The School of Essential Ingredients (22 page)

“Choose for yourself,” she said, and he had seen them at the back, resting quietly on a shelf above the white plastic buckets of red carnations and yellow daisies. Dusty dark purple tulips, their edges touched with black. They had cost almost as much as the bottle of Côtes du Rhône resting in the bottom of his shopping bag, but he didn’t care.

The Beef Bourguignon was bubbling in the oven, the smells of meat and red wine, onions and bay leaf and thyme murmuring like travelers on a late-night train. The kitchen was damp from the heat of cooking; Ian opened the window above the sink and the scent of the basil and oregano plants on the windowsill awoke with the breeze. He stood in front of the window, the warm water and soap slipping between his fingers as he washed the pots and pans, setting them to drain in the wooden dish rack, feeling the cool air run over his damp skin. When the kitchen was clean, he pulled out miniature bottles of dark rum and Grand Marnier, then the ingredients he had found at the Italian store on the other side of town—thick white mascarpone, whipping cream, bars of bittersweet and milk and white chocolate, glossy black espresso beans, and a blue box of pale
savoiardi
cookies. He laid them carefully along the counter, adding a canister of sugar and four eggs, cool from the refrigerator.

Ian looked at the assembled group in front of him. “We’re making this for her,” he told the ingredients, “and I’ve never done this before, so a little help wouldn’t hurt.”

He started with a thing he knew. From the cabinet next to the sink he took a small stovetop espresso pot, bought the weekend after the linoleum date with Antonia. As with making rice, the espresso pot had started out as a source of frustration, but over the weeks as he had practiced, learning the tricks and desires of the small, simple machine, the preparation of his small cup of espresso had become a ritual part of his morning, as necessary as a shower, as familiar and calming as watering the pots on his windowsill. So it was with a sense of easy affection that he filled the base with water and then ground the espresso beans. When the sound in the grinder changed from the rattling of beans to the breathy whirring of the blades, he stopped the machine and carefully spooned the grounds into the center metal container of the espresso pot, using the base of his thumb to tamp down the soft brown mass, feeling the grounds give beneath his finger like fine, warm dirt, the texture comforting, familiar.

How hard it must have been for Antonia, Ian thought, to leap across the ocean and leave all the sounds and smells, the tastes and textures she had always known. More and more recently he realized how much these very things made up his life. If he had told anyone at work about the little burst of pleasure he felt each time he opened the coffee grinder and released the smell of the grounds into his little apartment, they would laugh at him, and yet, these days, he noticed things like that. How his sense of balance was strengthened by the sight of the red walls of the Chinese restaurant below him or by the conversations the students had around the wooden prep counter in Lillian’s kitchen after the class was officially over but no one really wanted to leave.

He placed the pot on the stove and listened again, as the water heated then boiled, rising like a little, contained tornado through the grounds until the coffee gurgled into the upper chamber and the kitchen filled with the smell, riding on the steam, pure and strong, like the first shovelful of dirt after a spring rain.

More than anyone he knew, Antonia carried these things with her, in the million sweet and careful rituals that still made up her life, no matter what country she was in. He saw it in the way she cut bread, or drank wine, in the whimsical tower she had made out of the ripped-up linoleum tiles, just for the joy of it, or perhaps for the expression on his face when he returned to the big old kitchen and saw it, a friendly welcome, a moment of creativity in the middle of a hot and dirty project. Antonia made celebrations of things he had always dismissed as moments to be rushed through on the way to something more important. Being around her, he found even everyday experiences were deeper, nuanced, satisfaction and awareness slipped in between the layers of life like love notes hidden in the pages of a textbook.

The espresso fell in a dark, silken stream into the small white bowl. Ian opened the bottles of rum and Grand Marnier, hearing the slight crack of the seal, breathing in before adding the soft brown and pale golden liquid to the espresso. The alcohol was strong and spicy; it seemed to glide effortlessly from the air into his bloodstream, from the bottle into the espresso, lingering there lazy and relaxed, two ounces of secrets waiting in the bottom of a bowl the size of his hand.

