Under the Table (27 page)

F
or once, we had finished service on time, at 2:30, and managed to clean up our station with relatively little fuss. I packed up the last of the
filet de boeuf,
the leftover crêpes, the fricassee of wild mushrooms, and the tiny carrot flans that had been our assignment for the day in the
saucier
station. Each component was packed into separate squareboy containers, wrapped in a layer of plastic wrap, then aluminum foil. A large sticker identified the contents, the date, the level, the chef-instructor, and the station that had produced it. All that was left was to run them to the walk-in refrigerator in the garde-manger kitchen and find a safe place to squirrel away our leftovers.

We played rock/paper/scissors to see who would have to do this last chore. I lost, and complained bitterly to Ben and Jackie. I was still grumbling as I made my way through the main kitchen to garde-manger. The garde-manger stations for Levels 3 and 4 were run by Chef Chris, a relatively recent graduate of The Institute himself. Unlike many of the other chef-instructors, Chef Chris was almost always smiling. He patiently explained the steps to the recipes we prepared for him and never yelled at us. It was always a pleasure to work in garde-manger. Chef Chris was a huge practical joker, however, and was constantly playing jokes on the students and even the other instructors. He and Chef Paul were best friends, and since the pastry kitchen (Chef Paul's delicious domain) adjoined garde-manger, the two chefs were always playing tricks on each other or conspiring together to play tricks on someone else.

As I marched through the kitchens to the walk-in, I passed
Tucker and Angelo. Their brigade had finished cleaning up already and they were packed up, knife kits on their shoulders, red toolboxes and notebooks stacked on their workstations, ready to flee out the door the moment Chef released us for the day. They stopped trading good-natured insults with each other and began to rib me.

“Still hard at work, huh, Darling?” Tucker asked, his wide mouth set in a big grin. “Betcha wish you and me were still partners!”

He had no idea.

Angelo chimed in. “I can't imagine how you do it. I see you working with crazy Penny every day. Why don't you make Ben or Jackie work with her once in a while? You're gonna drive yourself nuts!”

“Too late,” I said, trying to play along with them, even though everything they said was true. It was funny to them, but to me, the hard work and long hours causing me to lose my marbles was no laughing matter.

They followed me into garde-manger, still debating whether or not I was going off the deep end or just grumpy. I tried to ignore them, calling to Chef Chris to please hold the door of the walk-in for me as I juggled my heavy armload of leftovers. Bowing deeply, Chef Chris ushered me into the chilly confines of the refrigerator. As I carefully stepped over 25-gallon buckets of cold veal stock and between towering shelves packed with all sorts of vegetables, fish, and meat, I tried to find a spot for my leftovers among the huge tins of mustard and olives, open containers of anchovies, troughs of potato peelings soaking in frigid water, and the piles of foil-wrapped packages left by other stations and other classes. Finally, in a far corner, I found a few inches of shelf space and crammed my leftovers onto it. Done. Just as I was straightening up, ready to pick my way back through the crowded and very cold fridge to freedom, I heard Chef Chris say “Watch this!” and heard Tucker's chuckles and Angelo's loud guffaw, cut short by a loud BANG as the door to the walk-in slammed shut.

And then the lights went out.

The funny thing about this walk-in refrigerator was the fact that the light switch was located on the wall
outside
the fridge, along with the door handle.
Don't panic,
I told myself, as the blackness settled over my face like a shroud. I had never told anyone this, not even Michael, the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with, but I am terrified of the dark. I sleep with the closet light on, not in case I need to get up in the night to pee, but to keep the monsters of my imagination at bay.
Don't panic don't panic don't panic,
I chanted to myself, willing my hands to unclench, my muscles to relax.
Just stay calm, it's just a joke, they'll let you out in a second or two.
I took a deep breath.
Don't panic.
Just then, I heard a scuffling noise coming from another corner of the walk-in, and then a disembodied voice say “Shit!”

I panicked.

