Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance (7 page)

“I had to say it.” Mae grinned sheepishly.

In no time at all, using Sally’s apple-wedging technique, the Tonys and I had the bulk of the bushel peeled, cut in wedges, and sprinkled with sugar and lemon juice. Mae had made the pastry dough and divided it into six portions, and it was resting in the refrigerator. We were discussing the spot’s degree of brownness in order to determine Jonathan’s degree of annoyance when we heard an unmistakable “Woo-hoo” just outside the door. Our culinary superhero was here.

God must have spent a little more time on you.
—Alabama

S
eventy-one-year-old Sally Woods galumphed into the kitchen with Sonya right behind her. Sally does galumph; it’s part of her charm and, I suppose, hard to avoid with size eleven feet tucked into two-inch-high pumps. “Is
that Casey Costello
?” Sally said this as though she had just discovered the Queen of England cleaning the loo. It was her regular greeting, and it always makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

“Can it be—
Sally Woods
?” I mimicked her tone and slight Georgian drawl as I stretched out my arms to join her in a big hug. Sally is my exact height, so hugging her is easy for me. Lots of people find their faces crushed into her ample bosom, a position that can be disconcerting when hugging someone as famous as Sally. “It’s
so
great to see you.”

Sally has been the biggest cheese in the food world for nearly thirty years. She has been declared a legend and a national treasure, been dined and feted by three presidents of the United States and one in France, and granted diplomas and awards more times than anyone of us can count, including Sally, who
doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention to such things. The man in the street knows her; children barely old enough to use the stove ask for her autograph; foodies swoon over her.

“It has been much too long, honey,” she said and then turned to hug Mae, who did stand on her tiptoes to avoid the bosom crush. “And here’s our Mae.” There was never any question about who belonged to the Sally family. They were “ours.”

As big a deal as Sally is, she never acts like one. The first thing she did after the hugging us was pull an apron out of her tote bag and ask what needed to be done.

“Well, we still have apples to peel and cut. All the dough’s made and chilling and needs to be rolled out and we have to caramelize enough sugar to cover . . .” I looked down at my notes. “Six—no, seven pans.”

Sally looked at the ten cast-iron skillets stacked up on the counter and let out one of her great hoots. “Huh! Just look at those pans. Isn’t this something? I’d like to make the caramel.”

Sonya reached for an apron and asked what she could do to help. Her question brought panic to Mae’s eyes. Sonya is a genius at producing food shows but a real klutz when it comes to actually cooking. The last time she helped, she came close to chopping off two fingers. Between getting her to the hospital for stitches and washing blood out of the potato salad, we were lucky to get on the air in time. At some point one of us was going to have to level with her, but for now, I just had to find her a task. “Would you mind going over my notes for the tarte Tatin setup? There are so many pans to deal with; I want to make sure it’s all there.” It was a stopgap measure at best. It wouldn’t take her all that long.

“Sure,” she said without enthusiasm and sat down at one end of Romeo with my script. Mae dusted the other end of
Romeo with flour and lined up six plastic bags, each containing a perfectly smooth, flattened cake of
pâté brisée
. Sally gave the bags affectionate pats on her way to the stove. “Those are lovely, Mae.” She slipped one out of its plastic cocoon, broke off a piece of the raw dough, and popped it into her mouth. It’s not for nothing she’s the best; she tastes
everything
. “Mmm. Buttery and delicious,” she said before going over to the stove.

“I just followed
your
recipe. It’s, like, foolproof.” Mae was beaming even as she tried to make a perfect circle out of the cake with the missing mouthful. I measured out the sugar and butter for the caramel and put it on the counter next to Sally, who was trying to get the uncooperative electric stove to deliver a moderately high heat. Any serious cook uses gas, not electricity, and this particular stove always presents a challenge. She turned on all four imperfect burners and waved her hand a few inches above them to see which ones were responsive. “You can be sure no cook ever designed a stove like this. And who sells these? Someone who last week was working in men’s socks? It’s just a shame.” Knowing what little control electricity provides the cook, I gave Sally a cut lemon. A few drops of acid added to the butter and sugar will prevent the caramel from crystallizing should the electric coils go mad.

