Today was the second night of my internship. (Technically it’s the third, but I’m not counting the trial run two weeks ago.) Yesterday I did salads again, and got a refresher course on where things are stored. Tonight I was on prep, and what hard work it is. There are three primary responsibilities for prep in the pantry – make sure bread and rolls are warm and available to the servers, clean and shuck oysters, and make sure the soups are ready. (“Pantry” refers to salads and cold appetizers like shrimp and oysters.) Usually we just have to shuck the oysters, but once a week someone has to scrub the dirt off the shells. Tonight, that was me – 200 oysters, scrubbed and put into pans for later service. I also had to shave a half-wheel of parm cheese, which involved slicing the rind off and then running it through a meat slicer. I haven’t used a meat slicer since the emergency room visit back in July, but I learned my lesson – respect the slicer. No fingers were lost to the cause.
Then there was roasted garlic – slice, top with salt, pepper, and olive oil, and bake 45 minutes. The extra pieces were roasted in a gallon of olive oil to make garlic oil for pizzas. (Waste nothing!) Finally, I had to make sure the salad station was stocked. Hard work, especially leaning over the sink to clean all those oysters, but well worth it for the practice.