The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier Page 3

  “You think I’m stupid?”

  “No. I just, uh—”

  “It means black. That’s what I am.”

  “Uh…”

  He stuck out a huge hand. “M’Lanta Scruggs,” he said.

  “Mylanta?”

  “Not ‘Mylanta’. You think my momma name me after a medicine? It’s M, apostrophe, capital L, a, n, t, a.”

  “I’m Hubie Schuze,” I said and endured another hand-crushing.

  “Like the things on your feet?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “And you think I got a funny name,” he growled and walked away.

  Off to a great start, I thought to myself.

  I began setting up my operation in the middle of what would eventually become the private dining area. Someone had put a tarp on the floor to protect it. A work table and chair had been supplied, and there were wheeled shelves along the wall for my supplies and tools. Molinero had evidently seen to my every need.

  After a few minutes, Scruggs came by to tell me breakfast was being served. When I entered the main dining room, the staff were seated at a large communal table. Santiago Molinero was standing.

  “I would like to introduce Hubert Schuze. Mr. Schuze is the ceramic artist I told you about. He will be making our chargers. His first task is to create a special design. That is why he will be working here in the restaurant. He needs to be inspired by what we are, by what we do. I encourage all of you to talk with him and share your ideas about Schnitzel. I want you to consider him a part of the team. If that happens, I know he will create chargers we can all be proud of.”

  I suppose it was a good little speech. I didn’t like being called a ‘ceramic artist’. It made me sound like a little figurine that sits on the shelf next to the ceramic butcher, the ceramic baker, and the ceramic candle stick maker.

  All eyes turned to me when Molinero sat down, so I knew I was expected to say something. “I don’t like making speeches,” I said, “but I love good food, so I’m happy to be here. I look forward to meeting you and learning about the restaurant. I look forward to your help. I look forward to breakfast.”

  I sat down. There was polite applause. A thin guy with wispy hair stood up and announced that the dish being served was Gebratener Leberkäse. Scruggs, who had taken the seat on my right, leaned over and whispered to me, “meatloaf.”

  I later discovered that Gebratener Leberkäse consists of corned beef, bacon and onions ground very fine and baked until it acquires a hard crust. When you first cut into it, you think it’s a piece of meat. Then you notice that beneath the crust the texture is artificially uniform. I have a good palate and nose, so I recognized black pepper, paprika, and nutmeg as the seasonings. It was tasty but a little heavy for breakfast, even for someone like me who is used to chorizo and eggs.

  After we had eaten, Scruggs insisted on taking my plate and silverware to the kitchen.

  “You don’t need to do that,” I protested.

  “You do your job,” he said, “and let me do mine.”

  8

  My supplies hadn’t arrived, so I took a postprandial stroll around the premises after breakfast.

  The front door was so massive you expected a moat in front of it and chains on each side for drawing up a bridge. The door was made from thick vertical planks of dark wood held together with bolts through three wrought iron cross-pieces. The extruded bolt heads were cast in the shape of the Austrian coat-of-arms. Austrian flags flew from staffs mounted at a forty-five degree angle on each side of the entrance.

  The large foyer was floored in rough stone. On the left, a wooden podium for the maître d’ matched the front door and was topped with crenellated molding. A bar replete with dark wood and stained-glass was to the right.

  A set of mullioned French doors separated the foyer from the main dining area which held perhaps twenty tables. Six of them had been pushed together to create the communal table where we took our meals. The staff were gathered there for some sort of meeting.

  There were stations around the perimeter of the room that I assumed would eventually hold serving pieces, napkins, water, glassware, butter dishes, bread, and all the other supplies and comestibles required in a fancy restaurant.

  I had no doubt diners would be impressed upon entering Schnitzel. I wondered if they would think the atmosphere justified twenty bucks for a plate of meatloaf.

