Healthy Place to Die (11 page)

“I’ve been looking for the opportunity to talk to you,” I told him. “I spent many of my earlier years on cruise ships as a chef. I understand you act as a consultant to the Scandinavian cruise lines.”

“That’s right,” he said happily, “as well as running my restaurant in Copenhagen.”

“Cruises must have changed a lot since my day.”

“The food on cruise ships has changed more than anything else,” he said. “The big Norwegian ships still have their dining rooms with assigned seating, just like the spa here. The ships cater to two thousand passengers or more, but now they offer another choice.”

“Competition?”

“The ships now have cafes that operate on a first-come, first-served basis. They are casual and quick and offer salads, soups, sandwiches, pasta, and other light meals.”

“The introduction since my day of vegetarian and calorie-conscious meals is another innovation,” I said.

“There are other innovations too. Informality has been introduced in lots of ways. Poolside grills, bistro bars where snack meals are served. Many ships now have a resident dietitian. Then too, some lines now offer gastronomic cruises. Guest chefs from famous restaurants are sometimes on board, and the dishes from their restaurants become the highlights of the menu.” He laughed. “Oh, yes, my friend, things have changed!”

We talked for quite a while. He was a friendly fellow and we discovered a few mutual acquaintances. “This is my first visit to a spa,” I told him. “You have been to others, I’m sure.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Quite a number.”

“How does this compare?”

He darted me a quick look. “
Ja,
” he muttered, “yes, compare …” He seemed to make up his mind. “The food here is very good, very good indeed. But uneven—you know what I mean?”

“Not consistent? The quality varies?”

“Yes, that is it.”

“It’s been of very high quality since I’ve been here,” I said. “All the meals—and I’ve been keeping an eye on what others have been eating. It has all seemed to be excellent.”

“That is true,” he said eagerly. “This time, it has been very good.”

“But other times, not so good?”

“Three months ago, I was here,” he confided. “The wild salmon was lacking in texture; it was dull, flat, uninteresting.”

“Every chef has an occasional bad day,” I reminded him.

“The next day, the
veloute de tomate
was underseasoned. It has only garlic in it, as cooked—I am sure you know this—so that seasoning has to be added just before serving. The chef had not done this.”

“He is very busy in there while the meals are in final preparation before being served.” Why was I making excuses for him? I wondered.

“Busy he may be,” said the Swedish chef. “There are many things to do,
ja.
But they must be done. Otherwise the meal is not perfect.”

“How often are meals perfect?”

“Not often—but the chef must do all he can to try for perfect. There is no excuse for not seasoning the soup.”

“You’d be tough to work for, Axel.”

He shook his head firmly. “I don’t think so. I demand a lot, sure. But I am fair—and I don’t ask anyone in my kitchen to work harder than me.”

“I’m sure of that,” I told him. “I’ll have to try one of your cruise ships.”

Until this moment, I had only my own experiences of the food at the spa on which to base any judgment. Axel’s wider experience was now suggesting that it varied in quality. A further viewpoint on Leighton Vance’s cooking would be interesting. When I left Axel Vorstahl, I looked for Michel Leblanc but could not see him in any of the obvious places. I was near the spa kitchens so I thought, why not give another look?

As I approached, I could hear raised voices from inside. Some sous-chef getting hauled over the coals for not beating the eggs enough maybe. Then a door slammed, and the great khan of the kitchen himself came stalking out. He didn’t look to be in an approachable mood, so I didn’t approach him. He was storming straight ahead and didn’t see me, so I waited till he was out of sight and then entered.

Cleaning up after lunch was well under way and a pastry chef was already rolling out sheets of dough for the evening desserts. Mallory was there, and when I walked over to her a couple of tears were trickling down her cheeks. She quickly rubbed her eyes. “Pepper,” she explained with a rueful little smile.

She was putting bones, skin, and trimmings of fish into a large saucepan. She poured in white wine and some water, then a bouquet garni and some salt. She set it over low heat. “A fumet,” she explained. “It will be used for a sauce tonight. There will be a
mousseline de poisson,
and the fumet will be the base of the sauce.” She seemed glad to have someone to talk to, so I pointed to the three impressive pieces of meat on the bench by her side. “It looks like you’re serving leg of lamb too.”