The large white eggshell cracked once against the side of the metal mixing bowl. Slowly, Ian slid the glistening orange yolk back and forth between the two cups of the shell, allowing the clear egg white to fall into the bowl below. The yolks he put in a small metal pot on the stove, spooning in sugar afterward.

And then he entered unfamiliar territory. The recipe told him to heat and beat the egg yolks and sugar until they changed color and formed ribbons, something “partway to zabaglione”—a term Ian didn’t know. Antonia would know, he was sure, but Ian wanted his tiramisù to be a surprise. He took a quick look at the clock and saw with alarm that Antonia was due in fifteen minutes. He turned the heat on low under the pot, and put his laptop on the counter, searching the Internet for “zabaglione.” Before he could get past the impatient prompting of the search engine asking him if he wasn’t actually looking for a word with another vowel or two, the egg yolks in the pot were already curdling into hard, scrambled globs that no amount of frantic whisking could save.

Ian started over. Washed out the pot, closed his laptop. This time he picked up the hand mixer and let the beaters skim lightly over the surface of the egg yolks while they heated, pulling the sugar into the liquid as it thickened, forming small waves along the edge of the pan. He watched as the mixture became denser and he held his breath in anticipation of another catastrophe, but then as he watched, the eggs and sugar miraculously became lighter in color, a comforting yellow, the concoction falling in long, sinuous ribbons when he turned off the mixer and gently raised the beaters from the pot.

While the egg yolks cooled, he directed the beaters at the egg whites, setting the mixer on a high speed that sent small bubbles giggling to the side of the bowl, where a few became many until they were a white froth rising up and then laying down again in patterns and ridges, leaving an intricate design like the ribs of a leaf in the wake of the beaters.

Next, the mascarpone. Lighter than cream cheese and a bit sweeter, it slid into the cooled egg yolks and sugar, making cream from custard, the color of sweet, freshly churned butter. The heavier egg yolk and mascarpone yielded with a sigh into the egg-white foam; under his hand the mixture grew ever lighter until it seemed to lift itself and the spoon moved through it all without effort.

The whipping cream was last, becoming firmer under the influence of the beaters rather than softer, the peaks finally reaching up to meet the beaters even as he pulled them away in order to add a soft snow shower of grated white chocolate.

Satisfied, Ian set the bowl aside and reached for the
savoiardi
cookies. He had had ladyfingers as a child—spongy, soft, part of a whipped chocolate freezer dessert, the oval cookies lined up vertically along the outside like debutantes in a receiving line. But the
savoiardi
were firm, delightfully crisp—if these were ladies, Ian thought with amusement, they were demanding respect. Ian laid them out, one after another, in a row along the bottom of a glass bowl and dipped a brush into the espresso and rum and Grand Marnier. He ran the tip of the brush smoothly along the top of the cookies, each stroke a bit longer than the last, and watched as the liquid sank deeply into their surface, like rain into desert sand.

When the cookies were dense with liquid, Ian gently, carefully spooned a layer of the creamy egg-white-mascarpone across them. When they were covered, he took a sharp knife and ran it along the edge of the bar of bittersweet chocolate, hard and dense, falling in a dark, velvety dust across the creamy white surface, then the milk chocolate, curling off like wood shavings. Then he repeated the whole process again and again until the bowl was almost full, a tower of cake and cream and chocolate. Lincoln logs all grown up, Ian thought, then spread an almost impossibly soft layer of white chocolate and whipping cream across the top.

Ian slid his finger along the edge of the tiramisù, bringing it to his mouth. The texture was warm, creamy and soft, like lips parting beneath his own, the taste utterly lacking in precision, luxurious and urgent, mysterious and comforting. Ian stood in the kitchen, waiting for Antonia, every sense in his body awake and completely alive, and thought that if the stars were suddenly to fall in a great, glorious burst into his kitchen, he would hardly be surprised.

