Knives at Dawn (27 page)

But it didn't matter. He had come up with the elusive centerpiece, and with it one of his two platters was coming into focus. Best of all, he felt that he was balancing on that tightrope between something clean and elegant that he would cook and serve at The French Laundry and something that,
as he understood it, the Bocuse d'Or judges were looking for—one component wrapped in another, then rolled in yet another. “I think the chances of us being successful with something like this is really, really good,” he said.

That night, a member The French Laundry's pastry team was in for dinner with her parents. They were served discs of cod that all but glittered with a fanciful green dust. They didn't know it, but they were the first people tasting the prototype of the centerpiece of Team USA's Bocuse d'Or fish platter.

T
HE FOLLOW ING WEEK
, H
OLLINGSWORTH
received a belated Christmas present. Still searching for a new way to use the beef fillet, the Fates threw him a bone when Corey Lee told him to make a potato-and-truffle tart for a table of VIPs.

There are a number of ways to structure a tart. Lee told Hollingsworth to make his with a layer of potatoes topped with a layer of truffles. But
tart
had certain connotations for Hollingsworth and he pictured a round of flaky pastry topped with overlapping circles of potato and truffle. Lee told him to go ahead and try it. When Hollingsworth showed him the finished product, Lee immediately said, “You should do that on your platter.”

“Yeah!” said Hollingsworth, imagining punched-out circles of beef incorporated into the composition. He considered whether he wanted to introduce a piece of cooked meat to those delicate flavors. “Do you think it'd be nice with the fillet raw?”

Lee thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said.

“Do you think I should sear it?”

“No.”

Hollingsworth agreed. His mind was racing. He knew that this was it: a tart was French, but a
beef
tart came with all kinds of American connotations. He was already using potato on the beef platter, but maybe … maybe … what? What could take the place of—

Celeriac!
That would be a good alternative. Picturing it in his head—
the white of the celeriac, the rosy red beef, the black truffle—he realized that the color palate was not unlike that of a pepperoni pizza. And if the competition demanded a touch of audacity, then serving the beef raw was his way of doing it.

Before the restaurant closed for the winter respite, he decided that he would add an endive marmalade—a Thomas Keller recipe made with endive, shallots, bacon, onion, and sherry vinegar—to the tart, layering it between the pastry and the “toppings,” though he would go easy on the honey, ensuring a balance that any judge, from anywhere, could appreciate.

He still had no idea what to do with the shrimp. But he had solved the riddle of the beef tenderloin with something he believed was true to himself, America,
and
the Bocuse d'Or.

The New Year was looking better and better.

Time moves slowly, but passes quickly.

—
ALICE WALKER,
THE COLOR PURPLE

T
IMOTHY
H
OLLINGSWORTH WOULDN'T SAY THAT HE THOUGHT HE
was dreaming. That's too melodramatic for him. But he couldn't quite believe his eyes when he opened his e-mail early Sunday morning, January 4, and read that Paul Bocuse himself was arriving in Yountville the next day.

Team USA was at T-minus twenty-four days, and counting, until the competition. With The French Laundry closed for the first three weeks of January, Hollingsworth possessed exactly one objective for the next month: do well at the Bocuse d'Or.

On Saturday, he and Guest had performed their first practice, with an encore scheduled for Monday. Daniel Boulud and Jérôme Bocuse would be jetting cross-country for the day, to observe, taste, and offer feedback, and a reporter and photographer from the
Los Angeles Times
were expected as well.

When Hollingsworth powered up his laptop Sunday morning, among the e-mails was one from Jennifer Pelka, which said:

“Hi, everyone. I have just learned from Jérôme that his father wishes to join the group in Yountville. I realize that the group is getting quite large now, but I do hope everyone is comfortable with Chef Bocuse being added to the trip.”

Hollingsworth stared at the note, blankly. It didn't compute.
Paul Bocuse is coming here? Tomorrow? To watch us
practice
?
He wouldn't learn until later that the chef was in the midst of one of his periodic extended visits with son Jérôme in Orlando, so it wasn't like the guy was coming all the way from France. But still.

“Oh, my God,” he said, as it sank in.

