by Amanda Usen
She walked back to the stove, automatically taking stock of what was cooking on the burners. Polenta? He’d left polenta sitting on the stove and walked out the door? The bottom of that pot was going to be scorched as hell. She killed the flame and poured the cornmeal pudding into a pan, being careful not to scrape the bottom or sides. After pressing plastic wrap to the top of the pudding, she cleaned out the pot, then put it back on the stove with some baking soda in the bottom to cook off the mess.
She carried the polenta to the walk-in and found two enormous pans of lasagna sitting on the shelf. That was enough to feed fifty people. He clearly intended to serve it as the entrée, but Italians customarily served lasagna for primo piatto. Was he catering to American tastes? And what had he planned for dessert?
She found amaretti cookies cooling on the baker’s rack. She pulled one from the parchment and took a bite. It was delicious—sweet and fragrant with almond paste, crisp on the outside, and chewy in the center. She grabbed another cookie.
She supposed she could spend the rest of the day lolling around her room, but damned if she’d be thrown out of the kitchen because Chef Alessandro didn’t think she was big enough to play with the grown-ups. She was used to being busy, and she’d had enough relaxation this morning to last her a month. Shaking her head, she studied the chalkboard for the next day’s menu: sottaceti and bruschetta, risotto, bollito misto with la peara and torta sabbiosa.
She had to admit that Alessandro had a gift for menu planning. It wasn’t easy to create a four-course menu that was simple to prepare yet impressive to serve. As far as she could tell, he hadn’t used any ingredients that cost the earth either. That was good for the villa and even better for the guests who might wish to repeat the dinner at home. The menu was simple yet rich. Light and refreshing. The colors would be beautiful, as much a feast for the eyes as for the palate. Bastard. She rolled her eyes. Alessandro Bellin, the man who can cook. And bake, she thought, swallowing the last bite of cookie. Still, he didn’t have to be such an ass.
She returned to the stove, assuming the lazily bubbling stock was meant for soup since she hadn’t seen an older batch in the walk-in. She grabbed a strainer, a large pot, and a smaller pot to use as a ladle. She began to strain the hot stock.
Her mother appeared on the stairs just as she was deciding she probably shouldn’t try to lift the pot off the stove by herself. “Perfect timing,” Olivia said with a smile.
Her mother descended the stairs and stepped into place beside her. Together, they lifted the heavy stockpot and poured the rest of the steaming liquid through the strainer. When the pot was empty, her mother carried it to the dish room while Olivia dumped the discarded vegetables into the garbage can.
“Can I do something with your pasta?” Olivia asked, when her mother returned.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Olivia nodded and set up a cutting board as her mother began to wrap up the dough. An easy peace settled between them, so different from the agitation Olivia usually felt in her mother’s kitchen.
“What are you working on, cara?” her mother asked.
“Alessandro asked me to make soup. I’d also like to get a few things done for tomorrow’s class, if that’s all right with you.”
“Go ahead, cara. Do whatever you think is necessary. I’d help you but I need to double-check the rooms and make our guests comfortable when they arrive. I also promised your father I’d find someone to fix his tractor. I swear it seems like something new breaks every week.” Her mother wiped her hands on her side towel and turned to go.
At the bottom of the stairs, she paused. Olivia looked up from the pan she was wrapping in plastic and waited for her mother to speak, sure that whatever she was going to say would ruin their fragile camaraderie. She braced herself.
“Thank you, cara.” Her mother gave her a brief nod and swept up the stairs.
Olivia stared after her, bemused. Well, that was a first. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had thanked her for anything. She was always too busy rushing off to organize the next task. Right now, Olivia could hear her voice in the dish room, probably adding to Marco’s list. Her mother expected everyone to share her goals. Anyone standing still was put to work. She smiled, remembering the many times when they were teenagers that she and Marlene had tried to look busy when they heard her mother coming into the kitchen.
