Under the Table (14 page)

We would just see about that. In it went, and seven minutes later, out came beautifully smooth, dark chocolate ice cream. It would need to go in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up a bit, and then we would have ice cream—chocolate and vanilla—for lunch.

 

While we waited, Chef announced our new teams for Level 2. Against all odds, Tucker and I were still together. We were also with Ben and Junior. We were also the only team short a person—the other four brigades all had a full complement of five students. This meant that we would have to do a bit of a scramble to keep up with each day's tasks, but I felt a sense of pride and accomplishment—Chef Jean thought we could handle it. We wouldn't let him down! We were all busily discussing our new alliances, the noise of conversation threatening to sweep us away in one giant wave of excitement and anticipation, when the door to the classroom flew open. There he was, silhouetted for a moment against the gleam of stainless steel pots and pans before marching to the head of the class, an impressive paunch (the sure sign of a true seasoned chef) leading the way. Chef Pierre was here to give us our lecture on the next level. Conversation immediately dried up like a kitchen sponge in the broiler. We fled to one end of the classroom—there was a bit of a skirmish as we all tried to stand as far away from the head of the class as possible. Chef Jean made the introductions and then retired to the back of the room with a spoon to check on the ice cream.

Our first encounter with Chef Pierre began with a bang—he
clapped his massive, much scarred hands together and grinned down on us. I noticed he seemed to be missing some important teeth. Maybe his bark would be worse than his bite. Maybe not. He seemed to have only one volume—full blast. As he shouted at us, telling us that we were in for a very challenging few months, I could see my fellow classmates staring at him, completely mystified. Chef Pierre's French accent was so thick, no one could understand a word of what he was saying. I thanked my lucky stars I had taken all those years of French classes—I was able to decipher every third or fourth word. Perhaps he was just trying to put the fear of God into us, I thought, as Chef Pierre graphically detailed exactly what he would do to us if we misbehaved. It involved lots of knives and disembowelment, I think. At least, that was what his sweeping hand gestures seemed to indicate. Who needs teeth when you're that good with a knife? He finished threatening us and stood back, his hands folded over his stomach, which was straining at the buttons on his chef 's jacket, seemingly satisfied with the reaction his indiscernible and somewhat spittle-flecked tirade had induced. He looked like a fire hydrant in checked pants, and seemed as tough as pig iron. I was terrified. I think we all were.

Chef Jean thanked Chef Pierre and as our new professor swept magisterially out of the classroom, we returned to our lesson on ice cream. Everyone was dealt a scoop of each flavor. I tasted the vanilla. It was delicious—smooth and creamy. But a little, well, blah. I tasted the chocolate caramel almond. A rush of dark chocolate flavor was punctuated with the bittersweet crunch of caramel, smoothed with the almost floral flavor of the almond slivers. It was definitely complex, almost too much for my virginal palate to handle. But what was that elusive flavor undercutting the heavenly chocolate? A definite tang, a slightly bitter bite lurking somewhere in the toffee clusters. Then I realized: it was fear. Fear of the trials and tribulations waiting for us in the new level, fear that I was still just beginning to learn the proper way of doing things. Fear that I was secretly a very
boring person who was clinging to habits (and vanilla ice cream) instead of trying new things. I felt unprepared for the next chapter in chef school, and for the next chapter in my own life. What would happen? I thought about what Chef had told me about making caramel—have patience, let things happen. It was good advice, and as I licked the last bit of ice cream from my spoon, I decided to follow it.

Vanilla Ice Cream

This is a basic ice cream base that makes delicious plain vanilla ice cream. It can also easily be altered to make a myriad of variations, from strawberry to chocolate, with the addition of a cup or so of the desired flavoring.

 

8 egg yolks

2 cups sugar

2 cups whole milk

2 cups heavy cream

1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1½ teaspoons vanilla paste

1. In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until the mixture is a very pale yellow and the sugar is well dissolved. The mixture will come close to doubling in volume.
   
2. Heat the milk and cream in a large pot over low heat. Add the vanilla extract and paste and stir gently, to ensure the mixture does not burn on the bottom. Once the mixture begins to steam, remove it from the heat.
   
3. Working quickly, add a scant ladle of the hot milk mixture to the egg yolks, whisking briskly. Once this has been incorporated, add another ladleful, again whisking briskly. The yolk mixture should get gradually warmer without cooking the yolks. Keep adding ladlefuls of the hot milk to the eggs, whisking all the while, until the yolk mixture is hot.
   