  The kitchen was to the left of the dining room, and I was astounded to discover it was twice as large as the main dining area. I had no idea restaurant kitchens are so large. There were four cooking areas with surface burners, ovens, and salamanders. There were a dozen smaller work stations evidently intended for chopping, dicing, slicing, kneading, mixing, grinding, and generally changing the shape, size, and texture of various ingredients.

  There was a walk-in cooler and a walk-in freezer on one side of the kitchen and a large storage closet on the other. Next to the storage area was a loading dock.

  A door on the back wall of the kitchen led to the scullery where M’Lanta and three Hispanic assistants were washing up the pots and pans used in preparing the breakfast meatloaf and the plates and silverware used in eating it.

  Molinero was visible through the window of a small office in the corner between the loading dock and the scullery.

  The noise of sliding chairs and murmuring voices came from the dining room. The swinging door on the right flew open and the staff streamed in, taking their stations like sailors on a ship when general quarters is sounded.

  The last one through the door was Chef de Cuisine Kuchen. The men and women at the stations stood at attention. Not like soldiers exactly – they weren’t all in the same stiff stance – but they were still, quiet and staring at their leader.

  Kuchen let his eye fall on each person in turn. “Begin,” he ordered.

  The staff began to mimic cooking activities. Some chopped at invisible vegetables. Others stirred empty pots. Some placed imaginary entrées on plates. As some of them finished their tasks, they picked up whatever they had done and began to deliver it to another station. Of course some tasks took longer than others (or maybe some of the staff simply had slower imaginations), so that some people moved about the kitchen and others remained at their stations. As more people joined the parade, I noted they all moved from right to left. Indeed, in one case, a chopper of some sort made his way around the entire kitchen and placed his phantom cargo on a station only six feet from where he started out. I figured out that each person who left a station visually checked the traffic flow. Since it was counterclockwise, they only had to look in one direction before safely merging into the flow.

  The Rockettes couldn’t have been better choreographed. I stood in mute admiration until the wispy-haired guy who had announced the name of our breakfast backed into a woman carrying a platter of air. She lost her balance and swerved into someone attempting to pass and all three ended up on the floor.

  There was no clattering and clanging because all involved were empty-handed. There was, however, a moment of deafening silence as everyone froze and stared at Kuchen.

  “Schwarzer,” he yelled, and Scruggs appeared in the door of the scullery. “Clean the mess, please.”

  Scruggs called one of his assistants who came and stood by him holding a large imaginary tray. Scruggs lifted the non-existent spilled items onto the tray and carried it into the scullery. Another assistant returned with a mop – a real one in this case – and pretended to clean up the area.

  Everyone remained silent and in place while this went on. When it was over, Kuchen said, “Mr. Mansfield, you are an ox. Ms. Mure, you are little better. Mansfield caused the collision, but you failed to avoid him. You must all be alert for failures among the brigade. There is no point in marching always anti-clockwise if you do not check the flow. The three pillars of the successful kitchen are ingredients, technique, and precision.”

  I had read the night before that Escoffier was responsible for the brigade system used in res
taurants. I had thought ‘brigade’ a strange word choice, but as I looked at the people in the kitchen, it made perfect sense.

  No one spoke. The only movement was the narrowing of Ms. Mure’s eyes and the reddening of her face.

  “Everyone back to the dining room,” Kuchen barked.

  9

  I waited until the first few had filed through the door and tried to blend into the crowd. Once in the dining room, I blended out and went to the private dining room where I began to arrange my knives and tools on the shelves.

  At one point I picked up a loop tool, sat down at the wheel and pretended to take a bit of excess clay off the rim of an imaginary pot. My effort lacked the grandeur of the kitchen parade I had just witnessed, but at least no one was going to yell at me.

  When the glazing chemicals showed up, I checked the contents against my order slip. There was calcium carbonate, flint, titanium dioxide, barium carbonate, potash, borax, and black iron oxide.

