The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  If you use very high-quality chocolate, extra batter may be kept in the refrigerator for later use.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For generous help throughout the writing of this book, we are grateful to Alexa Lewis and Lillian Sober-Ain. We also want to thank our agent, Deborah Schneider, and our editor, Natalee Rosenstein, for their enthusiasm and support for our mother-daughter project.

  For their appearances herein, many thanks to everyone at Eagles’ Deli, especially Stein and Robert.

  Simmer Down

  To Meg and Kristen

  ONE

  I hate the week after Christmas.

  Or I used to, anyway. When I was growing up, I kept trying to convince my Protestant family that we were Jewish and consequently had to celebrate Hanukkah for a full week instead of Christmas for one short evening and a single all-too-brief day. But this year, I, Chloe Carter, have an actual boyfriend, and everything has changed for the better—even my post-Christmas blues. Now, on December 27, I was not, for once, bemoaning the end of carol singing, and it didn’t bother me at all that I’d have to wait almost twelve months to tear through my presents like a six-year-old and then finish off every Christmas cookie in sight. On the contrary, I was brimming with excitement at the prospect of spending New Year’s Eve with my boyfriend.

  So, in the midafternoon, I was seated at my kitchen table pretending to concentrate on work for my social work school internship while actually being distracted by my gorgeous Josh, who was busy cooking. How I got lucky enough to find a chef as the love of my life, I don’t know. What could be better than good food and good sex all rolled into one? Well, not “rolled into one” in the sense that we were smearing food all over each other as foreplay. I mean, ewww! How gross. If I have to watch one more B movie with couples seducing each other with strawberries and whipped cream, or licking champagne off each other, or wagging their tongues in the air to catch dangled tidbits of food, I think I might gag. Still, there’s no denying the food-love link.

  I could seriously stare at Josh for hours while he cooked; he was so focused and serious and skilled and … well, so cute, besides. I couldn’t get enough of his dirty-blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and slim build. And he was loving and funny and loyal. We’d been together only since September, but we were already spending most nights with each other, usually at my place. The apartment he shared with his roommate, Stein, was, like most apartments inhabited by heterosexual males, messy and filthy. Discarded chefs’ clothes were everywhere, and unidentifiable odors emanated from dark corners. With some justification, Josh and Stein blamed the state of their living quarters on chefs’ hours; in fact, neither of them was ever home for long. Whatever the reason, I seldom went there.

  Josh had lost his last chef job right after we’d met and had been struggling to find a new home in which to park his culinary talents. He’d spent the past few months picking up hours by helping out chef friends of his who’d needed him to fill in now and then at restaurant after restaurant. His only steady employment had been at Eagles’ Deli, around the corner from my apartment in Brighton, where he’d been putting in a few days a week. Stein owned the booming deli and always needed the help, so the time Josh put in at Eagles’ gave the best friends and roommates a chance to catch up with each other.

  After chasing after every job lead possible, Josh finally hooked up with a man named Gavin Seymour, who was opening his first restaurant, Simmer, on posh Newbury Street, right in the heart of Boston. Gavin knew that if he was going to open a restaurant, he’d need the hottest location possible—and restaurant locations in Boston don’t get much hotter than Newbury Street. So, when the property became available, Gavin jumped right on it and paid what must have been a fortune for the lease. Nestled in the bottom of a brownstone and located among top restaurants and high-end shops, Simmer was strategically set up for success. And with Josh at the helm, there was no way it could fail.

  In the three weeks since Josh had accepted the position of executive chef, he had been working more or less normal hours, days only, instead of working until late at night as chefs almost invariably did. Opening a new restaurant was a tremendous amount of work, and Josh had been swamped with hiring a kitchen staff, contacting food purveyors, assisting Gavin and the contractor in remodeling the kitchen, and, most importantly, at least in my book, writing a menu.

  I’d been loving his schedule, which meant more time together, but all that was about to change when Simmer opened on New Year’s Eve. For now, though, I’d savor every minute I had with Josh. Technically, I was on winter break from my first year at Boston City Graduate School of Social Work, so I was free to follow Josh around like a lovesick puppy. In fact, although classes had ended, my field placement, as it was called, took no notice of the holidays. Since September I’d been interning at the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace, which I’d taken to calling the Organization, as if we were some sort of Mafia cell. The Organization was headed by my supervisor, Naomi Campbell, who was not, of course, the internationally famous supermodel and, in fact, had only a vague notion of who the other Naomi Campbell was. Naomi failed to find anything amusing about her name or, frankly, about much else. Totally driven to rid the world of harassment, she felt that since harassment didn’t break for the holidays, neither should we. The Organization consisted of Naomi and me plus a bunch of invisible board members who made themselves known only by signing hundreds of petitions and notices that Naomi was forever having me type up. We worked out of a minuscule downtown office, and my primary social work contribution so far had been to address the daily feelings of claustrophobia that came from finding myself trapped in the gloomiest, messiest one-window office in Boston. My other major responsibility was to handle hotline calls from women dealing with office jackasses who thought that attempting to fondle a coworker was acceptable behavior.

