The Devil in the Kitchen by Marco Pierre White Read Free Book Online

from the kitchen and up to his door, bent down and peered through the keyhole. There he was, Monsieur Distel, eating my English breakfast.
    In the mornings I’d work in the larder, doing the Lamplighter buffet, and one of my duties was to make the salads—Waldorf, bagatelle (with mushrooms), à la grecque, niçoise and coleslaw. I found that I could be a little bit creative with the salads and no one would make a fuss, and eventually I found that I could experiment with artistic presentation on whatever I liked. So if I was given a sirloin of beef, I might slice it very thinly and then arrange it around the joint in a fan shape. I wasn’t doing anything new—I had watched the other chefs make these dishes—but now I could create my own pictures. We might do a honey-glazed ham, which I’d decorate with cloves, studding them so they made the shape of a harlequin. Or I would do a chaud-froid of ham, using the studs of truffle to create a vase of flowers, perhaps.
    The back door would open and wonderful ingredients would be carried into the kitchen. Each season brought different ingredients and the menu would change accordingly—strawberries, asparagus, game . . . I stood in awe, watching as enormous wild salmon—there was no such thing as farmed salmon then—arrived to be poached, left to cool and then covered in scales of thinly sliced cucumber. In those times, meat did not arrive precut into equal-sized portions, ready for the pan. Whole lambs would be brought in and chopped up in the kitchen. The beef was brought in as sirloin and rump attached in one enormous joint. The leg of veal came as a rump, the whole loin attached to it. Milk would arrive in giant churns, rather than in plastic bottles or cartons. This was yesterday’s world, when fish-and-chip shops served food wrapped up in newspaper—a popular custom that was banned because of concerns that the newsprint contained toxins.
    Looking back, I realize that it was my love of nature which gave me the understanding of natural ingredients. Mother Nature is the true artist, and the chef is merely the technician. Every single day I was turned on by nature. But what would keep me going, the thing that would keep me in this career, was the desire to be recognized. The better I was at the job, the better I felt I could cope with my insecurities. I would become first and foremost addicted to the adrenaline of cooking, rather than the passion for great food.
    Standards at the George were high. If you made sandwiches, you had to trim the edges of the bread to perfection and serve them on a silver platter. Customers dined on dishes like beef Stroganoff and steak Diane. Nothing went to waste. If boiled ham was served hot, the remaining meat would be used later for sandwiches. Roast lamb might be served with petit pois à la Française and pommes dauphinoise, and the leftover lamb would be served cold in the following day’s buffet. Once in a while we’d serve a spectacular baron of beef, which is the two sirloins and the ribs—the better part of an entire cow. The baron was too big for the ordinary kitchen ovens, so it would be hung in the bakers’ oven and roasted pink. Once it was cooked, it was put on a sort of stretcher and two chefs would carry it into the dining room for carving.
    I did a bit of everything: I spent time with the kitchen’s butcher, worked hours on the larder section and sometimes would help the pastry chef by making lemon syllabubs or piping cream onto the trifles. I admired everything I saw. Some weeks I would work fifteen or sixteen hours a day, bumping up my basic wage of £15 a week to £60 with all the overtime I did. As an apprentice I received a salary raise of a pound a week on my birthday.
    When I turned seventeen on December 11, 1978, I had a day off, but I still went into work. Was I already hooked on the security of the kitchen? I had seen on the menu that they were doing Châteaubriand sauce béarnaise for a private party and I