Yes Chef, No Chef - By Susan Willis Page 0,115

station she wondered if she could have been more understanding of the daily pressures he’d been working under.

Starting to cut the blanched leek and carrot into Julienne strips she chatted briefly with Simon and weighed out the lemon grass, ginger and red wine in readiness for her first orders. The whole kitchen was buzzing. And, although they knew the food critic was coming for lunch, they didn’t know what time, and she could see Tim was already showing signs of nervous irritation.

“Is the salad prep done?” he yelled at Jessie.

Jessie hurried around to the green chiller, checked and then called back, “Yes Chef!”

The first customers arrived for table three and Tim called out her order. “Kate, we need three scallop starters.”

“Yes Chef,” she said and went to the yellow chiller to get her readily prepared scallops.

“Kate! Did you hear me?” he bellowed, “I need to hear you answer me and you didn’t!”

“I did answer you,” she called back lighting the gas under the pan of olive oil.

He walked over to her and stood behind her inhaling her familiar shower gel. “Well you’re not shouting loud enough,” he said close to her ear.

“Yes Chef!!” she practically screamed at him like a sergeant major.

Alarmed, he jumped back and wanted to howl with laughter at her humour in a challenging situation but as Simon was tittering at the other side of the bench he decided upon a sober reaction.

“OK. That’s better,” he smirked and watched her drop scallops into the sizzling oil.

Her hands were trembling slightly when she shook the pan but willed herself to stay calm; this was her first order and she wanted to do a good job for him. She quickly arranged her small piles of leek and carrot strips, rescued the scallops from the pan after two minutes and set them aside to keep warm. Adding the ginger, red wine and lemon grass into the juices she stirred quickly and then placing four scallops onto each pile of vegetables she drizzled her dressing over and around them.

He was waiting at the service bench for them and sniffed his approval as they were whipped away to the table. Got through round one, she thought breathing a sigh of relief and hurried to prepare her salmon for the main courses.

The restaurant began to fill with hungry customers and she worked quickly cooking a further eight orders of scallops. Tim’s temper was building and he was barking out orders to them all while loud Yes Chef answers could be heard simultaneously throughout the kitchen as they all did their best to keep up with him.

She had two orders for her salmon and pine nut crusted fillet with roasted sweet potatoes and began by flash frying the prepared sliced potatoes and spreading the pine nut mix on top of the fillets to go into the oven. After six minutes and with a golden brown crust she lifted them carefully out of the oven and placed them onto plates with scoops of chunky red salsa and roasted sweet potatoes. Once again they were whisked off to the table but this time Tim told her the potatoes were a little overdone.

He hoped he wasn’t being too picky because he didn’t want to upset her but the food had to be perfect, especially today - surely she was used to taking criticism? One of the waiters arrived at the serving bench with a plate of salmon fillet in his hands and told Tim table seven were sending the meal back because the salmon wasn’t cooked. He could feel his face flush with embarrassment in front of the snidey waiter and lost his temper. What was wrong with her, he fumed, could she not even cook a piece of salmon properly?

Descending upon her he shouted. “Kate! This fillet is not cooked. Table seven have sent it back. How long did you cook them for?”

She stuttered, “S…six minutes, like you told me to this morning.” Her heart was hammering inside her chest and she tried to breathe deeply to steady herself as he glowered at her.

“Well check the oven and do them again,” he snarled. “And this time call for me to look at them.”

“Yes Chef,” she muttered and then hurriedly correcting herself she raised her voice and said louder, “Yes Chef!”

Walking back to the serving table he tried to calm down by taking long, slow breaths and willed himself not to lose his temper again. It could have been much worse if they’d been given to the