The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier (17 page)

“I’m a server, not a cook.”

“What do most people order?”

“Enchiladas. Maybe you could have enchiladas filled with schnitzel.”

It was an indication of my desperation that I briefly considered it. When I regained my senses, I said, “Jürgen mentioned his favorite dish growing up was Wurstknoedel, stuffed potato dumplings. That’s sort of like an enchilada, except with potato on the outside rather than tortillas.”

“What would you put inside?”

“I don’t know. What does La Placita put in their enchiladas?”

“The usual – beef, cheese, chicken. We even have a vegetarian one with mushrooms and calabacitas. But my favorites are the ones with chicken mole.”

And that’s how I came up with the second entrée.

41

Inspired by my conversation with Susannah and having my pencils at hand, I started sketching chiles and ristras after she left.

I set them against a round background and played with different ways to position them, going so far at one point as to create a sort of chile version of the Vitruvian Man drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. It looked silly. Also not quite so well drawn as Leonardo’s.

I finally settled on two chiles – one red and one green, of course – tied together at their stems, their tips protruding slightly over the edge of the plate at different lengths. I didn’t want symmetry, fearful or otherwise.

I dropped the drawing off at Feats of Clay on my way to Santa Fe the next morning along with instructions about what I wanted. They agreed to make the switch at no extra charge since they had not yet created and applied the edelweiss overlays.

I arrived at Schnitzel to find I was not the only one whose creative juices had been flowing. Rafael had come up with all three new appetizers – grilled duck breast with a sauce made from dried New Mexico cherries, smoked New Mexico trout with a piñon and apricot pesto, and a Caesar salad with Verdolagas instead of romaine and an egg yolk dressing infused with garlic and cumin. Verdolaga is a Mexican green, a sort of cross between watercress and frisee.

I asked Rafael if he had stayed up all night.

“It was easy. I just remembered what Dagmar Mortensen had written about my salads. Fear is a great motivator.”

“Susannah was worried about you when I told her about the reviews. I also couldn’t believe it when I read what Dagmar wrote.”

He shrugged. “She was right. Those salads were awful. And you can tell Susannah not to worry. I don’t feel bad because it wasn’t my fault. Nobody could make a bologna salad taste good. I could have improved the potato salad, but Kuchen insisted I stick to the recipe.”

“I wonder where he is.”

“Back in Austria would be my guess.”

I found Masoot experimenting with ways to incorporate Southwestern flavors into the crusty boules served at Schnitzel. I told him about my idea for a crème brûlée with chipotle sugar, and he asked me to produce some of the flavored sugar for him. That sent me to the grocery store for a can of chipotles which I drained and put in the food drier.

I passed along the idea of a Wurstknoedel filled with chicken mole to Alain and gave him my recipe for mole. He grabbed the recipe like a kid reaching for a new toy and walked away reading it. After about six steps, he came back. “It is complicated, no? Perhaps we can prepare the first batch together.”

As we went through the steps, Alain changed some of the processes to make them faster and easier. Kitchen skills seem so simple, but watching a pro slice and dice made me feel like a klutz.

When all the ingredients were in the giant pot for the mole, I sought out Jürgen and found him experimenting with different spices in the breading for the pork cutlets that would become the schnitzel. I hadn’t thought of that. He was busy and enjoying himself, so I left him alone and went to check the food drier, only to find Masoot had unloaded it and was grinding the dried chipotles with sugar in a mortar and pestle.

Juan was de-stemming and de-seeding jalapeños. Deschutes was filleting trout in preparation for smoking. Maria was making piñon and apricot pesto. Helen Mure was working with potatoes. Rafael had left to search for a source of Verdolagas.

Everyone except me had a task to perform and was busily and enthusiastically performing it. I had invented schnitzel con tres chiles, but I wouldn’t be the one cooking it. Susannah had given me the idea of stuffing mole into a potato dumpling which, when you think about it, hardly rates up there with inventing the wheel. Rafael, by comparison, had come up with three outstanding ideas and had the wherewithal to implement them. Masoot was off and running with the new chipotle sugar crème brûlée. Alain was making mole faster than I could and no doubt better.

