Day 4: Why working for free is priceless.
If there has been one major take-away, from this first week then this is it. And this one, is worth at least a few thousand quid.
Olympian Kitchen is written by Nicola Fairbrother
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I’m on day 4 of a month-long chef stage in a Spanish Michelin star restaurant. It’s unpaid. When I tell people that their expression changes. They take a small step away (perhaps concerned whatever I have might be contagious) before they check again if they’ve heard right…. you, work for free?
What’s a chef stage?
A chef stage is an unpaid internship a cook takes to expose him or herself to new techniques. Before the advent of culinary schools, this was the most common form of education.
Oui Chef Oui!
There are probably good, mediocre and bloody awful Chef Stages. I don’t yet know enough to be able to qualify that, but I have read enough of the late, great Anthony Bourdain to know that kitchens aren’t always places of sugar and smiles, lobsters and laughs.
Yet it appears I have landed on my feet.
I’d been prepared to spend the first few weeks of this stage peeling mushrooms and obeying orders, Oui Chef Oui!
But it hasn’t been like that at all.
So what do you do on a chef stage?
If you are reading this, perhaps considering flinging yourself into a chef stage or just curious what it’s really like behind those swing doors, here’s what I’ve done over the past 4 days:
Blanched and refreshed codium (seaweed)
Helped prepare a salad for the staff meal
Trimmed about 150 (maybe more, I lost count) artichokes
Deveined, ballotined and sous vide a foie gras
Made orange rice
Made olive oil ice cream (yes you read that right!)
Boiled lobsters
Diced beetroot (and got a masterclass in knife skills)
Deseeded tomatoes
Made a black garlic paste
Plated the foie gras starter, slicing the foie gras, rolling it in lapsang tea, placing it on squash puree and finishing with salt and a tuile.
Chopped hard-boiled egg white and onion for a steak tartare
Collected various items from the cold stores.
Helped to set up for service and clean down afterwards
And tonight, I find myself adding kitchen task number sixteen: Gutted moray eels to make stock. Tick.
It’s 7pm. An hour to go until service and Victor, El Monastrell’s sous chef, is getting ahead on making eel stock for one of the arroces. He has allowed me to hinder him.
Victor grabs the eel by its head, his fingers dug firmly into the gills.
“Cuidado con el anzuelo,” Victor says.
I pick up my first eel, my brain slowly translating the Spanish.
Be careful of the …??? but by the time my brain has translated anzuelo into english, the fish hook is firmly stuck into my finger.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” says Victor, looking at my finger, his face deadpan.”
Half worried about getting some weird eel infection and half annoyed with the silly mistake, I pull the fish hook out, douse my finger with antiseptic, tape up and continue.
El Monastrell has six different gourmet arroces on their tasting menus. At 12 euros a kilo, eel is more expensive than sea bass but it makes an exquisite stock and is perfect for fish based dishes.
Larger than your typical eel, more like a sea snake, moray eels lurk in the shallows, hiding in the rocks, shooting it’s head out to capture small fish. They taste better than they look; their skin is soft and gelatinous skin, and the meat delicately flavoured.
We have a lot of eels to get through before service begins. For every eel, I nervously break down, Victor has chopped up five.
His knife skills are impressive. Now and then, when he sees me struggling, he reaches over to my chopping board and whacks his cleaver through a particularly tough bone.
The first few are fun. By eel number seven, my hands are blackened and my board is covered in a slimy goo, and three half digested sardines – the remains of the eel’s last supper.
I clean down. I get that this could get old, but right now, I’m loving it.
In most cases when you start a new task, one of the other chefs shows me what to do, then leaves me to complete the work, now and then returning to check my work.
So far there has been no shouting, no bullying, nothing resembling even a tense episode of MasterChef.
Perhaps those days are becoming thing of the past?
Perhaps this is a great kitchen? Or, perhaps it’s because I’m not even five days into this stage and tomorrow all hell will break loose?
No doubt there are bad and boring, bulldozing and bullying stages out there, but thankfully I’m not on one.
This is an excellent stage. One that allows you to participate. Expects it. That looks to teach and educate and is generous with sharing their recipes.
And I think that is how it should be after all a chef stagiare is an unpaid position.
Staging is very much an accepted part of the Michelin restaurant hierarchy. Thousands of candidates apply yearly to get into some of the three-star restaurants in Spain like Quique DaCosta, Arzak or Celler de Can Roca.
While chefs accept it as part and parcel of the learning process, most people find it challenging to comprehend.
When I tell people I am working 14 hour days for free their expression changes, they take a small step away (perhaps concerned whatever I have might be contagious) before they check again if they’ve heard right.
You, work for free? Are you saying you work hard, long hours and you don’t get anything for it?
Yes, and no.
Yes, there’s zero financial compensation (£0.00)
No, there is something I get back in return, there is a lot I get back in return. This is not a one-way exchange.
In return for my time, I get knowledge. I get the chance to work with ingredients that are impractical to buy for a home cook; I get taught techniques used by professional chefs and to me that is a fair trade-off.
I prefer to work for free than for low pay any day of the week.
Give me minimum wage and suddenly all the intrinsic motivation, goes down the sink, along with the eel entrails.
Something is lost. It becomes work and you are being paid to clean the shit out of the sink.
As it is, it’s not work but it’s an experience.
After all, how many times do you get to pull a fish hook out of your finger, and remove half–digested sardines from the belly of a moray eel?
That’s priceless.
Want to join me on this journey?
For the next 100 Days I’m staging in Spanish Michelin star restaurants. In the next episode, things explode. I learn to make Kinder Eggs. You’re going to learn how to make Manchego cheese sauce. Sign up so you don’t miss it:
Superb. Reminded me of a two month stage I did in a three Michelin star in London. Unpaid, brutal at times and so so tiring but still priceless. Thank you so much and stay strong.