Off the Menu (19 page)

And he does, sort of, but I don’t care. I hold the card to my heart. And I try to focus on the deep-down broken part of me that does still believe in happy-ever-after, and no shoes dropping, and think,
yes
.

W
hat time is your future husband picking you up?” Bennie asks, continuing to claim that her premonition about me and RJ is going to come true.

“About seven, so I have three hours to get ready.”

“Are you so excited?”

“I am, but also a little nervous.”

“RJ never makes you nervous. What’s up?”

“I’m more nervous about meeting his friends, and you know how I get about dinner parties with people who don’t know about my stupid food stuff.”

Bennie laughs. “For a chef, you do have some serious limitations.”

“I know.”

It should be mentioned that I am very oddly picky about my food. I’ve never been one of those chefs who would just eat anything, and some of my issues can be enormously problematic.

Without putting too fine a point on it, there is a lot of food that I don’t eat. A list the existence of which I hate to acknowledge, a list of things widely touted as so delectable that people think of them as the pinnacle of perfection. And I’m not allergic to anything, and I don’t have political agendas against how the foods are attained or prepared, and I’m not restricted by religious beliefs.

I just don’t like ’em.

Now, I don’t think you need to be Andrew Zimmern to effectively fit yourself into the foodie category. I know plenty of serious chefs and gourmands who aren’t going to tuck into insects and four-year-old putrefied shark. But despite having once eaten two live termites (a story for another day), my issue isn’t with extreme eating. It’s with stuff that most people find delicious, and I’m always afraid of that moment with someone who doesn’t know me when I have to tell them the stuff I don’t eat.

It would be like having to tell someone that, while you happily acknowledge your sex addiction, you aren’t interested in S&M, porn, toys, erotica, threesomes, and will only do half of the positions in the Kama Sutra. Your street cred would suffer significantly.

Same for me. I’m a trained
chef
for the love of Pete. I have more than seventy herbs and spices stocked in my cabinets. I have fourteen kinds of vinegar in my pantry. I am prepared, by virtue of a good stock of staples, to make a hearty, delicious meal at the drop of a hat. I believe in making homemade stock, in using top-notch ingredients prepared to best heighten their natural goodness, and that good food made with your heart is one of the truest forms of love. I subscribe to eight cooking magazines. I write cookbooks with Patrick, and collect other people’s cookbooks and read them like novels. I have been all over the world cooking and eating and training under extraordinary chefs. And the two food guys I would most like to go on a road trip with are Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman, both of whom I have met, and who are genuinely awesome guys, hysterically funny and easy to be with. But as much as I want to be the Batgirl in that trio, I fear that I would be woefully unprepared. Because an essential part
of the food experience that those two enjoy the most is stuff that, quite frankly, would make me ralph.

I don’t feel overly bad about the offal thing. After all, variety meats seem to be the one area that people can get a pass on. With the possible exception of foie gras, which I wish like heckfire I liked, but I simply cannot get behind it, and nothing is worse than the look on a fellow foodie’s face when you pass on the pâté. I do love tongue, and off cuts like oxtails and cheeks, but please, no innards.

Blue or overly stinky cheeses, cannot do it. Not a fan of raw tomatoes or tomato juice—again I can eat them, but choose not to if I can help it. Ditto, raw onions of every variety (pickled is fine, and I cannot get enough of them cooked), but I bonded with Scott Conant at the James Beard Awards dinner, when we both went on a rant about the evils of raw onion. I know he is often sort of douchey on television, but he was nice to me, very funny, and the man makes the best freaking spaghetti in tomato sauce on the planet.

I have issues with bell peppers. Green, red, yellow, white, purple, orange. Roasted or raw. Ick. If I eat them raw I burp them up for days, and cooked they smell to me like old armpit. I have an appreciation for many of the other pepper varieties, and cook with them, but the bell pepper? Not my friend.

