Absinthe

Chapter 24: Hard Work

I now know the reason why Chef Maxwell's classes were expensive as fuck. I thought we'd be in the

kitchen all day long, learning secret techniques to cutting vegetables and roasting meats. I couldn't

have been more wrong.

Classes started at exactly 7 in the fucking morning. That wasn't new to me since I used to work earlier

than that for more than a decade back in Samsong Group. However, the few months I'd practically

done nothing but party and shop had ruined my body clock. It was now near impossible for me to wake

up that early and attend the class on time.

At 7, we had professors from the Atheneum University come over to give custom-tailored classes in

marketing, accounting, management, finance, and other relevant business administration courses.

Chef Maxwell explained that those were all needed because we were training to be not just cooks in

the kitchen but also executive chefs who would one day lead the culinary industry in the country.

Executive chef? I liked the sound of that.

"For today's class, I've prepared a case study for one of the most successful marketing campaigns in

the history of the country," Professor Stefano Martinez began.

To be honest, I hate marketing. It's the least exact of all the disciplines in business administration. And

I've never seen a marketing specialist climb their way up the corporate ladder. Even the top marketing

executives at Samsong Group were not marketing experts—like me, they started out as corporate

finance analysts.

"Have you ever wondered why sausages in the Philippines are extremely soft and juicy compared with

sausages abroad?"

I saw all three of my classmates looking genuinely surprised. It had been more than two decades since

I had last eaten Filipino hotdogs and sausages. But when I thought about it, I did remember them to be

very soft, almost to the point of not being able to maintain their shape. I even recalled the TV

commercials wherein the hotdogs literally bent when raised with a fork.

"Cost savings?" I guessed.

"Can you expound on that, Mr. Alvarez?"

"Um, when you look at the composition of sausages, I'm guessing that a bulk of their manufacturing

cost comes from the raw materials, in other words, the meat and the additives they use to make the

sausages."

"Uh-huh, go on."

"So in order to make more profits, they would have to replace some of the meat with extenders—

maybe potatoes, chayote, even flour."

Jiwoo, Nico, and Vivi murmured in agreement to my answer.

"That's a highly logical guess," Prof. Martinez said. "But unfortunately, it's not correct."

I looked at Jiwoo, and he smiled patronizingly. Excuse me, but my ego wouldn't easily be hurt by

guessing wrong in an informal business class.

"Actually, the success of the country's top hotdog producer, Chastity Foods, all started from a mistake."

What? I could feel everyone else's shock at that statement.

"Yes!" Prof Martinez exclaimed, smiling as he noticed our looks of keen interest. "A production mistake.

You see, one of their quality control supervisors made wrong calculations on their production

specification. That mistake caused a week's worth of hotdogs to have double the normal amount of

water.

"There they were, in that fateful meeting room, deliberating what to do with hundreds of containers of

watery hotdogs. Should they throw them away and write the whole thing off as millions worth of losses?

"Lucky for them, one of their executives came up with the idea of marketing those products as a new

product. And that, lady and gentlemen, was how Chastity Foods' most famous Tender Juizy Hotdogs

were born!

"Just this year, they launched that very same product in other Southeast Asian countries, and the

reception was off the charts! This is the power of marketing, and this is what I intend to teach you all!"

Prof. Martinez explained cheerfully.

"Does that mean Chastity Foods' hotdogs are a scam? That their success was built on a lie?" Vivi

asked, a genuine look of discomfort on her face.

"I feel lied to," Jiwoo said, half joking. "I always thought they had a special way of preparing their

hotdogs to retain maximum moisture even after cooking."

"But do you like them? Do you like their hotdogs?" asked Prof. Martinez.

All four of us nodded our heads. Personally, I enjoyed eating their hotdogs when I was a kid.

