Mediterranean Summer (6 page)

At the cockpit, with an extended hand, palm up, she directed me to a cushioned seat. I stepped down into the sun-filled area that wrapped around the binnacle—the polished brass housing for the compass and steering wheel.
Il Dottore
was seated, and she introduced him to me.

Il Dottore
appeared to have a medium build, a skin tone that looked like a perennial tan, wavy gray hair that covered his ears, a nice smile, and an easy way about him—the casual demeanor of success and confidence. Dressed in a short-sleeve, button-down shirt and slacks, he augmented the very put-together presence of
la Signora.

I positioned myself on the seat across from both of them. The folding cockpit table was fully opened between us, with what appeared to be
Serenity
’s blueprints and the sail plan.
Il Dottore
was reading them before I sat down.

I affected an attitude that I hoped would convey total ease. But perhaps they sensed a little nervous tension in the fact that I kept looking from one to the other, trying to determine which of the two would be making the hiring decision. I also didn’t understand why they would even consider a young American cook and not an Italian chef.

This would be their first season as owners of
Serenity,
which they were apparently rushing to make ready for the May opening of the Riviera yachting season, less than two months off. Angry cries of the French, Italian, and British day workers on board, arguing about whose way was the right way to rewire the running lights from the navigation station, flew across the boat. But
la Signora
just tuned them out and began the interview in flawless Italian. I knew enough Italian to understand most Italians, but understanding a foreign language is always easier when the person speaking is highly articulate. This is especially so with Italian, some of whose regional accents only vaguely resemble Tuscan Italian, considered the most proper.

“So, Davide, what kinds of things do you like to cook?” She pronounced my name “DAH-vee-day.”

“Well, I am inspired by many things,” I answered. “I love to cook—am fascinated by—first courses and pastas. My whole perception of what pasta is—as a course, as a flavor, integral to a meal—has been rediscovered since I’ve been living in Italy. But what I like cooking most are game birds.”

“What kind?” she asked.

“Quail, pigeon, duck, and guinea fowl. They’re a great challenge to master,” I went on. “I’ve been exposed to a wide range of ways to prepare them.” Now, really wound up, I rambled on about how preparing special regional dishes allowed me to take the academic knowledge I had picked up during the various
stages
of my training and apply it to my own creations.

But mostly I spoke of ideas and a refined palate, confident this would distinguish me from a dockside adventurer looking to sling galley grub for tax-free cash. I paused, ready for
la Signora
to compliment me on my broad knowledge and interesting cooking ideas. No such compliment came. Instead, she sat quietly, patiently waiting for me to finish saying all I wanted to say.

When she was sure I was done, she said, “
Allora
,” pushing up to the edge of the cockpit bench, posture erect. I also edged closer to the lip of my seat both to signal attentiveness and to hear her above the workmen’s din.
Il Dottore
had long ago turned his attention back to the plans he was studying.

There was no question about who would be making the hire.

La Signora
cleared her throat and held forth:

“This is what we like to do in the summer. We like our food to be very light, very clean. We like it to be well prepared. We want it to be fresh, to be Italian. We don’t eat a lot of meats or heavy things in the summer.

“We want lots of fish—there is no reason why we shouldn’t have fish—we’ll be at sea!” she said, smiling and gesturing to the Mediterranean on three sides of us. Now I wished I hadn’t run on about game birds.

“Lots of fish and seafood, plenty of vegetables—we love tomatoes—and fruits. Simple things done beautifully.

“We’ll let you know when we want to have a pasta, so don’t think that we’ll have pasta or risotto at every meal, as you may have done at some of the restaurants where you worked.

“No onions are to show in dishes and no snails, red beets, or mussels.

“No meat sauces.

“No cold plates for dinner entrées. Occasionally you may serve a dish
tiepido
”—tepid—“if it makes sense for the menu.”

Il Dottore
mentioned something to her as she was talking. “Oh yes,” she added, “don’t be shy with
peperoncini
”—chile peppers.

“Have different snacks available and an assortment of canapés to be served every day with cocktails before dinner service. Make many and rotate the offerings so that repeats are spaced no closer than once per month.

“We’d like to have three or four courses for both lunch and dinner. Everything will be presented on platters and served Russian style.” Russian style, I knew, is where a server offers and then serves each person from the platter. That didn’t surprise me. No family style on this boat.

La Signora
leaned forward to emphasize her most important dictate. I found myself completely taken with her. She became very focused, her brown eyes locked onto mine, her perfect Italian coming off her tongue like the snap of crisp biscotti.