  Just after I put the chemicals on the shelf, Scruggs came to tell me lunch was ready. Maybe he should have said food was ready – I don’t think Salzburger Nockerln qualifies as a lunch. Of course I didn’t know what it was when Machlin Masoot announced it. I did know who Masoot was because I remembered Kuchen saying “I have a pâtissier, Machlin Masoot, who knows well the Viennoiseries.” I figured Salzburger Nockerln was one of the Viennoiseries. Which told me nothing.

  When the wispy-haired Mansfield had announced we were having Gebratener Leberkäse for breakfast, he said nothing else. That and the way he cowed under Kuchen’s rebuke made me suspect he was diffident. Masoot, by comparison, was quite voluble. A rotund fellow with a floppy white toque and a black Van Dyck beard, he seemed to relish being on stage.

  “We serve today Salzburger Nockerln. The preparation requires eight steps but fewer stations because some stations are used more than once. The steps are measuring and mixing the dry ingredients, separating eggs, whipping the whites, preparing the butter and jam, combining dry and wet, baking and plating. Everyone moved against the clock in an orderly fashion.”

  He paused for effect and smiled. “Of course in this case we had real ingredients to work with.”

  There was a bit of nervous laughter. Kuchen looked pleased and proud.

  Scruggs, who I now grudgingly considered my guide, said to me sotto voce, “it’s a raisin soufflé.”

  He was basically correct. I looked it up later in Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine. Salzburger Nockerln is made by combining butter and currant jelly in a soufflé dish. Egg whites, vanilla, sugar, and lemon zest are combined and beaten to a froth. Egg yolks are folded into the whites mixture along with a little flour, and the dish is baked to a light gold.

  “How do you know all these Austrian dishes?” I asked Scuggs.

  “You think cause I’m black, I don’t know nothing?”

  I was getting a little irritated by his constant scolding. “No, I don’t think that. I’m white, and I never heard of this dish.”

  “You know any black people?”

  I smiled. “I know you.”

  “You don’t know me well enough to count me.”

  “I dated a black woman named Sharice,” I said. That was stretching the truth. Sharice and I flirt with each other, and we did have lunch together once, but calling it a date was a reach.

  “You think that makes you a great white liberal?”

  “You asked me if I knew any black people. Sharice is one I know.”

  “The only one, I reckon.”

  “So?”

  He stared at me menacingly for a few seconds. Then he said, “I know what’s in them dishes because I see it and smell it when I washes them.”

  10

  The clay showed up that afternoon. I told the trucker to drive to the back and I’d open the delivery door for him. It was already open when I got there.

  As I approached the opening, I heard voices out on the dock. Something about the tones sounded serious, so I waited inside figuring it was better for the arrival of the truck to break up the conversation than for me to barge in.

  Then the voices started nearing me. I ducked into the storage room and heard feet walk by. When I came out, the people attached to those feet were gone. But before I had taken refuge between the canned goods, I heard Mansfield say, “Kuchen should remember that I work with knives.”

  The trucker used a hand-cart to bring the boxes of clay to the private dining room. I told him to leave them on the floor because I didn’t know if I could lift the boxes off the shelves.

  I spent the next half hour wondering what I should do about Mansfield’s remark. It was probably just bravado. I didn’t think Mansfield was going to stick a butcher knife in Kuchen. But if he did and I hadn’t said anything to anybody, I knew I’d feel responsible.

  Then I remembered that Molinero had invited me to get to know the staff, so I decided to start with Mansfield.

  I found him in the bar studying a loose-leaf notebook. “Mr. Mansfield, I’m Hubie Schuze. Mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all,” he said. “Call me Arliss.”

  “Thanks. You heard Mr. Molinero say I should get to know the staff, so I thought I’d start with you since you did such a good job with the meatloaf. I know I shouldn’t call it that, but I can’t pronounce—”

  “It is meatloaf. Calling it Gebratener Leberkäse doesn’t make it haute cuisine. Anyone who can read can make it as well as I did.”