"Marketing is not only about understanding what the customer needs. It's also about taking it a step

further and finding out how the customer wants something," Prof. Martinez explained. "It's a happy

mistake that Chastity Foods marketed their hotdogs that way because it aligned with how the Filipino

masses wanted their hotdogs to be. You may think it's cheating, but Chastity Foods is just making and

selling hotdogs the way Filipino people like it—tender and juizy!" Prof. Martinez explained, stressing the

Z sound in juizy.

"For our class, though, I'm not expecting you to rely on luck. I'm expecting you to use the tools we'll

learn and analyze what your customers need and how they want it."

Nico, Vivi, and Jiwoo all went out for lunch, but I excused myself and ate the sandwiches I had

prepared that morning. I was eating inside my car, and I got bored at being alone. I dialed Cass'

number, but it was still unreachable. I tried Faye's number next. After a few rings, Faye rejected the

call, which got routed through to her voice mail.

I decided to send her a message instead: Hey Faye. I'm sorry. I miss you. Call me back okay?

Then I dialed Derick's line. It was probably out of habit as a doctor, but he picked up on the first ring.

"Dr. Evangelista on the line."

"You didn't bother reading the name on the screen?" I asked.

"Oh, it's you. What's up?"

"Nothing much. Just wanted to check up on you."

Derrick was quiet at that. I was about to say something again when he spoke.

"BJ, I've got to go now." It seemed that he was still uncomfortable with me, after all. "But let's hang out

this weekend. Let's go to Janus' bar, okay? Bye now. I'm being paged."

And with that, I finished my sandwich in better spirits.

Afternoon classes were dedicated to the sciences—we had lectures on food chemistry, food

technology, nutrition, and the like. We had them until 3 PM when we finally joined Chef Maxwell's

kitchen staff in preparation for dinner service.

"What does it mean to cook?" asked Professor Pamela Bibing. "What exactly do we mean when we

say the word 'cook'?"

Vivi raised her hand, and Prof. Pamela nodded in acknowledgement. "To cook means to transform raw

materials, more particularly food, into something more edible."

"Edible, you say?" Prof. Pamela asked. "Then does it mean raw food like sashimi, most salads, and

fruits, for that matter, are not edible?"

Vivi and Nico exchanged looks.

"It means the application of heat to change raw materials into something else?"

"Is that a question, Nico?" the professor asked teasingly. "You're not wrong, though. Cooking is one of

the main methods of processing food. We have freezing, which preserves food by slowing or, if the

temperatures are right, completely halting cellular decay and at the same time preventing the growth of

microorganisms that cause spoilage."

My three classmates nodded in understanding.

"Cooking involves the use of heat to transform food, oftentimes with the objective of making it safe.

After all, people can eat certain foods raw."

"And cooking helps eliminate everything that makes food unsafe?" asked Nico.

"Indeed. In our upcoming lessons in microbiology, we will be discussing pathogens like clostridium

botulinum and salmonella typhi, which both cause harm when ingested, and sometimes, they can even

be fatal."

We all nodded again at her explanation.

"Now cooking, unlike freezing, is an undoable action. Can you elaborate on that, Mr. Garcia?"

Jiwoo looked around and said, "Um, I guess, for freezing, we can reverse it by thawing. On the other

hand, I don't think there's any action that can reverse any cooking done on food."

"Correct. There's simply no way to 'uncook' something once it's been cooked."

I looked around to see all three of them busy taking down notes. I figured I should be a good student

and do the same thing.

"That makes cooking a very risky and very difficult thing to do. But you guys don't worry about that,

right? After all, you'd be trained by the Chef Maxwell himself."

We spent the next three hours listening to Professor Pamela as she introduced us to the history of

cooking and how it was developed for food safety, digestibility, and edibility.

She also briefed us on the different methods of cooking. We were all familiar with those, but Professor

Pamela showed us their technical aspect.

At 3 PM, we headed toward Chef Maxwell's restaurant to work as part of his kitchen staff for our on-

the-job training. We changed into our uniforms in the locker rooms and were briefed by the Head Chef

on what the dinner service involved.

