit for moguls, lamb and rice, chicken in rich spicy hot gravy.

So Hungry.

In Japan at one sitting, I shovelled as much Sushi into my mouth as the average Japanese family eats in a week.

In the end I gave up and went to McDonalds.

These foods will never satisfy this hunger.

Australia had lots to offer. The best though was a cuisine older than any other in the world. Aboriginal food.

The dry but sweet fruit from the Quandong tree, Water Ribbons from the bilabong; steamed in a can over the fire, live Honey Ant' their abdomens swollen beyond belief, almost as large as mine, filled with honey looking like amber beads, roast Kangaroo, and of course the infamous Witchetty Grub.

Everyone crowded round, children clumped together arms entwined, ancient looking women, pretending not to be too interested. The old Aboriginal man offered me the fat white wriggling grub. It looked like a giant maggot.

I think they expected me being so pudgy and soft, to refuse to be disgusted. 

I ate five in a row. Live. They tasted like cream.

I ate them just like the old man showed me. You take the grub by the head, grip it firm with your finger and thumb, lower it still wriggling into your open mouth, and then bite it off at the neck and chew.

Kill, eat, feed this hunger.

The old man nodded appreciatively as I swallowed the last grub smacking my lips with gusto, the women no longer pretending not to watch, were chattering animatedly, and the children were wide eyed.

After that, I lost interest in Australia. The people were friendly, young, vibrant, and good looking. Everything I wasn't.

I booked myself two seats on the next flight to the US of A.

Twenty-eight stone.

Still hungry

The food on the flight wasn't up to much. They wouldn't let me have more than four meals, even though I'd paid for two seats.

I looked around at my fellow passengers, and wondered who I would eat first if we crashed in the Andes.

Yesssss.

They looked at me; the man so fat he needed two seats, and I think the same thought went through their minds. If we crashed how long before I started eating people?

America was one big super-size food theme park, but time was running out. My eating habits were taking their toll on my health, and travelling was becoming a drag. I wouldn't last much longer that much was certain.

My doctor, a good man but thin, said as much. He said I needed to take drastic action. I needed to make a total lifestyle change. He even suggested liposuction if I was going to the States. He said if I didn't reduce my intake of calories, fat in particular, and start a course of mild exercise, that I would be dead within the year.

I just smiled and offered him one of my biscuits.

In America I could blend in, be one of the crowd. There were so many obese people.

I liked that word obese it had a nice ring to it sounded better than fat, or overweight they were nasty sharp words. Obese had a soft round feel to it that appealed to me.

I spent a month in the states. It's a great country. I put on two stone. Like I said a great country.

I was thirty stone when I touched down in the UK.

I know I'm dying, but there is one more morsel, one more dish I want to try, must try before my arteries finally clog, and the weight pressing down on my chest stops my heart.

I've opened another restaurant in London. A small unpretentious Bistro, in a fashionable part of the city. Not many staff, I don't need many, but the kitchen is well prepared.

Very well prepared.

My knives receive daily 1,000 passes on the diamond steel. The chest freezer is empty.

I'm waiting.

Waiting to feed.

One day soon.

I know everything will fall into place because I've done my prep work.

I'll encourage people to come here if they are alone, create the right atmosphere, and let them take their time, read a paper. Let them relax, enjoy the good French peasant food, and the strong red wine.

                                                            ~

One day when the Bistro is nearly empty and you are the last customer in, you'll watch as I dismiss the staff. You'll think that's nice, what a jolly, friendly boss, letting his staff go home early, locking up on his own, letting you finish your meal at your own pace.

I'll lock the front door, smiling I'll explain that I'll let you out through the back. I'll laugh conspiratorially and say I shouldn't because it's against regs, but it should be ok, because tomorrow I intend to give the kitchen a very thorough cleaning. Very thorough.

You see in this business preparation is everything.

Maybe you'll notice as you walk through the kitchen, that it is already spotless, maybe you'll notice the backdoor I'm supposed to be showing you through is padlocked.

You might notice this as I lock the door that connects kitchen to restaurant, maybe this will distract you and you wont notice you are standing on plastic sheets.

Perhaps you'll be too busy looking at the plastic sheeting that covers the whole kitchen, covers everything.

Everything except the open empty chest freezer will you notice the assortment of bowls, and basins, meat cleavers, the bone saw, and the poultry scissors, all laid neatly out on the table.

Perhaps you'll notice my Knives.

You might not know it but my last meal will follow shortly after yours. You see it's all about preparation.

It's all about the Mise-en-Place.

SharonBell

This is one of the best stories I've ever read.  :dance: As I read it, post dining club and foie gras in the US of A, I felt almost thin, even slender at 170+ pounds, and sated. But the hunger, the endless craving of a new taste called and your tale answered it. Well done!!!!!  :cheers:
"Be good and you'll be lonesome." Mark Twain

www.sharonbuchbinder.com

Ed

Very nicely done, Chef :afro:

A waffer thin mint, monseur? :/

Thanks for the entry, and welcome to Doom :smiley:
Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression. [Sir John Harvey-Jones]

soniar

Ahhhh.. very good, and fully deserving of first place.. congrats!

Geoff_N

Not just show instead of tell, but show with saliva.
It left me with stomach rumbling, and I'm a paid-up vegan.

Congratulations, Chef, now go and have a celeb dins.

(And don't think I don't know who might be the knife sharpener in this kitchen.)


Geoff

Chef of Doom

Cheers guys (And gal), thanks for reading the story.