“Oh yes, my friends. There is a God and he’s painted my world red.” An obviously jubilant Jonathan walked in carrying a small crate with six bright red steamed lobsters. He immediately spied Sally and set his bounty down on the counter. “Mrs. Woods! How wonderful to see you again!” He ignored the rest of us to get to Sally and took her hand in both of his. He was uncharacteristically all smiles. “How are you?”

“Just fine, honey.” Calling him “honey” without using his name meant she knew she knew him and knew that he was one of us but just couldn’t bring up his name quickly. It’s a tactic
she uses often and well. “How have
you
been?” When Sally asks that, she really wants to know. I know this because months after she has chatted with a fan she’ll talk about how he or she lives in a trailer park, or was a pothead in the sixties, or has ten children. People fascinate her, and that has a lot to do with the kinship they feel with her. It’s why they never hesitate to approach her—in restaurants, airports, on street corners and in the market. One woman actually slipped a piece of paper under the door in a ladies’ room and asked for her autograph. Sally wrote “tinkle, tinkle” on it and slipped it back.

Sonya’s cell phone rang and I said a little prayer that it was something that would need her attention elsewhere for a while so I wouldn’t have to manufacture another task for her. It was and she mouthed, “I’ll be right back” as she left the room with the phone still glued to her ear.

Meanwhile, Jonathan was relating in long, painful, drawn-out detail exactly how he had been. Sally listened and commented as she heated the butter and sugar, coaxing it into a caramel with a clean wooden spoon.

“. . . so, after I spent my own money to paint the living room, and the bedroom, and put wallpaper up in the bathroom, just to mention a few things I’ve done, I may have to leave my lovely little apartment and look in a less desirable neighborhood—with my two cats and my dog, who really does
not
bark all day. It just doesn’t seem right since I’ve . . . Mrs. Woods?
Mrs. Woods?
Are you all right? Can I get you something?”

“Wha eet err tuk.”

I dropped my apples on the counter and turned. Oh my God, I thought, she’s having a stroke. She had her hand to her mouth and seemed to be struggling. Her eyes were watering. Jonathan was visibly shaken but immobilized. I reached her
just as she pulled a chunk of caramel out of her mouth. “It got stuck in my teeth and I couldn’t get it off,” she croaked.

“Jeez, Sally. You put hot caramel in your mouth? What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t think. I just did.” She gave me a Sally look that is seldom seen by the public. It is the sheepish grin of a school-girl who has just been caught executing a major prank. I’m sure she perfected the look in her younger days, because she is known to have created more than her share of mischief.

“Didn’t it burn?”

“Well,
yes
!”

“I’ll get some ice for you to chew. And for God’s sake, keep the spoon out of your mouth.” She gave me more of that impish grin.

I hadn’t always talked to Sally like that. When I met her six years ago, I was so in awe of her stature that I addressed her with exaggerated reverence. At the time, I was teaching at a local cooking school that had been asked to organize a charity event at which Sally was the main attraction. It was held in a theater, so a makeshift kitchen had to be built on the stage. The “kitchen” consisted of a long skirted table with a cutting board, knives, a two-burner hot plate, a standing mixer, a food processor, and a large jar holding an assortment of cooking utensils. Sally stood behind this table facing the audience. Several feet behind her were two other skirted tables. One held three big buckets of water and served as our water source and cleanup area. The second table was our prep area and on top were another hot plate, cutting board, knives, utensils, and the food. Underneath were pots, pans, numerous small appliances, and several electrical outlets.

Sally was demonstrating trout mousse rolled inside salmon fillets and napped—such a nice word—with hollandaise sauce.
She made the hollandaise on her hot plate and handed it to me to keep warm on our back-table hot plate. When I took the pan from her, smiling for the audience, I could see that it had curdled; little bits of hard yolk were visible up close. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. I certainly didn’t want to point it out to her, but I knew she wouldn’t want to use it as it was. So I made another one. I melted butter on my hot plate and crouched under the skirted table with the butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and the blender. I waited for Sally to turn on the food processor to puree the trout, and then, knowing the processor would drown me out, I turned on the blender and whirred yolks, butter, and lemon juice into a perfect hollandaise and put it in a pan identical to the one Sally had handed me. I saved hers just in case she was planning to discuss curdling, but when I handed her the newly made one, she just gave me that schoolgirl grin and said, “Nice work” and went back to the demonstration.

