Autumn Leaves Pt 08

Chapter 8: Just Enough Cooks

'Go on, George,' Molly urges in his head, 'offer to help in the kitchen before some bright spark beats you to it.'

'I don't know much about cooking, I left all that to you, dear,' George mutters silently in his head, 'Since then, as you clearly know, I only cook simple stuff, a meal for one not too fussy eater, and never contributed any effort for a hotel kitchen wanting 75 dinners of three courses.'

'Well, George, you could always wash and chop the veggies,' Molly retorts in his head, 'You can act as a sous-chef, keeping everything clean and non-contaminated, and if you remember I was great at sauce making, so you could also be Sally's soucier or sauté chef. I'm on hand to help guide you. Remember that I used to be really good in the kitchen once upon a time.'

'I'm sure I'll regret this,' George thought silently in his head before saying out loud to the occupants of the Sun Room, "Sally, if you need any help, my wife was an excellent cook and I used to do a lot of her clean-up stuff, and she showed me how to make a few tasty sauces, so if you need a sous-chef or sauté chef, well, I'm up for it."

"Excellent," the hotel manager said to George, answering for Sally, "come along, I would be very grateful if we could keep this all in-house. If we had to order in food, the other hotels would delight in telling everyone, and such derogatory tales persist ... well, forever."

The hotel manager led the party, with Sally walking next to him, Monty and George behind, plus two of the hotel staff followed immediately behind them. They walked through the dining room, which George recognised from his earlier walk past the outside, past the now redundant steps that the far part of the dining room was obviously originally the foyer of the then-adjoining, now-amalgamated hotel. They then passed through a pair of swinging doors into the kitchen. Again, George noted that the long wall of the narrow kitchen must be next to the alleyway and the narrow wall at the left-hand end must back onto the back yard where the staff and the goods entrance were located.

The hotel manager stepped into the centre of the kitchen and picked up the menu that was on the counter there and handed it to Sally to read. She nodded positively as she read through the menu and then addressed the Manager.

"This looks fine, now, I can see where the fridges are, where are the freezers and fresh food pantries?"

The Manager pointed to a couple of doors along the wall, "The left door is a walk-in freezer for meat and fish only; the middle door has several chest freezers all marked for contents, and is where the everyday frozenveg and frozen desserts are kept; the right-hand door is where the fresh food is stored and the work counter in front of it is where the vegetables are trimmed and prepped ready. The cooker at the side of the prep area is where the veggies are blanched or sautéed. The main ovens and cooking hobs are in the centre of the kitchen. It is a small kitchen but unlike most eating restaurants, the hotel caters for quite a limited range of dishes for each meal so the cooking area is compact. Come, I'll show you where everything is."

While Sally and the hotel manager went around the kitchen, the fridges and the pantries checking where the food was situated and the condition of the food, what was already prepped or not, the other two staff members explained to Monty and George who they were.

"I'm Alison, the head waitress," explained the woman, who George guessed was in her late thirties, "all the guests are pre-assigned to tables and we are not open to the general public as a restaurant, so we don't need a maître'd nor do we need a cashier, anything extra, like wine and beer is simply charged to the guest's room. We only have a couple of full-time waitresses, myself and Jennifer here, the rest of the waiting staff are other hotel staff who fill in, even the manager and the Receptionists help by taking food orders, bringing food to the tables and also collect the empty plates and glasses, and top up water, etc. Coffee and tea after the meals is served in the bar lounge so we can quickly clean up all the tables and get them redressed ready for the next meal, in this evening's case the tables will be relaid ready for breakfast. Porters like Joe and Fred mostly stay in the kitchen to do wash up and may be asked to help with food prep. It's quite a well-oiled machine here in the hotel, but when there is a sudden death in the family, and having a husband and wife team as our only trained chefs, means that on this occasion we've been left in a bit of a bind. In the past we've been able to contact agency kitchen staff to fill sick days and holidays, but this being October and out last weekend of the season and the other hotels only just out of the usual holiday season, most of the hotel staff are eager to get away for their own holidays that the agency said that they had no-one available at such short notice."

xXx

In the Sun Room, the hotel receptionist Angela checked off her list of arrivals from the Songlebridge Care Home, took down any declared dietary details and handed out their electronic keys.

"Please listen before you go off on your own," Angela said, "the room number on your electronic key has three numbers, the first number corresponds with the floor level of your room. For example Floor 1 is where the dining room is, down the ramp from Reception and the Sun Room which together form the Mezzanine floor. There are no rooms on the mezzanine level. The ground floor is Floor 1 where the bar and dining room are, and the rooms for level 1 are through the door at the back of the bar and turn left, past the goods lift, so they are all on one level with the other public rooms, no ramps unless you want to come to reception or to the Sun Room.

"Mr Peterson and his daughter Mrs Jones are in one room here on Level 1, also Mrs Newlove, Mr Wouters and Mrs Woods are also in rooms on this level. The stairs up from the bar lead to Floor 2, in which we have placed Mrs Arbuthnot, Nurse Sofija, Miss Long and Mrs Benstead. On Level 3 we have Mr Smythe and Mr Bryant. As well as the stairs these floors can be reached through the personal lift, immediately behind the bar.