Now that Olivia was a boss herself, she admired her mother’s ability to delegate work to those around her. Everyone had a job to do at Villa Farfalla. She was in the kitchen. Marco was in the dish room. Her father was in the vineyard. Gia was likely in the tasting room. The servers were in the dining room, and her mother was directing traffic and checking rooms.
How had Alessandro managed to slip her mother’s leash so easily?
He seemed fairly compulsive about his work. The kitchen was clean and the cooler was well organized. His food was excellent. She doubted he shirked his duties often because her mother didn’t tolerate slackers. She wondered what had been important enough to pull him away in the middle of the day. What had he said last night? A family emergency?
Olivia placed the polenta in the cooler and set up a cutting board. She wished she had asked a few more questions about the cooking classes. It was difficult to figure out what to do first. Since there was no one here to instruct her, she would just have to do things her way.
Upstairs in the dish room, Marco began to sing something operatic. His voice was lovely and although he sang in Italian, she could tell it was a love song. Suddenly, she remembered the golden rule of the professional kitchen—a good dishwasher knows everything. She left her station and bounded up the stairs.
“Marco?” She peered around the tapestry that divided the dish room from the rest of the kitchen.
He stopped mid aria and gave her a smile that made him look like a naughty angel. No wonder the servers had been flirting with him. He grasped her hand and pulled her forward, kissing her soundly on both cheeks. “Bella Olivia! Yes, I am Marco. So nice to finally meet you! What can I do for you?”
She smiled back at him. “I need some help figuring out how things work around here. I don’t want to bother my mother and the chef is gone. Can you tell me how they usually prepare for the cooking classes?”
“I will tell you everything I know…” He sighed dramatically. “Which is nothing. The classes were your Nonna’s idea and she left for the States before they started.” Olivia bit her lip, feeling guilty. Nonna had left Verona to help her.
He dried his hands on the towel slung over his shoulder. His black eyes danced with humor. “Your mother declared last week that she would do the classes herself.”
“Naturally,” Olivia said sourly.
He gave her a philosophical shrug. “You need help. I help you. What do you need?”
“Do you have a prep list somewhere?” She could only hope. He handed her a long list, written in Italian. Why on earth hadn’t Alessandro asked her to do some of the work? “Whoa, you’re a busy boy.”
“I’m used to the work. I will show you what to do.”
Fifteen minutes later, Olivia had everything she needed and she’d met the waitstaff, Rosa and Elena, a mother and daughter who lived in the village. They didn’t speak English as well as Marco, but they were very friendly. They found her a fat stack of plastic trays and a tub of ramekins for her mise en place. Marco had volunteered to cool the white beef stock and peel the artichokes, an offer she gratefully accepted, so she could focus on inventing a soup.
She walked over to the sink where the strained beef stock was sitting in an ice bath. She couldn’t resist dipping a spoon into the still steaming liquid. She blew carefully, then sipped, amazed by the pure beef essence.
The flavors were all right there, but not overpowering. The stock had backbone, but would effortlessly adapt itself to a soup or ris
otto without adding aggressive notes of onion, celery, or carrot.
It was perfect. Inspiring, even.
It would make a beautiful soup. Suddenly she wanted to make a more elaborate dessert too, something to complement the amaretti cookies, something creamy, but light. Something…sexy? She let ideas play in her mind as she headed for the walk-in.
Ice cream? No, they’d had that last night and it wouldn’t have time to freeze.
As she passed the stairs, she noticed a pile of pumpkins in a basket on the floor. Would crème brûlée, a favorite at Chameleon, be too heavy after lasagna? The zucche would be delicious roasted, pureed, baked in the thinnest sheet of custard, and coated with an amber ice of caramelized sugar. Crème brûlée was easy to make, but did she have enough time to cook the pumpkins? She eyed the clock. Barely, but if she ran out of time they could eat them tomorrow.
Enough doubts. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. It had been a long time since she had felt truly inspired to cook and she was going to go for it.