That night, Sally asked me if I would be available to assist her whenever she was working in New York. I guess being able to cook on the floor is a valuable asset. My first official gig with her turned out to be an eighteen-hour marathon of television, demonstrations, and eating. We started our day at five in the morning right here at
Morning in America
. Back then, they had no prep chef, not much equipment, and no Romeo, so the resources weren’t much better than the makeshift theater kitchen. But we managed to pull off one live show and three taped shows without a hitch. We congratulated ourselves with a four-course lunch and some very fine wine. Before going on to the evening demonstration, we stopped off at a champagne-and-chocolate-ice-cream tasting that the James Beard House was sponsoring. At six o’clock, we were back in another theater setup, where Sally made gumbo for three hundred people in
two electric woks. She was amazing. When the show ended at ten o’clock, the sponsors brought us champagne to toast the evening. Up until this point, I had been sensibly sipping the spirits, knowing that I wasn’t called “Thimble Belly” for nothing, but now that the day was over I greedily held my glass out. As I was draining my second glass, Sally asked me where I’d like to go to dinner. Who was thinking about dinner? Mentally, my head was already on a pillow. We chose a homey little Italian restaurant, and after dinner, and more wine, I was showing Sally how to burn amoretti papers and coming close to burning down the restaurant. The next morning we met for breakfast, and I thought I should explain my behavior.

“Sally, I think I misjudged my dinner wine last night. I seem to remember dancing on tables.”

She put her hand on my arm, got that impish look in her eyes, and said, “You were. But you were very good.” From that moment on, I saw her not as a star but as a cool person, and before long, we saw each other as really good friends. When the position at
Morning in America
came up, she told Sonya she had to have me. That led to the happy place where I am today.

“Cooking together is such fun,” Sally exclaimed between ice cubes.

“It sure is,” Mae and I echoed each other.

Jonathan, however, did not look as if he were having fun. He might have been unsettled by the realization that the all-time greatest cooking personality could have keeled over in the middle of a conversation with him. He would become the medical case model for proof of dying from boredom. “I’m going to go to the fish market to see if I can get some seaweed for the lobsters,” he said.

“Great idea. Did you remember the lobster tools?” I checked my notes to see what else was on my list. We’d spent so much
time on the tarte Tatin that the lobster spot was getting short shrift.

He rolled his eyes and smirked as he held up claw crackers and lobster forks.

“It’s my job to ask.” I smirked back.

“How about lobster bibs?” Sally asked. She never confused cooking with heart surgery and was always ready to ham it up a bit. Not that lobster bibs were so weird, but many of our guest chefs wouldn’t consider wearing a plastic bib with little cartoon lobsters running over it.

“What a fabulous idea!” Jonathan was clearly into this lobster thing. “I’ll get some of those too. Do you think Jim will wear one? He’s so conservative.”

“If Sally does, he will.” Mae was right. The show’s hosts were well aware that Sally was a beloved figure, and they were happy to follow her lead in hopes of glomming on to some of her star power.

Sonya came back into the room just as Jonathan was leaving. She spent a little more time with the script before setting it aside. “I think this is just fine, Casey. What else can I do?”

I looked around to see where we were. I was working on the last apple, Mae had all the dough rolled out, and Sally’s butter and sugar were now caramel. We were in safe territory. No more knives or heat. “I think we’re ready to assemble the tarts. Let’s line the pans up on Romeo.”

We put seven pans in a row down the center of Romeo and I switched the Post-its from inside the pans to the surface next to them. We took our places, two on each side, and began our assembly.

Sally had stopped chewing ice and was now munching apple wedges. Between chews, she said, not so subtly, “I met the nicest young man in Washington, last week. He’s a sous-chef
at Citronelle and very jolly. I think you might like him, Casey.” She was so sweet that way. Before I met Richard, she was always suggesting men she thought would be good for me. During one of my particularly long dating dry spells, she mentioned that she had a friend who was a “bit crumpled and dusty” but a fine fellow. Would I be interested? I thought she meant that he was a poor dresser, but it turned out that he was a very old, weathered college professor who, fortunately, found a mate before I had to tell Sally she must be crazy. Since I had kept her up to date on the turmoils of my transition from break to breakup with Richard, I imagine she was dusting off a lot of old friends.