#culinary whump

[tragedyinblue]

Today I learned that raw garlic can cause chemical burns! Managed to dice and crush 10 cloves (out of 20) for a recipe before I noticed the pain 🙃

[whither-wander-whump]

Gordon Ramsey as a caretaker (never thought id ever type this)

I never thought I’d type this either.

[Please note that I usually don’t write whump involving real people. This is solely for humorous purposes and committing to the bit. (It was also weirdly cathartic.) A fitting end to the Gordon Ramsay Whump Saga, if it doesn’t set the whole thing off again. Also I did censor the swears just because I try not to use them, but feel free to uncensor them when you read.]

“Whumpee!”

Whumpee jumped, dropping the knife they had been using to chop parsley. They winced at the sound of the knife clattering to the floor. “Y-yes, Chef?”

Chef Whumper did not look happy. They slammed a plate down on the stainless steel table that Whumpee had carefully polished to a mirror finish the previous night, spilling sauce across the shiny surface. “What,” Chef Whumper growled, “do you call this?”

“Um…it’s the glazed duck that you told me to make, Chef.” Whumpee bent down to pick up the dropped knife.

Chef Whumper’s voice turned deceptively casual. “What’s the classic way to serve duck, Whumpee?”

Whumpee’s heart sank. “Duck à l’orange, Chef,” they answered, trying to stop their voice from trembling.

“Then why,” Chef Whumper shouted, “does this duck have a mango glaze on it?!”

Whumpee cowered away from the angry chef. “The mango glaze is the only one you left me, Chef! I’m not allowed to get more ingredients!”

“You think the guests in this restaurant want to eat something like this? Duck with a mango glaze on it? I’m going to lose money, and it’s your fault!” Chef Whumper snarled. “Just like that time when you overfilled the soup bowls!”

Whumpee flinched at the memory. They’d filled the soup bowls nearly all the way, expecting the guests to be hungry. Chef Whumper had berated them about that for hours- “Fine dining is an experience! People don’t come to eat their fill, they come for the experience of tasting gourmet food!” Whumpee still had scars from the bowl of hot soup that Chef Whumper had thrown at them, and they still remembered how they hadn’t gotten to eat for nearly a week after that incident. What’s the punishment going to be this time? they wondered fearfully.

Chef Whumper’s eyes glittered with a cruel light. “Hand me that knife, Whumpee.”

Whumpee’s heart skipped a beat. “Chef, i-it was an accident!”

“Oh, I know. But your punishment won’t be.”

Chef Whumper lunged forward and grabbed the knife. Whumpee yelped, stumbling back and landing hard on the tile floor. “Chef, please! I-I made a mistake! It won’t happen again!”

“It most certainly won’t!” Chef Whumper advanced with the knife, and Whumpee shut their eyes and waited in terror.

That was when the kitchen door slammed open with a loud bang.

“Get out of my kitchen!” bellowed Chef Whumper.

“Did you just tell me to get out of your kitchen?” The new voice was deep and accented, and Whumpee thought it sounded familiar, but they couldn’t place it in their fear. “What do you think you’re doing, you donut?”

“I’m disciplining one of my kitchen workers,” Chef Whumper growled.

“Do you make a habit of terrorizing your staff, you f***ing donkey?”

Who would dare talk to Chef Whumper that way?

“Don’t just stand there like a big f***ing muffin! Put the knife down and back away!” the stranger bellowed.

To Whumpee’s shock, they heard the sound of the knife clattering on the countertop. Chef Whumper stepped away, and the stranger moved into their place. Whumpee cringed away from them, bracing for harsh words.

“Oh dear, oh dear, gorgeous,” murmured the same voice, now soft and gentle. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Look, I’m here to help you.”

To help- me?

Trembling, Whumpee opened their eyes.

They saw a chef’s uniform and flinched on instinct, but it wasn’t Chef Whumper who knelt at their side. It was a strange man, with blond hair and a face Whumpee felt like they should know…

“And what are you doing here, Gordon Ramsay?” demanded Chef Whumper. “Besides interfering with my business?”

The new chef straightened up. “It’s Chef Ramsay to you, you muppet. And someone called me to complain about your restaurant practices. What a kitchen nightmare this turned out to be.” He extended a hand and helped Whumpee to their feet. “Now, you useless sack of sh*te, why don’t you explain why I walked in to find you threatening an employee with a knife?”

“They deserve punishment,” snapped Chef Whumper. “They ruined a dish!”

“You’re a f***ing disgrace,” Chef Ramsay shot back. “What dish did they supposedly ruin, eh?”

Chef Whumper, redfaced with fury, jabbed a finger to the plate still abandoned on the counter. “It was supposed to be duck à l’orange, but this little idiot used mango instead of orange!”

