Apathy; The Legend of Princess Broccoli

People often ask me, “What’s the toughest thing to cook with?”. It is quite often, to their surprise and without hesitation, that I quickly answer with something other than an exotic ingredient , “Apathy” I respond. “It is the most difficult thing to cook with.”, and before the inquisitor can mount a counter, I continue to describe my choice and how most ingredients are at least predictable. An intelligent mind can look at a tomato, salmon or grain and realize it will behave much like itself or similar ingredients in other circumstances, seasons and techniques. Through enough exposure a talented cook can determine what they are working with it and thus how to treat it. But Apathy? What is a Chef to do with someone that just doesn't care? It’s not PC to just call people out in polite society; we tolerate everyone, right? But a kitchen doesn't play by the rules of polite society. It’s a "do it right, right now" way of life; a steady onward progression of the group under mindful leadership towards the elusive yet nonetheless pursued goal of perfection. No excuses accepted. So when someone does something wrong, we have the common decency to call them out so they can correct themselves, preserve the integrity of the group, and accomplish the task(s) at hand so we can succeed or at least continue on in the right direction. But when someone just doesn’t care, that simple thought now brought to action, or in this case inaction, becomes habitual and can easily spread into the very moral fiber creating apathy in not only in that individual, but those they contact and contaminate; and not only in our simple tasks but potentially manifesting into moral callousness and indifference systemically. Einstein said, “The world will not be destroyed by those that do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” This ironically tacit acceptance society has towards apathetic behavior is objectionable, and sometimes you need to consider going a little further and flush the culprit from, and for the good of, the pack.

It was another typical day in the kitchen (I know I should stop saying that, it always turns out to the contrary) and we were getting ready for another service. There was a beautiful roasted chicken entree on the menu that day, and it was going with simply buttered broccoli, the most conspicuously troublesome broccoli. For some reason broccoli in its simplicity has the ability to bring an unprepared cook to their knees. Today was such a day. One of my cooks began at his task, prepping broccoli, that’s all, broccoli, two cases, five hours from now, on the line, ready to go.

Klunk. He drop placed the two crushed ice filled cases on the floor next to his station. His body language screamed he was not thrilled at the lackluster task of simple veg prep.

“You gonna take that ice outta there, or put a sheet pan down so it doesn’t melt all over the place?” I asked, giving him a chance to do the right thing.

“Yup”.

“Yup?” I repeated.

“I mean, Yes Chef.” he quickly corrected himself. Verbally anyway. His slack-jawed attitude was evident and only further punctuated by his lack of follow through on the direction regarding the ice. He was not enthusiastically taking on this task and that was as clear as the pool of water now forming on the floor.

Klunk, he plopped a cutting board down on his station and took out his knife to begin.

“Don’t forget to get your water on, and lot’s of it. Think ahead, think ahead.” I coached, swinging my arm like I was trying to get a runner to round the bases.

“Yes Chef.”

Shoonk (that’s the sound his knife made making its way through the vegetable with minimal exertion). He managed to trim his first oleracea, pushing the usable spears towards one side of the cutting board and the debris towards the other.

Shoonk, he continued, building to the opposing-self encroaching- piles.

Periodically I would pass, trying to get a little better performance, some care, perhaps some attention to detail; as the piles were now limiting the cook to about six square inches of usable cutting board, the piles of servable food and debris had now run together into one and the ice had made a dangerous situation on the floor.

“C’mon Princess”, you know I’m trying to be nice when I give you a sarcastic nickname amidst a cluster of failings. However ‘Princess’ really did sum up the attitude towards the banality of the task. Needless to say, my newfound nickname did not inspire.

Shoonk.

“How about you getting something to put all that broccoli into so you don’t mix my side dish with my compost, Princess....”

Shoonk.

“And how about a mop. Remember that ice I told you about two hours ago? Well it's not ice anymore. You're gonna kill someone. MOP IT UP.”

Shoonk. I was reaching the end of my rope with this guy and we weren’t even halfway there time-wise and he was even less the way there volume-wise, only having completed about half a case of the two cases assigned him. As for now I had other cooks to deal with; I’d have to come back and check on Princess later.

You would imagine that if you did not enjoy something you would try to get it over as quickly as possible and not dwell in your misery. Get it done and move on to something you enjoyed, good at it or not.

Needless to say service quickly approached, the broccoli was finally fabricated, and I made my way over to inspect.

“OK, now let’s start blanching.” I looked around the station expecting to see some boiling water, maybe an ice bath. Nothing. Princess was a little antsy right about now. He knew I was upset at his less than stellar approach to his task today, and he knew that this would most probably send me over the edge. He was right.

“Are you telling me that you’ve been here for nearly five hours working on that broccoli and you never put the water on?” My voice was steadily on the rise.

