The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier Page 7

  “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.

  And sautéing the bacon is just the beginning. Even small things like the parsley must be attended to with care. Chop it too soon and the oils escape. Chop it immediately before dropping it in the broth and it can add bitterness.

  When I sipped the first spoonful of broth around the dumplings, I knew what Helen meant by gahm. It was not merely a liquid with great flavor. It was a spoonful of pure flavor. The chicken, bacon, onions, and other flavors had coalesced into a new and wonderful thing.

  When Helen stood up, there was spontaneous applause.

  She bowed and sat down without saying a word.

  I thought about the breakfast casserole Miss Gladys had brought me on Sunday. It, too, started with stale bread. I pictured Ms. Helen Mure and Miss Gladys Claiborne going head-to-head at the Pillsbury Bake-off and chuckled. Then I wondered if Helen Mure had gone head-to-head with Barry Stiles. They were both hot-tempered. Not much to go on, but enough to put her on my suspect list.

  22

  I called Rafael Pacheco after lunch and told him about Barry’s death. I urged him to come up and meet Molinero and Kuchen because they needed to make an emergency hire before the Grand Opening on Monday. He promised to be there at nine the next morning.

  For dinner that night, Kuchen announced Buergenlandische Gaenseleber prepared by Alain Billot with a special sauce by Maria Salazar. I turned to Scruggs. “Goose liver and onions,” he said. I left the table.

  Two hours later Maria entered my work area.

  “Slaving over a hot kiln?”

  She didn’t look like someone who would seduce Kuchen to get promoted. She was pretty enough to seduce anyone, but she looked too fresh and wholesome to do so. Like one of the Von Trapp daughters all grown up, but that was probably just becaus
e I had been working on edelweiss designs. Or is the plural edelweissen? Edelweißes?

  “I’ll get you a chair,” I offered.

  “Don’t bother,” she said and plopped down on the floor. She crossed her ankles in front of her, holding them in her hands, knees sticking out to the side like a little girl. She blew a few strands of hair off her face. She smiled at me. “Why did you skip dinner?”

  “I don’t like liver.”

  “It was goose liver. Have you ever tasted it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, don’t think of the awful liver and onions your mother made you eat.”

  “My mother never made me eat anything.”

  “You must have been a spoiled child,” she said breezily.

  “Terribly,” I said.

  “I’m going to bring you some food,” she said and popped up like a Jill-in-the-box before I could protest.

  She returned ten minutes later with a sandwich of sliced goose liver dressed with a dark sauce between two slices of crusty bread. I feared the liver would deliver the coup de grâce to my système digestif, but food was exactly what my tummy needed in order to attack something other than itself.

  The creamy liver and crunchy bread were a delicious combination. The dark sauce would have made a bicycle tire delicious. Maria was right – this was nothing like the dreaded calf’s liver.

  “What’s in this sauce?”

  “A saucier never tells,” she said with a look on her face that indicated maybe she did.

  “Speaking of sauciers, I hear you may be in line for a promotion to chef de partie.”

  A frown passed over her face, and I noted she was just as attractive frowning as she was smiling.

  “That wouldn’t be a promotion in my mind. I love sauces, and I don’t want to stand over a stove and under a salamander for hours on end. Where did you hear this?”

  “A potter never tells,” I said.

  “Touché. O.K., I’ll tell you what’s in the sauce and you tell me who said I might become a chef de partie.” It had the flirty tone one might associate with “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

  I didn’t want to tell her for fear of causing friction among the staff. There was too much of that already. But she started explaining the sauce, and I couldn’t bring myself to interrupt because she was so exuberant. Also, I wanted to know what was in it.

  She recited the ingredients - shallots, honey, verjus, and veal stock. Oops. Can’t serve that to Susannah. Maybe a good chicken stock would work. Then she said, “O.K., your turn. Who told you I might become a chef de partie?”

  What to do? I hadn’t twisted Helen Mure’s arm to make her talk, and she hadn’t sworn me to secrecy. There was nothing to prevent me from telling Maria the truth.

  I told her half of it – that Mure had mentioned it as a possibility. I didn’t tell her Mure’s opinion of how Maria was likely to “earn” the promotion.

  She was surprised by the news but didn’t seem angry. “I wonder why she would say that?”

  The question wasn’t directed to me so I didn’t answer it.

  “Let’s make a game of this,” she suggested. “I’ll tell you why I think she said it, and then you tell me if it makes sense.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “I wouldn’t have any way of knowing if it makes sense. I’m just an interloper.”

  “No, she told you for a reason. And you’ll know my theory makes sense if it fits with the way she told you – the words she used, the tone of her voice.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “But first I have to swear you to secrecy,” she said with mock seriousness.

  “Why? You’re not telling me a secret, just a theory.”

  “When you hear it, you’ll know why. Promise not to tell?”

  She was irresistible. I crossed my heart, sealed my lips and threw away the key.

  “I think she wants me to be a chef de partie so that we have to work side by side. She likes me.”

  Her theory made no sense at all. Not only did Mure not like Salazar, she seemed to despise her.

  “That’s a surprising theory,” I said.