I screamed, loud and long, and tried to stampede my way to the door, to light and air and warmth and freedom. I took one step, tripped over a bucket of stock, and sat down heavily in a huge pail of potato peelings. Ice-cold water streamed into my chef pants and soaked my jacket, my apron, even my underwear. I leaped up, screaming every curse word I could think of, and tried to feel around in the darkness for a weapon to defend myself against whatever was locked in this freezing hell with me. I snatched up what felt like a huge carrot or maybe a turnip and, brandishing it in front of me, prepared to confront…Philip? I would recognize his voice anywhere. He was the only one in school with that smooth, radio announcer's voice, and that “shit” had sounded pretty darn mellifluous, under the circumstances.

“Uh, hello?” the disembodied voice spoke again. Definitely Philip. “Darling? Katie? Is that you?”

“Oh, thank God, Philip!” I could feel my knees going weak with relief, and I stumbled toward the welcome sound of his voice. He had managed to fight his way to the door, and he began to bang on it with what sounded like a soup ladle.

I threw myself into the approximate region of his arms, desperate for some reassurance that I wasn't going to die here in the freezing dark.

Philip immediately recoiled from my soggy embrace.

“I'm gay!” he yelped, trying to fend me off with the ladle.

“I'm afraid of the dark!” I screamed back at him, trying to parry his ladle with my carrot.

“Oh.” Philip stopped trying to bean me with his ladle like some hysterical virgin. “Oh. Well, I guess that's okay then.”

Gratefully, I grabbed on to Philip's chef 's jacket and hung on for dear life, trying to hold in my sniffles.

“Poor Darling,” said Philip, as he resumed his banging on the door.

 

It seemed like we waited hours in that glacial blackness for someone to let us out. I had begun to think about what we would do if no one came to our rescue and we had to spend the night here. There was no way I could last all night in my soaked outfit without coming down with hypothermia, and I didn't really relish the idea of having to chow down on leek greens and anchovies to keep our strength up, either.

Finally, the door swung open. We had been banging on it so long that we practically fell out of it, right at the feet of…Dean Jacques Pépin.

“What zeee hell?” he said, as he surveyed Philip and me, both incredibly disheveled, Philip clutching a soup ladle he had apparently been using to dip up mustard when the door shut, me in my soaking-wet uniform, still brandishing an enormous carrot.

I blinked at the sudden brightness, my joints so stiff with cold I was unable to scramble upright speedily. My mind was completely blank. I couldn't think of any story to cover our ridiculous situation—not one believable, anyway. Dean Pépin would never believe we had been locked in the walk-in against our will by a chef-instructor.

Said chef-instructor finally came to the rescue.

“Oh, thank you for the carrot, Miss Darling,” Chef Chris said, winking broadly as he yanked the carrot from my numb grasp, “and Mr. Emerson, thank you for returning that, er, mustard. You are dismissed.”

Philip and I didn't need to be told twice. We grabbed our things and skedaddled to the locker rooms as fast as we could go. On the stairs, I grabbed Philip by his knife kit.

“Uh, if it is all right with you, Philip, please don't mention what I said in the walk-in,” I mumbled, terribly embarrassed now about admitting my secret fear.

“Uh, sure. No problem. And if you wouldn't mind not telling anybody about what I said, either, that would be great,” Philip replied, before rushing on. “I am not ashamed, but some of our classmates might not be so understanding.”

I thought about Penny and super-religious Keri and Mimi and was sad to say that I agreed with him.

“Your secret is safe with me,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Me, too,” I answered, giving him a big hug.

B
lack gold. Truffles are the little nuggets of fungus that grow under French oak trees and command breathtaking prices in gourmet markets around the world. They are the quintessential embodiment of the
luxe et volupté
ideal of French haute cuisine.

The mushroom of all mushrooms had eluded me. Oh, black and white truffle oil had been a precious commodity in my kitchen pantry for years, and I had often been told by posh and verbose restaurant menus that I was indeed about to enjoy a subtle hint of truffle essence with my risotto or potato gratin or as a finish on my wintry
salade lyonnaise,
but the actual fungus remained aloof.