“Five hours! Five hours and you chopped broccoli. That’s it!” I could tell by the fact he was aerating his tongue off his bottom jaw like a cow with its head over the fence that a response was not forthcoming. There wasn’t even a concern, possibly for the verbal thrashing he was in the middle of but certainly not for the condition he left the kitchen in, that is, not ready for service. Quite frankly the attitude bothered me more than anything else. He legitimately didn’t care; that’s what infuriated me.

“You better find a way to make ten gallons of water come to a boil in the next 15 minutes, blanch and shock all that broccoli and reset your station for service or you WILL have a ..." , well, you can imagine how colorful the language was.

The remainder of the kitchen steadied on. They did not want to join in this. I couldn’t blame them, this was disturbing.

“There’s a kettle of boiling water in the prep kitchen.” A fellow cook chimed in. And with that, Princess Broccoli finally found his second gear. He was off, there was boiling water somewhere in this kitchen and finding it was a life or death situation. I know, you would never imagine that cooking broccoli was this difficult, but if you try hard enough, or not, you can make it so.
Finding a pot of boiling water elsewhere Princess thought himself to be out of the woods. But with one quick motion, as he plunged all 20 pounds of broccoli into the pot, his hope came crashing down as the boiling water water was reduced to a tepid pool; those five hours of preparing quickly unraveling as the once brightly colored flowers festered in the overcrowded bath. To further compound the situation, Princess, stressed desperately for time now, without shocking (quickly cooling) the broccoli, dumped the hot broccoli back into the previously used, un-rinsed cambro and proceeded back to the service line; the drab, busted florets all but crying out in silent anguish over their dismissive demise.
Klunk-Klunk. Princess dropped the two still steaming containers of now devolved ambiguous paste of dull in a huff.
"All set Chef." His short gasps of air into his huge frame all but caused his shoulders to heave as he blurted it out. "Ready for service."
Wow, I was amazed. Princess really thought this was ok. That all that mattered was the situational positioning of the item without concern for its quality; this lack of care, this apathy, is ultimately what did him in.

"Ready? This is ready!?!" I gestured to the steamy vaguely green garbage. "Look at that poor broccoli Princess! Ruined!"
"We can't serve it Chef?" he clawed at the sand surrounding the precarious pit into which he was plunging.
"What do you think?", I chided, thinking he would catch my inference.
"Sure, what's wrong with 'em?" Princess replied. The steaming buckets still between us, its color fading like camouflage at dusk.
"This! This is OK with you!?!" I flipped a bucket onto the counter. The putrid disintegrated vegetables smploshed onto the counter awash in their own brackish embalming fluid. The broken sulfur bonds from the bracius smelt like hard boiled egg day at the nursing home. I turned and pointed out the roasted chickens that were accompanying this mess.
"And, you want to serve THIS" I pointed to the sludge, "with THAT?", pointing to the beautifully crisp and golden skinned roasted chicken. He nodded....I snapped.
"OUT! GET THE F(explicative) OUT OF MY KITCHEN!" I rotated my shoulders so my finger was now pointing at the door. "You heard me, OUT PRINCESS! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!" The rest of the kitchen scrambled to compensate for the now physically, although previously mentally, vacant station.
Believe it or not, the cook who roasted the chicken managed to get the side dish completed before service, properly and beautifully I might add. It's amazing what someone can do when motivated and not handicapped by an atrophied member.

Perhaps we could learn about beneficial intolerance of debilitating attitudes from kitchen life. Maybe, just maybe, the world would benefit from a little brutal honesty towards people who don’t care if they ruin it for the rest of us . PC aside, if you're getting in the way of the herd, the nicest thing we could do, is let you know. Aristotle said that, “Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society”. Look around, does this strike a relevant chord in the world you see before you today? Well, do something about it, because if you don’t see the relevance, trust me, you are destined to norm yourself to those apathetic people's behavior and debilitating ennui. Studies show uncertainty in people exposed to apathetic people experience decreased motivation. Yay for us. On a plus side though, motivated people are actually reinvigorated by apathetic people; so which one are you?  Perhaps once again we could take a page from kitchen etiquette, as abrupt and ruthless as it is, and do our part to save society and eliminate apathy from among us. Give them a good swift kick in the lassitude. While some consider apathy an emotion, it is actually the denuding of emotion; emotional atrophy. The antithesis of love or hate, which wholly embody passion, apathy is devoid of passion. It condemns us to indifference, unresponsiveness and dispassion. It can literally demotivate you into physical (lack of) response, create lethargy and paralyze you. It creates a melancholic malaise that there is no hope, no chance of happiness or self fulfillment; so why bother trying. The apathetic are just bystanders in a play that they have no meaningful role; an ironic self fulfilling prophecy. Do we really need this around us as we are working hard striving towards our goals? We owe it to those around us and ourselves to eradicate these toxic torporiants before they infect the whole of the herd. It really is the nicest thing you can do for them. And don't worry too much about them, they probably won’t care anyway.

