Vanilla Salt (4 page)

At night, you take your time cooking, with contemplative pauses, a long way from the trials of the day, with no traffic noises coming in from the road, no telephone, no demands, just the colours of the night and the hushed darkness of its whispered words. Only his own breathing will caress the slow caramelizing of onions.

“Just a rover, just a rover,” sings Lluís Llach as he cleans the calamari.

He browns them in a large casserole and puts them aside on a plate. He peels and chops the onions, more than he needs. He likes chopping onions. At first they make him cry. He needs tears. They are tears that mix sorrow and onion. They are well-justified tears that can fall without restraint, without his feeling foolish because they’re cleaning out his soul.
The pity of it is that tears dry up very quickly. “If you move onward in life, further than I can go…”

He lets the onions cook as he chops three cloves of garlic – “I won’t stop being the best rover of all, or the greatest athlete strong and tall” – adds marjoram, bay and a sprig of thyme. Slow, easy does it, and now, yes – “the depth of the rivers that will not wet my feet” – a generous dash of white wine.

He has to wait till the onion absorbs the wine. Now it’s time to have a ceremonial glass, sipping carefully to savour the suggestive acid notes of the simple Xarel·lo, shared by a casserole and a rough-mannered chef. He returns the calamari to the casserole and covers them with fish broth – “the immensity of a sky I shall never fly”.

A few almonds, a bit of fried bread and a touch of parsley. This is the great moment, furiously grinding these ingredients in the mortar to make the
picada
for thickening the stew – “I’m jealous but not sad at all the luck you’ve had” – mashing the nuts, forcing them into a paste with the bread and parsley. The
picada
will be the imperceptible soul of the stew, dissolved in its juices. He observes its binding power, turning the liquid into a gloriously consistent sauce, which then prods at his most damaged memories. A tiny touch of salt – yes, always light on salt, because the calamari have to play the leading role in bearing the smell of ocean waves to his taste buds.

Cooking the calamari has been balm to his muscles and mind. If only everything was so sure, so clear, so predictable. Fine raw material gives excellent results. But life stubbornly refuses to stick to a logical script. He doesn’t know how he’s going to face the future, and the present is telling the truth, overwhelming him with evidence that Antic Món is an old, decrepit dump, despite its youth.

Annette went up to her room a while ago, immediately after their only clients that night, the three Gourmet Club diners, left. She must
be asleep, Àlex imagines. However, walking past her door he sees light filtering through the crack. Maybe she likes sleeping with the light on. He’ll have to tell her to watch her electricity consumption. He can’t manage extra expenses and, anyway, people should sleep with the light turned off.

Annette is tired, but also jet-lagged, so she can’t sleep. It’s hard adapting to this new time zone. She tries to entice drowsiness sitting at her computer, reading her friends’ latest blog posts, having a look to see what’s happening on Twitter and checking out her five thousand Facebook friends.

She uses the social network to express her feelings in writing. This has been her first day’s work at Antic Món. Àlex is a cantankerous man who hardly speaks to her and won’t let her cook much. Her work in the kitchen has been peeling vegetables, stirring the odd casserole and doing a heap of washing-up. It’s taken her less than a day to catch on that her boss refuses to recognize that the restaurant’s not working. He cooks a dish as if he’s expecting fifty people to eat it. He receives his raw materials with great ceremony, cleans them impeccably, and quickly and rigorously transforms them, fretting about opening hours even though the pages of the reservation book are impeccably white, immaculate, unsullied by the scrawling of any name or table number.

Annette is now wide awake. Her tiredness has evaporated and her brain has lit up as if with a revelation. Most of her Facebook friends and Twitter followers are foodies, like her, lovers of all kinds of cuisine. They come from all over the world, but lots of them are Catalan. She’ll do a web page called Friends of Antic Món and liven it up with offers and suggestions. In fact, from what she’s seen today, Àlex doesn’t employ any waiters, so she had to serve all the dishes. If she offers a free tot of liqueur, he won’t know. He’s only got eyes, ears and nose for the food and doesn’t care about anything else, as expressed by the distressingly
thick layer of dust mounting up on the bottle shelf, which she’d set about cleaning. That dining room is so pathetic.

