Restaurant work came to mind when I recently read "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" by Matthew Crawford, a book described http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/at large/2009/06/22/090622crat_atlarge_sanneh?currentPage=all as a 21st century update to Robert Pirsig's classic, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Crawford's book bemoans the closing of high school shop classes to free up funds for more computer labs, in effect pointing everyone to college to pursue mental rather than physical labor. Crawford finds beauty and pleasure in physical work that creates tangible objects and finds little joy in Dilberts that sit behind desks filling out forms while dreaming of "tricking out their bikes".

Restaurant work is blue-collar labor that offer a daily "do-over". Every day ends with a cash register tally of meals served and the following day offers another opportunity to do it better. Next to the Sound Food prep kitchen where I worked, Bob Long continually trained a revolving door of young would-be bakers while simultaneously producing three baker's racks of bread, baguettes, cookies, bear claws, brioche, pies, and cakes. Bob understood bread  so thoroughly that once I heard him tell a probie who asked how long to mix the dough, "Just listen, you can tell by the sound of the dough as it slaps against the Hobart". And this in a bakery with the tinny radio turned up to painful.

Cooking on the line in a restaurant offers the opportunity to experience total absorption in loosing time while working. A restaurant kitchen line usually includes a grill cook, at least one sauté cook, an expediter (he/she's the guy who reads the meal tickets as they come in, assigns the menu items to the correct cook, and deals with the runners who deliver the food), a pantry person, and a pastry/dessert person. When the line consists of skilled cooks who can focus amidst chaos, a busy night becomes an exhilarating rush, a flowing, engrossing, dance where thought becomes action and time disappears. Overlapping table tickets each with "sauce on the side, no onions, hold the cheese, leave out the meat, allergic to shrimp" are completed only to disappear into the dining room, reappearing later as scraps for the dishwasher.

A good line cook doesn't necessarily have to be a good cook. They listen to how "the boss" wants the food to taste and look, and are able to reproduce that single lesson over and over, night after night, never loosing speed or sacrificing taste for efficiency.  A line cook may prepare the same dish twenty, thirty, forty times a shift allowing the final product to be perfected and refined. Each day's work ends as you walk out the door and the next day begins with a clean slate.

I've been a Dilbert and I've been a cook. I never wondered what time it was when I was a cook.

Here's a good one from the long-gone Trumps.

Chicken with Port

Add butter to hot sauté pan. When foaming has stopped, brown chicken breast, skin side down. Pour off fat.

Add 2 T. shallots, 2 parts red Port to one part chicken stock to sauté pan with chicken.

Roast in oven for 10 minutes. Remove pan from oven, remove chicken breast and keep warm.

Reduce liquid (port/chicken stock) to syrup. Add ½ c. heavy cream—reduced until thickened.

Add 2 T. stilton cheese, and whisk in 2 T. cold butter. If the cream sauce separates, just add a little water to the pan and swirl around.