Working clean, constantly wiping and cleaning, is a desirable state of
affairs for the conscientious line cook. That chef was right: messy
station equals messy mind. This explains why side-towels are hoarded
like gold by good line cooks. When the linen order arrives, the smart
cookies fall onto it voraciously, stashing stacks of the valuable objects
anywhere they can hide them. One cook I knew would load them above
the acoustic tile in the ceiling above his station, along with his favorite
tongs, favorite non-stick pans, slotted spoons, and anything else he
figured he needed on his station and didn't want another cook to get. I'm
sure that years later, though that restaurant has changed hands many
times since, future generations of cooks are still finding stashes of
fluffy, clean side-towels.
It's not just clean that you value in a side-towel—it's dry. It's nice,
wiping the rim of a plate with a slightly moist one, but try grabbing a
red-hot sauté pan handle with a wet towel, and you'll learn fast why a
fresh stack of dry towels is a necessity. Some traditional European
kitchens still issue two towels per cook at the beginning of the shift: one
to work with while the other dries on the oven handle. This strikes me as
criminally parsimonious. I like a tall stack, conveniently located over
my station, in neatly folded, kitty-cornered, easy-to-grab fashion, and I
don't ever want to run out. I'll rip through twenty of them in the course of
an eight-hour service period, and if it costs my masters a few bucks
extra, tough. I'm not burning my hand or wiping grease on my nice plates
because they're too mean to shell out for a few more rented towels.
What exactly is this mystical mise-en-place I keep going on about? Why
are some line cooks driven to apoplexy at the pinching of even a few
grains of salt, a pinch of parsley? Because it's ours. Because we set it up
the way we want it. Because it's like our knives, about which you hear
the comment: "Don't touch my dick, don't touch my knife."
A fairly standard mise-en-place is a pretty extensive list. A typical one
would be composed of, for instance: