Karla.

 

LAMONT

In the early days Lamont worked the line at “Four Stars” under the guidance of the heavy handed and often absent, Charles Ledoux. Called into the cubbyhole Ledoux called an office, Lamont was told that he was now in charge of making the restaurant's signature beef stock. Ledoux explained that Carson had been poached by a new bistro and there was no time to waste. The stock needed caring.

Ledoux pushed home that this was his only job and nothing but. Now four a.m. , starts and sluggish from previous long shifts and rumbled sleep, Lamont fired up the stoves and ovens waking the kitchen.

Last shift had been the usual. A rushed start to the day at nine a.m. , a flurry of phone calls about missed deliveries, and threats of cash withheld and then onto the day's prep work. By two p.m. , the promise of a “family meal” pushed everyone through the afternoon without a break.

Nothing new here, no one, under pressure of time, could volunteer to cook for the crew. By shifts end, drinks after, bullied about, but now quickly forgotten, replaced by a stumble home, to bed with a brief stop at pizza corner for a walk home slice.

Looking back now in the quiet morning, Lamont thought of how it had been just another typical long day into night of their six day week. Now here he was starting a new position five hours earlier.

The kitchen warmed to life and Lamont would bring the beef stock to centre stage as many had in the past. At this early hour there was no sous chef barking orders, no flat seated dining room turning over every hour or so and no customer wanting to come into the kitchen to drink with cheffy while the crew worked and cleaned around them.

Knuckle and shank bones band sawed to the correct size, washed and trayed, were oven ready. He would get the mirepoix cut, the tomato paste and aromatics ready to add later, but a nice roasting was step one.

Lamont checked the older stock supply and decided that it was low on glace de viande and demi-glace, so a nice caramelized brown stock would be on the agenda.

As he worked he thought of his friend David Barachois over in Newfoundland. How they discussed the difference in beef and moose stock. David being well known for making moose stock unlike any other, selling it all across the island and even up into the big land, Labrador. It was as David said, dark strong stock flavoured of the land each moose traipsed over.

Lamont remembers one story of the hunter Clem down on the Burin whaleback. A mostly barren ridge. Sparsely covered by scruffy, tired tuckamore, hiding many a moose over the years.

The tale of that moose plunging into a “shaky” bog hole. Clem chasing the wounded bull across the crisp yet spongy bog, crackling with each step. Clem said he could feel in the silence the life pumping out of the animal as it tried to flee, and he knew the moose felt death coming with each snort and slowing stride.

Finally Clem had to figure out how to pull the moose out and begin to break it down quickly.

Back to the task at hand, Lamont, pulls crackling brown bones from the hot oven and now smears them with tomato paste, adds the mire poix and pushes the pans back into the oven to finish the caramelizing. The large stock pots waited on the flat top. He would add the bones when “smell” ready to cold water and begin the cycle of days nursing a new brown stock.

It was the next morning and there were signs of last night's success. The floors were not cleaned, bins overflowed and chits, not torn, hung from the wheel as if these meals never made it through the pass. Everyone scurried out after midnight all for “taking a shingle” into the wee hours as the night pushed into day. Lamont thought cheffy must have left early.

For Lamont all that mattered was the beef stock simmering and “dropping” all night in the well tarnished stock pots. These all staff knew never to touch as Ledoux was known to fire on sight, anyone fooling around with the simmering gold.

Last night before leaving, Lamont had brought the temperature up to a gallop, and slowly turned it down to “sleep” overnight. At this point he gave a quick skim of the top layer removing what everyone called impurities. The aromatics would be added, and now after a night's slow turn had raised the fat to the surface to be snagged by the mire poix raft. Slowly he moved ladle around in circles, starting from the centre and moving outward. The bones had released their fat, and any collagen had now softened and left the stock with a lovely unctuous sheen. Exactly what Lamont desired. David would be impressed and Lamont though, fuck Ledoux.