But how can she create a Facebook page in Catalan if she hasn’t got the faintest idea of the language? She has a look to see who’s on Chat. Yes, Òscar’s there. She tells him about her brainwave.

“You’re crazy, Annette. He’ll never forgive you. And if you don’t ask him first, you might as well pack your bags now. You’ve got to understand that you’ve only just landed in Antic Món and you’re already want to make waves on the social networks. Aren’t you rushing things a bit?”

“Il n’y a pas clients. No customers, he must to close restaurant. If you no help I do sans aide.”

“You’re right. Not many people go there. The Bigues i Riells people think he’s rude and unfriendly, a weirdo. The ones with weekend houses won’t go near the place. He refuses to make potato chips for the kids, let alone throw a bell pepper, an aubergine and an onion on the grill to make a nice
escalivada
for the adults. His food’s too complicated for families.”

“What’s weirdo? Vegetarian? Why he no make chips? C’est vrai, no potatoes in kitchen.”

“No, a weirdo is a strange man. You have to hurry up and learn Catalan, Annette. Hasn’t Àlex told you yet that he won’t serve any food that comes from America? It’s forbidden in his kitchen. He says it’s barbarian food, for people with no culinary culture. It’s precisely this exquisiteness that makes the critics – and me too – so interested in his cooking.”

“Exquisiteness?…”

“Exquisiteness… It’s hard to explain. Well, it’s something delicate and difficult to achieve. OK, let’s leave it. Àlex is an oddity, as I warned you. He’s got hardly any friends and he’s never even told me if he has a family, but he’s always treated me very well.”

“You help me ou non, with page?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll help. But Àlex will kill us, the two of us. So what do you want to say?”

Luckily, Òscar decides to help. After some hesitation about the text and the name of the page, they finally launch a page on Facebook.

Antic Món. Unusual restaurant at Bigues i Riells. Special, succulent and sybaritic food. Closed Mondays. Become a Friend of Antic Món. We invite new customers to a taste of Caol Ila single malt.

Annette has seen the Caol Ila on the malt whisky shelf. She’s mad about it. It’s an exceptional, legend-laden whisky. Her foodie friends will read between the lines and see that this is a truly special restaurant, not like the ones that, without a single gourmet’s taste bud, invite you to a cheap limoncello. She has to get the message across that this is a highly select, very discerning restaurant which, if it invites you to something, offers only the very best. Tomorrow she’ll post photos of the dishes, write down some of Àlex’s recipes and suggest a virtual flavours game in which contestants have to guess the secret ingredient in each of Àlex’s recipes. Well yes, maybe she’s taking things a bit too fast in devising this offer. As usual, it’s a case of getting down to business straight away. She’s gutsy, dynamic and impetuous. And very generous. She can’t resist helping if she thinks she can. More than anything else she wants people to know that a great chef is waiting to cook for them in a restaurant in Bigues i Riells.

In bed, covered up to her nose with the childhood quilt she’s somehow managed to cram into her suitcase, a niggling question keeps her awake. Why won’t Àlex use food from the New World. Why?

3

SALTY

“Good morning. How’re we doing, family?” shouts Frank Gabo as he brings the fish into Antic Món. Sardines today.

He’s a good young fellow and carefree by nature. His only education is what life has dished out to him. His Mozambican parents were in the first group of African immigrants who came to the Maresme region a couple of decades ago. His Catalan is impeccable. He doesn’t even get the weak pronouns wrong. He laughs with gusto, mouth open, and his incredibly white teeth seem to spark flashes off the omnipresent, gleaming stainless steel of the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Annette answers.

Àlex doesn’t bother to greet him. He’s too busy rolling out fresh pasta.

“Hey boss, got a new girl in the office then?”

“Mind your own business, Frank. What have you got for me today? Sardines? Local, I hope. Let’s check the eyes. I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you. You’re too fishy.”

Àlex loves scrapping with Frank. They get on well, though no one would guess it judging from the barbs flying back and forth. They’re just playing, no harm intended.

“Àlex, I need to talk with you… and, er, I’d prefer not to do so in front of this girl here.”

