Aspie Chefs?

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What I did is make one cake and take it to a restaurant. Where I live in Oregon it seems to me that most people eat at least one meal out every day, and there are coffee shops on every other corner. I think you could take your desserts to any place like that, and see how it goes. You need to think about how much you will charge, because the customer is going to want to make at least 33% off of what you bring them. And you will want to think about how your product stores, and how they will present it. I used to give some accounts a cake dome to present my cake, for example.

I am not a chef yet,, but I am in culinary school right now getting my BA in culinary arts. I am hoping to start working in a fine dining restaurant right after I graduate. Working in a kitchen with aspergers is a struggle, but if you're passionate enough then you can do it. I do get flustered and stressed often though.

I cook professionally, but I'm not a chef; a chef is more of a manager than anything, he designs the menu and handles the ordering and paperwork more than actually cooking the food. At least that's how it's supposed to work, I've certainly been at places where you have a chef that also works a station on the line, but those are usually smaller places and there may only be a couple of guys in the kitchen. The bistro I work at is so low staff that it's usually just me in the kitchen, which can get a bit hectic when there's hot food in the oven and/or on a burner and a whole table orders salads and carpaccio and you've got a server yelling that he needs them on the fly.

I cook a lot at home too, and the personal interest has certainly fueled my professional trajectory, to a degree. I got into cooking because of my own specialized tastes, and eventually discovered that I enjoyed the work and have a pretty good, if non-traditional, palate. I would say that it's not a job for most AS people, it's loud, fast, and usually someone is yelling while you're trying to keep track of 6 things at once; I manage through a regime of benzos myself, otherwise I don't know that I could stand the working environment. Coming from a martial arts background helps too, when someone's yelling at you while you're wielding a large knife, heavy rolling pin, boiling hot pan, etc, methodically thinking through all the things you could do to them with the implement at hand is remarkably calming.

Last edited by Dox47 on 26 Nov 2012, 7:05 am, edited 1 time in total.

Chefs suffer. I survived on a sterling reputation... and they do too. So many of them (in my day) had emotional problems. They were obsessed with perfection, or angry, or obese, or drunks. Their jobs weren't easy. There were many upsets and changes... like pro-sports nowadays. It was the top purveyors, and the repair men, who fixed kitchen equipment THAT DAY, who survived.

I remember someone saying of Gordon Ramsay that when he was apprenticing in France that it was still legal for chefs to beat their cooks, and so it was little wonder that he's a bit, unstable these days. It really is sort of a tortured profession, with a high burn-out rate and a lot of maladjusted personalities working in it, not to mention the pirate crews of gypsies and oddballs found in the average kitchen. My talent is impeccable knife work and having a photographic memory, plus the klonopin enhanced ability to tune out all of the chaos and confusion and make the food *exactly* how I was shown how to, even if the guy who showed me how is the one yelling for it right this second. The memory thing synergizes really well with my extensive home cooking, as it's not unusual for me to greet a new menu item at work with "oh yeah, that's just like this but with a dash of that", and then rattle off some history about the development of that dish. It makes me seem more experienced than I actually am. I also long ago learned the line cook's lesson of taking pride in consistency rather than creativity while at work; it doesn't matter if I think the Alfredo sauce tastes better with a pinch of cayenne than a pinch of nutmeg, it's not my call and no good will come of me "tweaking" the food I prepare. Now at home I'm free to tinker to my heart's content and have the copiously annotated cookbooks to prove it, but professionally that kind of thing will have to wait until I'm the one designing the menu.

Eye opening stuff

Right on, Dox. For me I was coming in quite stoned off of good weed every shift and just letting all that stuff wash over me. Now that I have a real diagnosed anxiety disorder I will have to give those benzos (prescription?) things a try. I had to quit the pot because it was making me crazy.

