#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. Many of us sometimes have a question: what if I were engaged in a different profession? How could I cope with it? Participants in the exciting project will be able to feel themselves in a different role and share impressions about the features of various specialties. And we will tell you about the facts and figures of various professions with the ‘different story’ tag.
Facts
The first guest of the project this year was Anton Zaitsev, manager of Nornickel’s public relations department. For one day, he was offered to join the staff of canteen No. 13 of the Nadezhda metallurgical plant.
This canteen is part of the large family of corporate catering Proservice Taimyr and daily serves up to 350 people for breakfast and dinner and 250-300 for lunch.
This year, the approach to corporate catering has changed significantly: three chefs with extensive experience have been invited to Norilsk to contribute their ideas on how to diversify the menu at industrial enterprises. Andrey Damaskin, a Proservice Taimyr’s chef, is one of them. A native of Chelyabinsk, he went through a lot of schooling in different cities of the country to grow to the chef title. In Norilsk, his task is rather creative:
“As a chef, I cook little: I mainly train cooks. We study the technology of preparation, carry out dish sorting (checking the appearance and taste of the dish by sampling), and come up with new recipes. My task is to calculate the technological process: how a person will move in the kitchen, how many operations he needs to perform. Also this year, the canteens have introduced themed events. For example, today is Russian cuisine day. To understand what exactly would be interesting to our guests, we conduct surveys and collect feedback. Which dishes are liked and which are not, we can see from sales: if borsch is taken by 100 servings, then cream soup is only 20.
One of the dishes that Anton Zaitsev prepared for guests that day was the traditional Russian skoblyanka. Before starting the work, the guest was given a mandatory apron and introduced to the production. Each kitchen employee must perfectly know its structure – where, what and how is stored. And there are enough rooms inside a regular canteen – sometimes it looks like an anthill.
The kitchen begins with the place of receipt and storage of goods: in the landing stage, cars are unloaded that bring meat, vegetables, fish and other products from distribution centers. Freezing and refrigeration equipment is installed here, everything is stored in groups. In case of road closure, there is a supply of food for three to four days.
Further on, there is a row of workshops: a room for preparing and storing eggs, where three-section sinks for soaking and processing eggs are installed; an ovoscope for checking each batch. There is a storage chamber.
Then there is a daily storage chamber, where peeled vegetables and hermetically sealed dairy products are kept. These products will be used within the next 24 hours.
In the neighboring meat workshop, they cut meat, prepare cutlets, clean fish (portion the fillets). Here, process maps are posted so that the cook can see how much raw material is needed for a particular product (it is easy to get confused – each recipe has its own characteristics, and the scale of cooking is impressive, up to 150-180 cutlets alone can be made). Here, the meat is rolled in breadcrumbs – by the way, they make them themselves.
In the vegetable workshop, they process vegetables: machines have almost replaced manual labor here. Automatic potato peelers handle large volumes, only the eyeholes and dark spots on the tubers are cleaned manually. The next room is a dry warehouse where bulk products are stored: flour, sugar, cereals. All of this is repackaged upon receipt, but with the preservation of the marking indicating when the product was produced.
Interestingly, in a large canteen, the sinks are also divided into white and black. In the white one, they wash tableware, in the black one – kitchen utensils and containers.
Traditionally, there are hot and cold shops, where they bake, fry, and pack salads. The latter task, by the way, is carried out right before distribution, so that the salads do not dry out. There is also a bread slicer there.
The hot shop is the center of modern kitchen equipment: combi steamers that saturate food with hot steam, baking cabinets, stoves, powerful hoods.
“The hood is so good that you can’t even feel the bitterness of the onion”, shared Anton Zaitsev, who, as a newbie, was put in charge of preparations. He got to peel and cut the onions, prepare the vegetables.
By the way, you need a lot of them for skoblyanka. In general, there are many recipes for it, as usual: in this case, they made it from potatoes and pork with plenty of onions and tomatoes. Initially, the dish was made from game, says the chef, this is a dish of northern hunters. So you can choose a variety of meat.
Skoblyanka is distinguished by an original way of cutting meat: a frozen piece of meat is scraped with a knife, getting thin pieces, hence the name of the dish. In this way, it resembles a stroganina, but with a difference: after slicing, the meat is fried in a frying pan. You can use one type of meat or several. Potatoes (and sometimes mushrooms) are cooked separately, then combined with the meat, stewed or baked until done. Before stewing, at the end of cooking, the dish is often poured with sour cream or cream and mustard. Other vegetables can also be used, depending on the season. Sprinkle with herbs before serving.