  “That’s because you don’t know how I know she likes me. That’s the secret part.” She paused for effect then announced, “She’s been hitting on me ever since I arrived.”

  I guess I looked dumbfounded because after a few seconds of silence she said, “You’re surprised, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Somehow I got the impression you liked Kuchen.”

  She furrowed her brow. “I can’t imagine any woman falling for someone that conceited and domineering.”

  Despite her girlish demeanor, she looked up close to be in her mid thirties. Her black hair reached just above her shoulders and then turned up and inward. I suppose getting it to stay that way involved the use of a spray or curlers or a permanent or one of those processes I know nothing about, but it looked free and loose and not stiff at all.

  I was drawn to her, and that made me nervous. She didn’t seem the type to commit a murder, but what if she and Barry had a stormy romance? Susannah tells me that love and money are the only motives for murder.

  23

  It snowed overnight, but Rafael was at the door of Schnitzel when I arrived shortly before nine.

  He was huddled against the door blowing on his hands to keep them warm. “Neither rain nor cold nor dark of night,” he said as I unlocked the door.

  The only other person early to work was M’Lanta Scruggs. “I brewed fresh coffee,” he said.

  “Great,” I said and started towards the kitchen.

  “I’ll bring it to you,” he said, stepping into my path. “How you like it?”

  “Cream and sugar,” said Rafael.

  “Black,” I said.

  “Like your girlfriend,” he said.

  Rafael and I went to my work area.

  “What was that about?”

  “He was giving me a hard time about not knowing any blacks, so I told him I’d dated a black girl.”

  “I can see that broke the ice.”

  I liked this guy. “I’m sorry I kept you waiting out in the cold.”

  “I was early. And it gave me time to figure out whether a battering ram or a catapult would be the best way to get in.”

  “It is an imposing entry,” I agreed.

  “You almost expect armed guards and customs agents waiting to stamp your passport.”

  I showed him my charger design. He said it was great for an Austrian restaurant, but why would we have one in New Mexico?

  “At least they have cold dishes other than guacamole and salsa,” I pointed out.

  “How about warm dishes?”

  “There’s Liptauer.”

  “What’s her first name?”

  “Huh?”

  He laughed. “I meant warm dishes on the staff, not on the menu.”

  “Oh.”

  “Tell me about Liptauer.”

  “It’s a cheese dip.”

  “And I thought Austrian food would take me away from all that. Is it made by Frito Lay?”

  “It tastes like it might be, but don’t say that to Kuchen. It has quark, capers, and paprika.”

  “Isn’t quark a subatomic particle?”

  “I think it’s cream cheese in this case. If Kuchen asks you about it, be sure to say that draining the capers is important to avoid a vinegar taste. Also, the paprika should be subtle, not overpowering.”

  “Who knew? How did you learn all this?”

  “Barry served it, and I listened to Kuchen berate him.”

  Scruggs came in with our coffee.

  Rafael asked, “Are you the barista?”

  “No. I’m the pot scrubber.”

  Rafael took a sip. “You deserve a promotion.”

  “Why you think anything from pot scrubber is a promotion?” he challenged.

  After he walked away, Rafael turned to me. “Sensitive type, isn’t he?”

  “So I’ve
discovered. And he’s the most normal guy here.”

  He held his cup up in a mock salute. “Here’s to la vida loca.” He had a sort of cheeky humor I appreciated, but I was beginning to fear he might have an unsavory side.

  Raoul Deschutes came in and said, “Sorry, I didn’t know you had a guest.”

  “Yes, someone who wants to meet you.” I introduced them and explained that Rafael was interested in the garde manger position.

  Raoul’ face darkened.

  Rafael said quickly, “Hubie told me about the position before Barry Stiles died. He thought the position might come open because Chef Kuchen seemed displeased with Barry. I was interested, but of course I never would have approached Kuchen while Barry was still here. Barry and I worked together at Café Alsace. Even if we hadn’t, you don’t undermine another worker even in our cutthroat business.”

  “Oui, it is cutthroat, and the biggest cutter of throats is Kuchen himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed Stiles.”

  I wondered briefly if he said that to throw suspicion away from himself. Of course there was no reason to suspect Deschutes. In fact, there was no good reason to suspect anyone. For all I knew, Barry choked to death on a schnitzel.

  Rafael and I glanced at each other.

  “I want the position, but it feels ghoulish to apply the day after the guy who had it died.”

  Deschutes demonstrated the Gallic shrug. “Life goes on. As does the business of cooking. We need to open so the pay will begin.”

  “But you’re all getting stipends, right?” ask Rafael.

  “Yes, but paid in arrears.”

  Rafael and Raoul chatted about their work experience. Raoul seemed happy to give a quick tutorial, although it was clear he didn’t think Austrian food was haute cuisine. As other people trickled in, I introduced them to Pacheco. I stood around during those brief chats until we got to Kuchen.

  I left them alone and returned to my space where I applied the slip glazes and put the plate in the kiln. Watching a plate fire is no more riveting than watching one dry. I went for a walk. As I left the building, I saw Rafael and a woman who looked like Vivien Leigh leaning in close to him near the empty bar, radiant smiles on both their faces.