If I had expected to encounter it during my time in chef school, it seemed that I was out of luck yet again. The truffle season runs roughly from November to January, and while we would be in class for two months of this time, the prospects of the skies opening and showering us with the largesse of the Provençal forests seemed poor at best. This was due in part to the fact that the skies hadn't opened at all the past summer, and a drought both on our shores and in the forests of the Luberon meant that there was not enough rain to ensure a bountiful truffle harvest in the fall. This, in turn, had driven prices up to an even more dizzying height than usual, and the cost of a small plate of pasta with fresh truffle shavings on top fetched the astronomical price of $250 from some of Manhattan's ritzier restaurants.

This wasn't to say that all truffles were totally out of reach of the school or of us starving students. There is always the white truffle from Italy, considered by almost all gourmets to be good, but not in
the same league as its darker cousin. There are also canned truffles of both varieties—tiny jars of liquid in which one or two tiny specimens lurk, suspended in their own potent juices. This last variety was the sort that we, with much pomp and circumstance, were allowed to use, very occasionally, in our dishes for the restaurant in Level 3. A formal truffle request had to be made to first the chef-instructor, and a thorough discussion of the recipe would then ensue, after which further proceedings would be taken only if the student, through passionate argument and convincing demonstrations of need, could convince the instructor that truffles, and only truffles, were integrally important to the dish. Once this had been successfully argued—and such cases were very rare—then the lucky student and chef-instructor would both plead their case at the storeroom, where David kept the little jars of truffle safely locked away in a secret cupboard, next to the really good saffron stems. With the authority of the chef-instructor commanding it, the keys would magically appear from some hidden pocket of David's white grocer's coat, and the cupboard would open. The jar would be presented, with great ceremony, not to the student, but to the teacher, who would then take custody of it and supervise its use during service. In Chef Robert's case, the jar and its precious contents would go into his pocket, and only when the student begged, with appropriate accents of groveling, would he then carefully remove a small lump from the cloudy liquid and, using his personal truffle shaver, shave the truffle over the dish before sending it on its way. The students never actually got to touch the jar, let alone the truffle.

We could smell it, though. The second the little jar was opened, a heady waft of scent swept outward, enveloping the entire kitchen in its unique, indefinable aroma—part pungent, part earthy, almost animal. This, it seemed, was as close as I was ever going to get to the real deal—that and fondling the Plexiglas case at Dean and De-Luca, in which rested a few of the specimens, recumbent on a bed of pearly grains of arborio rice, their wrinkled ugliness made even more attractive against their virginal white backdrop.

Not that I was complaining, exactly. I was lucky enough to be part of a team that was blessed with the chance to work with truffles in Level 3: Jackie had used her big brown eyes, long brown hair, and a web of complimentary words to convince Chef Robert to let us make the classic dish of tournedos Rossini—meaty rounds of grilled filet mignon topped with a thick slice of seared foie gras and garnished with a single thick truffle shaving. Overwhelming and decadent, it was a lunch special to end all lunch specials at L'Ecole, coming as it did with flash-fried Swiss chard, all dark green leaves woven through with dark red veins, and potato puree molded around a scoop of tart apple flesh into a perfect miniature apple shape and then deep-fried to a golden brown—excess tempered with whimsy. It was a marvelous dish, and we had many orders of it during lunch service. Enough so that even Chef 's most parsimonious shavings used almost an entire truffle. But there was trouble with the fish station during service, as usual (at least I wasn't the only one who was having trouble with
poissonnier
!), and while Chef was distracted by their mishaps, finally leaving our station altogether to threaten the students making a mess out of the monkfish entrée, we were left in charge of the truffle shaver, the jar, and the precious lumps of fungus within. Much as I wanted to grate and grate shavings of truffle over a simple round of buttered, grilled bread and try the real deal right then, we had a bit of trouble of our own.

