Under the Table (12 page)

“Babies!” he taunted us. “You don't like that smell? Wait until you try some!”

The thought of eating something that smelled like, well, animal pee was almost beyond even my gag reflex. Almost. Still, I kept going, deglazing the pan with Cognac and adding heavy cream and Dijon mustard to the well-browned lumps still sizzling away. The sauce thickened up and looked almost innocuous, a velvety light beige that smelled more like shallots and mustard than anything else. I ladled my kidneys out onto the plate and napped them cautiously with the sauce. A dash of fresh parsley for presentation, and it was suddenly the moment of truth. I maneuvered a forkful into my mouth, preparing to choke down the most vile organ encounter yet.

It was shocking.

Delicious.

The kidneys were crisp, then soft, and the sauce was vibrant with the tang of mustard and the decadent rich smoothness of cream.

I ate the whole thing. Even Chef was impressed.

Chicken Liver Pâté

This is a nice, simple way to ease yourself into the organ meat milieu. We have been making it for years and serving it as an afternoon snack on Thanksgiving and Christmas to tide over hungry guests before the big meal is ready. The richness of the shallots and Cognac elevate the humble chicken liver without overwhelming the delicate flavor.

 

3 medium shallots, finely chopped

1 large clove garlic, finely chopped

16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 pound chicken livers, trimmed

Salt and freshly ground pepper

¼ cup Cognac (the best you can bear to part with)

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Pinch of ground allspice

Ciabatta bread or crackers, for serving

Sour gherkins (cornichons), for serving

1. In a large, heavy skillet over moderate heat, cook the shallots and garlic in half of the butter, stirring, until softened, about 15 minutes.
   
2. Pat dry the chicken livers and season with salt and pepper. Add the livers to the shallot mixture and sear until just pink inside, about 5 minutes.
   
3. Melt the remaining butter in a small saucepan and set aside.
   
4. Add the Cognac to the livers and carefully tilt the pan until the liquid almost touches the edge. Ignite the Cognac with a long match and stand back! Shake the pan until the flames subside.
   
5. Transfer the hot mixture to a food processor or blender. Add the
   nutmeg, allspice, and salt and pepper to taste. Puree the mixture until very smooth.
   
6. Pack the pâté into a 2-cup crock or several small ramekins. Film the top of the pâté with the melted butter—this prevents the pâté from oxidizing and changing color. Refrigerate until ready to use.
   
7. Bring to room temperature before serving. Serve with chewy ciabatta bread or crackers and tiny gherkins.
   

Makes about 1½ cups

J
uly became August and our time in the Level 1 kitchen was almost over. My black eye had faded from the color of candied violets to the pale yellow of sautéed onions. In a few more days we would be leaving the relatively sheltered confines of our sweaty but safe kitchen-haven and begin working in the cavernous Level 2 kitchen, learning more classic French dishes and putting together the family meal to feed the students, faculty, and support staff every day. While we had already begun our mastery of vegetable dishes, poultry, soups, tarts and pastries, and even organ meats, we hadn't yet begun to study the mysteries of the deep. We had all heard that the lesson on shellfish was the very best day of Level 1, better even than the lesson on ice cream and frozen desserts, because on Shellfish Day, everyone in class got to have a lobster of their very own for lunch.

I had only ever had lobster once before in my life, on a spectacularly bad Valentine's Day date in college. While I had no intention of ordering something that, to me, looked like an overgrown sea cockroach, my overbearing date had other ideas. “Get the surf and turf,” he grunted, his hockey player's muscles dwarfing the spindly chair on which he sat, the table he was resting his ham-hock hands on, indeed, everything in the room. “I'll eat what you don't want,” he graciously offered. Which, it turned out, meant that after my first bite, everything on my plate was his. Nevertheless, five years later, armed with a decidedly more adventurous palate and the ability to successfully dismember the sucker, I was excited for another crack at
homard
.

First, though, at nine o'clock precisely, we began the day with oysters. Raw oysters. Nestled in wooden crates packed with seaweed, their wrinkled, craggy shells poking through the ice like bits of some shaggy reef, they weren't really a good pairing with my morning coffee. Champagne would have been a much better choice. But they were delightfully cool to the touch, and after several false starts with a curved oyster knife, I had jimmied the hinges apart on one particularly large, lusty-looking fellow, and without any palate-numbing additives—not lemon, mignonette, or the bright ketchup obscenity of cocktail sauce—I swallowed it down whole. An immediate briny tidal wave of flavor caught me up in its big, mighty ocean arms and propelled me off toward an absolute, intoxicating love of seafood.

There was an entire box of oysters to be consumed, literally dozens and dozens to be wrenched open and sucked dry before moving on to mussels, clams, and scallops, those lesser bivalves, whose role in our morning would be as an appetizer along the lines of a shellfish soup. After quaffing almost a dozen oysters all by myself, I wasn't terribly eager to begin the rather arduous process of cleaning and debearding the mussels, or scrubbing the shells of clams, but the lure of a sunny Provençal-style stew, suffused with the happy summer flavors of saffron, tomatoes, and garlic, cheered me through the long process.

