Under the Table (30 page)

“Yeah, all right. I got it,” the counter guy said, completely unfazed. I didn't stick around to see how, exactly, he was going to get the cockroach out, I just got my tiny cart full of groceries in line and decided to get my bird (whatever it would be) somewhere else. Let the pushy Wall Street type have
filet de cockroach
for his dinner.

I headed home, almost completely submerged in the eddying grocery bags I had slung around my person. Dropping everything in the lobby of the building, I headed out again, to track down my bird. I ended up at Dom's, a small grocery on my block specializing in high-end Italian imported goods. I hadn't been in that often, because Dom's doesn't carry anything but actual food. Things like paper towels, toilet bowl cleaner, and cat food don't make the cut, so I had been sticking with the more down-market but democratically product-inclusive Associated Supermarket around the corner. Somehow, though, I thought Dom's might be a better choice for bird buying. I wandered up and down the aisles of beautifully arranged artisanal pastas, unusual dried herbs, jars of jewel-colored antipasti. I admired the wheels of cheeses at the immaculately clean cheese counter. I sniffed appreciatively; the trays of prepared foods, from homemade meatballs to chocolate cookies the size of dinner plates, all smelled heavenly.

At last I found myself in front of the meat case, looking at the piles of turkeys, chickens, ducks, and other poultry. Almost all of them had been spoken for, apparently—around each leg was a small tag with a name and a date inscribed on it in small script. Rats. I really had left it too late—I would be lucky to secure a chicken at this rate. Just then, from behind the birds stacked like cordwood, a round face beaming a large, gap-toothed smile hailed me.

“Buona sera, signora.”

Caught off guard, I answered, “Bonjour!” My Italian is obviously nonexistent.

Taking a leap of faith, I asked for help and advice from the smiling man behind the counter. Turned out I had gone right to the top.
Franco is the owner of Dom's, and as he listened to my dithering explanations about dinner and chef school and the imminent arrival of my family, he began to go through the birds. At last, he found one that was not previously claimed—an enormous goose. I had never cooked a goose before, and while it definitely looked vaguely birdlike, it was also very alien. Franco packed up the goose and a beautiful pink pork loin for dinner this evening and sent me off into the night, giving me explicit instructions on how to prepare everything “for
la famiglia
” and telling me to come back if I had any problems.

 

Well, I overcooked the goose, burned the chocolate pie, and the mashed potatoes were cold. I made stock out of the wrong parts of the goose (I didn't know that kidneys would make stock bitter) and was forced to make gravy from store-bought chicken broth. I didn't have enough serving spoons and had forgotten to buy napkins—we had to use paper towels. The candles dripped wax all over the borrowed table, and a bottle of wine carefully smuggled back from our trip to Provence and lovingly stored turned out to be corked. It was not my best day in the kitchen.

But I was with my family, and at dinner my mother told a hysterical story about the two geese that we had on the farm when I was still too young to really remember them. They were awful beasts, pecking my brother and me whenever we ventured outside unattended. At one point, my mother tried to run them over with the old Peugeot, but they escaped, flapping their ungainly bodies up into the safety of the boxwoods. However, they couldn't escape from my grandfather and his razor-sharp hatchet. At Christmas, they were both dispatched and prepared for our festive dinner. Full of pride at the gorgeously brown birds (and vanquishing her enemies at last), my mother proudly brought the roasting pan up the steps to my grandparents' house for the traditional evening meal. She slipped on the ice and dumped the whole thing down the frozen walk. It made me feel vastly better about the charred version I had
served—at least it reached the dinner table in one piece! It seemed that fate and DNA combined to ensure I would not be able to cook my own goose.

But I was thankful to Franco for finding me something to serve at my Thanksgiving table. While the dinner itself was not the success I had hoped for, I did end up making a very good friend. Franco has advised me on everything from the right time of year to buy fresh porcini to how to cook ricotta pie, even special-ordering everything from quail to venison for my dinner parties. He even shares his mother's recipes and regales me with stories, including one about a toad omelet he had growing up in Italy. While Franco has not the advanced diplomas or decades of restaurant experience that my chef-instructors had, he has been a wonderful guide through all the things they don't teach you in school. How to grow the best tomatoes for sauce, how to choose the right balance of cheeses for a satisfying cheese plate, how to break down an entire cow carcass for sale—I have never done this last one, but after the extensive tutorial Franco treated me to, complete with graphic gestures and sound effects, I have no doubt I could.

