Best Food Writing 2013 (52 page)

The next night I returned, again to an empty restaurant. “I had to have more of your cooking,” I said to Eloise, and she smiled with just a hint of a flirt.

After another lovely dinner—whelks in silky Creole sauce—Eloise asked to have a picture taken with me. I promised to print it out and bring it back to her, and, emboldened, I asked if I could go into her kitchen and learn to cook with her. I wanted to see her hands in motion, to see how she cooks such wonderful food for, apparently, nobody. She looked unsure, shying from the idea, until she eventually said yes.

I came back the next morning to a bustling kitchen with half a dozen women bumping about. Eloise wasn't there yet, but I poked my head in and spouted the cheesy comment, “That curry smells terrific!”

A broad woman with a no-bullshit air looked up.

“That's sugar, for stew pork,” she said. It's not a curry, in other words. She shook the pot, the bubbling caramel dancing on oil, then dumped in a massive bowl of meat, sending a flurry of bay leaves into the air. This was Miss Aggie.

She hustled, giving commands that were direct, short, and sometimes expressed with an urgency that sounded like exasperation. But she welcomed me in and set me to work.

As I scrubbed green bananas and introduced myself to the other women in the kitchen, Miss Aggie found moments in between cooking and hectoring her cooks to talk with me about Chinese food, her distaste for big cities, and visiting her husband in Boston, where he lives.

I asked Miss Aggie how she started the restaurant. “I always
wanted to be a schoolteacher,” she said, “but I got pregnant along the way.” She spoke frankly during our short chats; it felt generous of her. When she left to set up the dining room, however, the other women seemed to breathe a little easier, all except for Shackie. A young, lean woman with sleek dark skin, Shackie moved with intense focus; she cooked like she meant it.

Finally Eloise arrived, her round face curled in a smile, and I gave her a hug. Miss Aggie called to her to fry some fish, and Eloise chatted with me as she first finished up a dough Aggie had started for bakes. Shackie walked up and talked to Eloise in dialect, their words sparring in jagged, teasing rhythm, until Eloise said to me, “Say no, Francis, just say no.” I looked at her, confused.

“She says she's going to steal you from me,” Eloise said, and Shackie slipped away, cackling, as Miss Aggie came back in to announce that customers were arriving. Lunchtime proved to be much busier than dinners. “The fish!” Miss Aggie barked. “Eloise!” Things got frantic. Pots got stacked on pots, tilting precariously.

Eloise showed me how to roll the bake dough into round buns and fry them while she tried to get the fish going. She shifted beat-up pans on the stove, settling on one buckled beyond recognition and another that had long ago lost its handle. Guests were coming in, calling for rice, bakes, fish. Miss Aggie blasted through the kitchen again, grumbling something at Eloise, and Eloise shifted her body, blocking from Aggie's urgent demands. I kept making bakes, trying to ignore the fact that Eloise's face was pinching up, turning red. After a few more bakes, she handed her tongs to Shackie and left.

I found her a few minutes later on the porch, waiting for a taxi to take her home. I poured her some water, and she said something about not feeling well. I poured again. She seemed less ill than flustered.

As the cab arrived, Eloise asked for my number. I said I was leaving the next day, and she told me to take care. I went back into the kitchen.

The fish all done, I asked Shackie how long she's been cooking. “Why, I look like a professional?” she asked. Just a few months, it turns out, but she added, “Miss Aggie, she rough and tings, but it harder for you if she soft. This way you learn.” Sweat on her brow, fish in her pan, she looked proud of her work.

“OK, you've helped enough. I hope you learned something,” Miss Aggie said to me. “Sit down, have some lunch,” she invited.

I had one of my bakes, some green beans, and Miss Aggie's stew pork, the one she was caramelizing sugar for when I arrived. It was salty, fatty, bitter, sweet—delicious and complicated.

I ate slowly, taking in the room and the sounds coming from the kitchen, and I thought about what I would tell my Trini friend about life on this rock.