Spicy isn’t so much a preference as a physical necessity. In addition to my chronic and severe gastric reflux, I also have no gallbladder. When my gallbladder and I divorced several years ago, it got custody of anything spicier than my own fairly mild chili, Emily’s sesame noodles, and that plastic Velveeta-Ro-Tel dip that I probably shouldn’t admit to liking. I’m allowed very occasional visitation rights, but only at my own risk. I like a gentle back-of-the-throat heat to things, but
I’m never going to meet you for all-you-can-eat buffalo wings. Mayonnaise squicks me out, except as an ingredient in other things. Avocado’s bland oiliness, okra’s slickery slime, don’t even get me started on runny eggs.

I know. It’s mortifying.

And beyond dreaming of a road trip with Tony and Michael, it makes situations like tonight fraught with potential for disaster. It’s bad enough that so many people get freaked out by the idea of cooking for a chef, thinking we are going to judge them or be disappointed, when in fact, any chef is usually thrilled that someone wants to cook for them for a change. But the idea that I could sit at someone’s lovely and thoughtfully planned dinner party pushing things around my plate like some picky child, it knots my stomach. At least RJ was very cool about it when I fessed up during one of our marathon phone calls. He told me that I should never be embarrassed or shy about liking what I like, and anyone who would think less of me because of it wasn’t worth my time. I’m sure eventually he will say or do the wrong thing, we all do, but so far he is batting a thousand, and despite the fact that we have only actually seen each other in person a few times, I just feel entirely wonderful whenever I think of him.

Bennie continues to stick by her story that he is The One and that my forever after is around the corner. And she continues to talk me off the ledge about my own varied and ridiculous insecurities. Like now.

“You have nothing to worry about, silly girl. It’s New Year’s Eve. I’m sure there will be either prime rib or rack of lamb, with traditional sides. No one is making broiled kidneys with blue cheese sauce stuffed into a green pepper on New Year’s Eve.”

“Okay, that just made my whole stomach turn over.”

“Sorry. But aren’t you probably more nervous about after the party? I mean, aren’t you thinking that tonight is the night?”

“Yes, I’m thinking that tonight might be the night I ask RJ to sleep over, if it feels right.”

“It will be fine. You like him. You trust him. The kissing, etcetera, has been great. Don’t overthink.”

“Yeah, um, are you new? Have you met me? I overthink EVERYTHING.”

She chuckles. “True enough. Look, lovely girl, go indulge in some New Year’s Eve primping and dreaming, have a wonderful night with your man, and we will chat tomorrow. And I hope you don’t mind, but I thought maybe I’d stay with Maria when I come next week.”

“How come?”

“Because I think you are at a place with RJ that your busy lives are going to have to stop preventing you from spending more time together, and having me in your guest room for four days is not going to be conducive to that.”

“Hey, you know I’m not one of those girls who abandons her girlfriends in favor of boyfriends.”

“Wouldn’t have dreamt of suggesting such a thing. I just mean that you guys are about to be in the best phase of your new relationship, and you both have enough barriers to time together without having a houseguest for the better part of a week. Not to worry, we’ll still have quality time, and there is the party to think of. I just want the two of you to be able to get all wrapped up in each other without any impediments.”

“Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

“Yes you have. Go have a wonderful night, and happy New Year my sweet friend. I love you.”

“I love you, and I can’t wait to see you next week. Happy New Year, Benlet.”

“Mwah.”

I’m just getting out of the shower when my phone rings. “Help.” Patrick sounds urgent, but then again, when you are the center of the universe, things are always urgent.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Fridge died. All the food has gone off. Fifty people imminent. I need you.”

This cannot be happening. “Slow down. Exactly what happened?”

“Did all the food prep yesterday, platters set, everything ready. Then I open my fucking fridge and the light doesn’t come on and it’s totally warm and it smells like a corpse someone pulled out of a swamp. Fifteen hundred fucking dollars’ worth of shrimp and oysters and stone crab claws and lobster and cheese and caviar and all the little sliders I made that just needed reheating and the pot of chili … The damn thing must have died in the night and now I have fifty people coming in four hours and NOT ONE FUCKING THING TO FEED THEM.”

