The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier (8 page)

We also talked about pottery, and of course we gossiped about Schnitzel’s workforce.

I tried to get the check, but Maria insisted we split the bill. “It’s lunch with a colleague,” she said. “If it were a lunch date, I’d let you pay.”

She smiled and my knees went weak. Maybe it was the champagne.

19

Santa Fe was at its best. Dry snow flakes floated through piñon scented air. The shops were gaily lit and full of holiday shoppers, some of them residents, most of them tourists taking a break from the skiing.

No one on the street knew that Barry Stiles had died. Even the people at Schnitzel who knew it didn’t care. They had a restaurant to open.

So why did it bother me? Did Barry Stiles care that his passing left no void? Do the dead have cares?

I decided the last question was beyond my metaphysical powers, so I turned to one I might have a chance of answering. Why do we hope people will miss us and speak kindly of us when we’re gone? Why do we secretly want to play Tom Sawyer and listen to our own eulogy?

The answer, I concluded, is that our concern about how we are remembered is not really about that. It’s just a surrogate for caring about how we are regarded in the here and now. We don’t want to be spoken of badly when we are dead because that means that now – while we are still alive – people don’t like us.

I reached this profound conclusion just as I reached La Fonda. It was four o’clock. But it was five o’clock in Texas. That was only about 180 miles east.

Close enough. I went to the bar and ordered a bourbon on the rocks. I was in a brown mood.

An Anasazi pot sat on a flagstone mantel above the fireplace. I thought about the woman who made it. If she walked into the bar, she would recognize only two things, humans and her pot. Metal stools, glasses, lights, doorknobs, written words and books would be no more than strange shapes to her. The same sort of thing would likely happen to us were we to return in a thousand years.

I think she would be happy to see the pot. She would ask why we have it. I would tell her we treasure it because it is a thing of beauty and because it makes us feel connected to her. I would invite her to my shop. I would ask her to make a pot in my workshop.

By the second bourbon, I had imagined the whole thing as a sequel to Back to the Future.

I was expelled from graduate school for digging up and selling three Anasazi pots. It wasn’t illegal back then. The University thought it was immoral. I think it’s immoral to leave treasure in the ground. Like Tom Sawyer, the ancient potters would love to know what we think about them. We honor them when we display their work. We dishonor them when we make modernist adaptations of it.

I was thinking of ordering a third bourbon when Jürgen Dorfmeister walked in.

“I thought you might be here,” he said as he sat down next to me. He looked at my glass. “You are drinking scotch?”

“Bourbon.”

“Barman,” he shouted, “another bourbon for my friend and a Glenmorangie for me. Make it a double. I have some catching up to do.”

When the drinks came, he lifted his and said, “To the memory of Mr. Barry Stiles, garde manger extraordinaire.”

I drank to that. I felt a little better.

“Did you know him well?” I asked.

“No.”

“Do you really think he was an extraordinary garde manger?”

“He was a man. He had feelings. He deserves a proper toast. The facts are irrelevant at such a time.”

We stayed in the bar enjoying a dinner of bar foods – pistachios, salsa and chips, peanuts, and some strange hard sausages. In Spain, I suppose they would have called the snacks tapas and charged accordingly. In the La Fonda they were free to their good customers, a status Jürgen and I had earned by purchasing multiple rounds of expensive beverages.

I enjoyed my time with Jürgen. He didn’t ask me to drive him home. He didn’t ask to sleep in my vehicle.

I left at nine-thirty to check my kiln because that was when I expected the test firing to be complete. It was cold out but I had plenty of antifreeze inside me and a good jacket outside me. I enjoyed the late-night stroll to Schnitzel which took only twenty minutes. I unlocked the front door and entered. Light came from the kitchen.

Even though I had a key and every right to be there, I suddenly felt like an intruder. I walked quietly to the twin swinging doors and peered through the little window in the right one, the door we were all supposed to use as an entrance only.

I didn’t enter. I tiptoed to my work area and hid behind the table. The low reflected light went out. I heard footsteps. I saw a figure move silently towards the front door, open it and leave. I knew it was M’Lanta Scruggs because the light had been on in Molinero’s office. It was the sight of Scruggs leaving that office that kept me from entering the kitchen and sent me scurrying behind my table.