"There is a kettle plus tea and instant coffee making facilities in each of the rooms, with sugar and sachets of milk, please let us know if you need more supplies. The rooms all include wi-fi internet and TV sets, although we also have a small TV room off the corridor behind the bar, turn right away from the bedrooms if you want to use that room. If you get cold through the night, or you need more soap for the en-suite showers, please call Reception and we can bring up more blankets etc. The weather forecast for the weekend is good, dry and above normal temperatures for this late time of year, but early evenings and early mornings we do get stronger sea breezes, so if you are going out tonight or for an early morning jog, do please wrap up well and keep warm."

Angela smiled at everyone as she handed out their keys in turn according to her list. "Tea, coffee and biscuits are on the side here just below the Sun Room, so do help yourselves. If you need them there are toilets, situated just behind the bar area. By the time you've had your tea your bags should have been delivered to your rooms if you want to go, unpack and freshen up before dinner. Hopefully we'll have had some good news about the preparation of the evening meal while you have your tea. We only have the one meal sitting at this quiet time of year, and that will be at 7 pm, the bar will be open at 6.30 if you want to enjoy an appetiser, just show your room key and the drinks will be charged to your room. Your dining table number allocation is shown printed on your room key. If you do want to go out and explore the town tonight after dinner, do come to Reception first, where we have a handy map and an up-to-date guide of where to go for the best pint in the town, or the cheapest cocktails, where to dance, or listen to music, roller skate or even have a game of darts. We do have light entertainment laid on in the bar for a couple of hours from 8.30 to 10.30, 'The Righteous Cousins', Mick and Dave duo are on tonight and they play mostly early 1960s ballads, gentle ballads, not too loud, Righteous Brothers, Everley Brothers, Elvis, The Beatles, etc, they just have an approved playlist that they work through, so no requests, I'm afraid."

While they were having their afternoon tea, the Hotel Manager returned to the Sun Room, with Sally by his side and George and the others immediately behind, to announce that the evening meal would be served at 7pm and that it would generally be in line with the printed menu already at each table.

When George met up with Sally as they walked up the stairs together on their way to their respective floors, George asked, "Are you sure about this meal cooking, Sally? I mean, I'm willing and able to help out but, you know, this was supposed to be a sort of little holiday, not work experience."

Sally laughs, "Work experience is not what I need, George, but it is nice to be wanted again and I'm looking forward to getting out of my travel-togs and don a chef's apron and do some proper cooking again. I haven't cooked a meal for anyone except myself since I retired and ever since then, even though I do enjoy my garden, I have found that with my children not needing me and no-one to cook for, that I have had little enthusiasm for doing much at all, just growing veg for myself and cooking it for myself ... well, when it gets like that year after year, you find you don't even want to be bothered making anything fancier than a sandwich. Now, I've got to juggle 75 meals, making sure the food is tasty and cooked well and have it all ready at the same time. I used to thrive on that challenge, and I am sure I can rise to it again, even in an unfamiliar kitchen, and I believe that I will enjoy that challenge! Are you still up to help out, George?"

"We are, er, I mean that I am ready to help," George stutters, then more assertively and adding a salute, "I will be at your command, Chef."

"Actually, George, I noticed that a lot of the veggies had already been prepared, the telephone call telling them of the family bereavement must've occurred mid-morning, hence Gervaise's difficulty in raising agency staff for tonight with so little notice. At least the agency can cover tomorrow and the rest of the week." Sally said, "We do need some white sauce for the fish dish, some gravy sauce for the steak and onion pies and a soup of the day made from scratch. That is simply specified as 'soup of the day' but the Brown Windsor soup in the tureen was apparently left over from yesterday and there's certainly not enough of it to go round, so we need a fresh soup. I know you offered to prep veg and make sauces as well, but really, can you make sauces?"

'Of course we can, tell her you can, George,' Molly urges in George's head.

"Yes, Sally, I can make all the sauces you want," George assures her.

'I saw through your eyes, George, plenty of spare veggies, including sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips and fennel, we can spritz it and make a cream of root vegetable soup, and,' Molly added with a chuckle, 'don't ask how I know it but the Brown Windsor soup was actually a fake, not made from calf's feet and Madeira wine as they should, but from powdered gelatine, dried oxtail soul mix and a slug of Sherry, and cheap cooking Sherry at that, and caramel colouring added to darken it but, together George, we can make that left-over soup into a gravy, thickening it with cornflour and a bottle of burgundy that I saw in the kitchen rack and add it as a broth to the chuck steak that Sally will use for the pies.'

"Sally, I noticed that the pantry has plenty of spare veggies, including some sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips and fennel. I think I can prep and cook them until soft, then spritz them in the blender not too fine, and stir in a tub or two of double cream and make a tasty root vegetable soup," George asserts with confidence, "as for the rather tired Brown Windsor soup leftovers, I think it smelled as though it was a fake. Trust me when I say that it was not made from calf's feet, the bones of which are excellent source of natural gelatine, or Madeira wine as per tradition, but those noble ingredients were replaced by powdered gelatine, dried oxtail soul mix and Sherry, cheap Sherry at that, and the deep brown colouring from bottles of caramel colouring instead. However, I can make those left-overs into a rich gravy, thickening it with a little cornflour and a bottle of burgundy that I saw in the kitchen and you can add it as a broth to the chuck steak that I am sure you will use for the beef pies."

"George, you sound like you are the perfect sous-chef, the answer to my prayer," Sally replies with enthusiasm, "I love the idea of the fennel in the soup, to add a hint of aniseed to the zing of the wine. Go and get changed and meet me in the kitchen. Let's do this and give our friends a culinary treat that they will never forget!"

to be continued