“Mango duck?” Chef Ramsay strode to the table, picked up the knife, and cut himself a bite of the duck. Whumpee bit their lip, knowing that the dish wasn’t up to gourmet standards. Chef Whumper smirked cruelly at Whumpee.

Chef Ramsay chewed thoughtfully, his face giving nothing away.

“Well?” Chef Whumper demanded.

“Delicious,” Chef Ramsay pronounced. “Finally, some good f***ing food.”

Chef Whumper’s mouth dropped open, and they turned furiously to Whumpee, who stood blushing with unexpected happiness. “What?!”

“Mango pairs so nicely with duck, they were just made for each other. More unique than orange, and sometimes you need a unique touch. And your employee there clearly knows how to cook a duck breast, because that one is beautiful. Better than anything I’ve had of yours.” Chef Ramsay snapped his fingers. “Hey, panini head, are you even listening to me? I’m saying you’d better start treating your kitchen staff right, because this one could outshine you any day.”

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” Chef Whumper growled, and Whumpee flinched.

Chef Ramsay saw it. “Right. That’s it. Darling? I’ve got an open place at one of my restaurants if you’d like to come and cook for someone who isn’t utter sh*t.”

“I-I don’t exactly like to cook,” Whumpee said shyly. “I love to bake, but Chef Whumper wouldn’t let me.”

“Lovely! I can always use a good baker. Hey, you pitiful excuse for a chef- they quit. Come on, my darling.”

Whumpee felt like they were dreaming as they followed Chef Ramsay to the kitchen door. Chef Whumper watched in fury, but made no move to stop them.

Chef Ramsay turned at the door. “Right. Nearly forgot. Where do they keep the ingredients, love?”

“In that pantry,” Whumpee answered.

Chef Ramsay vanished into the pantry, and came out with two slices of bread. “Chef Whumper.”

“What?”

Chef Ramsay held a slice of bread on either side of Chef Whumper’s head. “What are you?” he asked coldly. “Say it.”

Chef Whumper’s eyes blazed with anger, but they didn’t dare disobey. “An idiot sandwich,” they spat.

Whumpee laughed for the first time in far too long.

Chef Ramsay nodded curtly. “Yeah, you bloody are. And if I hear of you mistreating your staff again, I’ll be back with a cast-iron pan to knock some sense into you.” He returned to Whumpee. “Right, darling, let’s get out of this kitchen nightmare. And I want the recipe for that duck.”

[whither-wander-whump]

Gordon Ramsay debate? Did I miss something, Puck?

I posted a whump prompt based on a culinary whump concept I created while I was in culinary school.

Someone saw the prompt and sent me an ask about Gordon Ramsay as a whumper, which I found hilarious, and someone else turned it into a meme.

That set off a whole chain of anons informing me that Gordon Ramsay would be a caretaker rather than a whumper because he yells at jerk chefs instead of harangued kitchen staff.

So. Yeah. Some weird things happening on the blog.

[whither-wander-whump]

Gordon Ramsay wouldn’t be a whumper! He calls out kitchen injustice! He stands up to chefs who mistreat their staff and he’s always nice to the waiters and calls them darling! I will NOT tolerate Gordon slander!! 🤬🤬

Yeah, I addressed that, don’t worry! I mentioned that he’s usually yelling at arrogant chefs instead of the people who are actually trying their hardest.

But it’s really funny to imagine a whumper yelling “WHERE’S THE LAMB SAUUUUUCE”

[whither-wander-whump]

Gordon Ramsay as a whumper

(Okay so first I’ll point out that the only Gordon Ramsay thing I’ve watched was Kitchen Nightmares, and in that show he’s usually yelling at arrogant chefs who think they know better than everyone else, and I love that. I don’t know how he is in other stuff, but in that show he’s not yelling at the people who are actually trying, just at the prideful chefs in charge. And I saw a quote once where he said “Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls, and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them” and I can absolutely corroborate. Chefs are jerks.)

But for hilarity’s sake, heck yes.

Just the mental images have me giggling. Whumper yelling “WHAT ARE YOU?” and Whumpee answering “An idiot sandwich!” through floods of tears.

[whither-wander-whump]

I think I’ve mentioned that while I was in culinary school, to deal with The Horrors of it I created a wildly complicated culinary whump concept, and I had plans to write a series about it but it sucked too much and I didn’t want to think about it anymore. (For anyone who doesn’t know I was a culinary student for a semester and it was horrible and I hated it and I will never ever take a culinary job ever.)

I think it’s finally time I explain that concept- this will never be a series I write myself, because I honestly don’t want to put myself back in that culinary setting to write it. So it’s going to live here as a bizarrely complicated prompt/ramble.

