White Jacket Required (16 page)

The next few days would set apart the chefs from the ordinary culinary students and determine our success in the whole program. The pressure felt like rocks on my chest. There was no room for error here; if we didn't get something right, we couldn't just try to do better next time. Next time would be an actual restaurant kitchen with a boss and prep cooks on the line. This was our last chance to work with instructors, our last chance to learn from our mistakes rather than get fired for them.

I glanced over at my friends, who were sitting silently, staring straight ahead. Part of me wanted to cry while part of me wanted to let out a loud
whoop
at the utter hilarity of taking something like baking croissants so seriously. I took my place at the cold metal counter and dug in my bag for my note cards and lip balm. The night before I had stayed up late studying the syllabus and creating a timeline for what to bake when, to ensure that everything would have enough time and room in the oven. The syllabus had been short, only one page, and had simply listed in alphabetical order the items we were to bake during the week. It was up to us to manage our time efficiently. As stressful as it was, I actually enjoyed the extra responsibility because it made class seem more like a job and less like school.

I chose to make the four required pastries first—bear claws,
palmiers
,
vol au vents
(simple jam-filled Danishes), and a buttery French almond pastry called a
pithivier
—because there were my least favorites, and also because they required the most preparation time. The blitz puff pastry used in all four products had to be prepared a day ahead of time so that it could have a slow, cold rise in the walk-in fridge overnight. I planned to start my sponge cake after prepping all the dough.

All at once it seemed my classmates were grabbing flour, butter, and yeast from various shelves at a rapid pace, but I chose to hold back and do things a little more slowly than the rest. I got my butter from the walk-in fridge and started chopping the thick slices into small chunks for my puff pastry dough. Every time I had made puff pastry dough in the past, the sheer amount of butter that went into it always flabbergasted me. It felt therapeutic, though, leaning up against a giant mixer and throwing cold chunks of butter in one by one for about twenty minutes. My dough was forming quite nicely and, when it was finished mixing, I took it out and gently wrapped it in plastic wrap to set in the fridge for half an hour. Then, I would perform the first fold, which basically meant just folding more butter on top of the dough and sealing the edges shut. Traditionally, when preparing classic puff pastry dough, bakers fold the dough dozens of times in a process known as laminating.

The next night I came in ready to roll (no pun intended). I had a lot of pastries to make from that one slab of dough, and I was determined to get done and get my station cleaned up by 9:30, so I could go home early. After grabbing my hunk of dough from the walk-in, I began working on the
pithiviers
because making them was by far the most dreaded task.
Pithiviers
consist of two circles of puff pastry with a mound of almond paste in the center, sort of like a giant toaster strudel. They are incredibly tasty, for sure, but they can prove to be disastrous if the edges of the pastry aren't sealed completely. All of my previously attempted
pithiviers
had exploded in the deck oven. So tonight I made a big deal out of pressing down the dough very, very firmly and putting extra egg wash on top to make it extra shiny. I placed them in the oven then ran back to my station to form my
vol au vents
and bear claws.

Everything was going smoothly. For the first time, my
pithiviers
did not explode, and my
vol au vents
looked close to perfect. I felt excitement well up as I looked proudly at the pastries surrounding me.
Three down, one to go
, I thought, then eagerly started on my bear claws. Around 8:45, however, after forming, shaping, and proofing my dough, I noticed that there was a bit of a size discrepancy between my bear claws and those of my classmates. Mine were the size of baseball gloves, while everyone else's were the size of my palm. I felt a sense of dread come over me as I carefully applied a second layer of egg wash to the proofed dough before shutting the bear claws inside the oven. I didn't have enough time or dough to remake the claws, so all I could do was stand in front of the oven and watch them grow. To my dismay, as the clock ticked on, my bear claws progressively got larger and larger. I excused myself to take a walk to the bathroom to burn off some nervous energy while assuring myself that this wasn't the end of the world.
Surely
I wasn't going to fail the program based on giant pastries alone.