Once we had cleaned and prepared the clams, mussels, and scallops, we were ready to begin making our shellfish soup. After the tedious preparation of the bivalves, the rest was a walk in the park. A few shallots, nicely
ciseléd,
some diced tomato, quantities of garlic paste, and a liberal guzzle of extra virgin olive oil, and that was all. Into the pot went the oil, shallots, and garlic to turn golden and fragrant before we added the pulpy, sweet tomatoes. While this simmered nicely over a low flame, Chef told us a story of how, as a boy, he gathered mussels with his grandfather for market near the small seaside town where he grew up, on the border between France and Spain.

“Actually,” Chef said, “I am not really
français
. I am a Basque.”

This surprised me, as I had ignorantly assumed that all Basques were “freedom fighters.” But here was Chef, his quintessentially Gallic features relaxed in a serene smile as he recounted scenes from an idyllic childhood, one filled with farm-fresh eggs, lazy milk cows, and pike just caught in mountain streams. The recipe we were making was not really Provençal, it was Basque, and a bit of Chef 's own past he was sharing with us. I was suddenly anxious to prove I could reproduce something from such a rich food heritage, something delicious that would remind Chef of his homeland. I was also inexplicably homesick myself for the rolling green hills of Virginia, the cows and chickens that had populated my own childhood, the taste of my mother's cooking.

The ingredients in front of me were a far cry from the shrimp with grits of my childhood, however. Once the garlic and shallots had softened and become fragrant, and the bright red tomato concassé had cooked down into a rich savory compote, we added a cup of dry white wine and a few precious strands of saffron. Saffron stems are actually the tiny stamens harvested from a variety of crocus that grows on the hills of Spain. Saffron turns everything it touches a brilliant yellow, and adds an exotic, pungent sweetness with a whisper of metallic tang. As soon as the strands hit the pot, the air was filled by the gasps of some of my fellow students who had never seen the little flower's brilliant powers of transformation. Once the saffron had added its distinct voice to the rising chorus of flavors in the pot, we began to add the mussels, clams, and scallops.

Clams are almost always the first to go into the pot, as it takes a little time for the heat to penetrate their thick shells and persuade them to open. The mussels go next, as soon as the clams have just begun to look like they might at any moment begin to open. The scallops go in last, as they have, by far, the most delicate flesh. The scallops should, in fact, merely poach in the juices released by the mussels and clams. Once all the shellfish begin to open like delicious blossoms from an undersea garden, the stew is ready.

We all carefully arranged three scallops, five clams, and seven mussels in each bowl, the odd numbers remaining an all-important, mystical element to French cuisine. The red tomatoes, yellow saffron, even the shiny black of the mussel shells seemed to take on a fierce intensity against the sturdy white china bowls. A sprinkling of finely minced parsley on top added even more color and vibrancy to the dish, and as always, after a careful visual inspection of each plate, counting to ensure we had indeed arranged the proper number of bivalves in the proper proportions, Chef dipped his large tasting spoon into each bowl, to check authenticity and correctness of the seasoning. His somewhat froglike, protuberant eyes fluttered closed after each mouthful as he rolled the flavors around in his mouth. Finally he admonished us—“Eat! Eat! It will not stay warm forever! Tell me what you think.”

I heaped my spoon with a bite of stew, the bright yellow sauce studded with small nuggets of jewel-bright tomato and pale purple, fragrant shallot. The taste of sunshine and lazy seaside afternoons filled my mouth in one vibrantly buoyant wash of perfectly harmonized flavors. I didn't need to hear Chef 's stories of his boyhood to suddenly appreciate and understand the magic of place; it was all there in the bowl before me. The class was silent as we took in the perfection of the simple dish, so accurately and effectively evoking a lost moment and a culture none of us had ever experienced. The reverence and appreciation were palpable.

“This is what cooking really is,” said Chef, his bright eyes smiling at us all. We were beginning to understand.

 

As marvelous as it was, however, it was
not
the lobster that we had been promised, tantalized by, and teased with since the beginning of classes in June. There also didn't seem to be any more plywood boxes stuffed with the fruits of the ocean, either. Where were the lobsters?

We were beginning to get restive, having cleaned the kitchen up for the morning and replaced the various implements from our
shared
batterie de cuisine
in the large stainless steel armoire, and had begun to sharpen our knives—a task Chef set us to whenever there was a free moment in the kitchen. Whenever he saw two or more students congregate and begin to talk, he would run over, flapping his arms as if he were driving a flock of poultry before him, shouting “
Va, va.
Go, go find something to do. A chef 's hands must never be idle. Sharpen your knives.” My paring knife was beginning to take on a decidedly snub-nose look to it from too much time spent grinding against the whetstone when the door to the kitchen swung open with a bang and we all stood to attention.