Swiftly, she attacked the pumpkins to get them ready for roasting. When they were in the oven, she cruised the walk-in, looking for inspiration for her soup. It needed to be gloriously simple, a soup that would tease the appetite but leave room for the substantial lasagna, something that would showcase the purity of the broth but also stimulate the imagination. Perhaps if she made an excellent soup, the peace between her and her mother would continue until the end of the week when she told her about Chameleon.
She felt chilled, although the walk-in was only forty degrees. Even if she made the best soup in Italy, her mother was not going to be happy with her. Resolutely, she focused on the joy again. Who wouldn’t be optimistic at the sight of the beautiful array of vegetables in the cooler? The radicchio looked like a bouquet of crumpled purple roses; so convoluted and crisp, it burst with life. The fennel fronds were soft and feathery. She wanted to brush them against her skin. Even the more common produce like celery and carrots seemed firmer, brighter and sharper. Her mother could write the book on fresh, local, and seasonal, that was for sure. She gathered what she needed and took it back to her station.
She worked slowly and deliberately, humming a bit as her knife worked through the vegetables to make the battuto, so much like the French mirepoix, but finer and with garlic, of course. The battuto reduced celery, carrot, and onion to their essences and then carried them through the dish. With guilt, she realized she hadn’t made one since her basic skills class at the Culinary Arts College.
As she chopped, a prickle of anxiety made her heart stutter in her chest. What if she couldn’t finish her soup in time? What if it was unremarkable? What if her custard scrambled? Or was pale and wan? Insipid? For a moment her knife stopped moving and she felt locked in place by the same kind of pressure that had paralyzed her in New York. Stop it. It’s just food. No one was expecting anything of her. She could walk out of the kitchen right now having accomplished more than had been asked of her.
With surprise, she realized she didn’t want to leave. She wanted to cook. Her heart skipped another beat, but this time it was because of excitement. She began to chop again, remembering how much pleasure Sean had taken in the simple Italian meal last night. She wanted it to be her food that brought him pleasure. Only her food?
No, not just her food. As soon as she got the custards in the oven, she would go to the tasting room and ask Gia to pair wines with tonight’s menu, although she was going to make sure they didn’t drink too much tonight. Maybe then she could finally get laid. The thought popped into her head and she froze, then she laughed, surprised she felt no panic.
She distinctly remembered the utter relaxation she had felt as she fit her body to his right before she fell asleep. Right before you used him as a bed, you mean. If she had gotten any closer to him, they would have become one person.
Exactly. The beast with two backs.
She snorted. Naturally, the first bit of Shakespeare that came to her would be that one. Her hands had been busy with the knife while she was thinking, and the battuto was ready. She heated olive oil in the pan to fry the pancetta. When it was crispy, she removed it and began to sweat the vegetables. The fragrance of her childhood wrapped itself around her. She chopped fennel and more garlic, glorying in the beauty of the simple ingredients.
As she julienned the remaining carrots for the sheer pleasure of feeling her knife move, she felt an ease she hadn’t enjoyed for months, maybe years. She felt drunk with the joy of creating something without worrying about how much it was costing, how long it was taking, or if her time wouldn’t be better spent doing something else.
Keeping Chameleon in the black had slowly eaten away her joy for cooking. Making a dish for the pure luxury of the experience or the quality of the products had fallen off her radar when she was faced with the necessities of employee scheduling and calculating food costs and payroll. It hadn’t helped that after Marlene left the line and moved to the bakeshop, she’d been afraid to leave Keith alone. All the denial in the world couldn’t hide the fact that he couldn’t hit medium rare with a baseball bat. They had been racking up customer complaints right and left before she’d fired him.
Leaving all that carnage behind her was a revelation. Time, usually her biggest enemy in the kitchen, now felt like a welcome challenge. She felt energized by her race against the clock.