Epilogue

The front door of the restaurant stood open, light spilling across the front porch and into the garden. Outside the gate, the world hustled by, running to the bank before closing time, getting off the bus from work. Inside, the garden was hushed and quiet. The Adirondack chairs sat empty in the cool evening air of early April; the branches of the cherry trees hung heavy with pink and white blossoms, their petals drifting like a spring snow onto the yellow daffodils below.

In the dining room the table was set for ten. The students had been arriving, walking up the path, calling greetings to one another, naturally gravitating in the direction of the kitchen door at the back, only to redirect their steps with a laugh of pleasure toward the front of the restaurant, where the smell of fresh bread and citrus beckoned them inside.

“We certainly are fancy tonight,” Carl said as he entered. He handed Lillian a bouquet of cream-colored roses, intermixed with lavender and rosemary. “These are for you.”

“How beautiful,” Lillian answered, her voice lit with surprise.

“Essential.” Helen kissed her on the cheek.

“I’ll just get water for these,” Lillian said softly, and went to the kitchen for a pitcher to put them in.

Isabelle approached the couple, her eyes dancing, her hand on Chloe’s shoulder. “Helen and Carl, I’d like to introduce you to my new housemate.”

“I’m like the puppy who showed up at the front door.” Chloe grinned.

“And got a whole lot more than she bargained for,” Isabelle added, chuckling.

“That’s perfect,” Helen replied, nodding in satisfaction. “And Chloe, you look simply beautiful tonight.” Chloe dipped her chin, a small smile on her face.

“I think you might not be the only one getting a new room-mate, Isabelle,” Carl remarked, raising an eyebrow in the direction of Antonia and Ian, who were talking together by the bay window, their fingers intertwined.

“Well, it’s about time,” Chloe said, returning to form. “Now, where’s Claire?”

“I’m here, I’m here—the babysitter was late.” Claire arrived laughing, bringing with her a tall man with curling blond hair. “I wanted you all to meet my husband, James. He’s heard so much about you; it seemed only right he should come, and Lillian said it was okay.

“James,” Claire said, leading him to the door near the kitchen, “this is Lillian.”

While Lillian reached out a hand to greet him, Chloe ran up and pulled Claire away.

“Claire, I need your help with the salad,” she insisted.

Lillian turned to James. “You have a lovely wife.”

“Thank you,” James said. His eyes traveled around the room, taking in the wooden wainscoting, the long table, the garden outside the windows shimmering in the twilight. “Did she tell you we got engaged here?”

“Yes,” Lillian replied, smiling. “It makes me happy to know that.”

“It’s made her happy to be here.” James looked over at his wife, laughing in the kitchen with Chloe. “Thank you.”

“All we did was cook.” Lillian reached up to brush at the rice cereal clinging to James’s shoulder. “You did the hard work.”

Tom entered the front door and Isabelle turned to greet him. “Tom, my white knight,” she said, walking up to him, her hand outstretched. “Would you care to escort me to dinner?”

“I thought for our last session we should celebrate spring,” Lillian said, coming out of the kitchen with a large blue bowl in her hands. “The first green things coming up through soft earth. I’ve always thought the year begins in the spring rather than January, anyway. I like the idea of taking the first asparagus of the year, picked right that day, and putting it in a warm, creamy risotto. It celebrates both seasons and takes you from one to the next in just a few bites.”

They passed the bowl around the table, using the large silver spoon to serve generous helpings. The salad bowl came next, fresh Bibb lettuce and purple onions and orange slices, touched with oil and lemon and orange juice. Then a bread basket, heaped high with slices of fragrant, warm bread.

“I am eating spring,” Chloe mused, taking a bite of asparagus. “I can’t believe I’ve never liked vegetables.”