 

 

T
O
S
ERVE AND
O
BEY

By Karen Barichievy

From
Fire and Knives

Armed with culinary school qualifications, freelance writer Karen Barichievy began working as a private chef in the Scottish Borders. Perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised to find that the life of a 21
^st
-century spatula-for-hire wasn't anything like
Downton Abbey.

E
ven in late August there is a bite to the morning air here.

I hurry towards the dark bulk of the house, down the moss-covered stairs to the basement door. Open it quietly—wouldn't want anyone else to stir.

I turn on Radio 3, reminding myself to turn it right down before breakfast. And to open the windows, because He doesn't like it too warm in here. But for now it's cold, and I shelter by the AGA, pulling on chef's whites and apron. I slosh the kettle half full for speed and flick it on. Reaching for the biggest mug I can find, a bucket, really, I tip in three heaped tablespoons of Nescafé. The craving for sleep is still tugging at the corners of me, and I pop two ProPlus tablets in my mouth, chasing them down with the coffee. The first mug of the day is unequalled. Comforting, reviving, just the faint bite of caffeine as I swallow. There'll be many more today, perhaps twelve, even fifteen, but they will be glugged only for their impact. None will match this one.

I open the dishwasher, and check if it worked properly. Not really, the bloody thing. So I pile half of its contents into the sink to hand-wash them later. Extracting the cutlery, I check the breakfast table, set in the small hours when my brain was sluggish. Knives and forks
for cooked, knives for toast, spoons for cereal and fruit, teaspoons for coffee. Mugs, cups, napkins, butter dish, salt pepper. Malt vinegar in case He wants kippers, brown sauce in case He wants a bacon sandwich instead. Jams, marmalade, honey, Marmite, peanut butter. Cereal—one gluten-free, one sugar-free. What have I forgotten? Something, I know it. It'll come to me.

To the pantry next, where excavation begins in fridge one. Milk, orange juice, apple juice, yoghurt, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, mango, pineapple, passionfruit, grapefruit—pink and white.

Arms overflowing, I carry them through to the kitchen. Then back to the pantry to fridge two. Bacon, sausages, black pudding, kippers, tomatoes, mushrooms. Eggs from the windowsill. Another loaf of bread. Ferry it all back to the kitchen. Two pans on the electric cooker—one for kippers, one for poached eggs. Half the boiled kettle in each and set them to simmer. If He asks for either, he wants them produced as close to instant as I can make them. Two more pans on the side for mushrooms and tomatoes. Is it worth taking out another in case of fried bread? Probably not.

I may as well start with fruit prep. Checking over the berries for mould, bits of stalk and hardy bugs that have survived their journey from the finest greengrocer in London. The blackberries are mouth-puckering. I get to work on them with a few drops of lemon, a cascade of icing sugar. A dollop of tayberry jam in a saucer, microwaved for 20 seconds. Dribble the molten red liquid over the berries. Turn them gently, because I don't want a scarlet mush. Taste. More lemon juice. Stir again. Check. The balance of sweet and acid, of fruit and freshness. A little lemon zest, probably three or four strokes on the Microplane. Stir again, scrape in the last of the warm jam. Arrange so that the plate is a jumble of deep, gleaming colour on the table. Next.

Pineapple, sliced thick enough to hold its shape, but not to be a boulder in the mouth. No brown speckles from the peel, no fibrous core. Mango, score each way, turn the skin inside out, slice off the perfect cubes. I check that none of the stone has been caught in the flesh. Passionfruit—four should do it. Two go in as seeds and pulp, the other two through a sieve. Pushing and forcing at the seeds, gleaning more yellow pulp. Scrape the bottom of the sieve. This is
taking too long, but there can be no crunching on seeds to spoil the perfect mouthful of tropical flavours. Push, scrape, push, scrape. I check beneath the sieve, scrape the last of the pulp, and stir it into the fruit. Lime juice, one should do, lime zest, lots this time. Microplane again. Stir, taste, a little icing sugar. Stir again. On the table. Next.

