Prep work (2 page)

“Any advice on making a sixty minute dish in thirty?” he asked.

He had been dredging the slices of eggplant, or aubergine, but whatever you call it, it still takes too long to cook when you start with big purple fruit and the diners are already seated. “Don’t tell anyone we committed this crime against food.” I tossed his carefully breaded slices into the deep fryer and hoped he’d bought a non-bitter variety.

The eggplant was hissing away and the onions caramelizing in the pan when he finally put out a hand. “Tommy Bell. Thanks for the help; you’re a lifesaver.”

“Glad to do it.” Silently we assembled the parm in individual baking dishes. He had the sauce hot already, and it was a matter of layering and sprinkling, then shoving it all into the oven to brown on top. Imogen was coming through with the orders, exactly as Tommy predicted. The meals would be out in good time, especially since Tommy took the precaution of sending out a little
amuse-bouche
to keep them occupied. I asked what it was.

Tommy paused with his serving spoon over a small plate. “White beans and figs in a citrus dressing. It’s the side for the chop tonight. They’ll eat one bean at a time, say ‘oh’ and ‘ah’, and still order the aubergine again next time.”

“But they keep coming back.” I’d had customers like that too.

He was in no hurry to chase me out, and another four-top order came in. Tommy had no
commis
or
sous-chef
, but he did seem to have four or six arms, the way he assembled the food, flinging things from his
mise en place
into small copper pans and making a quick trip into a walk-in fridge, which didn’t seem to have any beer in it. Not that I checked. He sent Imogen to the cellar—
Yes! A real cellar!
—for another beer, which he handed over with a slightly lopsided smile that I was coming to like very much. Every kitchen I’d ever worked had been hot, but this one was volcanic. The source of the heat was plating the food, brandishing a squeeze bottle.

“If the parsley upset you, this is going to make you bawl your eyes out.” Tommy shot an expert squiggle of sauce that smelled of adobo and peppers over the dish.

“Boo-hoo.” I enunciated each syllable clearly. “You’re waging a single-handed battle against the reputation of British food.”

“Not so single-handed.” He passed plates to Imogen, pausing to wipe a thumbprint off a rim. “Though I might be the only soldier around here.”

I hadn’t laughed so easily or so genuinely with anyone in a long time. Then he reminded me that I’m a celebrity and he’s a fan. Damn.

“I’ll get the cookbook. It’s upstairs in my flat. Be right back.”

Alone in the kitchen. I hadn’t been there in a long time. My restaurant had closed three years ago, and I’d worked guest gigs now and then, but not in one of my own. This one was small but could be arranged more efficiently. Two of us working together had been just on the edge of tight, but he’d danced around me with great surety for a man who usually worked alone. He was taking a while—the timer on the parm rang. Didn’t know when he’d be back, so I grabbed a dry towel for a hot mitt and extracted the food. A sprinkle of the parsley on top—
that
was where it belonged—and six dishes were ready to be whisked out to the surprise table as if Tommy had known in advance they were coming. Imogen gave me a funny look but no lip. Then she handed me a ticket.

Tommy hadn’t returned. Maybe he’d stashed the cookbook at the very back of the closet. Or in a box he hadn’t unpacked since he moved. Five years ago. I could make up a lot of unpleasant scenarios, but right then, I was going to make some food, because there were hungry people and no chef.

Little pork medallions were sizzling in a copper pan and parboiled pasta was ready to dip back into the hot water bath when Tommy returned, holding the hardback medium quarto volume that was my modest contribution to culinary reading. He was apologetic, but I didn’t know why—that book was used. Well-used. There were little wrinkled spots on the dust cover where it had gotten wet, sauce marks on the edges of the pages, and dog-ears on the corners. Oh. Maybe he’d got it secondhand and had never opened it.

“Sorry to make you wait, Jude. I shouldn’t have answered the phone.” Tommy took an appraising look at the ticket, then at my pans. Looked like he approved. “You didn’t have to cook.”

I shook the pan, flipping the shallots and tomatoes over rather than breaking them up with a spoon. “I’m enjoying myself. It’s been a while.” He seemed nervous about offering the cookbook, so I tried to help out. “How would you like that inscribed?” I flashed him a smile and slid the pasta into the hot water.

