Under the Table (22 page)

The best way to find out what wines you like is to try as many different ones as possible. Experimentation is a must. Sample wines whenever possible—many shops run regular tastings, often with the importer or even the vintner on hand to answer questions and provide commentary on the wines. Establish a relationship with a wine merchant. They can help you focus on what you like and suggest
different wines to try. Research is also an important part of educating your palate. While it isn't necessary to take sommelier courses or stay up late at night trudging through the
Oxford Companion to Wine,
learning a bit of background can help make a more informed choice. If you are building a wine collection, research is even more important, if only to ensure that the wine you have fallen in love with will age gracefully and taste as good to you in two years as it does today. The best piece of advice for aspiring oenophiles is this: keep track of the wines you like and the interesting information you have gathered. A small notebook you can fill with tasting notes, labels, a good vintage you have run across, even the name of an importer of a favorite bottle, is indispensable. I have found keeping track of importers can be very helpful. When I tasted the Chablis at Bouley, I knew I had to track down more bottles of this fabulous wine. The restaurant was able to give me the name of the importer, whom I contacted when I was unable to track down the bottle in any of my regular stores. The importer was able to tell me precisely where to find it. I even got a discount!

Everyone has a list of desert island discs, music that they can't live without. I have a desert island case: twelve bottles that would make my exile on an island paradise. I have broken my case into three whites, three reds, three rosés (I couldn't stand the desert heat without the refreshing, easy-drinking rosé; it is happiness in a glass), two sparkling wines, and one dessert selection.

WHITE

RED

ROSÉ

SPARKLING

DESSERT

A
s in all things both eagerly anticipated and morbidly feared, the actual day of the midterm was the epitome of anticlimax. Weeks of preparation and a steady diet of nothing but the possible dishes on the midterm ensured that at least most of us knew what we were doing, but there was always the looming specter of something going wrong at the last minute.

In my case, something went wrong the night before. Despite the fact that I had made it very clear (I thought) that this midterm was the most important thing in the world, and my entire life would be sacrificed on the altar of studious endeavor, there was a slight problem. Michael, my darling lamb, had scheduled an important business dinner for eight o'clock the night before. Unfortunately, all of my pleading, whimpers, and frosty resistance did nothing to wear down Michael's determination that this was an evening the two of us were required to attend.

Not only that, but he had volunteered me to make dessert.

This was an opportunity, I told myself, as I frantically whipped together yet another piecrust, to assemble the latest in a long line of practice
tartes aux pommes
. One more chance to perfect my technique before the exam. But I was secretly furious. How could he? Didn't he know how important this midterm was to the rest of my career at school? I silently raged around the kitchen as I rolled out dough and diced apples, my knife a dangerous blur of motion as I thought about how my preparations for the midterm had been going.

The midterm was
the
most important day of school so far,
because for the first time we were all being tested and graded and ranked as individuals within the class. All of the infighting and skirmishes and aggressive cooking would pale in comparison to actually having the top spot, ahead of everyone else—friends and enemies alike. Tucker was determined to be number one, and so was I. Ben was much quieter about his desires, but the steely glint in his eye spoke louder than words. For all we knew, Junior could want the top spot as well, but recently the redolent and distinctive odor of herb, and not the kind we cooked with, seemed to follow him everywhere he went. Junior had also started oversleeping, and had appeared almost an hour late for class three times in the last few weeks. When he was in class, he had become more difficult to control—letting the crème anglaise burn on the stove, cutting the bread for the minuscule garlic croutons we used as garnish far too large, and generally being a waste of space. Long talks with him did no good, and both Tucker and I were on the verge of consulting Chef. But our concerns about Junior's possible burgeoning drug dependency would have to go on the back burner—for the time being, at least. We couldn't afford to waste the last few days before the midterm babysitting; we needed to learn the final touches that would put our dishes first. This became terrifyingly important when Chef disclosed the possible dishes for the midterm and we realized that our little team hadn't prepared even one of them.

The trout
grenobloise
was a dish that had somehow escaped our attention the two previous times we had been cooking at the fish station. The fillet of sole
bonne femme
(literally, sole made by the good wife—good wives in France apparently use a lot of heavy cream) that we had cranked out had been very good, according to the chefs, and so, flushed with our success, we had prepared that dish twice more, instead of venturing into the unknown territory of preparing the
beurre noisette
that was the central aspect of the trout dish.

