Thicker skin, thinner pasta.

With spring quarter classes over & my stepson's summer visit with us over, I knew I had to find a job. I had what I thought was a promising interview with a "mobile restaurant" that resulted in fuck-all (really, don't tell someone you'll call them once you've completed the work schedule if you aren't going to hire them- that's cold!). Then I had a somewhat unpromising interview that did result in a call back for me to make pasta. Not with a job offer, but for a stage, which is a French term for 'unpaid intern', kind of.

Where are we? I think restaurants should do away with that term, unless they are actually in France. Reason being is that it's a bit vague here. I suppose they're trying to see if I'm up to snuff before they decide to offer me a job or decline to. I can understand that, but there's no clear time line as to when that decision would be made. Yet I'm on this week's schedule. I suppose that means they're on the fence.

The first day went well enough, & I got used to cranking out pasta dough that got progressively thinner & longer (double the length of the counter space I use). I made tagliatelle & ravioli. I wasn't perfect, but I did well for day one & felt confident I understood what I need to do to be better next time.

"Next time" was yesterday. Yesterday started out OK. The prep guy made five batches of dough for me (he didn't know I was coming in), which got the sous annoyed with me for the first time of the day because there were three batches of dough already made in the back of a fridge. He acted very bent out of shape by this, but I hesitated to say I didn't make today's dough. He threw the batches on the counter & said, "I know ____ may have told you to roll the dough as you go [aside: I was planning on doing this because the dough gets harder to work with & tears much more easily the longer it sits there], but ignore ____ & do it all now." I just said, "OK, you're the boss," & did as I was told.

I admit to being a bit put-off by this because I knew the stuffed pastas were going to be harder to do because of it. I did it nonetheless. The dough that had been made the previous day was so wet & tacky it stuck to the plastic wrap. After I rolled out all of the batches, he came by to check them out. I asked how thick I had rolled them, & I told him I went done on the dial to three-quarters (zero is the thinnest, ten is the thickest). "Do you mean one & three-quarters?" "No, I mean three-quarters." "Did you go to the right or the left of the one?" "The right." I could understand if the pasta dough wasn't delicate & somewhat transparent for him to assume I don't understand the number line...

Anyway, I made pappardelle, then casconcelli. He told me I needed to speed up at this point, which is understandable. The casconcelli is hand-formed, & getting the right amount of filling & working out the air bubbles without tearing it was difficult. Once that was done, I moved onto the ill-fated ravioli. I've received conflicting instructions for this project (from him & the chef), & that tacky dough...gah! I was told by chef last time to use this press on the pasta once it's on the ravioli mold to create a deeper pocket for the filling. When a bunch broke, the sous rightly told me not to use it, so I put it away. When I took that tacky dough & placed it over the mold to make more, it was so gooey it started to fall into the spaces in the mold & create pockets regardless. He yelled at me to stop using the press, though I hadn't. The dough was just shitted & doing its own thing, which was to drip like the Blob. I used less filling, & most of them still broke. This is when I wanted to crawl into a hole. The dough was just too stretchy & creating holes sometimes before I got to filling them (so I just passed those over & didn't fill them). He still felt I was my fault, yelled at me to clean my station & grate some cheese for service. Youch.

I take full responsibility for needing to be faster, but half of that dough was useless! The thing with dough for any application is that there are no hard or fast rules for ingredient amounts. Humidity will affect how moist flour is. You shouldn't just add water because the recipe says to. You need to check the dough first & add it little by little. I had to take it on the chin that what I was working with wasn't good, & I didn't work with it as well. The only way that could have been helped is if I was more experienced with these little nightmares than I am. This is truly what pissed him off I think.

Here's the thing though: I still feel fairly good about yesterday. I mean, my dough hardly bunched while I was cranking it through the machine, & I never tore any, despite how much better it could have been. I also did my best at paying attention to his instructions & carry them out without reacting to him aggressively throwing things around.

So...do I want this job? Yes, if they want me there. Either way, I'm going to do my best while I'm there. I'm going back in tomorrow, & I'm going to ask how longer this stage is intended to last. After yesterday, I have a poor feeling about things. I hope they aren't just keeping me on to make their pasta when they have no one else to in the meantime.