“Um….” He stared at my hands.

“I’ll get out of the way.” I’d taken over. Way to go, Jude, this isn’t your kitchen.

“You aren’t in the way. I like watching you work.” He fumbled the book open to the flyleaf without looking at it. “I learned a lot from your book, and….”

He had? The title is
Scaling Down
and the recipes came in two forms: one, the way the pros would do it in a restaurant with servings for fifteen to thirty, and the other a companion recipe for family-sized batches that served four to six with some simplified techniques and standard American kitchen measurements, not metric. I thought it was a good idea, and so did my publisher and agent. All of us were taken by surprise by the irritation of the book buyers who thought they were getting a diet plan and didn’t appreciate the butter and heavy cream. Maybe Tommy had put the sauce stains on himself.

“I can keep going if you like. A second set of hands might be good here.” Imogen came by with another ticket, which she held uncertainly, not sure who to give it to.

“I’ll take it.” Tommy examined the order. “I put the book upstairs because it was getting too messy. I made photocopies of the recipes I use the most.” He started another sauté pan heating, and I plated the pork. “A lot of my customers come to eat your food.”

I didn’t know what to say. Thank you? Oh good? Do it right then? “I’m glad they keep coming back.” We skirted each other carefully, me with loaded hands and him holding the book against his chest, protecting it from the steam hissing from the pan.

Imogen bustled away with my efforts, but Tommy wasn’t turning loose of the book. I wasn’t seeing stiff upper lip, or a stiff anything else, but I didn’t know what was going on. “How would you like that inscribed?” I asked again.

Glancing down at his pans, Tommy looked like he was blushing, though it could have just been flushing from the heat of the kitchen.

“Or have you changed your mind?”

“No, I haven’t. I—” He looked up at me with indecision and something else. “If you sign it, then you’ll go, and this will be over and I’ll never cook another dish with Jude Marshall, and—” Tommy sputtered to a stop. “You must think I’m a right prat.”

“A bit of a fanboy, but not a prat.” I tried to recall how awful prathood was.

He handed me the book. “You decide. You just came in for a quiet bowl of soup, and here I am wasting your time.” The pans needed all his attention. Right.

“No, you aren’t, and I don’t have to leave. Not if you don’t want me to.” Sam and Marcie wouldn’t miss me, and Tommy would. I scrawled
Try chervil on the pea soup sometime
and my name on the flyleaf.

“I don’t, if you don’t mind staying.” His words were hesitant but his hands were sure, which relieved me; I didn’t want to have to treat a burn. He had chef’s hands, marked, rough, and with the extra padding nature gives the fool who tries to pick up hot objects too often. Mine had softened with time away from the big gas range.

“So, are some of your soups rowdier than others?” Could I get him to laugh?

“My soups are all very well-behaved. It’s the customers you’ve got to watch. You wouldn’t believe some of them, slagging off poor, innocent bowls of soup.” The glint was back, and so was the dimple. “Ever had that sort in your place?”

“Awful, just awful,” I solemnly agreed, trying not to burst out laughing. “They’re hardly worthy to be served.” Then we did laugh, and I felt forgiven.

So I stayed. And we cooked. And we chatted. I prowled his shelves and walk-in, looking for clues to his style of food, and it was something I could appreciate: honest, fresh ingredients, treated simply and allowed to shine, mixed with a few more complicated preparations.

“How long have you been open?” I asked.

“The pub’s been here seventy years. I took over as landlord four years ago.” Tommy sprinkled a pinch of salt over the asparagus he was sautéing. “People are getting used to finding something other than a blob of soft cheese in a baguette here.”

I didn’t mention that I’d come in looking for exactly that. “What kind of hours do you keep?”

“The old hours. Last orders for drinks at eleven, everyone out by eleven thirty.” He picked up on what I’d really asked. “The kitchen closes at nine thirty. Then clean up.”

“I’ll go play dish pit. Will that speed you?” He had no one else to deal with the growing stack of dirty plates, and after he made one quick dash to the sink and then back to the stove, I could see what needed doing. He had the cooking under control. He didn’t have his face under control—his jaw was hanging open. I laughed. “It won’t be the first time I’ve been in soapy water to the elbow.”

