Chicken, quail, pheasant, ... Sparrow?

Wouldn't you agree that the only bird that belongs in a kitchen is a dead one?

Well then I have a story for you!

Yesterday when I got to work, my boss Sasha and I were planning our specials for the night. He was working the sauce station and needed a set* to go with his cote de porc (pork chops), and I needed sets for my Mahi-Mahi and Arctic Char. I had been off for the last two days and he was telling me about the produce that came in yesterday that he was planning on using for his plat ( no mom I didn't spell it wrong, plat is French). Apparently there were beautiful skinny yellow wax beans and clean chantrelles that he called dibs on. Danm! He knows how much I like to use fresh beans on my specials.
"well, what can I use then?" I jokingly demanded.
" lets go see what we have downstairs" He suggested.
Our walk-in fridge and dry storage** is downstairs in the basement.
We made the trip through the garage, down the stairs, through the filthy changing area (Have I ever told you guys that I have to get changed every day with a bunch of guys? That's a whole other post!) to the fridge.

He was right, the beans were gorgeous. They were slender, crunchy, and sunny yellow in colour. In compromise, he let me have the equally striking and perfect baby patti pan squash. After our first deal, we started to argue over the fresh aromatic basil that had arrived earlier that morning when we heard a noise unframiliar the basement of a restaurant.

Who the F%*k is chirping, and why????

Duh, the chirping is coming from that sparrow sitting on the pipe in the ceiling outside the fridge. Oh, that makes sense.
the sparrow
that's who is making the noise Sahsa...
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

He screamed, like a frightened child on the run from a giant hairy monster. He jumped back into the fridge and shut the door.
"What do we do now Meg?"
I was too surprised to laugh, yet.
We discussed it rationally inside the refuge of our fridge, and decided to try and capture it with a milk crate.
The door opened and we shot out screaming( and me laughing with tears streaming down my face). That bird was ours! So we thought. The ceiling is not paneled and the bird kept hopping from pipeline to pipeline mocking us, but who wouldn't. We were waving milk crates, throwing pumpkin seeds, standing on chairs, ducking, running away, and coming back for more. This bird was going down!!!! The attempted bird capture started with me and Sahsa stuck in the fridge, advanced to 5 cooks in a 5" by 10" room with 2 bus bins, 1 cardboard box, 2 milk crates, a handful of pumpkin seeds, and increasingly deflating egos, and ended when Rajeev told Alex there was no chance he could grab it with his hands,
" You're fat...., and that's a bird"
We tried. We gave up. How much damage can a sparrow do when left to its insticts in a basement? At least we got a really really funny story to tell at the bar later. " Did you hear Sasha scream?"

Last night I did my Mahi-Maihi with a beet caramel, yam pomme paille (match sticks), and a salad of juilenne beets, organic multicoloured carrots, fresh corn and micro mesclun greens (really beautiful salad greens).
I did my Arctic char with reduced balsamic, patti pan squash, asparagus and grape tomatoes sauteed in a basil pesto that I wound in between the layers of a really long sheet of fresh pasta.
I got big compliments on both fish.

Ohhh what happened to the bird you ask?
Our 19yr old bus boy killed it. Doesn't that sound morbid? He found it downstairs and coaxed it out of hiding and smacked it with a shoe.





** Dry storage, the room where a restaurant stores all "pantry"ingredients such as flour, salt, sugar, nuts, seeds, canned goods, oil....
* A SET is the starch, veg, sauce that accompanies the main ingredient on the plate.