Under the Table (4 page)

Egg yolks are also great emulsifiers—they bind fats and water-based flavoring together beautifully—and sauces emulsified with egg yolks possess a singular richness. Mayonnaise is one of the only sauces that uses both mustard and egg yolks together, creating a very sturdy sauce thick enough to spread across meats, fish, poultry, shellfish, vegetables, and the lucky sandwich. Usually yolks are used to bind hot sauces such as hollandaise and béarnaise, and occasionally to add heft and richness to soups. In this case, the temperature of each component of the sauce must be perfect in order to keep these rather delicate emulsions from breaking. The clarified butter, which provides the fatty backbone to hollandaise and béarnaise sauces, must be added drop by drop, until it has all been incorporated and the sauce becomes thick, creamy, and glossy. If the fat is added too quickly, the yolks will be unable to absorb the large amount of fat and will not bind the sauce effectively. A good rule of thumb to remember when making a sauce with egg yolks is that one yolk can absorb approximately 200 milliliters (not quite a cup) of oil.

Because these sauces are so delicate and depend for much of their stability on the proper temperature, they usually cannot be held for long periods of time, even kept gently warm in the diffuse heat of a warm-water bath (bain-marie), without breaking (separating) once again into hydrophilic (the water-based flavor and yolks) and hydrophobic (the oil) elements. Even with careful attention to detail, sometimes the sauce will break as it is being prepared. There are several ways to fix a broken sauce. If the sauce becomes too hot, adding a few drops of very cold water and whisking vigorously will usually resurrect it. If the sauce is too cold and has separated, add a few drops of warm water and whisk. Sometimes, even these steps will not save a sauce. If this happens, simply add another egg yolk and whisk vigorously over gently simmering water. This extra yolk will bind any extra oil in the sauce as well as binding with the
other yolks. This will almost always work to save a broken emulsified sauce. If even this doesn't work, it is time to scrape the broken sauce onto freshly cooked, piping hot pasta, grate a snowy mound of cheese on top, add a few grinds of freshly cracked pepper and a squirt of lemon juice, and call it the
fantaisie du chef
.

Tucker and I fought over who would prepare the mayonnaise, and in the end we flipped a coin. While Tuck and I were friends and got along well, both of us were supercompetitive and wanted to do everything ourselves. I lost, and ended up holding the bowl steady while Tucker whisked. His mayo was perfect: a rich, creamy sauce with a strong hint of lemon that bore little resemblance to the store-bought version. We ate it straight from the bowl on slices of warm bread from the bread kitchen across the hall. Delicious.

Mayonnaise

1 egg yolk

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

7 ounces (between ¾ and 1 cup) vegetable oil

Fine sea salt and freshly ground white pepper

1. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolk and lemon juice until the yolk is pale yellow and airy. Add the mustard, whisking briskly until well combined. While still whisking briskly, add the oil drop by drop, making certain that each addition is well incorporated. The mixture will begin to thicken and will also become much more voluminous. Once the oil starts to be incorporated more readily, it is safe to add a bit more at a time, but remember not to flood it!
   
2. Once all the oil has been whisked in and is well incorporated, taste for seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed. The mayo is now ready to be spread on sandwiches, used in salads, and slathered on eggs, potatoes, and almost anything else you can imagine. The mayo will keep for a few days in the refrigerator, but is best used when it is fresh.
   

A variation on the classic mayonnaise is aïoli, the garlicky mayonnaise redolent of olive oil and the Provençal countryside that spawned it. To make aïoli, crush a few garlic cloves well with a mortar and pestle (or in a blender) until a paste forms. Add the egg yolk and the mustard and whisk well. Add the olive oil bit by bit until it is totally incorporated and a thick, glossy, smooth sauce is achieved. But be more gentle with the whisking than when using regular vegetable oil—olive oil is easily bruised, and if treated too roughly, it will taste bitter.