Laughlin peeked at the message over her boyfriend's shoulder, and burst out laughing. What else could she do? Besides, there was no time for dwelling on it. The sun would rise on Monday soon enough. The best way for Hollingsworth to move forward was with the same plan he'd had before he'd learned that one of the planet's most historic chefs would be present: Get ready.

In retrospect, Saturday's practice had been like losing one's virginity: the main thing had been to get it out of the way. Now improvements could commence. The team hadn't choreographed their routine yet, but Guest took the initiative to give herself the structure she needed, ordering her tasks on a printed grid in neat little fifteen-minute blocks. Such grids are the North Star for culinary competitors, the itinerary to which Roland Henin had referred in his briefing at The French Culinary Institute back in July. They are also exercises in extreme optimism; reducing jobs that require extraordinary coordination, talent, and precision into one or two words. For example, “melbas” meant actually to
make
melba toast: slicing
the brioche, punching it out, and baking the pieces to perfection between Silpats.

Hollingsworth, meanwhile, opted to wing it for Practice Number One, operating in the way he first learned to cook, intuitively, relying on his experience to mentally MapQuest the five-hour journey for him. He would get around to regimenting his chores, but he needed to get there the same way he got to his dishes, on his own time and in his own way. On Saturday, he just wanted to
cook
.

The only other person in the Bocuse House that day had been Laughlin, who reprised the role she'd played in the Orlando practices, taking notes as the team called out items they'd need to talk about, or adjust. (At this time, Laughlin was transitioning to a new job with Soutirage, a rare wine merchant based in Northern California, and so had time to devote to helping the team.) Some addressed timing and sequencing, such as “Cook PD [pommes dauphinoise] for less time than 1 hour—check at 35 minutes,” “Melbas were 4 minutes at 315 degrees,” and “Heat up broccoli last.” Some indicated necessary ingredients, equipment, and tools, such as “Paintbrush and olive oil for tart.” Some were stand-alone adjustments such as “Freeze beef” [to make it easier to slice for the tart] and “Grind more panko [Japanese breadcrumbs], and grind to a powder.” Others were geared to establishing that essential, time-saving efficiency; for example, “Butcher all beef together at once,” “Do all meat glue at once (cod and meat),” and “When Vita-Prep is out: horseradish foam, chestnut puree, pistachio puree, prune puree.” By the time the day was done, the list would run down the left-hand side of
three
typed pages.

For four hours, Team USA belied the brevity of their preparation, as both Hollingsworth and Guest adroitly fulfilled their responsibilities. But they hit a patch of turbulence at plate-up time. Athletes refer to a
transition game
: switching from one mode that requires a specific set of skills, to another—relocating from the baseline to the net in tennis, or toggling back and forth between offense and defense in basketball. The transition game in the kitchen might be defined as shifting from prep to service, assembling
all the individual components you've been amassing, and getting them all out to the diner at the same time, and piping hot. In the Bocuse d'Or kitchen, transitioning meant much more than that: instead of a full brigade, there are just two people charged with putting up close to forty individual pieces (twelve of each garnish plus the centerpiece), each one flawlessly composed and as synchronized on the platter as the North Korean People's Army on a parade march.

The team lost time here, as plating-up became something of a game of Twister. But they finished: on the fish platter there was the cod, the millefeuille, and the custard cup. (The team also had also prepared a shellfish boudin, or sausage, wrapped in a sushi-like band of Swiss chard. It was lovely, but it was just a placeholder, there to take up practice time and fill up space on the platter. Hollingsworth still didn't know what he was going to do for his final garnish.) The meat platter housed the tart, the deconstructed stew, and the potato dauphinoise topped with the celery salad and chestnut. In the week and a half since Keller's tasting, the smoke glass had also morphed into something Hollingsworth felt good about: in the base of the glass were brunoised blanched Savoy cabbage, green apple, bresaola, pickled red onions, and small croutons that had been sautéed in olive oil and salt. They were topped with an airy cloud of horseradish mousse on which rested a delicate slice of bresaola. Hollingsworth had also figured out what to do with the remaining cut of meat: with the tenderloin riddle solved, he would wrap two cylinders of beef cut from the côte de boeuf in bacon, sear it, then roast it.

