To be a cook...

I guess one of the prouder and happier memories from last year was helping to cook for a hundred fifty guests at someone's wedding banquet.

I barely knew the bride, having helped out during her local all-women's theatre group production. A couple of days before her wedding, she sent out a distress email to her vagina monologue-ing sisters and me asking for help. Apparently her friends who were supposed to help out for the wedding had copped out on her and she was desperate. Hearing the call for help to either cook or serve at a wedding banquet drew me like a moth to a flame.

I was supposed to be part of the waiting team at first, but once I arrived at the forest lodge where the wedding was held (after riding my bike through some rough, muddy Dutch country terrain in the middle of the woods), I quickly got acquainted with the three cooks and got to work slicing radishes for the mis en place.

Only Reinard, the executive chef for the night was an actual professional. The rest of the team were made of amateurs who were friends of the groom but had some group cooking experiences at local fundraisers or university events.

I managed to help out mostly with the prep work, like cutting vegetables and arranging slices of venison carpaccio on plates that were to be the starter for the evening.

Since I told Reinard I once worked in a catering place while I was studying in Toronto, he put me to work as fry cook. So I got to dunk cheese-stuffed pimentos dipped in tempura batter into hot oil for one of the components of the hor de'oeurve tray.

As the evening went on and dinner was about to start, everyone started to get into motion. Luckily, the menu wasn't too complicated. Much of the stuff was already half-prepared in advance so it wasn't too difficult to plate and send out. From my memory, it was:

Hor de'oeurve plate: spoonful of fettucine with parma ham in cream sauce, radish slices with cream cheese on crostini and those tempura cheese-filled pimentos.

Starter: Venison of carpaccio with pine nuts, croutons and some kinda mayonaise-base sauce. Cheese souffle was the vegetarian option.

Main course: Roast chicken with side of roasted vegetables, herbed roasted potatoes and risotto as sides.

Dessert: Champagne fruit salad with a quenelle of lemon sorbet.

The evening went surprisingly smoothly food-wise, considering we were mostly Jamie-Oliver-watching homecook types. The only small hiccup for the whole evening was some confusion in the dining room because some tables apparently didn't get any chicken, which thankfully was not our fault.

For dessert, Reinard also put me in charge of quenelling the sorbet onto the fruit salad, since I was the only one besides him who knew what a quenelle was and how to do it. Later the same evening he told me if I wanted, I could probably apply to work at restaurants since I seemed to have the right stuff. My proud little moment for the night.

So dinner eventually ended, and the cooks were asked to come out of the kitchen to receive the applause and gratitude of the wedding guests and newly-wedded couple. Everyone seemed really happy, and so was I and everyone else who had toiled for hours in the kitchen (starting at 2pm and finishing at 10).

The night continued on, and I got drunk on beer and palinka (a Hungarian plum brandy that the father of the bride brought over). I slept in one of the rooms of the lodge overnight. Woke up the next day, biked home in dreadful Dutch weather (it was raining), got home completely exhausted and promptly went back to bed for the rest of the day.

In the end the only reward I got from the couple was a cheap bottle of wine and a box of arugula left over from the night before. I don't think it was because they were cheap or ungrately, just kinda poor. They were decent people and did eventually invite us (me & the theatre troupe who were the servers) to dinner sometime later to thank us for our efforts.

Yet somehow knowing I helped make somebody's big day work out right that night was one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had in my life. And the fact that it was for someone whom I didn't even know very well made it all the more satisfying.

I guess that's one of the reasons I'm grateful I learned how to cook.