 

Makes 1 cup

Basic Vinaigrette

The thing to remember when making vinaigrette is that the proportion of vinegar to oil will always be one part vinegar to two parts oil.

 

Scant ½ cup white wine vinegar

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 medium shallot, roughly chopped

1 heaping tablespoon Dijon mustard

 

½ cup vegetable oil

½ cup olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Mix together the vinegar, garlic, and shallot in a small bowl and let stand for at least 30 minutes to meld the flavors.
   
2. Add the mustard and mix. Whisk in the oils in a steady stream until well combined. Add salt and pepper to taste. Whisk again briefly before adding to greens.
   

NOTE: Strain out the garlic and shallot before serving if preferred. I like to leave them in, but make sure you alert other diners to their presence!

 

Makes a bit less than 1½ cups

Pâtes Cassées (Broken Pasta)

I went through an inexplicable phase when I could not make mayonnaise successfully to save my life. No matter what I did, I seemed to end up with a runny mess instead of thick, unctuous glory. Instead of tipping these disasters into the garbage, I got in the habit of pouring them over leftover pasta, creating something between hot pasta salad and pasta Alfredo. Michael liked it so much that even now, when I can whip up a proper mayo in a jiff, I will make this dish. It is particularly comforting after a stressful day—it is very cathartic to do something wrong on purpose, and have it turn out so delicious.

While you could use the same proportions of ingredients for regular mayonnaise in this dish, I have tinkered with things slightly to make it even more richly runny, lemony, peppery, and just short of overwhelming. Of course, if you do have a misbehaving mayo on your hands, by all means, use it!

 

2 egg yolks

Juice of 2 lemons

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

¾ cup olive oil

Salt and coarsely ground pepper

Small handful (about ¼ cup) roughly chopped fresh herbs (see Notes)

8 ounces pasta, cooked al dente and drained (see Notes)

¼ cup shaved (with a vegetable peeler) or grated Grana Padano or Reggiano Parmigiano

1. Whisk the egg yolks with the lemon juice and mustard. Add the olive oil a drop at a time while still whisking, until the mayonnaise starts to come together a bit. When all the oil is added, you should have something like a thin custard. If it is thicker or thinner, it doesn't really
   matter. The joy of this dish is that you can't really go wrong, because it is wrong already.
   
2. Taste and add salt and pepper to your liking, but be gentle with the salt—do keep in mind that the cheese is quite salty. Fold in your chopped fresh herbs, and pour over your steamy hot pasta. Sprinkle with the cheese.
   

NOTES: A bit of whatever is lurking in your refrigerator is an excellent finish for this. Fresh thyme, flat-leaf parsley, basil, or a sprig of rosemary would be lovely, and I have even used a soupçon of mint to good effect (but know your audience before trying this). Cilantro, sage, and curly parsley are not happy pairings, though, and if this is all your fridge yields (or if you don't have any fresh herbs at all), a dash of herbes de Provence or a whisper of dried thyme would be fine.

I like to use a short pasta with texture, like cavatappi or campanelle, to trap the yummy sauce, but you could use wide, rustic ribbons of pasta like pappardelle or even fettuccine just as well.

This is delicious hot, lukewarm, or cold from the fridge the next day. Start with some firm slices of
saucisson sec
or salami with cornichons and peppery hot mustard, end with a green salad, a nice fat wedge of sheep's milk Camembert, and some ripe fruit, and you have a wonderfully filling (and fulfilling) meal.

 

Serves 2 generously or 4 as part of a larger meal

A
s our second sweaty week drew to a close, everyone in class was thinking the same thing: it was definitely time to have some drinks and get to know each other a little better. We had gotten over our first week's jitters, and seemed to be settling into a rhythm as a class—personalities were beginning to emerge, friendships were being struck up, and underneath it all, there was the quiet hum of competition to see who was going to be the top chef.

