About Mis En Place

by Syd McGinley
13 pages / 5000 words
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc

Chef-in-training Rick is miserable, his training making him crazy. He likes his head chef a lot, thinks the man is hot, but that might not be enough to keep him in the program. Chef has plans for Rick, though, that don’t include Rick leaving him any time soon. Can Rick stand the heat Chef turns on, or will he have to get out of the kitchen forever? (Note: Previously published in the Men in Uniform anthology.)

Sample

My sleeves rolled high, I swish my hands in the hot murky water hunting for the onion blade. Mindy’s bitching about her assignment and I answer her back.  “You got the potatoes, so what? I got thirty pounds of onions to dice.”

She sniggers. “Of course you did. Chef always picks on your sort.”

“What?”

“He’s a raging ‘phobe.”

I smother a gasp. I’ve gashed my finger on the knife, but don’t want Mindy to think she’s scored. She’s so smug.

“He fired Jeremy,” she points out.

“Right.”

She stamps off, disappointed, to find someone more receptive. But Jeremy did disappear last quarter.

I get my hand under the cold tap, and groan. I check my finger. Too soon. A splotch of blood lands on my cuff. I’m a messy cook, but I make to-die-for rustic foods. Point me at peasant food and I’ll transport you. But why put me in pure white to make tomato sauce? Still, I’m in the program and do my best to obey the rules. Cut well covered with an official, but shameful, neon-blue bandage, I head to my workstation to prep the onions. I’ll have finished my first year next week, but we still get the grunt work when the second years have big projects. Fair enough. We need the foundation, but I’m not progressing with knife skills or presentation or even creating fifty identical servings.

I roll down my cuffs, adjust my kerchief, and tug my apron straight. Chef’s the program head and is supervising today. He trained in the Navy and runs his kitchen like a military operation. He yells if we’re disarrayed or sloppy. He’s the bane of my life. Overwhelmed by how much I hate this program, I feel a big fat tear roll down and splash my cutting board.

“No crying in the kitchen!”

“No, Chef,” I mumble. Of course it’s him who saw.

“Finger hurt that much?”

“No, Chef.” He’s right behind me.

“Then what?”

“Onions, Chef.”

There’s a silence, and then a snort. “So, you’re inept at lying too.” He steps round, and points at the unpeeled onions. “How did it happen?”

“In the sink, Chef.”

His amused expression disappears. “Someone left a sharp in the sink?”

A knife in the water is a cardinal sin that gets the whole kitchen bellowed at when it happens. I’m freaked, but confess. “I did, Chef, but it was just me who got cut so it doesn’t matter.”

Mercifully he just says, “Start chopping.”