I
t was almost over. The hard work, the blood, sweat, tears, and shouting. Levels 1, 2, 3, and now Level 4 had come to a close, almost, and everyone—students and teachers—could feel it. Level 4 had been hard—the most difficult we had ever experienced—but we had begun to turn out plates of food that would not be out of place at the French Laundry. We had come a long way from our first days at school, when peeling and dicing vegetables seemed like a challenge. It was time to celebrate. Of course, it helped that Christmas was only a few weeks away. It was marvelous, really, that we would be finished by Christmas, a wonderful way to end the year—
if
we could all manage to hold it together until then. Every morning, despite the fast-approaching final exam, more and more people in class were absent—working on their final projects or just having had a bit too much holiday cheer the night before. Chef Pierre definitely noticed, and had started making grumpy remarks and adding little black marks to his grade book every morning at roll call. Even roll call and our daily morning meetings in the restaurant smacked of the encroaching holiday—the decorations for L'Ecole had switched from the riotous crimsons and oranges and yellows of fall and Thanksgiving to an even more vibrant display of holly, poinsettias, and the heavenly scented evergreen boughs draped from every surface.

And there were Christmas parties; it seemed like hundreds of them. We often were briefed to be in early to prepare for the horde of fifty old biddies having the prix fixe before their annual cookie swap, or the clutch of businessmen who had read the good reviews
in Zagat's and recognized an incredible bargain when they saw one. If the patrons were special favorites, or had impressed someone in authority when planning their party, they would often get a tour through the kitchens and classrooms after dessert. It was touching to see them all file through, usually in a sort of silent awe, as we went about our business. We were often working hard by then, but it was always nice to have a bit of a heads-up from a waiter, just enough time to straighten out uniforms, readjust our hats, and stash anything vaguely unseemly—the rabbits being deboned for a game mousse were definitely still a little too true-to-life and macabre for the uninitiated, especially after a very full lunch. Sometimes, as they were on their way back out again, one or two would stop and say thank you for the wonderful meal. It was thrilling—we had managed to convince these perfect strangers that we were chefs, real chefs! Capable of producing the meal that had given them so much pleasure—it was intoxicating.

Lunch for seventy-five became just another task to be accomplished in a day, and we often had time after the initial, incredibly rushed preparation and service to discuss the dishes with Chef Pierre. We debated the merits of serving the pork tenderloin with the tiny crepe towers stuffed with chestnut puree, and whether or not the osso buco looked better when the rosemary sprig used as garnish was fresh or fried. While the things we prepared were interesting, discussing these tiny nuances with Chef gave them a heightened sense of what foods benefited others and what pairings tasted best together. Thus, we learned that the spicy-sweet Asian-influenced marinade we used on the quail would also complement pork, but not lamb or beef. The simple but powerful red wine reduction we used on the beef could be adjusted with several sprigs of rosemary to nap the leg of lamb or pool around a breast of chicken, but the parsnips accompanying these dishes would then have to be changed, as the sweetness of the root vegetable clashed with the tannins in the wine.

All this talk was Chef 's way of pushing us beyond the bounds of
the school curriculum, to help us use our experience and our palates to put together new ideas and give us the courage to take a chance and try something different—not at school, of course, but at home, and in the future in our own kitchens. School was still school, and the final exam would not be on theoretical dishes but on the ones we were making every day. It would be similar to the midterm: a quick written exam followed by our practical, where we would be randomly assigned either a fish and dessert combination or an appetizer and main dish. But there the similarities ended—we had come a long way since Level 2, and the complexity of the dishes we regularly prepared reflected that. No longer were dishes accompanied by a few simple tournéed potatoes cooked
à l'anglaise,
but rather by a fricassee of butternut squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and parsnips, all diced to the same precise measurement, boiled separately, dried, and then browned together in a steep-sided
sauteuse
over high heat. The fish dishes were garnished with everything from gently poached cucumbers to carefully snipped seaweed, with a few light green leaves from celery hearts for flavor and color. Cooking the meat to the proper degree of doneness, the primary goal of the dishes on our midterm, became just another basic step in the complicated dance of preparation for these final dishes.