In the women's locker room after class, Imogene and I had already begun to talk up the idea of a group happy hour, and I was certain that Tucker could rope in all the guys from our class as well. The ovens and burners of our Level 1 classroom blazed away all day long, making the already hot days of June even more unbearable. The temperature in the classroom regularly climbed above 110 degrees. Chef Jean warned us to keep ourselves hydrated, and often took long swallows from his own water bottle. Rumor had it that while we all sucked on ice chips from the freezer, Chef Jean's bottle was filled with chilled rosé wine. I never found out if it was true, but it would explain Chef 's increasingly jovial demeanor as the day wore on. I wouldn't have blamed him if it
was
true—there is no better way to beat the heat!

I knew I wasn't alone in fantasizing about a frosty cold drink to put out the proverbial flames when Tucker started rhapsodizing about fishing on Lake Michigan with his dad. The high point of all his stories was not the bigmouth bass he bagged, but cracking open a tall can of Coors afterward. This was not really the beverage choice I had in mind, but even a cold glass of Boone's Farm—a disgusting
beverage available at only the very best truck stops and 7-Eleven stores and a favorite from my college years—was starting to sound good by the end of another parching, sweat-soaked day.

Our uniforms—polyester pants, long-sleeve poly-blend jackets, and itchy polyester neckerchiefs—didn't do much to alleviate the situation, either. As I stood over yet another pot of boiling vegetables, I could feel the sweat running in a steady torrent from right underneath the band of my absorbent paper chef 's hat, pooling for a moment in the crease of my neck, before descending in a salty flume down my back to soak into the ultrahigh waistband of my checked trousers. Two separate rivers descended down the back of each leg to saturate my socks, already suffocating in my heavy-duty black work boots. My hands became sweaty from the heat and the pressure to churn out perfectly cut turnips, and I began to lose my grip on both my knife and my sanity. Blisters formed from only two weeks of chopping vegetables popped and wept fluid down my hand.

Redemption came at last on our second Friday afternoon. With two more hours to go until class let out, Chef Jean sidled up behind me to monitor my attempts to skim a slick of grease off the top of the veal stock bubbling gently away in the Swiss kettle. I was using a ladle the size of a cantaloupe to corral the scum and fat from the surface of the thirty-five gallons of veal stock simmering below. Steam was drifting up to penetrate my jacket and undershirt before trapping itself in sticky droplets in my bra.

“Ooh la la,” Chef exclaimed. “You look
très chaud
. Your face is getting very red. Perhaps…” Here he leaned forward slightly, and I thought I caught a faint glimpse of sympathy in the depths of his eyes. It was probably just my own desperation reflected in his eyes. “Perhaps you and the other students would like to join me and the other chefs and students this afternoon for a drink? It is a good idea,
non
?”

I couldn't believe my ears. A drink? A tall glass of chilly alcohol to rest against my fevered brow, to quell the unpleasant, burning
sensation in the pit of my stomach and quiet the voice in my head asking me if I had made the right decision giving up my office job to come here.

“Uh, gee, Chef, that sounds great.”
Oh, dear God,
I thought to myself,
why do I sound like a high school student accepting a date? Pull yourself together, wipe the slick of sweat off your face, and say something intelligent!

“Uh, where?”
Great. Great thinking. Impress him with your scintillating conversation.

“Well, some of the instructors like to go over to Toad Hall on Friday afternoons. Students come, they drink, they hang out, they talk. Sometimes, they like to buy drinks for us.”

Oh, wonderful idea! I would herd everyone in class over to the bar after school and make an ass of myself in front of the instructors. No, this is not what I was thinking. Unfortunately, this is what I did. I was actually thinking more along the lines of having everyone in class come, we could buy Chef Jean a couple of rounds of drinks, and I would practice my conversational French on him. If I couldn't manage to be witty in English, I could at least try to be coherent in French. A little lubrication couldn't possibly hurt.

I spread the word—Tucker got the boys interested, and Imogene recruited the girls. The rest of the afternoon dragged by, and finally, it was three o'clock. We packed up our knives and our red toolboxes of equipment and burst from the classroom in one sweaty, excited tidal wave of anticipation. It was like the last day of school before summer vacation, except that we were all looking forward to something a bit more adult than lemonade and Popsicles.