“There is no reason to ever,
ever
repeat a dish throughout the summer.” She explained that the season would officially begin in late May at Monte Carlo, during the weekend of the Grand Prix auto race, and end in October, during the Voiles de Saint-Tropez classic yacht regatta. From May through July, she and
il Dottore
would be flying from whichever of their residences they happened to be at the end of the workweek to meet the boat for weekends at predetermined places along the French and Italian coast, but come August, they would be on board for the entire month. The itinerary would take
Serenity
around the Côte d’Azur, then down the west coast of the Italian boot to Portofino, the Cinque Terre, along Tuscany from Viareggio to the Argentario via Elba, the islands of Ischia, Ponza, and Capri, the Amalfi coast, then after, the longest water leg, across the Tyrrhenian Sea to Sardinia along the Emerald Coast, to Corsica, and finally back to Antibes.

“As the cuisine changes in each port of call,” she told me, “you should be able to alter your menu to take account of the indigenous offerings of each place we visit.
Hai capito
?”—do you understand?

Clearly they wanted to enjoy the seasonal, regional, and local attributes of
la cucina italiana.
This created one of the most exacting criteria for cooking I had ever been given, requiring me to know what to look for in the markets at every port of call, then figuring out what local preparation to make out of what I’d be able to find.

I had learned that Italian cooking is all about place. Each region has its own flavors and even its own style of cooking, and she was now asking me if I thought I could vary my own cooking to accommodate this very Italian way of preparing food. I thought I could. After all, I had been preparing meals for Italians in my years in Europe. But then again, I never had sole responsibility for the menu. Nor had I ever cooked day after day for people who knew precisely what regional Italian cooking should taste like.

The extent of detail she had gone into, along with her flat-out directness, encouraged me to believe I had at least made the short list. I was happy with that. I wanted the job, but I didn’t know whether to tell her that I thought I could meet her requirements or wait for her to say something further. I decided to say nothing.

Finally, shifting from her
padrona
tone in Italian to the first English phrase she used during the interview, she added: “Make sure you have
an emergency menu.
If six guests turn to ten or fifteen, you must be prepared. Keep some cheeses, fruits, bread sticks, and crackers on board. Some canned tuna, canned tomatoes,
salumi,
and maybe a kilo of frozen shrimp. Enough to enable you to prepare a beautiful and simple meal on short notice.” I made a mental note to record this list in my journal to cover myself in case I got the job.

“Also, always have pâté on board.” The word “pâté” exploded from her mouth—more an order than a suggestion. “I like to have it on board at all times.”

She turned and asked
il Dottore
if he had anything to add. Solely by his facial expression, without a spoken word, he indicated she had covered everything.

She turned back to me and extended her hand.
“Grazie, Davide,”
she said warmly. Then, with the first smile she had shown me, she added, “See you in two months, okay?” I nodded my agreement. “The yacht manager will contact you about details.”

I wasn’t surprised when not a word about my pay was uttered. I had learned that the Italian way is that if you don’t trust your employer to do right by you, why even waste time on an interview? As I left the cockpit and walked down the
passerelle,
I took a last look back.
La Signora
had rejoined
il Dottore
in reviewing the blueprints and sailing plans.

With that, I had the job.

Two

A Season to Taste

Antibes and the Bay of Angels

A
s the coastal train rolled into Antibes, I caught sight of the tall, cascading masts of
Serenity
berthed at the Yacht Club d’Antibes, on the far side of Port Vauban. The boat had been moved since I was on board for my interview and was now in a new extension of the harbor built to accommodate mega-yachts, some among the largest in the world. A few of the motor yachts berthed near
Serenity
were many times her size.

The walk from the train station was a long one, but I welcomed the opportunity to get a better feel for the town that would be my home port for the summer. As I made my way toward
Serenity,
I took in the activity of the busy harbor. The hundreds of motor yachts, motor sailers, and sailing yachts, tied up one after the next, gradually got larger and longer the farther I walked into the marina. On just about every one it seemed maintenance was going on. Sun-bleached teak decks and bright white hulls were being scrubbed clean by tanned and fit crew members in uniforms; a few riggers worked at the top of masts; cranes lifted and lowered smaller craft into the water near the harbormaster’s building; little Renault marine service vehicles were everywhere. The noise of sanding, spraying, fairing, and honing was constant. It was just another busy late-spring day in a working harbor catering to the serious yachting community.

Serenity
was parked stern-to in her slip almost at the end of the quay. When I was on board the first time, she was undergoing a complete makeover—restoration work on the rig, deck, interior, and mechanical systems—or what’s called in the yacht business a refit. When the owners said that she would be ready for the opening of the summer season, my reaction, which I kept to myself, was disbelief. To my eye, too much remained to be done to meet that target date. Now I had to concede that I had been wrong. Although a lot of finishing work was still going on, I no longer doubted she’d be ready. This confirmed the reputation and my original impression of the owners: that these were people who knew how to get things done.