I really do love to cook, especially on the line. I'm blessed? with ADHD too so having to multitask is my preferred state of being. I think our Aspie focus would do well in a kitchen to produce food that is consistent because we don't get as socially unnerved by whoever yelling at us. I've been told by people after service that they appreciate my 'cool head'; one guy I worked with snorted coke off the cooler behind me and yelled in my ear all day about this and that... at one point he stopped and he asked me how come I wasn't reacting to what he was saying, and I calmly said I was making sandwiches, not listening to him much! (yeah that didn't win me any brownie points, heh)

About G. Ramsay, that man is seriously genius and to have a Michelin star like what, a year out of school? is like... godlike in this profession. It is extremely difficult to earn a M star. Edited to add, it was over three years at Aubergine that he got his restaurant two Michelin stars. I was trying to remember!

I really appreciate everyone who responded. After nearly a decade in the hospitality industry (the majority in service rather than cooking positions) I was ready to quit and go on to something else. I still take courses here and there for my Biochem degree but my heart is in the kitchen and always will be. Thanks for sharing your stories, hope to hear more!

I’m a qualified chef. I love cooking but hate it as a job. I once worked in a big hotel as a chef in N Ireland, never again. It was very unsocial hours, underpaid and couldn’t stand the stress screaming and shouting from the head chef. It wasn’t a nice atmosphere. But I love cooking so much, you can’t beat making some good food and sharing it with others.

They're a whole class of prescription drugs, stuff like Valium, Klonopin, Xanax, Lorazepam, etc. I use Xanax and Klonopin, Xanax for acute anxiety, e.g. a huge group just walked in and I'm by myself or the store owner is riding my ass that day, and the Klonopin for generalized anxiety, e.g. everyday. They literally allow me to work in the industry, otherwise I would have stabbed someone in the walk in or dropped the pot and run in the middle of a service; never a good look to be sure.

Chef, yeah, that would probably be my nightmare profession. I get into meltdown town just when trying to cook a relatively simple meal.

i am not interested in cooking meals for anyone other than myself, but i do have quite an interesting ability (according to my tastes) to compile recipes that are delicious to me.

example:
date and sausage casserole.

ingredients:
1 cup of iranian pitted dated (not californian ones)
3 tablespoons of cream.
1 tablespoon of butter.
1 onion.
three beef sausages.
1/2 can tomato soup
1 cup of chicken stock.
2 teaspoons brown sugar.
1/2 cup of milk.
1 teaspoon of nutmeg.


method:
1. fry dates in butter for about 3.5 minutes at medium heat turning frequently.
2. boil sausages in water until cooked through and cut into 1 cm slices
3. remove dates from frypan and introduce sliced onion and cook until transparent (not caramelized)
3. add another knob of butter to frypan and reintroduce fried dates and fried onions and boiled sausage slices.
4. add 1/2 can of tomato soup and 1 cup of chicken stock and 2 teaspoons of brown sugar and 1/2 cup of milk and 3 tablespoons of cream and the nutmeg and simmer until thickened to your desired degree (i usually simmer for 40 minutes whilst adding small amounts of chicken stock to extend the reduction). also add 1 teaspoon of salt i forgot to mention.

after it is cooked for 40 minutes in this way, the sausage slices melt in the mouth and the associated flavor of the ingredients i mentioned elevates the culinary experience to what i would call "heavenly". it should be served with white fluffy unhealthy rice that completes the meal. it is delicious even if one is not hungry.

There's a guy making pretty good videos on youtube who's a chef

http://www.youtube.com/user/InjuredMinds

It was my nightmare job. Did it for a few years. There was so much peer contact, overstimulation, eyes on, yelling, preparations and the list goes on. Though once your familiar with each environment its fine. It was the social unease which broke me each time.

Why is it hard to be female in the cheffing profession?

i am an excellent chef. i have no training and i just started cooking less than a year ago.

everyone, including myself, is amazed at how good i am.

Is that in a kitchen taking orders from the others or working in your own environment? Addapting and learning new environments was what got me dismissed most of all. At first i could hold character for a while, impress with my skills, though it fades very quickly and eventually I would feel completely rejected aswell as overwelmed by everything.

Though when cooking under my rules I'm great and everybody loves it.