“Don’t worry, Frank. She’s a foreigner and her Catalan’s worse than an Eskimo’s. Say whatever you like but don’t try to fool me with those sardines, telling me they’re from the Gulf of Roses when I can see they’ve been dredged out of the Llobregat Delta, right next to some damn factory.”

“Listen, friend, I’m not here to talk about sardines. It’s a problem with the boss. He says we’re not bringing you any more fish because you’ve got unpaid bills mounting up from six months ago. He can’t keep supplying you if you don’t pay, Àlex. Unless you pay at least a part. I’m really sorry. You know I—”

“I hope your boss chokes on an umbrine bone, you fucking lackey!” Àlex yells. “Damn it, I’ve been wanting to change my supplier for a while now. Your fish stinks. It’s the worst in the whole region. If you can’t appreciate the fact that you’re working with the best bloody cook in this godforsaken country, you can bugger off.”

Àlex, red-faced, waves a knife around as he’s shouting.

Annette is a horrified witness to all this. She stares at the sharp knife without knowing what to do. Maybe a murder’s about to happen, right here. Should she call the police?

In less than a minute her boss goes from the most histrionic raving to total composure, his face fading from puce to waxy pallor as the violent storm subsides into the balmiest calm. He puts the knife back on the table and keeps rolling out pasta as if nothing has happened.

Frank leaves, feeling distressed. Having to tell Àlex that he can’t deliver there any more is like stabbing him in the heart. Things aren’t going well at Antic Món. Everyone in the town’s talking about it. The restaurant’s had its time of glory and now it’s going to rack and ruin. Only a few of his friends have been eating there and even they’ve stopped coming.
Everyone knows that, with the first sign of any problem, friends desert like rats from a sinking ship.

No one comes for lunch that day either, but everything is ready to serve in the kitchen. Àlex can never have enough of cooking. The burners are always lit and he’s never still. The fridges are bursting with cooked dishes, stews, side dishes, sauces and basic preparations.

Although Annette’s only been there a few days, she’s seen him emptying the rubbish bin full of food that was going off, not just once but plenty of times. Food that isn’t in the least bit dodgy also goes into the bin, including the cream-of-asparagus soup she so carefully made. Obviously Àlex didn’t like the way she made it. He didn’t lift a finger to help her and neither did he tell her how she was supposed to prepare it, or offer any comment once it was made, but he made sure she saw him throwing it out, which he did with all the pomposity of some old ham doing
commedia dell’arte
.

Annette was hurt, but understood very clearly that he was making a statement about their relative roles in this show. It was also a ploy on Àlex’s part to see how much she could take of his offensive behaviour. A kind of exam. Annette pretends she hasn’t noticed, so she keeps chopping garlic, because her goal is to pass this test with flying colours. She knows she’s not going to win in this duel, but there’s no way she’s going to be a loser either. The war has only just begun.

The first week has been gruelling, what with jet lag, frayed nerves, settling in, putting up with Àlex’s tantrums and sleeping very little. She’s spending her nights at the computer trying to find ways of resuscitating Antic Món. She’s posted comments about the restaurant on all the gourmet guide sites, even outside the country, but the pages of the reservation book remain stubbornly unmarked, the purest pristine snowy white. She can count on her fingers the total number of lunch and dinner customers.

She doesn’t know what else to do. The Friends of Antic Món Facebook page is starting to fill up with content. With Òscar’s help, she’s posted recipes – with a few invented touches, to tell the truth – and there are photos of the restaurant too. There is some interest in the virtual flavours competition in which contestants have to guess the secret ingredients of a recipe, but no one’s come to try the fabulous offerings of the chef at Antic Món. People say it’s a great game but nobody wants to play.

In any case, she thinks it might be better that nobody’s come in the last few days, because the dishes are emanating doom and gloom. The first one to stop supplying raw materials was Frank Gabo, but now deliveries of meat and eggs have stopped too. Àlex has been going to the supermarket in town, but the quality of its products is very inferior. He’s humiliated by being seen there and can’t stand “mingling” with the people of Bigues i Riells. He’s putting up a front, trying to mask his dour and lugubrious mood, but his cooking gives him away in excessively strong tastes, radical flavours, over-spicing and too much salt.