The Hilarious Dish

It's been a few days down the track now and I'm feeling much better, albeit a teensy bit emotional.
­
Okay, so I'm hiding under the covers of my nice and warm bed on a Friday night, half listening to David Letterman and Julianne Moore discussing pressed hams for some reason. How their conversation moved from fellatio to exposed underage buttocks I have no idea and even less so on why they began conversing so ardently about fellatio in the first place.
­
Life is a complex thing. It's slightly absurd and chock-a-block full of hilarious contradictions which more often than not, don't seem so hilarious when they actually occur as to when we can look back on them with a little more humility and grace.

­Blueberries on the Ceiling is a new event by Food Nerd which requires us to humiliate ourselves further by exposing our most vulnerable moments in the kitchen to a mass of talented food writers who could very well make bad hair sound horrifically dangerous. If you think this sounds like fun, you'll be in stitches when you watch this hilarious sketch from MAD TV.
­
Warning: I will be a qualified industry professional not too long from now so the following recount may be worrying.
­
­
This story occurred about two years ago when I was working in one of Sydney's largest and most prestigious fine dining restaurants. All year round we'd be catering for rich gits' parties whether they were large, small, off premises, business canape functions or wedding receptions.
­
We catered for the reopening of the Paspaley Pearl Gallery armed with a fire hose, we made an absolute fuckload of beignets and sushi for a $500/pp canape function at Guillaume at Bennelong and we held Gordon Ramsay's Sydney book launch. I once found myself wandering around a millionaire's house in Rose Bay for a $10,000 charity dinner provided by us for the hosts and 8 guests. On another occasion I remember dragging kitchen props to small church in Surry Hills which had been converted into a Gothic cathedral to do an eight course degustation for weirdly dressed people from Vogue. Once I even got to join my boss for a cooking class at Accoutrement despite that all I had to do was stand to the side pushing buttons, remember people's names for him and occasionally demonstrate super technical cookery skills like whisking.
­
I can't for the life of me remember what we were doing exactly. I just remember the oysters. FIFTY FIVE FREAKIN PORTIONS OF OYSTERS. Okay you're right, it doesn't sound like much but bloody hell, with just two people it's difficult to get that many portions ready for the first course from the moment you hear "GO!". Each plate needs two identical mounds of wetted rock salt, then the beautifully shucked Sydney Rocks sit on top. Each individual oyster needs a teaspoon of dressing, a little cucumber, a little daikon, then a quick once-over before it leaves the kitchen.
­
We hmm'ed and ahhh'ed in contemplation the day before and decided to pre-cut all the cucumber and daikon as we'd have to spend most of the next morning washing and shucking what would feel like a billion oysters. So, onward! First we peeled the cucumbers and daikons, then we sliced them before every single one was turned into perfect little brunoise. When we were finally done we threw it all into cryovac bags to keep it perfectly fresh for the next day.
­
Uh oh you say. Uh oh indeed.

­The next morning found the two of us huddled in the cool room, turning the bags over in our hands and muttering swears at all our hard work which was by now totally translucent. Needless to say, we were running around like headless chooks for a while, both trying to juggle the day's prep work and to amend our teensy mistake.
­
Bloody hilarious.