I gave him plenty of time to vacate the neighborhood. Then I checked the kiln, decided the firing was complete and turned it off.

I went to Molinero’s office and tried the door. It was locked. I tried my front door key in the lock. It didn’t fit.

I went back to the hotel to think. My first thought was that Scruggs was up to no good. My second though was not actually a thought. It was a feeling – guilt at suspecting a black man of ill-doing.

So I asked myself if I would have formed the same conclusion had the person leaving Molinero’s office been Arliss Mansfield. I answered myself that I would. People in someone else’s office at ten o’clock in a dark and locked building arouse suspicion no matter what the color of their skin.

But on second thought, Scruggs might have a better reason for being there than Arliss. Maybe M’Lanta had janitorial duties in addition to his scullery work and had just finished cleaning the office. A chef is less likely to have cleaning duties than a pot scrubber, so it would have been more suspicious to see Arliss in the office.

My machinations on racial profiling weren’t helping me answer the one practical question confronting me – what, if anything, should I do?

20

The completion of the test firing provided an excuse to visit Molinero’s office.

I found him there Wednesday morning and knocked on his door. It had a window through which I saw him as he stood up. I pretended to take his standing as permission to enter and turned the knob hard enough that it clicked.

It was locked. Molinero walked to the door, placed a key in the slot, and unlocked the door.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize your door was locked. Maybe I should come back later.”

“No problem,” he said. “I keep the office locked at all times because the personnel files are in here.”

“And the safe,” I noted. It was a big one, built into the wall.

He laughed. “Yes, for keeping the hordes of cash we’ll rake in starting on Monday. I see you have the charger.”

“Actually, it’s only a test piece.” I handed it to him. “This is the background glaze I propose.” I handed him a piece of paper. “This is a sketch of an edelweiss that would be in bas relief.”

He looked at the clay and the paper. “Excellent.”

“You don’t want to study it for a while or talk it over with anyone?”

“No. I like the drawing. I like the glaze.’’

I was surprised at how easily he gave his consent for the design.

I took a deep breath. I hate delivering bad news. “I can probably have four real chargers ready by Monday, so you’ll have a set for one table. But it will be at least a week and maybe even two before we’ll have the full one hundred.”

“Even with the commercial place doing them?”

“They aren’t the problem. They can glaze and fire a hundred plates in two or three days. The bottleneck is me. It will take me a long time to form the plates.”

“Can’t that place – clay feet? – form them?”

“Yes, but that would add to the cost. And I kind of wanted to do them myself to make sure they’re right.”

“I’m sure they can follow your prototype. And don’t worry about the cost. We need everything to be here as soon as possible.”

I was grateful he wasn’t upset about the delay or the additional money. I felt guilty about the negative opinion I had formed of him.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“No. I’ll start work right now on the prototype. I’ll be sure to finish in time for the place to be cleaned up before we open.”

“Fine,” he said.

I looked around the office for affect and asked the question I had been waiting to ask. “How do you keep your workplace so clean and neat?”

“By doing it myself and never letting anyone else touch anything. I’m a neat freak.”

21

Breakfast was Erdäpfellaibchen. I skipped it because I needed to work on the plate and because I didn’t like the way it sounded when it was announced.

I must have felt some sort of inspiration because I finished the plate in just over an hour. As I set it aside to dry, I thought about all the people on Molinero’s list I had not consulted about the design. It was too late to make anything other than minor adjustments, but I thought I should at least get all the input Molinero had wanted me to have.

I also had another motive for wanting to talk to the rest of the staff. I thought I might learn something about Barry Stiles’ death.

I knew who Helen Mure was because Kuchen had called it when reprimanding her and Mansfield, so I decided to meet her next.

I found her instructing a young man how to chop bacon. “Run a very sharp knife between the fat and lean strips.” She demonstrated for him. “Then stack the lean strips and cut across them so that the resulting pieces are as close to square as you can get them. Do three pounds. Save the fats strips as well as the lean pieces.”