She added crushed red pepper flakes to the soup and stepped back to reach for a tasting spoon. Suddenly, she was fiercely glad she was alone. She could do this. She dipped the spoon into the soup, blew on it for the necessary seconds to avoid scalding her tongue, and then tasted it.
Perfetto.
A smile curved her lips. It would be even better after it had a chance to simmer. Eagerly, she crossed the room to check on the squash. It was soft and smelled like caramelized sugar already, so she pulled it out of the oven to cool a bit. She rummaged in a drawer for a pencil and paper to make a few quick calculations. She would have to adjust her basic custard recipe to allow for the added liquid of the pumpkin puree.
Should she add some booze too? Amaretto would match the almond in the cookies. The custard would be rich, yet ephemeral, singing the top notes of spice and sweetness yet echoing comforting chords of crunchy caramelized sugar. It would need one more flavor, she decided, to even begin to compare with the complexity of Alessandro’s lavender ice cream.
She spun on her heel, searching the kitchen for inspiration. An herb? A spice? She walked over to the spice rack and searched the labels. Vanilla bean? Never a bad choice, but not what she needed tonight. Not fennel either; it might fight with the amaretto.
Star anise? Maybe. It might be too strong of a flavor. Or it could be perfect, providing an interesting counterpoint to the amaretto and almond. It was a risk.
She grabbed the container and headed for the stove, hoping Sean would make it back in time for dinner.
***
Sean pillowed his chin on his hands and stared across the piazza, admiring the elaborate frescoes painted on the buildings. He had switched from espresso to wine during lunch and the second glass had probably been a mistake. It was well past noon and warm enough to make him sleepy but not quite hot enough to make him sweat. The red and white striped umbrella above his table shaded him from the worst of the sun and the musicians continued to play, seemingly tireless.
He watched two men argue at a café across the piazza. The younger man looked exactly like Alessandro Bellin. He squinted and realized it was Alessandro.
He studied the men, taking note of the chef’s aggressive body language and the way his hands flashed in front of him as he spoke. The other man was much more relaxed, almost indolent. The man stood and leaned across the table, getting within a breath of the chef’s face. Sean’s fatigue disappeared. He wondered what the man was saying as Alessandro slowly drew an envelope out of his pocket and tossed it onto the table.
>
The older man picked up the envelope and tucked it into his jacket. He rose and flicked the back of his fingers under his chin in a broad arc. Sean had never seen anyone use that particular gesture but it looked insulting as hell, and it didn’t take years of observing people in the courtroom to know the chef had just lost that argument.
The older man turned his back and walked away. Before he had taken three steps, two men rose from the next table and followed him, one on each side. They were an intimidating trio, all in dark suits despite the heat of the day. In fact, they looked like Mafia gangsters as they cut across the piazza and disappeared into an alley.
He hesitated for a moment, pitting his dislike of the chef against his need to get back to the villa. Practicality won. He pushed away from his table, leaving enough euros to cover his bill. He crossed the piazza and stopped at Alessandro’s table. “Alessandro—I thought that was you.”
The chef nodded, not looking at all happy to see him.
Sean stuck with it. “If I had known you were coming this way I would have asked you for a ride to Padua. In fact, I was hoping you might be able to give me a ride back to the villa. I didn’t want to ask Mr. Marconi to wait for me. Big mistake, as it turns out. The shop girl wouldn’t sell me a phone, so my entire trip was wasted.”
Finally, Alessandro seemed to notice him. “Why wouldn’t she sell you a phone?”
“Because I didn’t bring my passport with me.” The disgust in his voice sparked a wry smile from Alessandro.
“Did you offer her una bustarella?”
“A what?”
“A little envelope. A bribe. You’re in Italy, remember.”
The chef stood and walked away from the table, motioning for Sean to follow him. He seemed to know where he was going and led Sean right back to the same cell phone display he had visited earlier. Sean hung back, wondering if the girl would recognize him.