Even Scruggs ran me out of the scullery when I went to talk with him. “You got everybody cooking out there, Shoes. That’s good. Gives a lot of work for me and the boys.”

I started to reply, but he yelled, “Step aside,” and I moved just in time to avoid being run over by a kid with a pile of greasy pans.

I went to the bar and sat on a stool. Kaiser Wilhelm II was so impressed with Escoffier’s cooking that he said to him, “I am the Emperor of Germany, but you are the emperor of chefs.” I was not the emperor of food. I wasn’t even a general of gastronomy. More like a peasant of provisions.

No one missed me. My brief flirtation with professional chefdom had come to an end. I wondered what I would do if by some miracle the plan succeeded. What if Chile Schnitzel became a money-making restaurant? What would my role be? I was no professional cook. I had no clue about waiting tables. I lack the personality to be a bartender. I’d probably be a poor pot scrubber, and I didn’t think Scruggs would want me anyway.

Maybe I could be a greeter like they have at Wal-Mart, I thought to myself in comic relief.

Then it came to me. In addition to being a treasure hunter – aka pot thief – I was also a merchant. I had a business degree and had worked briefly as an accountant. I could be the money manager.

If we made any. If we gave the money to Molinero, he would probably just waste it on things like rent and back expenses. What we should do with it was purchase supplies and pay the staff. They were enthusiastic about Alain’s plan, but you can’t eat enthusiasm. Eventually, they would have to be paid.

But how? Most diners pay with a credit card, and our machine would funnel the money into an account controlled by Molinero. It sounded like a job for Tristan.

Scruggs called dinner at five. It was like a smorgasbord because we had samples of all the new dishes. No one had come up with the third new entrée, but we had more than just the three appetizers and the two entrées because various renditions had been prepared for comparison. Maria had drawn up a scoring sheet and someone had stuck numbered sticky notes on the dishes.

There was an air of excitement as everyone tasted and commented. Even Helen Mure put aside her attitude, and no one was upset when someone suggested a change to another person’s dish.

As we were finishing up the crème brûlées, Alain stood up and read us the text of an advertisement he had placed in the newspaper.

“This is to announce that the restaurant formerly known as Schnitzel has been attacked by an alien chile from Roswell. It is holding the staff hostage and forcing us to add Southwestern flavors to our dishes. Please join us for our Grand Re-opening on Thursday night as Chile Schnitzel, the world’s first Austrian/Southwestern fusion restaurant.”

Jaws dropped. People glanced at each other. After a few seconds of silence, Jürgen roared with laughter. “He is joking.”

“But of course,” said Alain, “the Grand Re-opening is Wednesday, not Thursday.”

42

I walked to La Fonda and entered the bar.

Curiosity about all the new dishes had caused me to overeat.

I needed a digestif.

The problem was I had no idea what one is. It sounds like a drink to settle your tummy. Maybe it’s a brand-name, I thought.

But when I asked the bartender for a digestif, he asked which one.

“Surprise me,” I said, and he brought me a small glass of Campari. It tasted like something that would cause digestive problems, not ameliorate them.

“Something not so bitter,” I told the barman when he noticed I had stopped drinking the Campari. He brought me a Fernet-Branca. I have no idea what it was made from, but it was peppery and sweet. Better than the Campari, but not something you could sip all evening.

The next one was grappa. It was not something I ever plan to drink again, but it cleared my sinuses and encouraged me to try again. Francisco – we were on a first name basis at this point – suggested Lillet. It was lighter than the others with a pleasant citrus tang, but it was basically wine. I don’t like wine unless it has bubbles.

Next came pastis. If it had been the first drink of the evening, I would have hated it. I don’t like licorice. But after the others, it was strangely smoothing. I actually drank the entire glass.

I should have stopped there. Actually, I should have stopped at the bar door and never entered.

But my buddy Francisco insisted I try Cynar. By this time, distilled pickle juice would have tasted like the nectar of the gods. Cynar, on the other hand, tasted like tarnished pennies. It wasn’t so much a taste as a sensation, a fibrillation of the muscles in the throat.

