Fifteen Years in America – Chapter 5: The Chef of the Student Cafeteria (Part 3 & 4)

This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Continued from Part 2

I told Jane that I was familiar with work in the kitchen.  She asked me if I had guaranteed hours for working and I told her that I was a student at the college and I can guarantee that I would work 2 hours a day and 10 hours a week.  Later I found out that the cafeteria is extremely busy during the lunch hours and they must have people that get there on time and guarantee the smooth operation of the cafeteria.

After listening to me Jane handed me an application, and told me to fill it out and bring it back.  Additionally, she asked for a copy of my last health checkup.  I think that is because I would be handling food and they need to guarantee that I am not diseased.

The next day I brought the finished application form and a copy of my health check to Jane.  She brought me to the kitchen’s grill.  There I saw a very muscular and tanned woman grilling many pieces of hamburger meat.  As she flipped the meat the oils that seeped out sizzled on the grill.

Jane said to that woman, “Morri, I found you a student helper!  His name is Jian, and now he is yours.”  Morri is one of the cafeteria’s chefs, and she was my supervisor.  Her supervisor is named Craig, and they’re both native Hawaiians and are both tall and large.  They’re both very nice and humble people.  Later I heard that Morri is actually 1/8th Chinese.  I guess  most people in Hawaii are very mixed and a couple of her great grandparents were Chinese.  However, she didn’t look Chinese at all.

Since I kept my promise and always came to work on time no matter how busy I was, Morri liked me and treated me very well.  Even though I told Jane that I know how to cook, but I never worked in a kitchen that served hundreds to thousands of people before.

–

Part 4

After I was hired by the student cafeteria, I would work there two hours a day, and I usually served lunch so I got there at 11am.  After I finished class, I would go straight to the cafeteria.  My main job was to help Morri make hamburgers.  Even though making hamburgers looks easy, it took a bit of practice for me to make them efficiently.

For example, the tomato slices in each hamburger must be even.  It is not good to have some thick pieces and some thin pieces.  At first, I was not good at balancing the tomatoes and my hamburgers looked lopsided.  Additionally, it is important for a hamburger to be cooked to the right temperature.  At that time the cafeteria made three types of hamburgers: beef, fish, and vegetarian.  Each type required a different cooking temperature and time.  The beef needed to be cooked the longest and at the highest temperature to kill the germs in the meat.  However, you couldn’t cook for too long because if all the juices are evaporated then it would be dry and tasteless.  If it was cooked for too short a time the meat would be raw and the consumers could be seriously sick.

The fish and vegetarian burgers were different.  First, these two types didn’t ooze oil like the beef so they didn’t create big oil  flames on the grill.   They were quite easy to cook.  Finally, there was quite a bit of skill involved in wrapping these burgers after they were cooked.  At first, I wrapped them extremely slowly and my products were quite ugly and the wrappings fell off easily.  After quite a bit of practice, the hamburgers I wrapped finally had the right shape.

Each day when I went to work, I would cut up the tomatoes first, and then prepare the lettuce.  Then, while I cooked the patties, I would lay out pieces of the wrapping paper and split the buns.  On each sheet of paper I would prepare the buns and place the tomatoes and cheese.  At the same time I would flip the patties.  After the patties were done I would put them on each of the buns and start wrapping.  When the students start to come in it gets extremely busy and my hands and feet were constantly moving.

Besides making hamburgers, I would sometimes help with frying the French fries and onion rings.  The hot oil often splashed onto my hands and body and it hurt like needles.   However, this bit of oil is really small potatoes compared to the heat I experienced in the steel factory I worked for during the Cultural Revolution.  At that time, I was only 15 and I lifted molten steel measuring thousands of degrees and passed many months chanting the mantra of “defeating heat and compete for the highest production”.  In that seven years of physical labor and training, I lost a lot of time for education, but in that environment of  “thousands of hammers and hundreds of purifications” I acquired an extremely strong will.  Another slogan that the Communists often taught was that “people need a bit of spirit”.  This will or spirit is what gave me the power to conquer the trials of starting over again.

After one month, I became a hamburger making expert.   However, I really wanted to bring the real “Yangzhou Fried Rice” to the cafeteria.

To be continued! 

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