Up with the rest of the world at Mamakas
Not many cooks or chefs work 9 to 5. Typical shifts are long and go late into the night. The whole culture of “working when everyone else is resting” is baked into the restaurant legend ethos.
However, not all chefs work crazy hours. Some manage to make beautiful, delicious food and still have a home life.
Like anyone else on the morning streetcar, Cora James arrives for work at 9 a.m. I meet her at the same time, in the back of the Greek restaurant Mamakas on Ossington, to make desserts and bread. If we can finish her prep list in time, we’ll both leave before service starts, around 5 p.m. Once all the hard work of production is done, a cook can easily plate her desserts during service.
A typical restaurant like this (open only for dinner) has everyone on from noon to midnight, which does create cohesion among the team, everyone prepping, cooking and cleaning at the same times. But it also doesn’t make maximum use of the space, the kitchen either empty or overcrowded at different hours of the day. The staggered schedules at Mamakas allow at least a few of the staff more of a “normal” workday.
Out front, light floods into the blue and white dining room, resting on the dusty, decorative copper pans hanging above the open kitchen. Day cook Leor Zimmerman has the front space to himself, though he comes back to the prep kitchen to ask if his music, Nirvana and Rage Against the Machine turned up full blast, is too loud for us.
James assigns me to baklava duty. For the next hour I brush layer after layer of phyllo, rolling the sheets around a mixture of walnuts, pistachios and honey as she makes cheesecake and ice creams. When I’m nearly done, I ask her how long the baklava takes her.
“Twenty minutes,” she estimates. “Maybe 21.”
Then there’s pita to make. Once the dough has risen, I cut and weigh out 65-gram portions — 99 of them. After that I roll each one into a ball and flatten them into disks, then take them up front to fry them on the griddle.
Over the hours, as I tackle these chores, other cooks trickle in one by one. When I’ve finished the pita Zimmerman says I’ve done a good job and jokingly offers me $11.25 an hour to do it every day.
As the day cooks begin to pack up, they ask each other what they’re doing tonight. One is going out for dinner with her boyfriend. Another says his wife is making dinner for him.
My phone buzzes with a photo from my girlfriend, a picture of the stew she’s making and a request for me to pick up sour cream.
In our home I do most of the cooking, for no more reason other than I love to cook and I love to have someone to cook for. Plus, she has a “real job” and I work from home, my schedule more flexible. Having dinner ready when Victoria gets home from work is one of the joys of my weekdays (maybe it’s a recipe I’m testing for work, so it’s a twofor). But on the occasion that I’m out doing physical work, it’s a special thrill to know that dinner’s waiting for me. It’s certainly not something I experienced the six years during my younger days when I cooked for a living and never got home before midnight.
The shifts of most restaurant cooks, sweating away while everyone else is putting up their feet at the end of the day, can begin to feel normal when you do it for long enough. I remember that sentiment, that the rest of the world, with their eight-hour days, family dinners and weekends off, were squares. That outsider/outlaw mentality, and the adrenalin rush of high-pressure dinner service, can be cool when you’re young. But it’s important, particularly for young cooks, to know the long hours pervasive in restaurant culture don’t have to be standard — there are opportunities to cook great food and have a life as well. Baklava At Mamakas, pastry chef Cora James makes individual baklava. For home use, she says to bake a big tray. Whether yours is square or rectangular (or parallelogram), just cut the phyllo to match the dimensions. It just needs to be deep enough, at least 2 inches (5 cm), to hold the syrup.
1/4 cup (60 mL) unsalted butter
2 cups (500 mL) chopped walnuts
2 cups (500 mL) chopped pistachios
2 tsp (10 mL) ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp (2 mL) ground cloves
3/4 cup (180 mL) honey
18 sheets Phyllo pastry, cut to the size of whatever baking tray you’re using
1 cup (250 mL) sugar
3/4 cup (180 mL) water
11/2 tbsp (22 mL) lemon juice
1 cinnamon stick
In a medium pot on low heat, melt butter.
In a large mixing bowl, combine and blend walnuts, pistachios, ground cinnamon, cloves and 1/2 cup (125 mL) honey. Preheat oven to 350 F/180 C. Using a brush, coat bottom of baking tray with melted butter. Place 1 sheet of phyllo in the tray. Brush with butter. Repeat until you have 8 layers. Using your hands, spread half of the nut mixture over the phyllo. Add 5 more layers of phyllo and butter. Spread the remaining half of the nut mixture over top. Layer the final 5 sheets of phyllo and butter.
Portion baklava with a knife before baking, to prevent brittle dough from shattering after.
Bake in oven until golden brown on top, about 25-30 minutes.
While baklava is baking, prepare syrup by combining sugar, water, lemon juice, cinnamon sticks and remaining 1/4 cup (60 mL) honey in a pot. Bring to a light boil. Strain hot syrup and pour over finished baklava. There will be an excess of syrup in the pan. But once cooled, the baklava will reabsorb much of the syrup. Cool before serving. Makes 6 servings
Star Tested Email mintz.corey@gmail.com and follow @coreymintz on Twitter and Instagram.