In the locker room, I fought my way over a mess of bodies in various stages of nudity until I made it to the square foot of space I called my own. The locker rooms at chef school were cramped, overcrowded, and always dirty. It was in strange contrast to the polished perfection of the rest of the school. While the kitchens were always immaculate, and the dining room of L'Ecole was a
masterpiece of crisply starched, immaculate linen tablecloths, warm ochre-colored walls, and gleaming silverware all precision-placed in neat and orderly rows, the ladies' locker room was a warren of steel-gray lockers, grimy concrete floors, and fluorescent lighting that always seemed to be flickering. There was no room for showers or even benches to sit on. There definitely wasn't room for the ninety-six women (on average) attending the school during the day. Some people were assigned lockers in a bathroom near the pastry kitchens, but this did little to ease the congestion. It wasn't so bad in the mornings, because people from different levels seemed to trickle in at different times (I noticed the more advanced the level, the earlier the people were coming in), but as soon as three o'clock came, classes were over for the day and all the levels plus the pastry students converged in one sweaty, seething mass of humanity, studded with red toolboxes.

In an attempt to bring some level of sanitation to my tiny corner of the locker room, I bought an economy-size tub of baby wipes and handed them out freely to my sweaty neighbors. It didn't exactly take the place of a shower, but at least I managed to remove the pieces of food found stuck in various unexpected places. I haven't the foggiest idea how I managed to get carrot strips lodged in my socks, or how potato peelings found their way even into my underwear. I threw my street clothes on as quickly as possible, forgoing style or even a glance in the one tiny mirror, in favor of speedily escaping the maelstrom of perspiration and grime. Together with the rest of the gals, I bounced out of the service entrance, onto the steamy, scummy SoHo streets. Tucker and the boys came down moments later. Almost everyone lit up a cigarette except Tucker, who smoked one of the stinky, cheap cigars he bought at the deli and insisted on calling cheroots. I didn't smoke, but I was definitely in the minority. Once the instructors emerged, we finally set off, practically running the three blocks to the bar.

Though it was only a few blocks from my apartment, I hadn't
noticed this particular watering hole before, but that wasn't too surprising. It was the very definition of a hole in the wall—a sliver of an entrance set slightly back from the street, up a few steps. There was a sign, but it was battered, distressed, and barely legible. This was also the general theme of the décor once inside the double doors. The long, low, dimly lit space was populated with a few worn-out tables and chairs. The aging wooden bar running along one wall had definitely seen a lot of action. The plank wood floors were scarred but clean, as was the bartender, whom we came to know affectionately as Bear. In the back were a few more tables, some vinyl benches, and a pool table. The best part was the air-conditioning. That and the gleaming polished taps behind the bar. I tried not to be the first one to order, but I didn't have to worry. It was a stampede: chefs and students, not only from our level, but also the three levels above us, all descended upon the lone bartender like starving men setting upon a hapless double cheeseburger.

When I finally fought my way to the bar, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It belonged to a short, swarthy little man whom I vaguely recalled from our orientation.

“Hey, you,” he said rudely, his heavy French accent turning the words into a guttural slur. “Don't you know we chefs have seniority? You wait your turn.”

Oh, Lord. It must be a chef-instructor, but who?
How did I know there were still chefs waiting to order? Almost all of them had retired to one table, the conversation among them quieted with the arrival of a waitress bowed almost double under the weight of the tray of drinks she carried. What was this chef doing still at the bar? I could tell he was a chef, all right. He was wearing street clothes, like the rest of us, but his authoritative belly was plainly visible, as was a certain Napoleonic look in his eye. The heavy French accent was also a big tip-off. How could I ease myself out of this situation without offending this guy, who would probably end up being my instructor in the next level?

“Would you like a drink, Chef?” I asked.
Brilliant, brilliant move,
I thought. It did seem to placate him, if only slightly.