A few deep yoga breaths later, I was back in the kitchen, pulling my sheet pan out of the oven and setting all my pastries together to be graded. My
pithiviers
looked amazing, the best I had ever done, as did my
vol au vents
and
palmiers
. But those bear claws were as large as a grown man's head. I pulled a marker out of my coat pocket to label my products and decided the best way to go about this was to use humor to my advantage. I wrote in big, swirly handwriting, “PAPA BEAR'S CLAWS.” It was hard to get a smile out of Chef Horn, who also happened to be the dean of the Baking and Pastry program, but I figured it was worth a shot. I took my sheet tray and stuck it in the rack with everyone else's products. After we were gone for the evening, Chef would look at all the pastries and grade everyone; we'd have to wait until the end of the week to see our scores.

Turned out, Chef must have seen the humor in the situation because much to my disbelief, I actually scored high on my bear claws and other pastries. I let out a big sigh of relief that Capstone was finally over. As much as I prided myself on thriving under pressure, I was ready to relax and soak up my final days in Orlando before packing up again. I felt a great sense of accomplishment over what I had done, failures and all, and was ready to move on.

15
GOING HOME AGAIN

F
INALLY, THE DAY CAME TO SAY GOOD-BYE. THOUGH IT WASN'T
my first choice, in the end I decided to move back to my hometown of Vero Beach to do my baking externship at a yacht club only two miles away from the house where I grew up. Originally, I had wanted to go out west, maybe to a spa in California or Arizona, but I got offered a good temporary position back home that I couldn't turn down. Plus, it was much more affordable than taking off and moving across the country for only three months. I told myself that California could wait. Instead, I planned on staying at the home of the parents of my best friend from high school for the next few months. They had generously offered me their guest room while Christie was away at law school, and from my window I had a view of the river that we spent so many Saturdays jet-skiing on as teenagers.

I knew that Rob was more than a little upset that I hadn't chosen to do my externship at a restaurant in Tampa where he had connections, but I promised that after these three months I would finally move there to be with him. As I packed up my apartment in Orlando and cleaned out my closet, I paused to look at photographs and recipes that had accumulated on my top shelf over the past year, along with books, books, and more books. Since Helen had moved out a few months back, I had spread out my things all over the apartment, which I now considered my own. I hadn't seen or spoken to Helen at all during the past two months, but that was normal for us when we were apart. Helen and I had one of those rare close friendships that could just pick up right where it left off, no matter how much time and distance came between us.

“We've got our work cut out for us!” Rob exclaimed when he arrived at the apartment to help me move. Lamps, kitchen utensils, and books lay scattered on the living room floor, along with a few open suitcases and book boxes. All of the furniture was Helen's, and she had a mover coming the next day to take care of everything, so I just had to gather up all my things and hit the road.

“I already put some stuff in my car,” I said, running my fingers through my hair, which I'd cut short in preparation for my externship. “Are you hungry?” I asked. “I just got back from a run and I'm starved.”

“Always hungry! Let's just carry some of this stuff down now on our way out and we'll get something to eat,” Rob said.

We had a nice dinner with glasses of red wine at the grill down the street. Rob stuck to pizza, which was personal size and Chicago style, cheese oozing over the sides of the crust and into the deep-dish pan. Pieces of pepperoni and sausage lay nestled in the cheese, a stark contrast to my grilled salmon and broccoli. After we ate, we headed back to the house to finish packing. That night, as I lay on my mattress on the floor in the empty apartment, worried thoughts filled my mind. Was I choosing the easy road or the road less traveled? I could start to see my future laid out in front of me, and it scared me a bit. I would most likely do my externship, move back to Tampa, take a safe job, and settle down and get married within the next year. I wondered if my dream of exploring California would ever actually come true. Finally, the thoughts seemed to settle in my head and I fell into a dark, dreamless sleep on that mattress, preparing myself for what was to come.

The next morning I had pretty much packed all my food except for staples like flour, milk, and baking powder. I used those to make us a big plate of soft, doughy pancakes as fuel for the trip. Though it was only eight in the morning, it was already a scorcher outside, the sun blazing bright in the Orlando sky. Rob was starting to lug my suitcases down the two flights of stairs while I wrapped up all the bedding into a big ball before stuffing it into a large suitcase.