I and almost everyone else in class spent almost all our free time huddled together, either studying for the final exam or making plans for what we would do when we graduated. Junior dreamed of cooking for a large cruise line—the thought of hot women and tropical destinations settling like a fog over his person, a fog not even the threat of having to prepare the scallop dish for the final seemed able to burn through. Jackie had more personal things on her mind—her boyfriend had proposed, and she was full of plans for a wedding in the New Year, and toying with the idea of making her own wedding cake. Tucker desperately wanted to return to his family in Michigan and begin his new career as a chef in his town's one posh restaurant. Ravi was taking a trip to India with his extended family for a month,
and was full of ideas on marrying French technique with Indian spices and the freshest American ingredients. Ben was hoping to win a full-time job at Blue Hill, where he had been interning for almost four months already. I fervently hoped Mimi was planning on taking a job as a short-order cook in hell, but wasn't holding my breath. What did I want? I didn't know, and that scared me. Why didn't I know? Why didn't I have a plan like all my friends and classmates? Once I did graduate, did I really, really want to go to work in a restaurant kitchen? I wasn't sure, but I knew that I wasn't going to be happy unless I graduated with honors, top honors if I could help it. So when I wasn't working to repay my student loan, I was spending long evenings at my own stove, trying to reproduce everything I had learned so far, memorizing the steps of each recipe, the proper feel of each finished product, the look, the taste of my best efforts.

Which left me little time to enjoy the holiday season, my favorite time of year. I reflected on the past six months; all the spent time, effort, and sheer number of vegetables was mind-boggling. I wanted to do something for the people I had spent so much of my life with, a little thank-you for helping me get through days that sometimes seemed as hard to navigate as the endless mountains of tomato seeds, potato peelings, and chicken carcasses we left in our wake. I also wanted to do something nice for the chef-instructors I had, whose kind words and subtle instruction got through when shouting and threats did not. But I didn't have the money to spend on nice presents, and while I could make something delicious to give, they were all chefs, too, or very nearly, and could whip up something just as nice themselves. I was stymied, unable to think of a suitable way to say thank you, until one evening it hit me. I could throw a Christmas party for all my former teammates and chefs in our new apartment, a last hurrah for us before we had to buckle down for the final and then go our separate ways. A big, friendly dinner, with cocktails before and plenty of wine during and after, some good, warming winter food, and music and laughter and dancing. I could
give them a good time that they would remember long after the stress of school and the holidays had passed.

Such an event is easier dreamed up than actually carried out, however. If everyone accepted, I would have almost twenty people for dinner—not an impossible feat if one has all day to prepare and a restaurant-quality kitchen and dining room, but a bit more difficult after a long day spent in class, and the constraints of chairs for ten and plates and glasses for twelve. I persevered, however, and planned stuffed, marinated olives, salted nuts, and the Italian flatbread known as
pane carasau
for nibbling; a big beef stew (no one was a vegetarian) bountiful with carrots, mushrooms, well-browned pearl onions, and pulpy bites of tomato; a green salad; a platter of cheeses; baskets of fresh bread from Balthazar; and a flourless chocolate cake for dessert. The beef stew went into the oven on low the night before and simmered slowly through the night. The cocktail snacks I bought from Franco, my friend, adviser, and grocer, who helped me plan the menu. All I had to do was rush home from school, wash the greens, make a vinaigrette, set out the cheeses to lose their refrigerator chill, mix the cake, and set up the bar and trays of snacks.