Three oven trays, lined with baking parchment, on which I lay out sausages, bacon and black pudding. Sausages first, in the top oven of the AGA. Set the timer for ten minutes. Back to the larder. My brain snags, what did I come in here for? Ah yes, I remember: fillings for the picnic rolls.

A plate of sliced roast chicken awaits in fridge two there's a bunch of tarragon in fridge one. I snatch some butter and a bowl of thick yellow mayonnaise, made from some decent eggs I found on a farm coming south. Two bags of brown baps on the windowsill. Unload them all in the kitchen. It's soup next. Fridge two, at the bottom, lurking in a Le Creuset big enough to hold a suckling pig. I have to kneel and grip it with both hands to lift it. The thought of dropping it steels my arms, and I heave it next door, onto the slow side of the AGA top.

The timer dings. Sausages. They're browned on top, so I give them a turn for a final ten minutes. The black pudding had better go in too. Timer on again. Back to the fruit. Grapefruit now. His favorite—I've noticed He likes the white more than the pink. When I segment grapefruit, I am back at Leiths in the teaching kitchen, with Claire at my shoulder. She is saying nothing, the faintest frown puckering her brow. A look in her eyes that is half surprise, half disappointment. How can a student be so cackhanded, she wonders, as I hack at her perfect fruit, creating only deformed balls of mush. Until I went home one weekend and bought twenty oranges and a dozen grapefruit and found somewhere a measure of dexterity.

I burrow around in the drawer for my fruit knife. It has a serrated edge and is sharp enough to draw blood with merely a whisper of pressure. Slice off the top and bottom of the fruit, just enough to reveal the tips of the segments. Then cutting off the peel, following the downward curve of the fruit, taking away the pith, but not pillaging the segments. The fruit must maintain its shape, Claire would say, no mutilated blocks. Round until I've come full circle. Then tidying away the remaining traces of pith. There must be no white except
the faintest trace of veins between the segments. The trimmed fruit is a perfect pink orb.

My hands are dripping juice, and I check the clock. Faster, faster. I saw gently on either side of the segment, leaving the membrane behind and extracting a perfect sliver of fruit. Then the next one alongside. Watch for pips. Now the white grapefruit. There is a pile of fruit peelings spilling into the sink by the time I'm finished. Wash hands, clear the mess, wipe the rim of the grapefruit bowl, stir the grapefruit into an even salad of pink and white. As if anyone would notice but me. On the table. Next.

Give the soup a stir, check it's not catching on the bottom. Haul out the sausages—there's probably a minute left on the timer, but they're caramelised and look well enough. That reminds me, hot plates, hot platters to go in the warming oven of the AGA. How many will eat hot? Perhaps eight, maybe ten. I turn the black pudding, time for the bacon to go in too. Top rack of the top oven, submit it to brief, brutal heat and watch it like a hawk. Set the timer for two minutes.

Tomatoes next. A glug of sunflower oil in the pan, better start on the hot plate of the AGA, because the soup is still hogging the cooler one. Slice the tomatoes in half, sprinkle with coarse sea salt and a grind of pepper. On the burner, go. The mushrooms are next. I pick through them, brush them free of earth and muck, dock their tails, and quarter them. Cooking space is getting more complicated now. The soup gets shifted onto the warming plate. A cast iron frying pan takes its place, and I cut off a third of a pack of butter and a splash of oil, and wait for it to melt and fizz. When the butter is spitting, the mushrooms are in, with more sea salt and pepper. The timer is demanding my attention for the bacon. It's not quite there. Another thirty seconds will take it to the razor's edge between crisp and burnt. I'd better wait—if I walk away it will char, and I'll have to start again. Hunker down by the AGA, gulping my tepid coffee, listening to the bacon hissing inside. Ten, nine, eight . . . I force myself to be patient.