“Yes. We have several haute cuisine dishes, but Leighton likes to include one or two that are more country style as balance.”

I looked at the bowls of freshly chopped carrots, onions, and celery, the jar of Provençal herbs, and the basket of spinach flanked by a bottle of Madeira wine. “So you’re going to prepare leg of lamb à la bourgeoise. I guess it’s too soon to take the cream out of the refrigerator. Are you going to bone the lamb?”

“No. Oh, we do when we serve it in the elegant style, but for this peasant way, we don’t.”

“A lot of peasants wish they ate this well,” I told her.

She was cleaning up as she worked, making sure that all traces of fish were removed, as it has a very pervasive odor. I was looking around the kitchen, but I knew I was not likely to see any telltale signs that would confirm or deny Axel Vorstahl’s criticisms.

It might have been because she thought that I was going to ask her questions that she didn’t want to answer, but I had the distinct impression that she spoke only to head me off. “We’re cooking some German and Austrian dishes tonight,” she said brightly.

“
Halve hahn
?” I asked. Translated literally, it means “half a hen,” but it is a popular local dish in the region of Cologne, and when you order it you get a snack consisting of a hard roll, a slice of cheese, butter, and a glass of beer.

“Oh, we can do better than that,” she smiled.

We discussed German cooking. “In many spas,” Mallory said, “German cooking is kept to a minimum as it has the reputation of being heavy and fattening. Here, as you have found, we do not make a fetish of diet. Several German dishes are very popular, so we cook them. We avoid most of the ingredients that are high in calories or fats or cholesterol but without affecting the taste.”

“Many Swiss enjoy German cooking, don’t they?”

“Certainly, Switzerland consists mostly of people of German origin and with German names and habits. Naturally, they enjoy German food, and all the traditional favorites are cooked in homes and in restaurants.”

She was surprisingly knowledgeable, and we talked about German cooking for some time. When she began to get that nervous glance in the direction of the door that meant she was afraid that Leighton might return and find her talking to me, I said, “I’d better go. Your husband doesn’t like you chatting with the guests, does he?”

“He doesn’t like people in his kitchen,” she said.

“Lots of secrets to guard?”

“It is a very competitive trade,” she said defensively. “He’s not paranoid about it, he just likes to think of this kitchen as his private domain.”

“He wants to make sure he keeps up his high standards,” I suggested.

“Yes. He is very guarded with respect to his reputation.”

I wondered what Axel Vorstahl would respond to that, then took my leave, telling her I was looking forward to making a German selection that night.

“Fast food has a bad name,” Brad Thompson declared. “I want to change that. There’s nothing wrong with food just because it doesn’t take three hours to bake. Fast food can be good food—it just doesn’t take as long to bring it to the point where you can’t wait to put it into your mouth.”

It was the afternoon session, and again there was a packed house. How many were pro and how many con remained to be seen.

“Do I need to define ‘fast food’?” Brad looked around his audience. His good-natured face and easy manner got him off to a good start. “I will anyway—the fast foods that we know best are hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizzas. Hamburgers and hot dogs are of German origin, and pizza is, of course, Italian.

“But lots of other countries have fast foods. In England they have fish and chips and Cornish pasties; in Belgium, they have fries—or ‘frites.’ We call them French fries, which makes the Belgians mad because they thought of them first. In the Middle East they have pita and kebabs; in Spain they have their tapas; Indonesia has satays, and Mexico has tacos and burritos.”

He was about to continue but a raised hand stopped him. “What about fried chicken?”

Brad nodded amiably. “A good question. We think of the gentleman from Kentucky immediately, don’t we? Colonel Sanders.”

The same questioner asked, “Was his business really based on a secret recipe?”

“Colonel Sanders himself once said that the seasoning of the batter coating was the secret but added that it did not contain any unusual ingredients. He said that ‘the herbs and spices stand on everybody’s shelf.’