This was beginning to be a habit, as we had already been the subjects of several surprise inspections by visiting deans in our short stay in the Level 1 kitchen. These inspections, in which the dean would stalk up and down the rows of nervous students, barking comments like “Stand up straight” and “Shave that facial hair before you come to this kitchen again,” reminded me of some five-star general inspecting a fresh shipment of raw recruits, and once the door had slammed shut behind the departing figure, there was an audible sigh of relief, from both students and chef.

But this was not a surprise inspection; it was David, the major-domo of the storeroom. David could provide anyone with anything, from nonstick pans to any type of vegetable you could imagine to lobes of fresh foie gras to canned black truffles, these last pricey delicacies kept in a specially locked cabinet to which he had the only key. Rumor had it that the special cabinet also housed a veritable cornucopia of illegal pharmaceuticals as well. David was
the
connection. This time, though, he came heavily burdened, like a short Cuban Santa Claus, with a huge plywood box slung over his stevedore's shoulders, a box stenciled with the words caution! live lobsters! caution! Lunch had finally arrived.

We circled like a school of sharks. I don't think anyone actually bit David in their eagerness, but there were a lot of big, white teeth showing. Swearing good-naturedly at us in Spanish, David dumped
the box at Chef 's feet and fled—there was definitely blood in the water. Chef cuffed the hands already tearing at the plywood and called for silence. We were to return to our stations, and Assistant Chef Cyndee would dole out to each student one lobster. There would be no trading, no returns, no refunds. Tucker and I exchanged chagrined looks. This was not a good thing. Cyndee's antipathy for us all was obvious, but she seemed to have a special loathing for my partner and me. I blamed it on Tucker's super-nerd habit of asking Cyndee endless questions about the food, the recipes, the curriculum, and kitchen lore in general, none of which she knew the answers to, and Tucker blamed me for being blond and for smiling too much. I think we were both right.

Sure enough, Tucker and I predictably ended up being the last ones to receive our bounty. Tucker's lunch was so small it looked more like a crayfish than a lobster. Mine was slightly bigger, but it was missing one of its claws. It was also very, very angry. Cyndee tossed the disgruntled crustacean onto my cutting board, making it even more furious. It scuttled for cover behind a large stainless steel bowl. I didn't know lobsters could move that fast. Using my large strainer as an improvised lacrosse stick, I eventually scooped up the errant lobster and deposited him in a large stainless steel container called a squareboy, where Tucker's tiny lobster was already cowering in a corner. My lobster immediately began to advance, antennae bristling ferociously. He was definitely a fighter. I named him Fido on the spot, and left him to menace Tucker's lunch while we gathered to watch Chef 's lobster demonstration.

Chef was holding Amanda's lobster up in one hand and explaining how to tell the boys from the girls. Apparently it has something to do with the excessive number of legs hiding under the thorax. However, there were so many of them, and they were all waving wildly as Chef poked the underbelly gently with a paring knife, that I lost track of whether boys or girls were supposed to have more and just tried not to think about my lunch having sex.
Just then, Amanda's lobster began flapping its tail and struggling mightily to free itself from Chef 's iron grip. Gently, using the butt of a large knife, Chef began to stroke the lobster on the back of its head, behind the bulging eyestalks and flopping antennae. Right away, the lobster stopped struggling. Chef placed it on the cutting board and explained that this petting would calm the lobster, and it would eventually even go to sleep. He continued petting the little guy, now actually singing “Frère Jacques” while we smiled at each other.

Suddenly, just as Chef began the third chorus of
“dormez-vous, dormez-vous,”
he brought the knife down with a
thwack!
and sliced the lobster's head in half. “Dead,” pronounced Chef, with satisfaction. “He didn't feel a thing.” I wasn't so sure, as I watched the legs twitching wildly and the eyes still moving about on their stalks. Amanda seemed to be in shock. “It is kinder than letting him boil, my dear,” Chef said, as if to comfort her. He dropped the carcass into a large pot of cold water, added a handful of salt and dark green seaweed, which had come as packing material in the crate, and put the lid on. Turning the flame up to high, he instructed her to bring everything to a boil, and then turn it off. The lobster would poach for a few minutes (depending on its size) and be tender and succulent without overcooking.

We returned to our stations, and I checked on Fido. He was sitting on Tucker's lobster, and waved his remaining claw up at me. I couldn't tell if it was a wave of greeting or a challenge, like a boxer brandishing one gloved hand, but I did know one thing: I didn't really feel like having him for lunch anymore. I picked him up and began to stroke the back of his head, even scratching behind his ears, if he had any ears, that is. Around me, everyone was either busily braining their lobsters or placing them into the pot live, preferring not to stare death directly in the face. Tucker executed a perfect three-point shot, tossing his lobster into the waiting pot from two feet away, and turned to wait for my guy to join his.

I looked down at Fido, whom I was now cradling gently against my chef 's jacket. His big black eyes looked back, and one of his antennae gently tickled my chin.