4. Add the yolk mixture back to the milk mixture and heat gently, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the temperature reaches 180°F, just a breath away from a boil. Immediately remove the mixture from the heat and strain it through a fine-mesh sieve into a stainless steel bowl placed in an ice water bath. Chill.
   
5. Follow the directions for your ice cream machine. Once the mixture has been spun, remove it from the machine, pack into a covered container, and freeze to firm and ripen for a few hours.
   

For chocolate ice cream:

I prefer a one-two punch of chocolate flavor—if you're going to have chocolate, make it CHOCOLATE! I sift 1 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder into the 2 cups of sugar, and add 8 ounces of chopped semisweet chocolate to the milk and cream to melt. This makes a deep, dark chocolate ice cream that should satisfy even the most fervent chocoholic.

A
t this point in my chef training, I understood the importance of the tools we used in class every day. The strainers, the Robot Coupe, the pots and sauté pans were all integral to our preparations, but most important to our work was our battery of chef 's knives. Intimidating in their wicked sharpness and seemingly monstrous size on that very first day of class, our personal arsenal of weaponry had quickly become a constant companion. We had all received identical knife kits at the start of our studies, complete with chef 's knife, carving knife, fillet knife, vegetable peeler, paring knife, and an extremely vicious blade almost fifteen inches long called “The Slicer,” like the title of a low-budget horror film, in which it could easily star. Months of daily use and regular sharpening had given each knife a unique appearance, one immediately identifiable to its owner. I could tell the difference between my paring knife and Tucker's from across the kitchen. While Chef Jean had cautioned us to clearly mark our knives, by engraving them or marking the handles with distinctive electrical tape, it hardly seemed necessary, though we all chose different colors and wrapped the handles of our blades accordingly. Who would confuse my already battered chef 's knife with its distinctive burr halfway down the blade with their own? In a school where everyone was identically equipped, who would want to steal my knives?

Of course, I was wrong.

Before we could begin our servitude in Level 2 under the watchful eye of Chef Pierre, the current Level 2 students would have to take their midterm exam in the kitchens. So, on our first day of Level 2, we were not faced with the scowling visage of Chef Pierre
at all. Some of us were to hear a lecture on food costing and some of us were to help out with the preparation and support for the Level 2 midterm. I eagerly volunteered for the latter, not only to get out of what was sure to be a really boring lecture, but also to get an idea of what the midterm would be like. We had a whole new level to master before we would be taking the exam, but every day had gone by so quickly in Level 1, I knew our own midterm would be here before we knew it.

We spent the early morning preparing the classroom, setting out trays of ingredients for each student and checking and rechecking that everything they might need, from kosher salt to fresh herbs to extra pots and pans, was on hand in the room, ready for use. When the Level 2 students finally trooped in to take their practical, all of them nervous and pale, we stayed in the corners of the room, scuttling out to fetch things only when asked by the chef-observers, who lurked around the class like malevolent hot-air balloons.

While we didn't really do very much work, certainly not as much as we were used to, the tension of the Level 2 students had worn off on us, and we were all exhausted from the nervous strain. When at last the exam was finished and we returned to the locker room to change into street clothes at the end of the day, I was not very alert.

Absently I hung my chef 's whites on their hook in my locker, returned my red toolbox to its cubby hole, and neatly folded my neckerchief and my paper chef 's hat, ready for tomorrow. I even gave the food-splattered toes of my Docs a polish, ready to make a good impression on Chef Pierre. As I gazed into my locker before shutting and locking it, it seemed that something was out of place. But what was it? My uniform was there, my toolbox was in its proper place, its sundry cooking utensils neatly organized. My notebook and new textbook were stacked on the floor of the locker, waiting for the next day. I looked around me, to see if I had forgotten something, but in the crowded confines of the tiny locker room, with almost a hundred students in various states of undress, the floor was a churning vortex
of bags, shoes, and sweaty cast-off clothing. None of it seemed to be mine, so, shrugging to myself, I locked my locker and made my way to Toad Hall to meet my new teammates for a beer.

It was only after Tucker had been discussing the new Santoku knife he was hoping to purchase that I realized what was missing. My knife kit! I had forgotten to put my knife kit in my locker! But where was it? I hadn't seen it on the floor when I was leaving, and I certainly hadn't left it in the exam classroom. With a mumbled apology to Tucker, Junior, and Ben, I flew back to school to see if I could track down my missing knives. I had the stomach-churning feeling that something terrible had happened. Sure enough, as I stared at the barren locker room, I knew: my knives were missing. Despite scouring the entire school, from the pastry classrooms to the supply closets, I couldn't find a trace of them, not even the black polyester knife roll they were stored in. What was I going to do?