  Although I completely believed in the work I was doing, Naomi’s extreme dedication and overzealous work ethic grated on me—that and her New Age, hippie, hold-hands-and-tell-me-your-feelings style. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to avoid our morning “staff meetings,” a term that I found ridiculous not only because staff meant Naomi and me, but because meeting meant my being pressured to verbalize some sort of spiritual feeling about what the day would bring. Last week, for example, while gripping my hands in hers, Naomi had closed her eyes and whispered, “Today I will look inside myself to find strength, sensitivity, and courage. I will reach out to my sisters in need and take on their challenges as my own.” Then she’d waited for me to take my turn. I usually snuck in a good eye roll before she opened hers and before I compliantly faked my way through some copycat bullshit.

  I liked some of my classes and parts of my internship, but for the most part I was finding that I didn’t fit in with my earnest, do-gooder classmates. I definitely considered myself a liberal, politically correct twenty-something, but I wasn’t all about marching the streets for causes, petitioning against this and that, or engaging in long discussions about oppression and injustice in the world. So far, I’d managed to keep my true character hidden from my peers. In brief, I wasn’t the most devout social work student there was. I blamed my uncle Alan for my being one at all.

  When my mother’s brother died a few years ago, his will revealed what I considered to be blackmail; I would receive an inheritance only if I completed a graduate program of my choosing. Uncle Alan’s estate would pay for school and give me a monthly stipend distributed by his lawyer, and if and when I earned my degree, I could collect the rest of the money. In other words, Uncle Alan had no confidence in my ability to further my education on my own. Not that I’d actually had any plans of my own ever to poke my head into a classroom again after college, but I wasn’t about to turn down a lucrative opportunity just because of a few insults about my ability to get my act together and find a career. After rifling through piles of graduate school catalogs, I’d narrowed my choices to two different easy-sounding program
s: one in social work, the other in performing arts. Since my most recent acting experience had been in elementary school when I’d played Nana the dog in Peter Pan, I’d figured that a career on the stage was out. Plus that snot-nosed Eric Finley had called me Nana until we’d graduated from high school. Who knows? Maybe I would’ve been a brilliant thespian if it hadn’t been for Eric’s tormenting me.

  So, social work it was. I was getting through mostly unscathed and enjoying the advantages of a school schedule versus some dreary nine-to-five job. And having a winter break meant that I could sit at home today and admire Josh as he worked on his food. The new restaurant, Simmer, wasn’t quite finished. As of today, there was still no electricity in the kitchen, so Josh had been working out of my condo to test dishes and feed recipes into his laptop. Although I didn’t exactly have a gourmet kitchen, even my small space was better than the eat-in kitchen Josh had at his apartment. By some act of God, I’d been able to convince my landlord, Chuck, that I’d move in only if he installed a garbage disposal and a small dishwasher. Not realizing that he could’ve rented this condo unit to about a million other people for more money, even without the new appliances, he’d agreed. And with Josh cooking out of here, I was even happier than ever to have those two kitchen accessories. He’d been testing a lot of recipes this month. Three or four times a week, he’d come over with bags loaded with beautiful fresh produce, meat and fish wrapped in white butcher’s paper, wine for reducing in sauces (and drinking), fresh pasta sheets, and packages of aromatic herbs. I’d learned that a chef’s grocery shopping looked distinctively different from mine. When Josh shopped for the restaurant, there was nothing frozen or precooked; everything was fresh and raw and gorgeous. Since Gavin was picking up all the shopping costs, Josh spared no expense in buying the highest-quality ingredients he could from specialty shops around the city. And I was a delighted taste tester.

  Today, he was not, however, testing recipes but preparing food to serve at the Food for Thought event going on tomorrow night. The annual charity fund-raiser, which was held at Newbury Street art galleries, paired social service agencies with local restaurants. Inside each of the posh galleries, one agency and the restaurant paired with it got to set up a booth to showcase services and food. When Naomi had first brought this event to my attention, my inclination had been to run screaming from something that was going to interfere with my vacation. I quickly realized, though, that Food for Thought was not some bothersome and negligible event; it was a high-class, high-publicity Boston affair and was the perfect opportunity to promote my boyfriend’s talents. Boston magazine always did a piece on it, and local restaurant reviewers would definitely be there. Gavin and Josh were thrilled to be involved, and the timing coincided perfectly with Simmer’s grand opening. It took only a little conniving to have the Organization and Simmer assigned to each other. Our tables were to be featured at the trendy Eliot Davis Gallery, which was just a few doors down from Simmer. Oh, and, yeah, I could help promote the harassment hotline I was in charge of. I keep forgetting that.

  I was much more excited about Josh’s end than mine. Naomi was forcing me to learn about “marketing the agency,” as she called it. So far, the activity mostly consisted of her calling me six hundred times a day to see whether I’d finished making idiotic posters and flyers about the Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace.