Beurre noisette
(hazelnut butter) is a delicate sauce that, in its most basic, pure form, is merely butter that has been heated in a
pan over a high flame until it melts and the proteins that precipitate out of it turn a lovely golden brown. The butter takes on a heavenly, nutty aroma and flavor. At this moment, the sauce is finished, and must be pulled quickly off the heat and served before the browned bits go from perfectly browned to burned beyond repair. It is very hard even for a top chef to gauge precisely when to pull the sauce at the moment before it is golden brown and then correctly time the carry-over heat so that as the sauce is napped on the fish and the plate travels to the diner, the sauce remains hot and brown without burning or cooling and congealing. A fraction of a second too long over that high flame and the sauce will continue to cook, even after it is on the plate.

In this recipe, timing is everything. Of course, timing was the one thing that seemed to escape my team over and over again. It was always a struggle to meet our deadline to have the plates for the chefs' table on the serving trays and out the kitchen door on time. I knew that every team felt the stress of the clock, but my brigade seemed always to be battling the clock in a titanic struggle. Every morning, Chef would point to the large clock over the doorway in the kitchen.

He would say, “I am not your master. The clock is your master, and she's a bitch. Me? I am here to make sure you are listening to her.”

It was true—every morning I would check the time as we began our preparations and feel that this was definitely the day we would be able to finish with time to spare. Every day I would glance up at the clock, ticking off the steps of a recipe in my head, happy to be halfway through our labor, only to see the monstrous hands denoting hours and minutes sweeping madly across its face. There was no possible way that it could be 11:15 already! We weren't going to make it—we were still braising veal for the blanquette, and it would need at least another hour before it was ready. Where would we find the time to plate properly? Or it was 12:08, and we hadn't made the
vinaigrette for the chefs' green salad, which had to be plated and out in six minutes precisely. It always took longer to plate than we had time left, and there were many times when Chef hollered out the seconds ticking away as we bent over the plates, frantically arranging vegetables in a decorative pattern.

So with all the pressure to make eight examples of the perfect plate, coupled with the ominous ticking of the clock, it was no real surprise that Ben, Junior, Tucker, and I hadn't chosen to make the trout
grenobloise
. It combined too many elements of the unknown. But this wasn't going to do—Chef was looking squarely at us as he read out the list of dishes.

We were not the only brigade to feel less than prepared for the midterm. Imogene's group hadn't prepared the roast chicken grandmother's style at all in Level 2, though we had all given it a try in Level 1 when we were learning about poultry. Angelo's group hadn't prepared either the apple tart or the lemon tart yet, despite the very broad hints dropped by Chef that a
pâte sucrée
of some type would
definitely
be on the midterm. And I happened to know that Mimi's group hadn't tried to make the
goujonettes
—refined fish fingers served in a little basket made from
gaufrette
potatoes formed into a flower shape and then deep-fried, sauced with a red pepper coulis. We had made the
goujonettes
a couple of times already, and while I was praying that I wouldn't end up having to prepare those fragile potato creations, I was confident I could do it. My wicked side was hoping Mimi couldn't.

As I dumped the cooked apples into the tart crust and quickly arranged apple slices in my apartment's tiny galley kitchen, yet again racing against the clock, this time trying to get this dessert and myself ready and out of the house in time for our big business dinner, the day's events at school played out before my eyes. Tucker, Ben, Junior, and I were in the kitchen extra early, waiting for the fish delivery so that we could practice filleting the trout and finally begin to master this dish. Of course, this was the only day all term
that the fish and meat deliveries were late. My classmates were milling around the classroom restlessly, for once with no preparation to do. Chef was herding us around like chickens, waving his arms and shouting, “Check your order! What about the vegetables! Make sure you have everything else you will need!” His efforts at distraction were useless. We all knew that if we were short a potato or a few ounces of bacon, the storeroom would be open for more. The important thing was the protein, and it was nowhere in evidence. We saw David hustling through the back hall and began fussing for him to get us our meat, and pronto! That was it for Chef. None of the students were allowed to be anything but respectful and perhaps mildly flirtatious with the storeroom guys. They were, after all, in charge of the precious raw materials we were learning to create masterpieces from. Yelling at the storeroom guys or even ordering them around was a definite no-no. Chef ordered us to our workstations and we stood in silence with our heads bowed as we were lambasted by Chef 's acid French tongue for being so ungrateful. As punishment we were all set turning vegetables into various sizes—which was fine for my brigade, since the trout was to be served with precisely five perfectly turned potatoes cooked
à l'anglaise.
Quiet descended except for the occasional muttered swear word as a paring knife missed its mark by a millimeter and someone would have to start over again.