It was Penny, of course, the human crisis, who had managed to burn three orders of the pork tenderloin we were serving as our curriculum dish. How it happened was a mystery—the pork had been cooked before service began and merely needed a gentle re-heating in the oven while the cider-braised cabbage was sautéed on the stove. Ben threw his side towel in the sink in despair—she was hopeless, he hissed in my ear as we traded places, and partners, at the stove. It was true—Penny was turning into a train wreck as we moved through the stations in the Level 3 rotation, not only derailing her own efforts, but plowing a wide swath of destruction
every time she went off the rails. Cooking for real patrons in the restaurant seemed to totally undo her. She was like a disoriented deer in the headlights, standing frozen before the high flame of the stove, helpless to stem the disaster before her. Which didn't make it any easier on the rest of us. Penny was especially difficult during service and needed to be guided again and again through the plating techniques we had watched Chef Robert demonstrate to us only moments before. Somehow, though, the salmon was always burned, the potatoes were in the wrong place, and the wrong herb was being used as a garnish. For the next hour of the lunchtime I worked on the pork dish, occasionally catching glimpses of Jackie and Ben working on the Rossini: arranging the adorable potato “apples,” searing a mouthwatering hunk of foie gras, shaving truffles with happy abandon. I tried not to be jealous.

Service was over, and we carefully packed up the leftover food in its squareboys and labeled it all before passing it along to the
entremétier
station (the “leftover” station in charge of making a pasta, a salad, and a sandwich special out of scraps from the other stations). The pots and pans used during service were bundled away to the dishwashers, and all of our own tools were waiting to be washed and sanitized in the sink. The stoves were scrubbed down, the prep areas swabbed, and everything put neatly back in its place.

If there was time after making certain the station was spick-and-span and the stainless steel surfaces shone brightly, then we would be allowed to use the few minutes left of class time to work on our own pursuits, whether it was working out a potential plating design for the next day's specials or using the school's electric knife sharpener to put a new edge on our knives. While we were cautioned against using the grinder too often—overuse would wear the knife down completely—an electric sharpener was simply heaven, reducing the hours and hours of laborious back and forth with a whetstone to a few noisy moments. But the sharpener was a bit
intimidating: not as scary as the razor-sharp promise of amputation inherent in the deli slicer, perhaps, but still frightening. When my knives were finally so dull they wouldn't pierce the skin of a tomato, I knew I needed to use the big guns. I just didn't want to face the grinder alone. So I dragged Angelo with me, to demonstrate exactly how to use the thing without having to expose to Chef Robert my ignorance of yet another kitchen gadget.

Together we traipsed down the hall to the Level 2 classroom, where the sharpener lived in a dark corner. Taking my battered paring knife, Angelo was in the process of demonstrating to me how to slide the blade slowly through the coarse and then fine grinders when a stranger ambled through the kitchen. This was very odd—a password lock protected the front and back entrances to the school, and so he couldn't have just wandered in off the street. But there was something slightly furtive about him—he cast his eyes around the kitchen as if he had never seen one before, and he was carrying what looked like a bulletproof cooler on a strap over his shoulder. Definitely strange.

“Can I help you?” I said, curious to see who this person was and what he could possibly want with the school.

“I am looking for Chef Robert, please?” His French accent was heavy and unmistakable.

Before I could direct him down the hall to our kitchen classroom, Chef Robert popped out of the woodwork, in that irritating way of his. For a fat man, he sure could move with stealth when it was required. Smiling that wicked smile, he tried to shuffle Angelo and me back to class before dealing with his guest, but I was not to be deterred—I wanted to know what Chef was up to. Brandishing my dull knives at him, I begged to use the sharpener. Sighing heavily, Chef turned away and began a rapid-fire discussion with the stranger
en français
—using his broad back to shield them both from my vision.