  Mansfield’s narrow face and long straight nose gave him a patrician look, an image reinforced by his delicate hands and pale skin. He did not look like a man who worked for a living.

  “Why did you choose to prepare it?”

  He gave me a wan smile. “I am a chef de partie, Mr. Schuze. What they call a ‘line cook’ in a diner. Except in that case there would be an element of honesty. Line cooks do not decide what to prepare.”

  I decided to interject my own element of honesty. “I take it you do not like cooking here?”

  “I despise it.”

  “Then I suppose I’m not likely to get from you that magical inspiration Mr. Molinero hopes I will find.”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “Why do you do it?” I asked him.

  “Sadly, I need the money.”

  I made no comment. He closed the notebook and put it aside. He placed his hands flat against the table. “Ironically, I attended culinary school on a lark. My family travelled a great deal, and I grew up eating in fine restaurants around the world. When I finished college, I thought cooking would be a splendid hobby, so I attended Cordon Bleu.”

  He seemed to drift off in reverie.

  “And then?” I prompted.

  “Then my father died, and my brothers and I discovered why we had lived so well for so many years. He had drained the family fortune. I think he must have known exactly when he would die because it coincided with the bank balance reaching zero. Below zero, actually. He left us with monumental debt.”

  “Why don’t you pursue some other profession?”

  “Such as?”

  “I don’t know. What did you study in college?”

  “Classics.”

  “Ah.”

  “I thought about teaching, but I’m not cut out for it. Besides, I earn twice what a teacher does. At least I do when I get paid.”

  I raised my eyebrows, and he said, “I worked at Café Alsace in Albuquerque,” as if that explained it.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” I said.

  “I’m not surprised. It was open less than three months, and my only two checks bounced. Then the only position I could find was at an Applebee’s. I was happy to work for an employer who actually paid me, but franchises don’t pay much because they don’t need creative cooks. The menu is corporate. So I was delighted to get this position. I’ll be even happier when the first check arrives.”

  “You don’t get paid until the place opens?”

  “We get a small stipend paid in arrears. Then the salary goes up
when customer cash starts flowing.” He looked at me and smiled. “I apologize, Mr. Schuze. It was in poor taste to subject you to my tawdry pecuniary history. I do hope you will forgive me. And I wish you the best in finding your inspiration.”

  Thus dismissed, I thanked him for his time and retreated to my lair in the private dining room. I couldn’t help comparing Mansfield to Escoffier who had wanted to be a sculptor but was forced instead to apprentice in his uncle’s restaurant. Escoffier did not want to be a chef. But when forced to become one, he found both prosperity and happiness. Mansfield, who did want to be a chef, found neither.

  Mansfield hardly seemed the type to knife anyone. For all I knew, Kuchen had tried to reassign Mansfield to desserts, and his remark that “Kuchen should remember that I work with knives” was merely a way of saying he did entrées, not pastries.

  I decided not to worry about it.

  11

  When dinner was called, I dallied for a few minutes in order to be the last person in. I deliberately took a seat at the opposite end from Scruggs, whose antics were getting under my skin.

  Kuchen said, “Mr. Barry Stiles, garde manger, has prepared Liptauer.”

  I couldn’t resist. I looked across the huge table at Scruggs. He silently mouthed the English name of the dish. Not being skilled at lip reading, I thought he said “cheese dip.”

  Turns out that’s what it was, although fancier than the ones sold on the grocery store aisle next to the Fritos.

  I didn’t bother looking this one up because I figured out most of the ingredients when Kuchen reviewed the offering for us after we had eaten it.

  “Mr. Stiles has demonstrated why even the simple tasks performed by the garde manger require skill. The quark was not allowed to come to room temperature before the mixing commenced, resulting in incorrect texture. The capers had not been thoroughly drained. The vinegar was obvious. He used too much paprika. It should be subtle, not overpowering.” He turned to face Stiles. “Perhaps you lack the palate for your position.”