There’s a thing in professional kitchens called the kitchen brigade- it’s a sort of hierarchy that all kitchens have, although most kitchens won’t have the whole lineup. It goes from the chef all the way down to the dishwashers, and it’s the chain of command in the kitchen. It’s pretty rigidly adhered to, and it’s understood that the chef and sous chef have absolute power. It very much is a hierarchy, except the roles are so specialized that competing for stations is a bit less of a thing.

I wanted to make that hierarchy literal. And also do the competing for roles thing.

In my idea, the kitchen brigade would be made up of kidnapped whumpees, none of whom had any experience in a professional gourmet kitchen. Only the chef and sous chef would be actual chefs, and they would also be the whumpers.

The whole thing would be run like some kind of twisted game. Everyone would get assigned a random position in the kitchen brigade to start, and every night they would be judged on how well they completed their assigned tasks, and assigned a new position based on how well they did. Those assigned to the lower end- the dishwashers, cleaners, porters, waiters- would be living in misery, sleeping on the kitchen floor, eating the kitchen scraps, basically getting nothing. While those who did well would get better and better treatment the higher they got on the ladder, as station cooks or area chefs.

It would basically be this big, cruel culinary game- you had to try and get higher on the ladder, but you have no idea what you’re doing. People would be sabotaging each other, nobody could trust anyone else, and the chef and sous chef would be handing out torturous culinary punishments to anyone caught cheating or not doing well enough or just plain whenever they felt like it (said punishments would naturally make it even harder to do your tasks right, knocking you back down to a lower level, with harder tasks that are even more difficult to get right, and so on and so on.)

But you don’t have a clue what you’re doing, so you basically have to cheat and try not to get caught, or you don’t have a chance. It’s a game you can’t win- even if you do get higher up, you can always be knocked down again, and there’s no real way out- you can only fight to make it a little better, but it’s always a perilous position.

No one is stable, and no one is safe. If you try to stay low, with easier tasks, the conditions are impossible to live in. But if you get higher up to get better living conditions, the tasks get harder and harder until you inevitably fail and get demoted again. There’s no winning. The only ones who win are the chef and sous chef, who get to enjoy everyone else’s suffering.

And of course the miserable conditions are the same- all the whumpees are in uniform, hot and sweaty or cold and wet, and the same dangers of a kitchen still apply. You can still burn yourself or cut yourself or any number of things. The chef and sous chef still have sky-high expectations that you’d better match or else.

I also had the further idea that this fictional torture kitchen is cooking for some extremely wealthy (and slightly sadistic) guests, and that the kitchen has a glass roof and is situated underneath the dining area. So the guests get to pay to watch everyone scramble about trying to make the best of their situation, all while enjoying a gourmet meal.

I actually did start writing this a little bit, but then came the Day of the Chicken and that put me right off ever doing a culinary whump anything. Except for prompts and ideas like this. Like I said, it’s absurdly complicated, but I did have fun thinking about it while I endured my own irl culinary whump. Honestly it probably got me through that semester, imagining whump in it. Unlike these hypothetical kitchen whumpees, though, I got a chance to escape :)

[whither-wander-whump]

Culinary Whump Stuff

For whatever reason I’ve had my single semester of culinary school on the brain recently. So I decided to revisit those days and make a list of all the stuff that has whump potential in a professional kitchen. I actually did have an idea for a culinary-based whump series once, but I ended up not writing it because it was very complicated and at that point I was sick of the whole business. Someday I’ll make it a one-shot or turn the complicated premise into a prompt or just word dump about the idea or something.

There’s a lot of stuff in a professional gourmet kitchen that can hurt someone. Safety is a huge thing. Also chefs make really good whumpers. Just throwing that out there…not holding a grudge at all…

These aren’t very fleshed out, and aren’t in any particular order. They’re mostly just stuff I remember being hurt or annoyed by. But they do have whump potential! All of them are under the cut just in case!

- a professional-grade meat slicer. This is terrifying. I hated this thing. It can and will cut through almost anything that isn’t solid metal. Including body parts.

- a salamander. Not the lizard. This is a little oven that directs heat onto just the top of whatever you put in it, used for melting cheese or toasting bread or whatever. I know from personal experience that this thing HURTS if you stick your arm into it.

- knives. Good gravity, so many knives. Knives designed specifically for taking meat off of bones. Knives for cutting into things. Knives for slicing things. Knives for chopping things off of whatever they’re attached to. Knives that can do all of the above. Literally so many knives.

- a cleaver. Ever seen one of those cartoon chefs waving a cleaver around while they talk in a ridiculous French or Italian accent? Yeah. That.

- various other sharp things. Kitchen shears, skewers, even forks. I have been stabbed with a fork under the fingernails while washing dishes. It hurts. A lot.

- heavy stick-ish things. Oven peels, rolling pins, some types of spatulas and spoons- anything heavy and big that you could potentially use to hit someone.