At last, the people from Western Beef and Fish Importers International took pity on us and our provisions were delivered. David, saint that he was, brought our orders to us first, instead of filling the Level 3 and 4 orders, as was protocol. Our trout arrived in a giant waxed cardboard box filled with briny-smelling ice and fish so fresh I could swear that one of them was still quivering. Not for long, though.

As a lifelong fisherman, Tucker, of course, was the best of all of us at filleting the trout, quickly reducing his specimen to a few beautiful, perfect fillets. Even though we hadn't had that much practice
with trout, as each of us grabbed the superfresh, slightly slimy specimens and began surgery on them, I felt confident that with a bit of a trim here and there and the judicious use of my fish tweezers, I would be able to churn out decent-looking fillets for the midterm, even though I was still praying not to have to perform this particular dish.

While we all managed to fillet our fish in a relatively respectable manner, it took us significantly longer than the twenty seconds it would have taken a real chef to reduce the same number of fish to neat piles of fillets. The clock's hands swept forward, edging us closer and closer to lunch for the chefs, and we still had no really good sense about what to do next. We stood and waited, the fish chilling in a squareboy over ice. The potatoes were perfectly tournéed, the lemons and capers used for garnish stowed in the
mise en place
tray.

Everything was ready except Chef Pierre. We couldn't begin cooking the fish until he was ready to supervise us, orchestrating the timing so that we would not begin too early or too late, and generally yelling and screaming an equal mix of insults and directions to get us through the preparation. At the moment we could hear his voice bellowing from the pastry kitchen, and I didn't envy whoever had made the pastry crust for the
tarte aux pommes
in Angelo's brigade. I was certain it wasn't Angelo—for such a big, beefy guy, Angelo had the lightest touch with pastry I had ever seen. After an unfortunate first attempt at pastry in Level 1, when he had borne the brunt of Chef Jean's wrath, Angelo had turned out ethereally light, gorgeous crusts. For a self-described “pizza-making Guido from the Jersey shore,” Angelo had talent coming out of his fingertips, and he was never again on the wrong end of a chef-instructor's wrath.

Finally, Chef Pierre's shrieks quieted into spirited orders, and he emerged from the pastry kitchen, wiping his sweating brow with a fresh white kitchen towel. Shouting really seemed to take it all out of him. I attempted a small, subservient smile.

“What are you so happy about?” Chef asked. Uh-oh. “What is
all this shit? Where is your
mise en place
? Why are you not ready for me?”

This was merely the opening volley, an obligatory greeting that Chef said to each of the brigades before commencing his instructing. Ben mutely pointed to our bowls and squareboys full of prepared ingredients, and I silently ran a kitchen towel over our already sparklingly clean station. Chef was clearly stressed out about the midterm, possibly even more than we students. For the first time I realized that our performance might be just as important to Chef 's standing among the other instructors as our individual scores were to us. The intense competition of the kitchen was not solely for class rank and grades, but simply to be the best of the best. Maybe the instructors felt the same. It would certainly explain why Chef Pierre's shouting seemed to have reached a higher octave.

With a Gallic sniff for which there is no English translation, Chef Pierre inspected our efforts. Poking a long finger into the carefully cut garniture, inspecting the lemons and the toasted croutons, Chef had no comment, the highest praise possible from him. Turning to our labored fish fillets, he ran a practiced thumb across the pale flesh, checking for stray bones and ensuring that the fish was firm and fresh and very cool to the touch. Chef was a maniac for making certain that the fish we used for each dish remained as fresh as when we received it in the morning. This meant that the fish spent as little time as possible on the cutting boards and as much time as possible in squareboys over trays of crushed ice in the refrigerator. Even over ice, the fish should not be left out for more than the bare minimum of time to be sufficiently filleted, boned, or otherwise prepared before returning to its icy home.

Sadly, we did not completely evade a scathing tongue-lashing by Chef, and it was all because of Junior, whose efforts with his trout had taken on the operatic physicality of a WWE wrestling match. After all that prolonged scuffling with fish and knife, Junior had stacked his fillets together not flesh to flesh and skin to skin, as we
had been taught, but in a mishmash of flesh to skin and vice versa. While not as unpardonable as leaving fish unchilled, this was almost as bad. The tender flesh had been compromised by its contact with the skin, which could impart all manner of impurities, not the least of which was an errant scale or two.