He couldn't shield my nose from what was coming, however.
While I had noticed a vague aroma that seemed to be emanating from the stranger, in my ignorant American way, I put it down to a more European approach to personal hygiene. I was completely unprepared for the full-on frontal assault to my virginal nasal passages when the stranger shrugged the bulletproof cooler off his shoulder, unlocked its several padlocks (!), and slowly lifted its lid. A tidal wave of some colossal, strange smell swirled out, obviously angry at being pent up for so long in a confined space, and began a full-scale invasion of the room and everything in it. It was more than a smell; it was a wild animal, lunging up my nostrils like an angry elephant bent on destroying everything in its path. The lights suddenly seemed to go dim, my head was spinning. I slumped against the wall, feebly clutching the knife sharpener for support. It was like being hit by an eighteen-wheeler, or jumping out an airplane; it was like falling in love. But, my God, what was it? Had I stumbled into a deal to buy nerve gas and become a victim of Chef Robert's secret terrorist tendencies? Was this freaky French guy carrying around a dead animal in there? It smelled like something passing from one state to another—living to dead, animal to vegetable, mortal to divine.

I wasn't too far off. Through the haze—the smell seemed now to have taken up residence, settling over the room like a Victorian fog—I could just make out Chef Robert and the stranger now fondling what looked like gobs of black earth, weighing each on a tiny collapsible scale the Frenchman had conjured from thin air, and assembled with a few deft flicks of his wrist. Chef Robert drew a fat and impressive wad of bills from the pocket of his chef 's pants and started peeling off twenties and fifties and stacking them, like paper-thin sheets of filo dough, on the counter. When the stack was a good three inches thick, the stranger pocketed the money, and Chef Robert pocketed several small black knobs. Truffles! From the furtive nature of the exchange, black market black truffles! I wondered if the man had flown them all the way from France—how had he gotten past the bomb-sniffing dogs? How had he explained
the
odeur
to his unfortunate seatmate on the plane? Before I could pull myself together to ask any of these or the million other questions I had swirling around in my head, the little dark Frenchman was gone, seemingly disappeared in his own fragrant cloud. Perhaps Chef Robert had just sold his soul to the devil for a few truffles. If the smell was anything to go on, it was probably worth it.

 

This exchange left me more determined than ever to have a truffle of my very own, but judging from the stack of bills Chef Robert had had to lay out, I was going to have to sell a kidney or other vital organ to finance a purchase. I returned to class and told everyone what I had seen, and smelled, in the Level 2 classroom, but found that few of my classmates were in the same state of thrall that I was in. Of course, none of them had smelled that intoxicating aroma, or actually seen the little nuggets, either. The temptation to make something with truffles was overwhelming, but no matter how many recipes I researched and presented to Chef Robert as possible candidates for preparing for L'Ecole, all coincidentally with truffles, he would approve none of them. I had come so close that day with the tournedos Rossini, but my silly moral scruples about stealing had thwarted me. If only I had that jar of truffles now!

Resolutely, I put the thought of truffles out of my mind. Like a tragic love affair, it seemed it was just not meant to be. Level 3 finally drew to a close, and as we gathered to get our final textbooks and to hear who would be our new teammates for Level 4, I found myself standing next to Ben, whom I had been partnered with since we were on the same island in Level 1. We had been through three levels together and made a very good team. I felt like I didn't even have to say anything to him anymore—every morning, we would nod to each other and begin working side by side, like an old pair of oxen, used to pulling the plow together. But we would not be together anymore. Level 4 was a shake-up for everyone—we were guaranteed to be in new teams with new people, even as we returned
to Chef Pierre for our final, and most challenging, level. As Chef Robert called out my name with a group including Jared, Wayne, Tommy, and Amanda (for once I would not be on the short-handed team! Hurrah!), I felt like it was the end of an era, and turning to Ben, I shook his hand and wished him good luck on this last leg of our journey. Ben reached into his toolbox and came out with a small, foil-wrapped package. Shuffling his feet slightly, he handed it to me.