She watched him do the first few strips then turned to me. “What can I do for you?”

She had a square face, short black hair and a nasal Midwestern accent. There was a sense of energy and tension about her.

“I came for inspiration,” I said, hoping to relax her slightly.

“I don’t have time for small talk,” she replied.

Well, that certainly worked well. “Maybe I’ve come at a bad time,” I said.

“There are no good times for a chef de partie.”

“Then I’ll let you—”

“I’ve got a few minutes while Pedro here chops my bacon.”

“It’s Juan, Ms. Mure.”

“Whatever,” she replied without looking at him. Then to me she said, “I have no interest in chargers or decoration generally. I cook. If you want to know something about the food that might help your work, I can answer food questions. Other than that, you are wasting your time.”

‘O.K., if I can know only one thing about the food you cook, what should it be?”

“It needs to be gahm.”

I thought she said, “It needs to be gone,” so I said, “In other words, you want the diners to clean their plates.”

“No. The food has to be gahm. It’s a Chinese word I learned while cooking in San Francisco. It means the flavor is not on the food or even in the food, but has become one with the food.”

“Sounds very Zen,” I said, not really knowing what that meant.

“Maybe, but you don’t accomplish it by meditation. It’s strictly a matter of technique. Two chefs start with the same piece of meat and the same seasonings. One ends up with a tasty meal you enjoy. The other ends up with a culinary experience you remember for years. The secret – like the devil – is in the details, how the meat is handled, how the seasoning is applied, the temperature at which the meat hits the pan. All these and many more factors make a huge difference.”

She looked back at Juan and evidently approved of his chopping because she said nothing.

“Are you and Arliss the only two chefs de partie?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”

Evidently, I had hit a sore spot. “No reason,” I said, “Just trying to get a feel for how a place like this works.”

“O.K., I’ll tell you. Places like this seldom work. That fool Molinero talks about teamwork, but he knows nothing about kitchens. Kitchens are battlefields. Chefs are famous for big egos. We work in intense heat with short deadlines for everything we do. We yell and scream and insult each other.”

“Wow.”

“Chefs in serious restaurants adhere to certain rules – make sure health and safety procedures are rigidly maintained, treat the customer with respect, and make every plate the best it can be. But between us, there are no holds barred. I was hired with the understanding that I would be one of two chefs de partie. Then I met that fool Mansfield and realized I was on my own. Worse, my reputation could be harmed. People don’t know who cooked what. If Schnitzel gets a bad reputation, it will affect all of us who work here.”

“Arliss seems like a nice guy,” I said.

“He’s a wimp. He lets Kuchen push him around. He’s also slow, and that clogs us all up. But you want to know the real zinger? I think Kuchen is considering promoting Maria Salazar to chef de partie. She’s currently the saucier. An appropriate title for the little tart. I’ll admit she knows her job, but this promotion will be earned in the bedroom, not the kitchen.”

For someone who didn’t have time to talk to me, Helen had a great deal to say.

When lunch was served, Kuchen invited Mure to comment on the dish, but she said she preferred to wait until after the meal.

When the top was lifted from the elaborate tureen, I knew immediately where the chopped bacon had gone – into the Speckknödel.

“It’s a bacon dumpling,” whispered Scruggs who had again insinuated himself next to me.

He was right, but the term ‘bacon dumpling’ cannot do justice to the dish Mure had prepared. Because of my interest in food, I looked up almost every item served even though most of them did not get copied into my personal cookbook. This one did, but I wondered whether I could ever duplicate what Mure had done.

It seems so simple. Stale bread, onion, bacon, warm milk, eggs, parsley, salt, pepper, nutmeg, chives, and chicken broth.

Start with canned chicken broth or chicken bullion cubes, and you might as well not bother. You already know the bacon has to be cut precisely, but you also have to figure the ration of lean to fat. The fat strips are not chopped because as you sauté the bacon you want to be able to spot them easily and pull them out when you have exactly enough fat. If the temperature is allowed to climb too high, the bacon will darken too much, imparting too strong a flavor and too much crunch. Let the temperature go to low, and you’ll have a fatty taste and rubbery texture.