Sitting high and proud,
Serenity
was a magnificent yacht, seemingly ready to handle whatever the sea threw at her. Having sailed the Mediterranean and Caribbean for decades, this 124-foot, gaff-rigged schooner had been commissioned and built in the United States during the early 1930s, the worst years of the Great Depression. A model of classic design, she enjoyed a reputation in the yachting world as having “great lines.” Now, as the refit neared completion, the sanded teak deck, varnished woodwork, replicated solid brass hardware, polished fixtures, new masts, booms, ropes, blocks, and virgin white sails made her shine.

I was looking forward to spending time in this major hub of the sailor’s world. Situated between tony Cannes and bustling Nice, Antibes was founded by Greek colonists as Antipolis—the city across—possibly because it lay across the Bay of Angels from the earlier-settled Nice. Control of the city later fell to the Romans, who ruled it for many centuries, then in turn to nearby Italians, the Ligurians, and the house of Savoy. Not until the mid-nineteenth century did the region officially become a part of France, which accounts for the city’s culture being so strongly Italian.

Beyond
Serenity
’s bow, I could see Fort Carré, a sixteenth-century stone fort across the harbor. When I first came to Antibes, Annie had given me a tour of the area and noted a few landmarks, the fort being the most prominent. Napoleon spent some time there, both in front of and behind bars. I looked to the other side of town and saw Phare de la Garoupe—the famous lighthouse on top of Cap d’Antibes. This aid to navigation has kept seafaring vessels from having their hulls ripped on the beak-sharp peninsula rocks that lurk in the shallow waters along the coastline. I soon learned it had a land-based navigational role as well, guiding drunken crewmen back to their boats from Juan-les-Pins, the wild nightlife town on the other side of Cap d’Antibes. Down along the seafront side of the old town is one of the most distinctive landmarks, the ramparts, the shoreline fortification that protected the town against invaders and against the high sea swells driven by the legendary mistral winds.

Whether experienced on land or sea, the force of a mistral can be nasty. The mighty gales come roaring down the Rhône valley, then split offshore in the Golfe du Lion, with one half fanning easterly while the other blows to the west. But Annie calmed any concerns I had about being caught in the tempest by promising that an advanced mistral is rare in the summer.

This beautiful and brackish port city overlooking the Mediterranean Sea has been attracting creative people for more than a century. Jules Verne wrote
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
in Antibes, and from the 1920s on it was a playground for movie stars, artists, and writers. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gerald and Sara Murphy dug their toes in the sand while sipping pastis, and Picasso, like Monet before him, found his time in Antibes inspiring and restorative. He generously left behind his collection of work done at Antibes, the city turning his prominent old-town residence, Château Grimaldi, into Musée Picasso, a museum dedicated to these objets d’art. Jacques Cousteau used Antibes as home port for his research vessel, the
Calypso,
when he was working in the Mediterranean.

Behind the facade of glamour lent it by artists and writers, Antibes stayed true to its heritage: first and foremost it has always been a sailor’s town. As the harbor grew into one of the most important in the world for yacht sales, berthing, chartering, and maintenance, a labor force to fulfill these services made the area home. This citizens-of-the-world confluence of captains, sailors, specialists, and day workers, all drawing handsome paychecks from their wealthy employers, kept perpetual smiles on the faces of the local shopkeepers, landlords, crew agencies, restaurateurs, and bar owners. I looked forward to becoming part of this community.

I don’t recall how long I had been standing there on the quay admiring
Serenity
before a broad-shouldered man with a military bearing and a serious look called out to me from the deck. “Can I help you?” he asked in very British Queen’s English.

“I’m David,” I answered. “The owners hired me a couple of months ago.”

“The cook, right? I heard you might be joining today.”

Following yachting protocol, I asked permission to board. When it was granted, I took off my shoes before ambling up the
passerelle
— the gangway. This is not a universal maritime practice, but dark-soled street shoes can mar and scuff a yacht’s soft and stain-prone teak deck, so removing them before being asked to do so, I hoped, would be taken as a sign of my respect for the stately
Serenity.

“Kevin, the mate,” he said, offering a firm handshake. As the mate, he was second in command. “Welcome aboard.”

“Pleased to be here,” I responded. He said nothing further. I stood awkwardly, making sure I at least made a good impression. He caught the eye of someone on deck farther forward and waved him over to us.

