A Girl and Her Dragon – Don’t Panic
Oct 04, 2016Posted by Kylie HNo matter how long you’ve been catering, or how many times you’ve run through every part of the pizza making process, every once in a while you’re going to hit a snag and things are going to teeter on the edge of falling apart.
I felt this keenly a couple of months ago, standing in front a fire that would not start, stupidly having let myself run out of kindling, with my second-to-last piece of Firestarter resting by the mouth of the oven. We were expected to start serving in less than an hour, and, to top it all off, my lighter had gone dead.
The wind blew cold, and the little flames I had managed to build kept winking out as I raged (and cursed) at them. The problem was the firestarter; I didn’t have enough of it. Unless you have hours of time for trial and error, copious amounts of firestarter are the only way to get a good fire going. Without it, not enough of the wood was catching to produce a sustainable blaze.
I’d like to say that I handled the situation with decorum, with tranquility and confidence and professionalism. In reality, I had a mini-panic attack, stared at the charred logs like I could ignite them with my glare, and snapped at my hapless assistant. Forty-five minutes ‘til starting, and it wasn’t looking good.
So I did what every good caterer does, I sucked it up and I improvised. Swallowing my pride and panic, I asked the owners of the house if they had a lighter and some newspaper. They lent it to me without a second thought, their own faces reflecting none of the anxiety I felt. Strangely enough, this reassured me, especially when they said they’d need to push the start time back a good half hour (phew).
Light and makeshift firestarter in hand (never use newspaper as your primary firestarter, it burns hot and short and leaves quite a bit of ash behind). Then I scrounged around in my wood box for little scraps of log that could serve as makeshift kindling. Thank my lucky starts, there were enough chips and splinters to make together a decent kindling pile.
The newspaper, makeshift kindling and the already warm logs were enough to get a steady blaze going after a couple minutes (and some more cursing). Soon enough, we had a tidy little fire that I fed a bit overzealously, until the dome was 1200 degrees and the floor over 900˚.
In the end, it turned out fine. The event went off without a hitch: the guests loved the pizza, the hosts loved the hip-yet-tasteful ambience that a pizza oven brings, and the valets/bar guys scarfed down the free food (pro tip: always keep the valets happy, because they can spot you as you back the oven out of a tight driveway). However, I learned a couple of things from this experience.
First and foremost, don’t be sloppy about your supplies. I now keep good sized box stuffed to the gills with firestarter and kindling permanently stored under the oven. I’ve purchased another lighter, and am thinking about getting a spare. Before every event, I run down a checklist of exhaustible essentials, like wood, cornstarch and Firestarter.
Secondly, have a plan B. The newspaper-as-firestarter wasn’t pretty or effective, but it worked in an emergency. In leiu of cornstarch I can use flour (or vice versa), and I always keep an emergency stash of wood in the front of the oven.
Thirdly, and perhaps most important, don’t panic. The quarter hour I spent wringing my hands and biting my nails could have been used much more effectively, and in the end inaction and paralysis were my worst enemies. It’d be a bit of a stretch to say that I keep a perfectly level head every time I hit a bump in the road (literally at times), but ever since the success of that improvised fire, I’ve realized that the best thing one can when presented with an unexpected obstacle is take a deep breath and deal with it.
