soon to be replaced by robots

We've got some brand spanking new combination ovens at work. They're pretty freaking Gucci. The more expensive model has got its own computer control panel, and is worth about $35,000. I bet a lot of people would be thinking, whoa, what's so good about a freaking oven that makes it the same price as a sweet new car? Or, why would anyone want to bother with a computer that's attached to an oven?


Because good cooks are hard to find. That, and it won't be too long until our entire mustering can be done by trained monkeys.

Seriously, the SelfCooking Center® is an utter smartarse. It's like the Hermione of ovens, and I'm sure once you've worked with them for long enough, going back to the old school combi where you have to choose from limited and archaic options such as steam or dry heat, time, and temperature, would be like returning to the dark ages.


Say you want to cook some bar snacks to fatten up the Officers on a weekday afternoon. You've trayed up some party pies, sausage rolls, mini pizzas, dim sims, and chicken satay meatballs. Trouble is, they all take slightly different times to actually cook, so it's a bit tricky to avoid overcooking one type of snack whilst undercooking another. Never fear, genius oven is here! Simply load up the trays into any of ten racks, and via the Finger Food menu options, set separate timers for each numbered rack. The computer will buzz and remind you when rack two, party pies are ready to roll, then once you have taken out that tray of tasty pastry, the internal thermostat will ensure the oven returns to its specified temperature before counting down the timers on the rest of the items inside.

Or perhaps you'd like to slow-cook a roast for the next day's lunch. Choose the type of meat from the menu, how quickly you'd like to roast (there is actually an overnight option), and the level of doneness for the meat. Stick the internal temperature probe into the meat once you've put the tray into the preheated oven (the computer will say when it's ready for the meat to go in), and the oven will take care of the rest. You can even choose to do roast with crackling, and once the core temperature reaches a certain point, the computer will crank up the temperature of the oven so that the crackling gets super crisp by the time the whole roast is ready.

Maybe you've got a couple trays of Cauliflower Mornay or Potato Au Gratin that you'd like to cook off. Back in the day, you'd have to blanch or steam your cauliflower or potato to partially cook it, then tray it up with the white sauce, cheese and/or breadcrumbs, then hope to bake it enough to get the cheese golden and melty without turning it brown or black. Now you can just choose from the Gratin menu, stick a probe in your cauliflower or potato, and the computer will know how long to steam/bake for, whilst also pumping up the dry heat in the last moments of cooking so that cheesy crust will be just right.

If you have a pasta choice coming up, you can actually put measured amounts of dry pasta, prepared sauce, and water into a gastronorm tray, immerse the internal temperature probe, and the combi will buzz you when it's ready to go. Ready to go onto the servery that is! Straight from oven to bain marie, without having to deal with the hassle of sticking a pot of water on the stove to heat up water and then cook pasta, then drain it off so it's ready for use. It's 2009, after all... why don't all commercial kitchens do away with such prehistoric means of cooking pasta!?

Say you're a bit of a control freak, and you're not 100% willing to relinquish control of your meal to software that has been developed by Germans (who no doubt wish to take over all of the world's cooking facilities, one combi oven at a time). You can still work in manual mode, and go into all sorts of menus to program your own cooking styles and save them on the oven's computer. Want to start off by steaming something at 75% humidity and 50 degrees, but finish off with a searing dry heat at 250 degrees? You can do it. It's like going into the source code of the cooking programs, and if something works well, you can even download it to a USB drive and transport your winning programs to another combi elsewhere. If you don't trust the autopilot, you can tool around with as many settings as you like. If you want to change messes and still insist on cooking quiches your way and no one else's, jam your masterpiece onto a USB key and show everyone else who's boss.

Maybe you have to be a bit of a geek as well as a not-too-precious chef to appreciate this sort of technology. The guy who was sent out to train us (madlove an oven that requires basic training, manuals, and a dvd included!) said that he used to work functions where he could get his produce in on a Tuesday. Then he'd prep it all on a Wednesday. Cook it and plate it up on a Thursday. Then blast chill it whilst the plates were loaded onto special trolleys. Pull it out of the freezer on the Friday, load it straight into the oven and stick it on the special reheat setting (the trolley is designed to fit into the oven whilst it is full of plates). Wait for the oven to bing, pull out the trolley and put a special thermal cover over it that can keep it at temperature for twenty minutes or so... which is the time it takes to heat up another trolley load. Work smarter, not harder! Pity you still have to rely on humans to actually take out the plates to customers at the function.