I trudged home and investigated my knife block, looking for suitable replacements. Suddenly, the knives I had been happily using at home for years weren't going to cut it anymore, literally. While they were perfectly decent, serviceable blades, they lacked the keen edge and beefy heft of the pro models I was using in school. There was no way I could show up at school with my wimpy six-inch chef 's knife and try to pass it off—Chef Pierre would spot it right away. I couldn't show up without any knives, either. Coming to class without the proper uniform or equipment was cause for suspension. I didn't know what I was going to do.

Despite Michael's assurances that things had a way of working out, I tossed and turned that night, unable to sleep, worrying about what had happened to my precious knives. I was convinced that someone had taken them, but claiming that they had been stolen would be of little help in the morning. When I finally did drop off to sleep, it was to dream endlessly about being chased down the hallways and stairwells of the school, dropping piece after piece of my
batterie de cuisine
as I fled.

The next morning, I told Imogene and the other girls about the missing knife kit. Imo was outraged, but I was defeated. My knives were lost and gone forever, and there was nothing I could do about it. My only hope of avoiding punishment in class was to try to find another set of knives. I wearily put on my uniform and trudged downstairs, feeling the missing weight of the knife bag where it should have been slung over my right shoulder, banging against my hip. I found Chef Jean by the coffee urn and confided my troubles to him. Somehow, during the trials and tribulations of Level 1, Chef Jean had become my friend, and I often asked his advice about everything from what to stock my home kitchen with to how to brine a turkey to where to find a good conversational French class. As I told him the tale of my missing knives, his already long Gallic face became even longer.

“Ooh la la,” he clucked, making that distinctive clicking noise of disapproval unique to the French palate. Chef Jean said that my knives had definitely been stolen, and they were indeed gone for good. It happened every time there was a midterm or final—some student who was missing their own tools simply swiped someone else's to take the test, and then kept them afterward for use in their kitchen career post-school. Chefs, it seemed, were an inherently amoral lot. The realization that someone I knew—and who had probably seen me naked in the locker room—had stolen from me was very sobering. I thought we were all, well, if not friends, then at least good acquaintances. I would have lent my things to anyone who asked for them, but now I wasn't so sure.

Chef Jean patted my shoulder with one of his large, surprisingly gentle hands.
“Vous êtes désolée, ma chérie.”

I was indeed very sad—desolated, in Chef 's words. But there was no room in the kitchen for self-pity, and I needed knives right now, not sympathy. Chef Jean, of course, also had some good advice. He directed me to the storeroom, repository for all things sought after in school, from lettuce and eggs to saffron, truffles, and pasta
machines. They might have an extra knife kit left over from an orientation, Chef thought, but I would have to pay for it. At this point, with only a few minutes before Level 2 was set to begin, I would have gladly handed over my firstborn child to the guys in the storeroom for a new set of knives.

I hustled to the storeroom window and told my tale of loss once again to the sympathetic ears of David. David was definitely one of those guys who “could get things,” be it lobsters or otherwise. In addition to running the storeroom for the school, tales surfaced that David had a very healthy relationship with various dubious organizations and black marketeers, and could put his hands on practically any sort of illicit merchandise you could imagine. Despite this somewhat shady reputation, David was a real sweetheart, joking and flirting with all of us students, even throwing a game of darts with us in Toad Hall sometimes. David nodded sagely when I wound up my story and asked him if he happened to have any spare knife kits hidden away.

“
Sí, señorita
. I do have a knife kit left over here somewhere, but I can't give it to you without some major
dinero
.” David shrugged his massive shoulders sadly. What could he do? Rules are rules.

To say that I was running low on funds would be an understatement. My bank account was hovering on the brink of being over-drawn, but I needed those knives
right now
. Taking a deep breath, I asked how much it would take to get some new knives pronto, knowing that I was about to be put over the barrel.

“Two fifty,” said David, with a small shrug of apology. Two hundred and fifty dollars would take every last dollar I had left to my name, but I didn't have a choice. I wrote out a check and received my new set of knives.

The new knives felt cold and unfamiliar in my hands as I began to work with them, but soon they began to take on the battered and scarred appearance of my previous set of cutlery and were well on their way to becoming old friends. I kept my new blades under lock
and key, and never let them out of my sight, let alone lent them out. No one touched my blades but me. The old kitchen dictum that no one touches a chef 's knife but its owner suddenly made sense, and the punishment for disobeying that rule, a nasty cut from the rightful owner, now seemed a just and fitting punishment.

I hoped that my old set of knives, wherever they were, had cut their new owner good.