It was my brilliant idea to just bungee-cord my mattress to the top of the car and drive it home—about 60 miles across the state of Florida. Rob was skeptical but willing, so we secured it as best we could and hit the road. I waved good-bye to my old apartment and headed west to Tampa. We got a few strange looks and honks because of the mattress, but we only had to pull over once to adjust it a bit tighter.

Rob was a trouper through it all, helping me unpack and temporarily housing all my books until I moved back in December. I spent the night with my family in Tampa, and the next day I headed out early in the morning for Vero Beach. People always say there's nothing like the feeling of going home, and as I drove my beat-up black Honda over the bridge that connected the mainland to the island where I grew up, I felt a surge of gratitude for this place and this time in my life. I rolled down my window, inhaled the rich saltwater air, and blasted old CDs from high school that reminded me of beach parties and tanning on the school football field during lunch breaks.

Vero Beach was a small town, the type of place you go on vacation when you're older and living time zones away. The town has two high schools and a small shopping center, the main attraction being the beach, which is known both for great surf and for shark sightings. I had always been so anxious to get out of that town, to make something of myself, and not become one of the “townies” who never left Vero after graduating high school. As teenagers, Christie and I used to sit on her dock facing the Indian River and talk about where we would be five years down the road. I was the one who got voted “first to marry,” as I had always found myself in serious relationships with guys who wanted to settle down. Really, though, all I wanted was to write books, and I had always hoped my five-year plan involved a novel, not a husband.

Now, coming back five years later, I wondered how much had really changed. I certainly wasn't married yet, and although I had always jotted down in my journal funny anecdotes about things that had happened at school, there was no national bestseller in my immediate future. I pulled into Christie's driveway and greeted her parents with big hugs before they helped me drag my luggage up to their guest room. Betty, Christie's mom, had prepared a delicious meal celebrating my arrival; we ate grilled salmon and drank white wine with the door open and the gentle beach breeze blowing in and through my hair. It felt odd to sit at their dining room table without my friend next to me, and I wished that she were there to laugh with me and ease my anxious nerves about starting my externship.

Betty's salmon was perfectly cooked and topped with a Mediterranean tapenade made from tomatoes, pine nuts, olives, and feta. We ate it with creamy polenta studded with rich gorgonzola cheese and garlic, and roasted green beans on the side. After dinner, I headed to bed early to make sure I got enough sleep for my first day in the kitchen. I forgot how silent it was there at night, with only the sound of the river gently lapping outside, and fell asleep almost instantly.

In the days and weeks that followed, I slowly grew accustomed to working in a kitchen, rather than just trying to make the grade at school. I was pretty used to being the only girl on the line, but knew it wasn't easy to work under pressure with a bunch of guys. Luckily, I worked under the head pastry chef and was usually able to get most of my baking done in the early morning, so my hours weren't extremely late. It felt great to have my evenings back and free. At the club we made everything in house, from the rolls served in the breadbasket to the pie crust. I liked everyone I worked with, and just as I had at school, I loved baking bread the best. Seeing that my interest was piqued, the pastry chef had me experiment with new recipes and formulas, and soon I was not only whipping out two hundred rolls by 8 a.m. but also coming up with ideas of my own.

It was fall, and we were gearing up for Thanksgiving—the club's biggest holiday, since it was smack-dab in the middle of prime tourist season in Vero Beach. Everything was pumpkin; we had pumpkin bread constantly in the oven, pumpkin crème brûlée on the dessert menu, and pumpkin cheesecake in the fridge. I had recently become fascinated with the concept of the Whoopee Pie—billowy buttercream frosting sandwiched in between two large soft cookies—and thanks to the freedom that Chef had given me to experiment, I developed a Pumpkin Whoopee Pie that went over well with him and our clientele. Even though the majority of our members were older, they actually loved the concept and welcomed Whoopee Pies as a change of pace from the chocolate and macadamia cookies that were always found on the dessert tray. For the big Thanksgiving Day buffet, I was in charge of baking the breads and making my Pumpkin Whoopee Pies.