Luckily for us, there is still a need for human cooks, so that the right decisions can be made with the oven, and the right things are put on for meals. Some could argue that this takes the fun out of cooking, because so much of it is done automatically, but to be honest, I don't think anyone really sees checking temperatures and moisture content of food as the most enjoyable part of cooking. The other great thing is that the oven tracks temperatures and times for food that has been probed within it, so if someone decides that they've got food poisoning, we can actually pull up a record that says everything we've served has complied with HACCP standards.

I probably shouldn't be saying all this, because word might get out that the mysteries of cooking and getting things right with food have now been taken care of by a computer. The same ten year old that once knew how to program a VCR whilst their parents scratched their heads about how to get it to stop flashing 12:00? They're going to be smart enough to know how to cook a succulent steak, or a tray of perfect soft-poached eggs. You probably won't need Year Nine maths to be a cook any more, you'll just have to watch a DVD and be tall enough to shut the door.

I'm more awed than scared at the moment. Still, it's a good thing I'm looking into remustering in a couple of years. :)

muffins, meringues, and meat-based mayhem

The day didn't start off too well. I dumped my bag with PT gear in it (hopeless optimism that I'd get time to duck out for a quick game of something with some of the other cooks), hung up my squadron cap, and realised that I forgot to bring a skull cap with me. A quick look in a couple other lockers saved me from scurrying back to my room, as I discovered Kina's secret stash of hats. Now things were looking up. A quick stop to check work emails, and look up a basic muffin recipe, and I was on my way.

Usually when I'm working, I've got to write out a full plan of what I've got to get through that day. It'll have a list of the tasks I'm assigned to, as well as timings so I can actually get everything done on time. It's one of the perils of being a bottom rung Aircraftwoman (ACW), but I don't mind it. I'm not that much of an organisation nut or list junkie, but I like looking at a timeline to get an idea of whether I'm ahead or behind schedule, so I can sing out for help or give someone else a hand as necessary. It really helps in sweets to have stuff nutted out before the shift as well, because I often struggle trying to get things baking, mixing, setting, and garnished simultaneously, and there's not enough time in the day to do everything as separate tasks.

Fridays mean a bit of a reprieve from all the planning - if the week's gone well, I know what ingredients there are in the fridge that are leftover and to be used up, and I know what we've run out of in the freezer or the dry stores so I'll come prepared with ideas that I'll be able to do without having to beg other messes for the right ingredients. There's a lot of flexibility with the sweets we can offer with meals - there used to be a set menu, but now it's pretty much an open choice as long as there's a hot sweet for lunch, and fruit salad with lunch and dinner.

I started off with a mega muffin mix, seeing as it's good to get the baking requirement of the day done first. It also helps warm up the kitchen and fill it with that awesome baked goods smell, which always gets the other cooks wondering what's cooking... and later swooping like seagulls for whatever scraps they can steal. The other thing about Friday sweets is that as well as preparing assorted platters of sweets for the upcoming weekend, the sweets cook has to offer something to the 58 Gap Year Cadets that have a weekly barbecue up at the Officers' Mess for lunch. I figured that I didn't have enough leftovers kicking around to sacrifice to the cause, so a giant batch of banana, mixed berry and white chocolate muffins would just have to do!

Doing something well whilst in sweets bay elicits a variety of responses:
'Ooh, yummy! What a shame you don't have a penis.'
-- from a seemingly easily impressed female

[Walking past the oven and looking in] 'Oh my God! Those muffins look like shit!'
-- the most backhanded of compliments from one of the guys

'Why are you wasting perfectly good muffins on the Gappies?'
-- from the new kid who was probably too scared to ask for one directly

My favourite response of all - busting a couple of the cooks stealing muffins from the bowl I was filling up for the Gappies, while they didn't think I was paying attention. :)

