The Crying Game

To become a firefighter, I obtained my EMT certification, attended a fire academy, read and studied, worked for a private ambulance company, gave my weekends and nights as a volunteer. I took every opportunity to test for positions in the fire service, hoping, all the while, to be hired by the very department that ultimately gave me my job. After being hired, 10 weeks at the state fire academy, and almost as much time spent studying and drilling on the hated day shift, I received an assignment "in company", actually getting to work on a fire engine. After the usual: "What did you do before?", "Where are you from?", "How old are you?", came the question, "Do you know how to cook?"

"Actually... ", I measured my words, hoping for both humble and competent, " I do."

A long time ago, during high school and college, I worked in a Mexican restaurant. It was an ideal job for this young man. I started out washing dishes, but expressed an interest in cooking, and was soon working in the kitchen, feeding a hundred tables a night. I learned about cooking and cuisine, with an ancillary education in sex, drugs, and rock and roll from the college students with whom I worked. My first serious girlfriend was a cocktail waitress from the bar, a journalism student, 8 years my senior. The week I turned 21, I started pulling pitchers of beer every Tuesday night, in a basement banquet room, for a rowdy college crowd. My culinary education was just beginning,with tutorials in sauces and soups, and I learned early that if you want to make salsa you have to cut onions.

Onions are an essential ingredient, and a salsa without them is a bland melange, no matter the heat. Chopping, dicing, or mincing industrial quantities of onions can be unpleasant. A single batch of "Super Hot" salsa, copiously ladled onto our plates of nachos, required 25 chopped onions. I would often make a double batch to stay ahead of our appetizer-hungry customers. I remember crying real tears, unable to focus on the cutting board, eyes burning, going home reeking of Allium. It was, needless to say, hard duty, and I tried all the folk remedies for the irritation caused by syn-propanethial-S-oxide, the chemical ruining my vision. I'm here to tell you that a piece of bread in your mouth does nothing to allay the discomfort, and keeping your cutting board and knife wet is just plain dangerous.

The only way to really minimize the agony of cutting up the cheap yellow onions was to be fast, efficiently rendering the papery globes into a finished product. Technique is crucial, but equally important is a razor-sharp knife. The sharp blade goes where you will it, and doesn't crush the aromatic flesh. Gordon, the owner's son, and main prep chef, kept a such a keen blade that it would fall through an onion on it's weight alone. I probably developed an immunity to the chemical, but I also became very good at dissecting an onion.

In French cuisine a chef is judged by the number of pleats in his toque, the floppy hat on his head, each fold representing mastery of a different way to prepare an egg. I've come to judge a cook's skill by his ability to disassemble the onion. In the firehouse, we cook something at least once every shift, and, picky eaters aside, onions are ubiquitous in our kitchens. In less time than it takes to describe the process, I remove the ends, bisect the vegetable vertically, and peel back the two halves, removing the skin. Laying it on the flat, I start at a cut end of the onion, making vertical slices of appropriate thickness. Rotating ninety degrees, I make more vertical cuts, tipping the uncut mass to finish at the thick side. Repeat, and you have several cups of prepared onion. This method is the product of the thousands of onions which have surrendered at my hand.

Most of the knives in the firehouse kitchen were nice tools once - on the day they were first used - but apathy and neglect rapidly render them blunt, nicked, and dangerous. Some are actually professional-quality, German steel, full-tang construction, now hospicing in a drawer, awaiting the futile sharpening and resurrection.. Totally worthless are the serrated "never needs sharpening" knives that arrive complete, in a laminated knife block, from discount or department stores. Since working in restaurants, so many years ago, I have amassed a small collection of miscellaneous chef's knives, parers, slicers, and French chef's knives, of which, there are two in my duffel bag every time I go to work. I hone them as Gordon did his, and I pull them out whenever dinner requires extended vegetable preparation. Using a keen blade is a pleasure easily worth the added weight in my bag.

I am not particularly gifted with a creative flair for cooking, but I can follow a recipe. Tell me what you want, and you will have it, and enjoy it. So, I am called Chef, and my brothers underestimate their own culinary abilities and talents. And, I can slay the onion.