I’m back in whites. But not a judogi this time. Nope. This is something brand new for me. And for it, I’m in chef whites.
Today is the first day of my first chef stage. Day 1 of 100 days staging at Michelin restaurants in Spain.
And as I stand in the kitchens of a Michelin one-star restaurant in Alicante I realise something is amiss – I’m way too white. My whites are too white. My apron is tied too carefully. My trousers too neat. I stand out like a big sore white thumb. But I hardly care, I can barely contain the excitement. I’ve been searching for some years to find something to replace the buzz of being an Olympic judo athlete. Who would have thought that I would find it by working in a kitchen?
Life after being a top sportsperson is hard to get used to. You miss the purpose and motivation, the satisfaction as you improve, the buzz and adrenaline of the competition arena.
Parallels between chef life and sports life are similar – the daily grind. Sacrifice. Routine. The search for self-improvement. Focus. Drive. Creativity. Technique. Not to mention the adrenaline rush.
And so it is that I find myself, today in a kitchen, beginning a new adventure.
I’m new, and awkward, and very white. It’s in everything, in the way I stand, the way I hold a knife, and it’s in the way that I move around the kitchen. And as hard as I try to disguise it, and blend in, I’m sure those who have been in the kitchen for any amount of time, can spot I’m a novice chef stagiare a mile off.
Federico Pian, el Monastrell’s head chef comes over.
“You will be working with Marcos who will show you what to do. Do you know how to prepare crayfish?”
Marcos takes the first crayfish and shows me how to turn it on its side and firmly with the heel of my hand to press and crack the shell before twisting its head off and tail off, making sure I pull its intestine tract out as I twist. And so I begin..
Now and then, as I twist the heads off, dark, red crayfish brain squirts over my chopping board and onto my jacket. And just like that, my whites are no longer quite so white, the journey has begun.
El Monastrell, Alicante
Day 1 – What’s an Olympian doing in a kitchen anyway?
Day 4 – Why work for free?
Day 7 – Knife Skills, go as fast as you can but no faster
Day 10 – Mugaritz: You don’t have to like something to like it
Day 12 – The best paella recipe, in the world
Day 14 – Chef Life, it’s not all liquid nitrogen and lobsters