“
Beh, oui,
why do you think I am standing here?”

A good question,
I thought.

“You may buy me a beer,” the angry chef ordered. “
Attends, non
…make that two. One for me, and one for your own chef.”

“Sure thing, Chef,” I said. Well, I wouldn't be able to bring Chef Jean a beer myself, but at least this chef would pass it along to him for me.

Actually, I thought I was really killing two birds with one trip to the bar, making friends with my chef and this new chef. Here my happy thoughts were interrupted by the chef still standing at my elbow bellowing, “‘Sure thing, Chef '? Where did you learn to talk? Didn't your chef tell you it is ALWAYS ‘Yes, Chef '? Always.”

I felt the unexpected sting of the rebuke and spoke before I had time to reconsider—“But we aren't in school, Chef.” Big mistake. The chef, who was at least an inch shorter than I, seemed suddenly to tower over me, all ominous slitted eyes and heavily accented syllables. Cowering at the bar, I silently prepared for the outburst.

“Say ‘Yes, Chef Robert'!” He pronounced it Roh-bear,
bien sûr.

I didn't even have to think twice. “Yes, Chef Robert,” I said meekly.

Just then, the two beers appeared, and I handed them off to the angry Gaul before me. My hands were shaking very slightly, from prickly embarrassment laced with searing anger, but mostly acidic, stomach-churning shame. I smiled, to show how thrilled I was to be buying him a drink, and realized I was smiling like a moron into empty space. He had turned away with the drinks and scuttled off to join his compatriots.

I couldn't believe how quickly the conversation had gone downhill. I was already beginning to dread the thought of toiling under Chef Robert. I knew who he was now, the infamously vicious chef for all Level 3 students. I could only hope he wouldn't remember me
by the time I made it to his level.
If
I made it to his level. There was no doubt that nothing I could do in the kitchen under this man's eye would be good enough. Even if he did succeed in forgetting our first encounter, I knew I wouldn't be able to.

I bought a hefeweizen beer for myself, a bit of sunshine in a glass, the creamy light wheat beer given a playful kick with the tang of lemon wedges, and joined my own little circle of friends.

“What the hell happened, Darling?” asked Tucker, who had taken to calling me by my last name, like we were both on the varsity football team. He had obviously seen the unfortunate incident at the bar, and his already rather prominent ears were practically out on stalks in his eagerness to hear what had gone so flagrantly wrong. The conversation among my fellow classmates sputtered and died like a faulty pilot light on a Vulcan range, and all eyes turned to me.

I decided to try to downplay the incident. “Uh, nothing. I just bought a beer for Chef Jean and Chef Robert. That's it. Sort of.”

I took a heroic swig of my beer and then another one, fending off further questions. Pretty soon I was looking at the spent wedge of lemon at the bottom of my empty glass. Tucker took one look at my long face, and decided to have pity on his partner. He bought me, and everyone else, another round of drinks. After quaffing the second beer, things seemed to be looking up—it couldn't be as bad as I thought it was, I told myself. Just a slight misunderstanding. I would win all the chefs over with my kitchen competence and willing demeanor. Hopefully.

Soon, it was my turn to head back to the bar and buy a round. Ricki came along. Ricki was one half of the team across the aisle from Tucker and me, and while I admired her ease with her chef 's knife, I didn't know that much else about her. She had many visible piercings, and a few tattoos revealed themselves in the locker room. It all seemed to portray her as a supertough chick not to be messed with. But she also had an easy smile, and a southern accent so glorious and rich it reminded me of lemon meringue pie. I am
a sucker for accents of all types, and would probably have agreed to any suggestion Ricki made in that sweet southern voice. When she suggested that we should buy shots for our classmates, I was all for it. Fifteen kamikaze shots were quickly lined up on the bar and Ricki and I did our best waitress impersonations, sashaying across the length of the room with our loaded trays, under the watchful eyes of the chefs.