It is interesting that professionals do not neglect the secret of Norilsk housewives – frozen vegetables. According to the chef, they are selected in season, when tomatoes gain maximum taste and aroma. And then shock freezing allows you to seal these flavors.
To prepare such a dish for more than half a thousand people – and this is the throughput of this canteen for breakfast, lunch and dinner – serious preparation is needed. In any kitchen – and every worker will confirm this – preparations are the most labor-intensive part of the work. This is the only way to count on fast cooking, and the canteen makes not one, but several types of cold and hot dishes at once. For example, every day, the workers of the canteen are served a choice of two soups, three side dishes, and five meat dishes and salads.
The menu is designed for an 11-day step: this means that the dishes are not repeated during this time.
Anton Zaitsev shared that he is well acquainted with cooking: he is the permanent author and host of the program Around Food, which has been on our channel for almost two years. He enjoys cooking at home. But before, he had no chance to cook on an industrial scale, and this turned out to be the most difficult:
“I once cooked navy-style macaroni on board an icebreaker that was heading to the Murmansk region, but this is still not the same volume. It is very interesting how everything is organized here. You know, I ate in this canteen myself for four years when I worked at NMP, but I did not even imagine that there were so many rooms behind the counter! And everything is arranged like in the army: clearly, smoothly, harmoniously. No chaos. And this is despite the fact that a small number of people have to feed hundreds. Everyone just does their job and passes the process on like a relay race”.
After cutting the vegetables, the guest in the kitchen was entrusted with frying in a frying pan, after which the dish was sent to the combi steamer to finish cooking. All the visitors who wanted to try the skoblyanka that day. Anton Zaitsev and Andrey Damaskin agreed that the dish turned out juicy, with a very clear taste.
But making the food is only half the battle. Then you need to clean everything up and prepare for the next stage: dinner is ahead. And such a cycle repeats every day – so that people receive high-quality and varied food.
Chef Andrey Damaskin shared that the canteens try to diversify the workers’ diet:
“From a gastronomic point of view, the North is very attractive: it is a very interesting region in terms of meat, fish, berries, herbs”.
About his impressions
While the first shift of NMP workers were having lunch, Anton Zaitsev shared his impressions and noted that now he himself would be happy to taste the food he had prepared with his own hands.
“I have been helping my mother in the kitchen since childhood, and at school I studied cooking optionally. While the boys were doing electrical work and drawing diagrams, the girls and I were cooking in the kitchen to music. I think I made the right decision (laughs). I have always believed that it is better to cook and eat with pleasure than to buy ready-made food. Besides, I like to invite guests, and at tourist camps I am usually responsible for grilled meat”.
He said that for many years he worked in the workshop directly across from this canteen – in the raw material and batch preparation shop, where he started as a reagent solvent. Then he became a senior foreman of this section, after which he went to the plant management and was engaged in technological processes. And for the last six years he has been working at the public relations department. By the way, Anton is a representative of the Nadezhda dynasty: his father was there when the plant was launched, and his mother worked here for more than 20 years.
“I counted more than 60 years of our family’s total work experience at NMP. My mom and dad ate in this canteen for many years, and I did. So for me, it’s almost like a home”.
Anton admits that he liked trying on another profession – although familiar to him in general, but not easy, given the scale of the work:
“It’s really difficult. And it requires a lot of effort and attention. People in this profession deserve great respect for their difficult work”.
Numbers
The workers’ canteens serve three to four meals a day. Employees work 12-hour shifts. In a canteen similar to №13 at NMP, on average, a little more than 20 people work, and only eight of them are cooks.
In 24 hours, cooks can make 150-180 cutlets, 50 pieces of each type salads per shift.
Up to 3 tons of products are delivered to the canteen per week, with more meat than vegetables. Cheesecakes and casseroles made by local chefs are also very respected.
Up to 50 loaves of bread are consumed per day for almost 600 people eating.
Where you can learn cooking
In Norilsk, you can get a chef profession at the college of industrial technologies and service. However, to rise to the highest level of skill, you will need additional training and internships in different cities and, possibly, countries.
Vacancies
Catering outlets in Norilsk post vacancies on their resources, as well as on aggregators like hh.ru. A number of college graduates receive job offers while still in their senior years of study – today the college works in partnership with various food service establishments in the city, and some of the graduates are employed by chefs at several city restaurants.
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Text: Maria Sokolova, Photo: Nikolay Shchipko