- a mandolin. This is a tool that makes uniform slices out of whatever gets rubbed back and forth across it. They are so stupidly sharp that we were required to wear chain mail gloves whenever we used one. Chain. Mail. Gloves.

- a deep fat fryer. Bubbling hot oil, in a big huge container. Need I say more?

- ovens, blowtorches, various hot tools. See above.

- on that note, steam burns. Steam burns hurt longer than normal burns, in my experience. Hot water burns are slightly less painful, but can have worse effects.

- cleaning chemicals and soaps. It takes a long time to get a professional kitchen clean, and you need some strong chemicals and soaps to do it. Some of those chemicals have a nasty habit of affecting skin in bad ways unless you’re wearing gloves.

- frying pans/pots/heavy metal dishes. This will knock you out if you get beaned in the head with one. A cast iron skillet will probably land you in the hospital. I thankfully do not speak from personal experience here.

- a walk-in freezer. Not as cold as you might expect, but definitely not pleasant to stay in longer than two minutes.

- sinks. Professional sinks are about as deep as an adult’s arm, and the water comes out fast. Hold someone’s head in there and it will be very hard for them to fight their way up.

- tasting stuff. You have to taste everything in a professional kitchen. Even if you hate the taste of whatever it is, even if it’s so spicy it makes you cry. We got docked points if we didn’t do this.

- wetness. That sounds weird. But when you work in a professional gourmet kitchen, you are always wet in some place. Your hands are wet. Your socks and shoes are wet. The bottom of your pants are wet. Your apron is wet. Somehow your hat is wet. It’s just very wet, especially back in the dish pit. It’s not so much whumpy as it is just very uncomfortable, and some classes the only thing I could focus on was the fact that there was wet fabric on my legs.

- broken porcelain dishes! Something broke about once a week while I was in culinary school. I actually think porcelain/enamel shards are worse than glass. They tend to fly everywhere. And porcelain cuts deep. It doesn’t really stick in you like glass does, but it cuts really deep.

- speaking of which, broken glass also happens. And that does stick in you.

- the uniforms. Professional culinary uniforms are uncomfortable, hot, and weirdly dehumanizing in a setting with a lot of other people wearing the exact same thing as you. I used to identify people by height and skin tone because it was the only way to tell them apart. The uniforms have several layers and are very exacting- my chef used to do random sock checks to make sure we were wearing ankle-length black socks, and I had to hide two personal pieces of jewelry, my cross necklace and my ace ring, to make sure I didn’t get yelled at for wearing them. Also culinary pants are hard to find if you’re small or short. The uniform is tradition, and there’s some pride connected with wearing it, but it also strips a lot of the individuality out of a kitchen brigade. I still have mine. I plan to burn it.

- disturbing tasks. Especially if you’re sensitive or have prior trauma, getting told to take apart or fabricate, say, an entire chicken carcass is awful. I cried the whole time I was doing it and lost points on the midterm because I flatly refused to do it a second time. Deveining shrimp, fabricating any kind of animal, cooking things like lobster and octopus and stuff that still looks like a creature- it can really mess with you. I’ll never forget the sound of a knife going through bone.

- physically impossible tasks. Kitchen work requires strength, a lot more strength than you might think. There were several things I had to convince the chefs to do for me, simply because they wouldn’t believe that I didn’t physically have the strength to do them myself. There were also some things they had to do for me because I was too short to do them, like those stupid salamanders placed about two feet from the freaking ceiling. Short whumpees, beware culinary settings.

- an uncomfortable environment. Kitchens are hot, steamy, loud places. You are on your feet the entire time, and you don’t get a moment to rest. You’re always rushing to do multiple things at once, and everyone around you is trying to do multiple things, and you’re all usually getting yelled at by a chef. It’s sensory hell and hard on your body, too.

- the whole culture of a professional kitchen- the strict hierarchy, the uniforms, the tendency of chefs to yell at you and point out every tiny mistake…that all contributes to whumpy effects. Trust me on this one. It only took four weeks for me to go from a bright-eyed baby chef excited to learn a career to a miserable student just wanting the semester to be over. Unless you are extremely thick-skinned and don’t mind being yelled at and ridiculed for ten plus hours a week, the culinary culture will affect you. It’s some hefty emotional whump, and I only got twelve weeks of it.

If you have or are considering a culinary career, please don’t let this post discourage or offend you!This is just whump ideas based on my own experience, it’s not universal and not all kitchens are like this. If you’re considering culinary whump, this post will hopefully give you some ways to do it. This was a fun break from NaNoWriMo, and it was actually kinda therapeutic for me to think back to that semester and stick all the negative stuff that happened to me into the context of whump, which is something I love! Enjoy, and I’d love to be tagged if anyone writes something with any of these! I’m also happy to answer questions or flesh any of these ideas out if anyone’s curious!