There was a
lot
of tweaking to do. Hollingsworth and Guest met at the Bocuse House Sunday afternoon to review these topics as well as the list Laughlin had created, and to determine the changes they needed to make for Monday's practice. Two hours were required to get through it all, but Hollingsworth was feeling good, satisfied that his approach—drawing on techniques familiar to him and Guest from their daily work—was working. If he had created a menu that had required them to master techniques from scratch, the first run-through may not have gone so well. His strategy
was ultimately to design the division of labor to max out Guest's schedule, while leaving him free to take on tasks should she fall behind during competition. In sports terms, Hollingworth was not just the team leader but also the ultimate “utility player”—able to step into any position—except that where that phrase connotes mere competence, Hollingsworth could perform any task expertly. It was another application of his French Laundry experience to the Bocuse d'Or; just as he had worked every position in that kitchen, he was able to take on any task in this considerably smaller one.

The battle lines drawn, they were ready to take on their first adversary: time.

O
N
M
ONDAY MORNING
, T
EAM
USA had a taste of what the Bocuse d'Or would be like as they prepared to cook publicly for the first time since competing in Orlando. As they readied the kitchen, arranging armfuls of produce and equipment in optimal locations, Kristine Keefer, public relations manager for the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, looked on along with Betty Hallock of the
Los Angeles Times
and a freelance photographer there to take pictures for her article. After conferring with the photographer, Keefer asked Guest if it would be okay to move a table from the corner of the kitchen so a reflector could be positioned there.

Guest was so in the throes of the chain of command that she wouldn't give an answer, even though the table was outside the practice area. “Ask Chef Tim,” she said.

The three Frenchmen arrived minutes before the planned twelve noon start time: Paul Bocuse, nattily attired in a black-and-white checkered blazer and black scarf, along with Daniel Boulud and Jérôme Bocuse. Others had stayed to one side of the imaginary line that marked the perimeter of the training kitchen, but after making his hellos, Boulud marched right in and engaged in some shop talk with Hollingsworth, asking how the equipment had been treating him and how the preparations were going.

As soon as the dialogue stopped, with no fanfare Hollingsworth and
Guest began working. Hollingsworth set about butchering the beef while Guest was out of the blocks with a demonstration of her quick hands and the precision of her technique: one of her first tasks was to peel several Yukon Gold potatoes, which she accomplished by standing the potatoes on end, one at a time, and rotating them with one hand while the other brought her knife down with the persistent ferocity of a wood-chipper, filling the kitchen with a rat-a-tat-tat.

Is there anyplace on Earth where Paul Bocuse
isn't
a celebrity and somebody doesn't want his autograph? In the living room, Keefer handed one of Bocuse's own books to the maestro and asked him to autograph it for Keller, who was out of town that week. She offered a pen, but he raised a hand to freeze her, producing his own from his blazer pocket. The man is so used to signing things that, even at age eighty-two and at the crack of dawn in Orlando, before leaving he had thought to stick his own
plume de choix
in his pocket. Before the day was over, he'd have signed a wall in the living room as well, branding the house that unofficially bore his name.

Friends and fellow employees of the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group dropped in throughout the afternoon, lending the spectacle of the blue apron–clad cooks the air of a sideshow.
Step right up, folks, and see the amazing Chef Timothy and his trusty
commis Adina. Marvel at his nerves of steel. Witness the speed of her knife. You will NOT believe your eyes!
Larry Nadeau, maitre d' of The French Laundry, dropped in, as did Jennifer Fukui, director of private events for Keller's Yountville restaurants. In the living room, Hallock interviewed Boulud, who was only too happy to explain the difference between the Bocuse d'Or and other competitions. “The taste is very, very important,” he said. This is a point of distinction that Bocuse d'Or's insiders cite with great pride: their contest of choice eschews the outdated conventions of cold-food competitions, all that aspic-drenched stuff meant for the eyes rather than the palate. In the Bocuse d'Or, the chefs do
real
cooking and the judges evaluate primarily on taste. (In truth, though it features cold-food contests, hot food is also a major component of the International Culinary Olympics, but detractors of that event frequently decline to mention this fact.)