Happy Mistakes

As many of us know, Columbus did not set out to find the new world, in fact he came across it much by accident. The thinking he had found a shorter route to Asia still bears his mark as we refer to Native Americans as “Indians”. Eventually we came to the realization that these were not India Indians, rather people of a different land altogether. This in no way diminishes the awesomeness of the discovery of the new world, but rather heightens it when we look at it through the scope of a “Happy Mistake”. As much as we may not enjoy the mistakes of our lives, there is no denying that the mistake is truly our own. Our mistakes have our fingerprints all over them. What comes next is the tricky part, we need to learn from them. Sounds simple enough, but studies show that we can learn from our mistakes, but only if we want to. The two typical responses the brain has to mistakes mirror closely our fight or flight instinct when faced with stress. First, and best is when the brain addresses a mistake as a problem that needs solving. The brain increases attention during the next decision making process, as if to avoid the pain repeating itself from the first mistake, increases the chances of making a good decision, and fostering learning through positive confirmation. These people take critique well. The second response is not so good. When faced with a mistake the brain simply shuts down, taking it as defeat, we flee from the mistake's pain. Such people react better to positive reinforcement.  Studies also show that you are more prone to learn from a mistake if you believe (truly, don’t fool yourself) that you have room to grow in your knowledge. Some offenders of this include people who think they already know it all, successful people who deny the need to know any more and people who believe intelligence is immutable. These people are less likely to learn from their mistakes because they pay less attention to them as a learning tool.  With such an arsenal at our disposal it would seem silly not to tap into this explosive resource for learning. Instead of the "woulda coulda shoulda" mentality of counterfactual thinking which debilitates us into daydreaming about our whatif universe, embrace the mistake, learn from it and use it as the fuel to fire your growth.

In one of my many past Chef lives I catered. I really enjoyed the challenge of producing under extreme circumstances and with changing boundaries. It was exciting. Stakes were high and mistakes were costly. On one such occasion I found myself and my crew in the middle of nowhere at a palatial home to cater a New Year's Eve party. Aside from being some twenty miles from anything resembling a store, it was a late night affair, so even if we could get somewhere for supplies, chances are they would not be open. This sort of event needed to be extra perfect in its planning and execution.  We checked our mise en place, double checked it, loaded the vans, checked the lists, and made sure we had all we needed to WOW another customer; and we set off on our way. The night went off without a hitch, all the planning and double checking was sure paying off as we wined and dined our client into the night...and morning. The theme was dinner by the bite. The entire menu, served course by course, was all bite sized, a progressive meal served in hors d'oeuvres form. That way you could eat as much or as little as you wished, and not worry about lugging a plate around, just your glass. Well, it was well past midnight as we started on one of the final courses, dessert spoons. I loved these. We scooped little quennels of creme brulee onto dessert spoons, sprinkled with sugar, and caramelized each spoon individually. People loved them, too. I began on the first round, I thought I must be tired, they weren't caramelizing like usual. Maybe it was the torch I was using. I adjusted the flame and got back to work. After a few more passes of the torch I realized something must be wrong, these brulees were not....well, bruleeing. I tasted one. OH MY G....salt. Are you kidding me? SALT. I turned to the young cook who was in charge of packing the dessert mise en place.
"Did you taste this?" I sternly asked, equally as disappointed in myself at this point for not doing so before using it.
"Ummmmm, No, it looked like sugar...and it was on the pastry bench. So I figured..."
This was bad,
"Check the coffee station!" I blurted out to one of my servers, "make sure that's not salt too." I quickly brought in the servers and began to retrieve all the spoons that had made their way out into the party. But what to do now, middle of the night, middle of nowhere? Hopefully the host had a bag of sugar in the cupboard. Wouldn't you know it, not a grain. All the sweet and low you could imagine but no sugar. My mind went into overdrive. Luckily the cook who put together the desserts was not in charge of the coffee station. The coffee was safe and had enough sugar to get the desserts going again. Luckily, too, the guests had a good sense of humor about that initial round of salty custard spoons. They didn't miss the chance to give me and my apprentice some good-natured ribbing about it for the rest of the night.
Now I know what you're saying, that doesn't sound happy at all. And you're right, it was dismal. I should have checked, I should have tasted. But you know what, after that night, I always did. And happily, a mistake like that never happened again.

Mistakes do happen, not much we can do about it, it’s part of life, we are imperfect. What we can do lies within our reaction to them. In that moment we may not be happy about it, but that moment will pass. Be happy, maybe not that you made a mistake, but that you survived it, and perhaps even are the type of person who has learned from it. And that experience will add to the others and form the person you are presently. And if you are happy with who you are today you should realize you are you because of all the experiences that led up to this moment, including all the mistakes.