Goddamnit all to hell. “Patrick, I have plans, I—”

“YOU cannot have PLANS when I NEED YOU. This is a catastrophe.”

“Patrick, I have a date …” This is the first time I’ve ever said these words to Patrick in all the time we’ve worked together. He doesn’t notice.

“So what? I have a CRISIS. Get it together, Alana. What the fuck are we going to do?”

I stand in my bedroom, hair dripping, trying to pull something out of my ass that won’t totally screw up my night.
“Pick me up in ten minutes. We’ll go to the test kitchen. You’ve got me till seven, and not one minute later, Patrick, I mean it.”

“I love you, my little Alana-guanabana. I’ll see you soon.”

So much for primp time. I throw my wet hair in a loose bun, slap some makeup on, and put on a pair of cargo pants and a work shirt. I bring the black wrap dress and boots I am planning on wearing tonight, and call RJ.

“Hi, slight change of plans. Would it be okay if you picked me up at work instead of at home?”

“Of course, but why are you at work?”

I briefly tell him about Patrick’s disaster. “I told him he had me till seven, and not a minute more.”

“Of course. Don’t worry. Did you want me to meet you there early? Can I help in any way?”

ACK! Cannot let Patrick at him yet. “You are the sweetest man on the planet, and no, we’ll have it under control. Call me when you are getting close to the studio and I will meet you outside. And thank you so much for understanding.”

“Of course, honey, just do what you have to do.”

Patrick picks me up in his new Hummer, which I think is probably the single most unnecessary and obnoxious car on the planet, and we go to the studio. Once we get into the test kitchen, I look through the walk-in and get a handle on what our options are. And then it hits me.

“Flatbreads,” I say.

“Flatbreads?” He looks at me like I am insane.

“Flatbreads. You’ve got four ovens in that kitchen of yours. You’ll set up a DIY flatbread station. Everyone gets a round of dough, you set up all the toppings on the island, and they make them up however they like. They only take twelve
minutes to cook, and you can do four sheet pans per oven, so sixteen flatbreads at a time. We’ll make a big salad, and some easy pasta to fill in, and steal all the nuts and olives and cheese to put out for antipasti. Everyone ends up in the kitchen anyway, this way they can participate. One step up from ordering pizza.”

He pulls me into an embrace. “You’re a genius. I’ll do pasta, you work on the dough so it can rise, and then we can knock the rest out.”

In a frenetic whirlwind we chop and dice and mince, turning anything we can think of into a possible pizza topping, and packing them all in small hotel pans in the rolling coolers we use for field shoots. When the dough has risen, I roll out fifty twelve-inch rounds, separating each with sheets of parchment, and stacking them in sheet pans, and putting them into Patrick’s car. He whips up two pastas, a rotini with a creamy sauce with ham and peas, and a simple rigatoni with vegetables in a light tomato sauce. Patrick discovers a big bowl of leftover risotto from Friday’s testing, and heats up the deep fryer, yelling at me to set up a breading station so he can do some arancini. While he is frying the little rice balls, I grab a huge prep bowl and fill it with romaine, shaved Parmesan, croutons and crispy capers, and I mix together a quick peppery pseudo-Caesar-style dressing. By the time it is nearly seven, Patrick’s car is filled with the makings of a fine party, and I am a limp, sweaty mess.

I go to the ladies room to change into my dress, and find that my hair is a frizzed Jew-fro, my makeup has melted off, and I am flushed from exertion and the heat of the kitchen. I know it is going to take me at least an hour and a half before I stop sweating. I put on my dress and boots, try to fix my hair, fairly unsuccessfully, and get the runny mascara mostly
out from under my eyes. I am presentable. But I am not fabulous. And I so wanted to be fabulous. I’m exhausted. I smell of the kitchen. I have prosciutto under my fingernails. I want a hot bath and a cold, clear, high-proof adult beverage and my pajamas.