“That caused a lot of controversy,” Brad continued, “between the franchisees and the Kentucky Fried Chicken management. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s—often believed to have secrets of their own in the fast-food market—said that Kentucky Fried’s licensees had to pay four or five times the price of the seasonings simply because they were obliged to buy from them.”

“Somebody must know,” argued another. “Surely the Colonel obtained a patent?”

“He did,” said Brad, fielding balls from all directions. “It was for the process only and did not mention seasoning.”

“Hasn’t anybody had the batter coating analyzed?” came another question.

“Yes. It revealed only four constituents—to the surprise of all concerned. They were flour, MSG, salt, and pepper.”

“No exotic spices?” said a disappointed voice.

“Nothing else at all.”

A temporary hush settled. Everyone had wanted a secret to be revealed.

Brad resumed his theme. “Young children, teenagers, and adults all love fast foods. The tempo of life today is geared to foods that don’t take long to prepare or to eat. We are a lot less formal than we used to be. Sitting at a table with seven or eight knives, forks, and spoons, wondering which to use and going through five or six courses—no, that’s not the way we want to eat as we enter the twenty-first century.”

As Brad continued, more questions arose. Oriana Frascati was in the audience for this session, and she apparently felt it was her duty to her Italian background to say, “The pizza should get more credit as the ideal fast food. Tell us about its many virtues.”

There were laughs at this, but Brad was equal to the occasion.

“It’s hard to beat as a fast food, I agree. Okay, the basic pizza was known as ‘marinara’—or ‘sailor style’—and it was so called because it was one of the staple foods on board the ships of the Neapolitan navy. Those were the days when Naples ruled the Mediterranean. The pizza marinara was made from only four ingredients: tomato, olive oil, garlic, and oregano—”

“No cheese?” asked an incredulous voice.

“Cheese wouldn’t keep on a long voyage,” explained Brad. I was pleased to learn that he had an interest in the history of the pizza and went further than merely knowing how to bake one. “In the city of Naples—still considered the birthplace of pizza—cheese was used, and it was mozzarella, made from buffalo milk. Other areas of Italy developed their own variations. In Rome they used onions instead of tomatoes; in Liguria, they used both.”

The school principal whom I had encountered before spoke up. She seemed to be at least as interested in food as in education. “For us cooking dummies, it would be more helpful if you told us about the dough. Isn’t that more critical? Seems to me anybody can put what they want on it after that, and it’ll cook in the same time it takes the dough to bake.”

“Makes sense,” nodded Brad. “Originally, flour, water, and yeast formed the dough. Yeast had already been developed centuries earlier for beer making, so although many other kinds of yeast are available to us today, it was beer yeast that was first used for pizza dough.”

“Today,” the principal called out in the tone she must have found highly effective in her job. “How do we make pizza dough today?”

“There are lots of ways—”

“Tell us one,” came the insistent interruption. “The best one.”

Brad was doing a masterly job of not losing his cool. “Sure. Mix whole wheat flour, a little salt, and a little bicarbonate of soda. Make a well in the center and put in some yogurt, water, and olive oil. Mix into a dough and knead it on a floured board.” He paused and his silence said, “How’s that for brevity and simplicity?”

Inevitably, further questions took him into the realms of variables, but he had done a fine job of sticking with the essentials, and he got a big round of applause when he concluded.

I made my way to one of the public phones and dialed the number I had noted from the issue of
Good Food
magazine. I was offered several numerical options by the electronic operator, but I opted for the ‘stay on the line’ contact and got a real live person. She had a pleasant female voice.

“I want to speak to Kathleen Evans,” I said.

“Who’s calling please?”

“It’s Thomas Mann,” I said, giving the first name that came into my head. He had written about a spa and it was in either Germany or German-speaking Switzerland.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mann, she isn’t here,” the operator said. “Can someone else help you?”

“I really need to speak to her. I have some information she is waiting for, so if she has told you she doesn’t want to be disturbed, I can assure you that she would want to be. She is very anxious to hear this.”

“I understand, but she is not here—truly she isn’t.”

“She’s in the office somewhere, though, isn’t she? I know she was at that conference in Switzerland, but she’s back now. She told me she was leaving the conference early.”