I scrubbed away, enjoying the simple pleasure of bringing order out of chaos and messing with Tommy’s mind at the same time. Maybe he could lose the fanboy thinking if he saw me doing the menial tasks that never end. Once everything was loaded in the sanitizer, I ambled back to the stove. “Have you decided on a special for tomorrow yet?”

He shook his head. “I’ll wait and see what’s good at the market.”

I liked that philosophy. Also, I was eaten with curiosity. Of all the books out there, why mine? No mouth to brain filter, remember—I asked.

“A couple of reasons,” he mumbled, his head practically in the oven where he browned the top of something sticky. “I couldn’t afford to go to culinary school, so I bought books and took a few classes when I could. I’m still not much of a pastry chef. But I learned by cooking the family portions and then scaling up.”

I’d thought his knife work was a little odd, and his
mise en place
barren, not organized as I would have set it up and missing ingredients he’d needed several times during the evening. “You do well for self-taught.”

“Thanks.” He waved his hand at the rack of spices and metal pans. “It could be more efficient, but I just don’t know how to do it. When I washed dishes at Claridge’s, they chased me back to the sink every time I tried to look.”

Having to chop an onion at the moment of need wasn’t at all efficient. That should have been done hours ago and replaced if it was used up. I would have screeched harsh words at any of my staff who’d done that, but I’d thought at the time that he just didn’t use it much. “Some of my best line cooks started as dishwashers.”

“Lucky them.” Tommy slid a filet of cod from pan to plate, dribbling the cooking juices over it. “When my dad died, any chance of learning elsewhere went too. I had to run the pub or sell it, and it’s been in the family since it was built.” The asparagus glowed jewel-green next to the brown-drizzled white fish, beautiful in the fluorescent light for the scant seconds ’til Imogen took it away.

No choice then. My mouth didn’t ask my brain—I heard myself offer. “I could show you a few things.”

To see his face, you’d think I’d brought the sunshine for the picnic. “Start by showing me exactly how you minced that onion so quickly.”

So I did, and began to get a better feel for how much extra effort Tommy had to go through with each day’s cooking for not knowing the basics. “You’ll pick up speed with practice. Do the shallots similarly or they look like worms in the dish.” Perhaps I didn’t really have to touch his hand to show the small circular motion that keeps the blade from slicing through the root end prematurely, but I wanted to, and he didn’t shake me off.

He peeled another onion to test his new skill. “I’ve just been slicing them at random. This is a lot better.”

That started me asking about his menu changes and thinking how to reorganize his
mise en place
. Tommy didn’t need to keep the truffle oil away from the heat; he hadn’t gone that far down the path of
haute cuisine
as to have any, but we shuffled pans and plotted prep work until Imogen interrupted us with a late request for shepherd’s pie.

“I do cook some of the pub classics, Jude.” Tommy scooped out a portion and offered me a taste.

“Mmm. Made with the freshest shepherds?” It really was good, savory with lamb and rosemary, the potato smooth but with enough texture to show it had never been a dehydrated flake.

“He was fresh, all right. I had to slap the cheeky bastard to get him under the mash.” He disappeared into the walk-in with the pan, my chuckles following.

The riposte was my reward, along with his blue eyes dancing below the thatch of straight brown hair that stuck out below his baseball cap. Had he sported headgear as pretentious as a toque, I wouldn’t have followed him to the kitchen.

“I can start cleaning up, Jude. Thanks.” Tommy glanced at the clock. “I’ll be able to squeeze a few more minutes from each hour, now.”

I started scraping the grill. “It’s a start.” I hadn’t really touched on more than the very basics, but his day had been long already and how the hell had it gotten to be nine thirty?

“You don’t have to stay for this. You came in for some food, not to end up cleaning a grease trap.” He lifted the cover, making a face at the nastiness inside.

“You get to clean your own grease trap. I call mopping the floor.” I was reluctant to leave, both for the company and for the joy of creating something delicious, some small bit of edible art. It had been so long, and cleanup felt like payback for the chance. “I’m staying.” The stack of pans in the sink shrank under my hands.

“You really are a lifesaver.” He came to stack the dishes from the sanitizer rack, standing a little closer to me than the space required.

Have to find out sometime. “I’m a small, round candy with a hole in the middle?” Did they have those candies here?