It was a good thing, too—while everyone was supposed to come at seven, Tucker and Junior showed up almost an hour early, at a little after six. They had nowhere to go, they said, and were tired of staring up at my building, waiting for the lights to go on. I set them to work opening bottles of wine and folding paper napkins while I threw myself into the shower to wash off stray drips of chocolate cake batter and put on clean clothes. By seven-thirty, the candles were lit, the music was playing, and everyone was happily clustered around the kitchen island, scarfing up olives, swilling down cocktails, and having a marvelous time. Michael was happy to play host with the most; while he sometimes thought my friends from chef school were a little crazy, he couldn't resist spending an evening with them, drinking a case or so of wine and hanging out—talking about food was one of his passions, too.

While Michael kept our crowd of guests well stocked with noshes and well lubricated with another round or two of drinks, I found myself trapped in the kitchen, worrying about plating everything, making certain everyone had enough to eat. But I had forgotten that while everyone was a friend and a guest, I had been through chef school with them all as well. When it was time to serve the stew, I found myself suddenly at the head of a seamless production line of plates and workers, just like a station at the school restaurant. Tucker ladled a serving of steamed baby potatoes on each plate, and then Jared came behind, adding generous dollops of stew, while Jackie added a garnish of pepper and fresh herbs and Junior ran the plates out. It was marvelous. Chef Mark and Chef Paul clapped in appreciation of our team effort, and Chef Tina complimented the swift service. With a dozen chefs at my disposal, it should be. As the plates were slowly wiped clean of food and the salad was served and quickly disposed of, the cheeses passed and passed again, I found myself looking around the table at the clutch of people I had come to know so well in the past months, glad I could share this evening with them, that we would all have a happy memory to mark the end of our time together.

After dessert had been eaten and people wandered away from the table for more wine, more music, more conversation, I looked around at the incredible mess waiting for me to address it at some point. But not now. I, too, got up from the table and ambled off to refill my glass with some more of that lovely Châteauneuf-du-Pape someone had brought and spend a few more minutes with my friends.

Eventually, the music got louder, the conversation more and more jovial, and the night got later. When my downstairs neighbor came up to complain about the wrestling match that had broken out between Wayne and Junior, I knew it was time to break up the party and send everyone home.

 

Since graduating from chef school, I have thrown many dinner parties, and while they have all been fun, and the food has often been more haute than the simple fare I served that evening, that dinner party will always stand out in my mind as a perfect evening among friends.

Beef Stew for a Crowd

This master recipe serves twelve and can easily be doubled or even tripled if needed. You can cook it in the oven, on top of the stove, or even in a very large slow cooker (cut back on the liquids if you choose this way). Because it is meant to serve a crowd of people at a party, I just bring everything together in the pot to brown briefly before adding the braising liquid and simmering, instead of browning everything in separate batches. If you are throwing a party, there are better ways to spend your time than in time-consuming details. Remember, this is hearty, stomach-pleasing peasant fare, not haute cuisine. Figure on a pound of meat serving two people.

 

1 pound slab bacon, cut into lardons

6 pounds rump pot roast, cut into manageable chunks (roughly bite-size)

2 medium onions, chopped

4 medium carrots, peeled and chopped

4 stalks celery, chopped

10 cloves garlic, chopped

8 medium shallots, quartered

2 pounds white button mushrooms, quartered

8 ounces wild mushrooms, shiitakes, criminis, or baby bellas, quartered

¼ cup all-purpose flour

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 cup balsamic vinegar

One 14.5-ounce can peeled, crushed tomatoes

2 bay leaves

Handful of fresh thyme sprigs

Two 750-ml bottles red wine

1. In a very large pot (big enough to hold everything!) over medium-high heat, brown the bacon. Once the bacon has begun rendering its fat, add the beef, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, shallots, and mushrooms. Dust with the flour and season liberally with salt and pepper. Cook until the veggies begin to color and soften, about 5 minutes. Add the balsamic vinegar, half of the tomatoes, the bay leaves, thyme, and enough wine to completely cover everything. Cook, covered, over very low heat, adding more wine and crushed tomatoes as things cook down.
   
2. I have cooked this overnight in the oven (I added all the liquid at once and cooked it in an enormous roasting pan covered with foil), and for 3 to 4 hours on the back of the stove. The stew is ready when the meat is so tender it is just on the verge of falling apart and the liquid is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.