Dear Diary

Always wanted to share my stories, so here I go, I like to call this one, cornstarch and crickets

Cornstarch
Definition:

flour from corn: fine-grained, starchy flour made from corn, especially used as a thickener in cooking

Dear Diary,
Toronto can be a humid place, working in a 100+ year old hotel in August is about as muggy as it gets. I was apprenticing at the King Edward Hotel in the late 1980's, no ac in the kitchen, it would literally rain from the ceiling at 2pm everyday like a predictable jungle storm.

I was working with a sous chef that brought me from a hotel in Markham , his name was Jaco he was South African and he was big...with a temper...in a good way..... sometimes. Jud Simpson was actually the chef at the hotel where Jaco and I worked and had a connection to Chef John Higgins at the King Eddy who helped me lock in the position.

Jud is the Exec Chef at the House of Commons in Ottawa now and has been since 1990. Jud and Jaco took me to Montreal when I was 15 years old to polish silver for the Salon Culinaire at the 'O' dome (this at the time was one of the biggest food competitions in North America) .....I remember going down the 400 to Montréal (one of those hot days I was describing) in July with the ac cranked and ice on all our food so it would survive the trip. We were all wearing toques and sweaters, quite a sight.

OK, I am way off track...so our kitchen was hot. I started to develop a bit of a problem one afternoon due to the heat while getting ready for dinner service and needed counsel from my sous chef Jaco. I pulled Jaco aside and explained to him that I was soaked from sweating but it was worse today because I tore the bottoms out of my boxer shorts while I was cleaning the cooler and I was experiencing something he referred to as "Crotch Crickets...you know when you walk the chafing makes a bit of a cricket sound."

Jaco was a bigger man as I had mentioned so he had been in my situation before. Well I am not sure about making a cricket sound but was thankful that he was able to help diagnose the problem. "What can I do to fix it"..."I am dying here" I told him. "No problem, look when we break before service go grab a handful of cornstarch and get in there and powder it up, you will be as good as gold".

This was it I had about half an hour to go before we broke before dinner rush so I went (gingerly) back to my section, the slightest contact and I was brushing tears from the side of my face. I have broken bones but this...this was more pain than I could take. Finally Jaco hollered out for everyone to break for 10 minutes before service. I hobbled to the pastry shop and as I was about to open the bin Elaine our GM sous chef started to chat me up and I got totally side tracked....finally Elaine went back to the GM and I grabbed a handful and made it to the men's change room.

So the first thing you learn about cornstarch is that it feels different from all other powders and flours, to me when I touch cornstarch it feels like fingernails on a chalkboard....flour on the other hand is absorbent. So after I "got in there" with the cornstarch I quickly realized that I had made a very wrong decision, see cornstarch is Not absorbent but flour is and I in my distraction grabbed flour, good old all purpose flour. So what happens when you make an error like this? Well I created what can only be described as dough ball, or gnocchi if you will.

This was bad.

I had no time to correct the problem and spent the rest of the night in line with a steady stream of tears running down my face. I don't think I ever told Jaco about the error I just sucked it up and pretended like everything was fine as best I could..skipped going for a beer with the guys that night and rode the subway home in shame, grabbed a pair of scissors and went to work.....I will never make a mistake like that again. That's why I prefer dry climates like Alberta...no "crickets".

By the way my perfectly polished platters helped Jud win Grand Gold at the Culinary Salon in Montreal.

Until next time, keep you knives sharp and your pans hot.
Chef