Iakovos Apergis, Chef de cuisine at Tzaneio, describes a week day at work with challenges not missing during the daily preparation of meals.
We admire them, we’ve tried their specialties from time to time, we follow them loyally on social media and at least once in our lives we wished we could “inherit” their culinary talent.
Chefs, first-line cooks, beyond their glamorous public image, have to manage a rather complex daily life in their work with good and bad moments, just like all of us, difficulties that harden them to iron and shape their characters.
Iakovos Apergis has given writing samples from a very early age. Choosing to work not in an award-winning restaurant as the head of a well-tuned brigade but in a hospital, he proves almost daily that there are no barriers at the culinary art and is not limited to venues of haute cuisine. After all, good food combined with the love of giving to fellow human beings makes the ultimate difference.
05.00am: I have always been a morning person. Over the years, I find myself becoming more and more involved with food. As soon as I wake up, I start planning the day.
06.00am-19.00pm: The hospital kitchen operates daily from 06.00 am to 19.00 pm with two working shifts from 06.00 am to 14.00 pm and from 11.00 am to 19.00 pm. The morning shift employs 3-4 people while the afternoon shift employs 2 people.
The morning meal includes milk heating that will be served as a morning drink, as well as food distribution per clinic such as toast, honey or jam, margarine, eggs, caseri cheese, yoghurt, bread, fruit, compotes, jelly, cream, etc. depending on the daily diet.
At the same time, sandwiches are prepared, intended for the personnel of the closed departments, as well as the patients undergoing hemodialysis.
I am sometimes troubled when I hear friends and acquaintances start their day with just a coffee. Over the years, perhaps because of my work and my interactions with doctors of several specialties, I try wherever I am to emphasize the importance of a correct and balanced diet plan.
Part of our responsibilities is the preparation of meals according to the standards of the Mediterranean diet.
It may sound cliché, but I don’t cease for a moment thinking about how important a proper diet plays in the health of every person and how much we neglect it by adopting foreign standards and choosing products of dubious quality while our country has enormous wealth.
Extraordinary events will occur as well as difficulties requiring immediate solutions. No matter how much you think you have it all figured out, something will always come up that throws you off schedule.
Iakovos Apergis- Chef at Tzaneio Hospital
The nature of our work is no different from that of a restaurant or hotel. But the responsibility is great. Having gone through several health problems myself and seeking to give our patients the opportunity to taste familiar and delicious flavors, with the warm responsiveness of the hospital administration, we achieved to get over years of stereotypes and prejudices as Iakovos Apergis stresses out.
The shift cook undertakes the cutting of meat (beef, pork, chicken, fish depending on the daily diet), while the assistants undertake the preparation of other foods (cleaning vegetables, making jelly, cream, rice milk, etc).
Consequently, we assume cooking for patients and doctors on call.
The food is distributed in gastronome containers that are placed on the thermobox wheels per clinic and at approximately 13:00 the thermoboxes are collected by the clinic cashiers.
In parallel with the above tasks and in collaboration with the food technologist, we participate in the qualitative and quantitative delivery of the various goods. Similar are the tasks during the afternoon shift, where the preparation of evening meal for the patients and the doctors on duty is carried out.
Extraordinary events will occur as well as difficulties requiring immediate solutions. No matter how much you think you have it all figured out, something will always come up that throws you off schedule such as staff shortages or illness, equipment breakdowns, food shortages, or even power and steam outages.
The time has come for him to hang up his apron and for us to say goodbye to him for the day. Tomorrow dawns a new day for Iakovos Apergis and his team in Tzaneio hospital. So we ask him what he has achieved all these years and his answer is as direct and honest as himself. “Healing of the soul” he adds.
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