“Scott, the engineer,” he told me. To Scott, he said just as simply, “David, our cook.” So much for small talk.

Direct from the Isle of Wight, Scott was more cordial than Kevin, even cheery, with the weathered and chiseled looks you find in many men who live on the sea. He was tall and thin, had a receding hairline, and a neatly groomed beard. He volunteered to show me around, inviting me, with a sly smile, to go with him for the “cook’s tour.”

I followed him almost the length of the boat, carefully plotting my way past the day workers on deck, trying not to interrupt their work. At the bow, we climbed down the crew ladder into the fo’c’sle, short for forecastle (pronounced “FOLKS-ul”), the small crew quarters in the bow. I noticed that Scott was as sure-footed as a mountain goat, leaving me feeling like a landlubber. It would take a few days for me to get my sea legs.

The slightly raked floor and support structure for the deck above made ceiling height below just under six feet. The camber of the space created a feeling of being inside an elongated pyramid on its side. We moved aft through a bulkhead, and I put my bags on the mess table. One step farther aft Scott opened the thick metal door to the engine room to let me have a look at
Serenity
’s new artificial heart—a loud, vibrating diesel generator that provided electricity and charged the boat’s batteries while under way or at anchor. Then he showed me other newly installed equipment: a drive axle, water desalinator, electric panels, alarm systems, and a wall of meters, digital gauges, and switches. For a long moment he stood before all this new equipment with a look of pure love in his eyes.

I would guess he saw no such look in my eyes, because he quickly moved on, to the galley, my new office. It was an L-shaped space on the port side just across from the mess area that led into the pantry. All around us, the floorboards had been removed to give workers access to the utility lines under the flooring. We had to move around by balancing ourselves on the support structure. He showed me the refrigerators, known as “reefers”—one a hull-mounted reach-in, the other top-loading, built like a deep chest, not my favorite design in fridges, since whatever you need in a hurry will invariably be found crushed at the very bottom.

I was introduced to an appliance I was surprised to find in a yacht’s galley—a shiny new commercial-grade dishwasher. Whoever was in charge of the refit must have figured an onboard dishwasher would add a nice touch of modernity. But every new convenience comes with a price. Part of the challenge of cooking at sea is resource management. Dockside, a dishwasher can draw electricity from shore service, but once under way it’s a discipline of power trade-offs, and in this game it was a fair guess that the captain would choose his radar over my rinse cycle. Plus, the owners wouldn’t want to be worrying about whether there was enough available power for them to watch a video or play music. I suspected this dishwasher was going to enjoy a nice, easy life as a large bread box.

Standing in the galley, I had a different take on the progress of the work being done. As magnificent as
Serenity
looked from the quay, here below she reeked of a foul combination of varnish, brass polish, and diesel fuel. The small portholes on either side of the galley were open, but clearly not up to the job of ventilating the area. One of the first chefs I ever worked for used to say that taste is also appearance and aroma, or as he also liked to say, “Smell the flavors!” Would every dish I prepared taste like the odors now permeating the galley?

Scott interrupted my thoughts, giving me what he thought was good news. “We just installed a new marine stove for you,” he said, beaming.

Yep, it looked new, and expensive, too—mostly made of stainless steel—but damn it, once again there was bad news mixed in with the good. The stove wasn’t on gimbals, gyroscope-like devices to keep an onboard stove horizontal in heaving seas. “No gimbals?” I asked.

“No, we can’t do that,” he answered nonchalantly. The stove had been installed parallel with the beam (width) of the boat, rendering gimbals useless. Great! I had visions of sauce sloshing over a pot’s rim with every sea swell. Scott mentioned that a custom-designed system of bars and adjustable guards was to be installed within days to keep the pots over the burners. I would quickly find out that the system was only good for pots, since fry pans were shallow enough to slip under the guardrails. This system would prove useless unless I gave some forethought to menu needs, the sailing schedule, prep time, and the size of the cookware. And the ventilator hood above sounded at best like a decent desk fan.

Scott would have made a good poker player. Ignoring the serious concern that must have been written all over my face, he went on with the tour, noting one by one each of the galley’s features. He proudly pointed to where my oven hooked into the gas line and to the butane tanks housed in a locker on deck. He emphasized a sequence of manual valves that were automatically monitored. Escaping gas that went down into the bilge could be very dangerous, so an alarm system, a high-pitched screech audibly very different from the other bell alarms, had been installed. Scott pointed out a space under the floor just above the bilge that had new shelves installed: my nonperishable food and beverage storage area. Getting to it meant pulling up the heavy floor plank then climbing down with only enough space to spin in a squatted position.