Due to the lack of equipment on hand, I only had a 24-cup tray, so I did two and a bit rounds of spooning the mix in and baking, giving the tray a quick wash in between. I ended up having enough mixture for 58 exactly, but with some muffins going AWOL earlier on in the piece (gotta love how blatant some of the guys are, not even putting the glad wrap back over the top of the bowl properly after yoinking a muffin), if each Gappie wanted a muffin, they might have to duke it out for the last couple. Well, they're going to have to learn sooner or later that life isn't fair and rations aren't always what you expect them to be. They looked so happy to receive a giant bowl of muffins for their dessert too! I can just imagine how crushed the last couple of Gappies would've been, discovering that they're too late for pudding. Survival of the fattest, ey?

While the muffins baked, I got platters ready for the weekend, as well as plating and garnishing up some desserts for lunch. I had a big tray of chocolate cheesecake brownie slice to cut up, something I prepared yesterday because the recipe said that brownies taste better the day after they're made. They weren't wrong! The beauty about cutting up good sweets is that anything you trim off the edges, or happen to cut unevenly, just gets eaten without you even realising it. Limited wastage all round! The guys thought that the hybrid of cheesecake and brownie was a bit unusual, but still dug it once they gave it a shot. I've made this recipe a couple of times, but I still can't match how one of my favourite cafes back at home does it.

The second round of muffins went in, as I decorated some mini-pavlovas for the weekend. I later discovered that I shouldn't have spread the pavlovas around all the platters, because they won't be any good beyond about 24 hours. Yes, sweets can indeed self-destruct. Something about the moisture making meringue go all spoogy after it's been sitting in the fridge for too long. A few bits of strawberry and some mixed berry coulis to finish off the pavlovas, and there's only a few gaps left on the platters to fill.

That's where my totally ghetto recipe for the day came into play... I made an orange polenta syrup cake yesterday, but buggered it up somewhat when flipping it out of the tray too soon after taking it out of the oven, so I ended up with a heap of scrappy bits where the cake cracked apart and I couldn't salvage a square-sized serving out of it. However, with a waste-not-want-not mentality, and spaces in the weekend sweets platters to fill, I thought I could turn these cake bits into Jaffa Truffle Balls. Feel the fear and do it anyway, right? :) A couple of cans of condensed milk, a smattering of cocoa powder, rolled into disturbing poo-balls and finished off with desiccated coconut. Everybody wins. I totally kick food wastage butt!

All that was left to do for the day is the hot sweet. Today's masterpiece was butterscotch self-saucing pudding, served with hot vanilla custard. I thought I should face my nemesis from Monday once more, after the pudding I tried to cook was nowhere near ready for the whole of lunchtime, whether it was due to too much liquid in the recipe, or the oven was turned down too low for most of its cooking, I still don't know. This time around though, I got the pudding in early, held back on the amount of liquid it recommended to pour in for the sauce, and it was ready ahead of schedule. I wasn't even using a recipe that I had tried before, but it all turned out like it was meant to. What a relief! After cleaning up the sweets bay area and putting out my hot sweet for lunch, it was time to... cook burgers.

I'm not kidding. Yes, I get paid way too much per hour to flip burgers, but this was my lunch job. One could argue that I also get paid too much to make sandwiches to order, but I might save that rant for another time. The new kid Harry was torn between the torment of sandwich bar, and the pressure of cooking burgers to order back in the kitchen... he first requested to swap jobs with me for lunch, but then went back on his wish and opted to go out to sandwich bar anyway.

This left me to find out all the wild and wonderful ways to not assemble a burger, according to Adam's Rules of Burger Assemblage:

1. Do not melt the cheese onto the base of the bun.


2. Do not start with any salad item other than lettuce.


3. Do not melt the cheese onto the top of the burger patty.


4. Do not put unmelted cheese underneath the burger patty.


5. Do not attempt to close the burger with salsa on the underside of the bun lid.

I have a feeling they're going to make me do remedial burger cooking at Ron's barbecue on Monday... I think I might have to plead strategic incompetence to get out of it. Who knew that there were even five ways to mess up a burger? Apparently it was painfully obvious that I never worked a job at Macca's or Hungry Jack's. I'm kind of glad that it shows, though. :)

Too bad I can't give up my day job until 2011!