I got paired with Jiwoo, and we were both sent to the entremetier while Nico and Vivi were sent to the

boucher.

"Hello! It's JM and BJ, right?"

"It's Jiwoo, chef."

"I'm sorry. So, Jiwoo and BJ, welcome to Hacienda. I'm Chef Karl. As you can see, I am the Chef de

Partie for soups and vegetable preparations. My official title is entremetier, or vegetable chef in

English."

"Thank you, chef," Jiwoo and I answered in unison.

"In bigger services like hotels, this position is usually split into two: the potager who is in charge of

making soups, and the legumier who is in charge of all vegetable preparations. As Hacienda is an

exclusive restaurant and we get our revenues from our prices rather than from our volumes, I handle

both positions with a couple of commis chef, or junior chefs, Daniel and Joshua."

Two gentlemen in their early twenties smiled and nodded at us. Jiwoo and I smiled back. After the

introductions were done, Chef Karl explained to all four of us the menu for the day and the types of

vegetables that had to be prepared. Soon after, we all found ourselves busily washing, peeling,

blanching, and cutting all sorts of vegetables for the other sections of the kitchen.

Every time we finished a task, Chef Karl had to inspect and approve it before we could hand the

ingredients over to the other sectional chefs. As expected, Jiwoo was a natural. His years of

experience working in kitchens shone as he gracefully chopped onions, carrots, potatoes, and

everything else.

"Pass," came the voice of Chef Karl after glancing at Jiwoo's chopped carrots once.

I offered mine next and saw Chef Karl frown. "This has to be 50px in length. I can see some of them

are uneven. Repeat!"

To my shock, Chef Karl proceeded to chuck my plate of cut carrots into the bin.

Six more of my plates were chucked into the bin after that, and I couldn't have wished for an earlier end

to that training.

At 6 PM, we headed to chef Maxwell's R&D Kitchen located behind the main kitchen. It was pretty

cramped since they had built individual workstations for all four of us, but it still looked like a neat,

modern kitchen.

"On to your stations now," Chef Maxwell said as we entered. "How were your classes? Liking them so

far?"

Nico, Vivi, and Jiwoo nodded. I smiled and nodded quickly when I noticed Chef Maxwell looking at me.

"I wanted to give you a holistic training—your morning classes will hone other essential skills needed to

succeed in this industry, your OJT at the kitchen will help you become a top chef, and your classes with

me—" He paused for dramatic effect. "Will take you to places no other chef in this country has ever

reached."

I turned and saw Jiwoo listening intently, absorbing every word from Chef Maxwell.

"I will use the entirety of this week to train your palate. You will learn to identify flavors. You will learn to

predict how flavors work with each other—how they complement, how they fight, how they change

when mixed together. You will learn what happens to flavors depending on what cooking method you

use.

"This is the basis of all your training with me. Failure to develop your palate means you will no longer

be able to catch up to any of my lessons in the future.

"As such, at the end of this week, you'll undergo a test to see how much you've improved. Those who

fail will have their fees refunded and booted out of this course."

We exchanged nervous looks, but Jiwoo nodded at me and mouthed don't worry.

We spent the rest of the evening tasting different foods prepared by Chef Maxwell. While working

earlier, I had been wondering if we were going to have a dinner break and was disappointed when

nobody mentioned anything of the sort. But it looked like we won't be needing a separate meal—trying

all the dishes was more than enough to make one full.

It was around 9 PM when Chef Maxwell announced that we are dismissed. We cleaned our stations

and started to head out when Chef Maxwell called out to us.

"I almost forgot. All of you are exempted from kitchen OJT tomorrow. You have an interview with Tita

Gay Abundance. She's featuring my program in her magazine—what do you call it again?" ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

"Ka-Vogue?" I asked jokingly.

"Yes, that's the one."

What the fuck? Ka-Vogue was the biggest fashion and lifestyle magazine in the country! Nico and

Jiwoo began excitedly murmuring about it.