I shook my head and blinked my eyes. I rolled my head around my shoulders like someone with a stiff neck.

Then I took another taste and identified the flavor.

Artichokes.

“I’ll have another,” I said.

I went to my room, but the key wouldn’t open the door. Then I remembered Molinero saying I could have the room through the Grand Opening, so I went to the desk and charged the room on my credit card. I was in no shape to drive back to Albuquerque, and I was not going to sleep in the Bronco and risk ending up dead as another person.

Strange thoughts run through your brain after six digestifs.

I awoke the next morning around nine with a fiery stomach and a pounding head.

I bought a bottle of Mylanta Extra Strength in the gift shop, chugged some down and went directly to the French Café where I drank three cups of strong coffee to kill the taste of the Mylanta and soothe my headache. When I reached into my pocket for a tip, I came out with my bar bill from last night. Seventy-three dollars.

Which was small change compared to my room bill. When I went to the front desk to drop my key, the clerk gave me an invoice for $3,986.72.

“There must be some mistake,” I said, pushing the paper back to him.

He studied it for a moment. “No, sir. It is correct. Twenty-one nights at $175 a night plus tax and bar charges.”

I have to cut back on my drinking, I thought to myself; those bar charges really mount up. Then I realized he had said twenty-one nights.

“But I charged only last night. All the previous nights were charged to Schnitzel, the restaurant I’m working for.”

He stared at his computer screen. “Yes, the record says billed to a third party, but the bill has not been paid, so when you presented a credit card, the entire amount was automatically charged to your card.”

“But I only intended to pay for a single night.”

“Perhaps you can get your employer to reimburse you.”

Fat chance. I argued with the clerk briefly. He was a friendly and able chap but unauthorized to reverse charges. He gave me the manager’s card and suggested I contact him when he returned to work the next day.

I drank the rest of the Mylanta.

43

I stopped by Schnitzel and saw Alain on a ladder over the front door painting the word ‘chile’ next to the word ‘schnitzel’ above the lintel. My font suggestion had been ignored.

The Austrian flag to the right of the door remained, but the one on the left had been replaced by its red and yellow New Mexican counterpart.

After ascertaining I was even more useless to them than I had been the day before, I drove to Albuquerque, stopping at Gruet for more champagne in order to have enough to serve for the Grand Re-Opening.

But which I didn’t come away with because my credit card was rejected as being over the limit. Gina the manager was friendly, competent and apologetic, but of course it was the bank’s fault, and there was nothing she could do. Actually, it wasn’t the bank’s fault; it was Schnitzels’ fault. Then, after reflecting on it and facing the ugly truth, I realized it was my own fault. Everyone had warned me about restaurants, Susannah even urging me to get paid in advance.

The next hour was spent on credit card matters. First I called Tristan. He said he could probably reprogram our credit card machine. Then I called my own credit card company. After almost an hour and a dozen attempts at navigating their phone menu and pushing buttons, I got a guy with a thick Bengali accent who agreed to note on the record that I was contesting the charge from La Fonda. That didn’t make me feel any better, in part because I figured nothing would come of it, but also because La Fonda deserved to be paid. I just didn’t want to be the one doing the paying.

I was in a foul mood at that point, so I took Geronimo for a long walk. His company and the burned energy perked me up.

But my mood deteriorated when I found Whit Fletcher at my door at the end of my walk.

He didn’t even let me unlock the door before he waved a paper in my face. “This here’s a warrant for your arrest for the murder of Barry Stiles.”

Suddenly my four thousand dollar hotel bill seemed like a minor issue. “I was afraid of this. Duran wants to force me to finger Dorfmeister, and since I won’t do that, he makes me the suspect.”

“You got a pretty low opinion of Duran to say a thing like that.”

“Why else would he accuse me? I have no motive for killing Barry. I hardly even knew the guy.”

“I guess they’ll try to figure out the motive later. Duran tells me this here warrant was issued on the basis of means and opportunity.”

“Opportunity? Stiles being found in my vehicle isn’t opportunity. The window was open. Everyone in Santa Fe had as much opportunity as I did. As to means, how does that relate to me? I don’t even know how he was killed.”