  Speaking of which, the phone rang. One peek at caller ID made me sigh.

  “Damn Braids, again,” I grumbled, referring to Naomi. She had the misfortune to think that plaiting her four feet of brown hair into zillions of fat braids that poked out of her head was attractive.

  “Hi, Naomi,” I said with resignation.

  “Hey, there, partner,” she chirped. “How are the materials coming? Are you just about finished?”

  I glanced down at the drawing I’d done of a male stick figure trying to fondle a female stick figure. I drew a big X across the image and scrawled ILLEGAL across the top of the page. “Doing great,” I lied while crumpling the paper up and tossing it into the trash. “I’ll e-mail you something at the office later to print out.”

  “Wonderful. You know, this is a significant opportunity for us to really get the word out.”

  Getting the word out, I’d learned, was hard-core social work jargon. If I wanted to appear studious, I’d need to start tossing it around. I need to get the word out about the sale at Banana Republic! Or maybe, It’s vital to get the word out about salon-quality hair care products!

  “Oh, listen,” continued Naomi, oblivious to my daydreaming, “I have one other assignment for you. I want you to work on a list of things in life that cause you to feel anger. This is an exercise that will really help you get in touch with who you are, where your fears and strengths come from, and how you can best work with your clients. When I was in school, my supervisor had me do it, and I found it incredibly enlightening.” I could practically see Naomi’s face suffused with exhilaration at the prospect of my enlightenment.

  “I’ll start on that right away,” I said, turning to my laptop and writing:

  Anger-Inducing Experiences

  by Chloe Carter

  1. Being forced to write stupid lists by psychotic

  supervisor.

  “You know, Chloe, the holidays are a great time of year to do some introspective thinking and get a good look at yourself. Reassess where you are at professionally and personally, and set goals for next term. In fact, I think I’ll do the same assignment I’ve given you to work on. We can compare them in a few days!”

  Oh, Naomi, I’m giddy with excitement!

  “Before I forget, I got a message on my voice mail at the office that was for you. The woman didn’t leave a name, but I think it was a follow-up call about a sexual harassment issue at her job. You can call into my messages and listen if you want. I think it’s that same woman I’d spoken to a few times before passing her on to you. Remember?”

  I had mastered the basics on handling sexual harassment hotline calls, but some of the callers were in really dicey situations, and my limited experience sometimes left me at a dead end when I tried to help. Also, unbeknownst to Naomi, I frequently jumped outside the hotline instruction manual to suggest slightly radical alternatives. In this woman’s case, I think I may have advised her to chomp on garlic-stuffed olives so she could fend off the man harassing her with her stinky breath. That suggestion, as I recalled, hadn’t gone over too well, and I’d transferred the anonymous caller to the thoroughly professional Naomi.

  “I think I know who it is.” Naomi sighed. “I’m glad she called back. I’ve been waiting to hear from her. I’ve been working really hard to put a stop to her situation. Totally intolerable, what that young woman is going through.”

  I agreed with Naomi. Every time this caller went to work, she faced her asshole boss and his attempts to maul, grab, and pinch any available body part.

  “All right,” Naomi continued, “I’m going to go call her back right away. I am taking care of this situation before the year is done. Enough is enough! And I’m going to check in with Eliot Davis at the gallery. Have Josh there by five thirty tomorrow to start setting up, okay?”

  I promised that I would, hung up the phone, and went back to staring at Josh, who’d barely spoken for the past two hours. Under normal circumstances Josh could carry on a full-blown conversation while cooking food good enough to make you shake your head in disbelief that you’d managed to live on anything else. Today was different. The food he was making today would be the public’s first taste of his new menu, and the pressure was keeping him quieter than usual.

  He was making Parmesan-panko-encrusted beef medallions served on crisp wafers and drizzled with an oregano vinaigrette. Panko, it turns out, is Japanese bread crumbs and not, as I’d feared, some sort of weird plankton. Because he was forced to work out of my little kitchen, Josh was playing it a little safe with this dish. He had wanted to do smoked bluefish with wasabi vinaigrette
, but the odds of successfully smoking enough bluefish out of my beat-up oven were pretty bad. The amount of prep work for this beef dish wasn’t too serious, considering that he had to make three hundred servings. Today he would clean and slice the tenderloins into half-inch-thick medallions, make the Parmesan-panko mix, blend up the vinaigrette, and bake herb focaccia, which is, of course, a somewhat flat and totally delicious Italian bread with olive oil drizzled all over the top crust.

  “Hey, Red?” Josh was teasing. Every redhead in the world is cursed with the nickname, and he knew that I loathed it. Why do people think that they have the right to address redheads by their hair color? I spent my childhood cringing every time someone asked, “Red, where’d you get your red hair?” My redheaded friend Nancy used to respond, “From under my father’s armpits!” She often shut people up, but I never had the nerve to answer with the same retort.

  I smiled at Josh. “Sure, but if you call me Red ever again, I’ll—”

  “Could you take the oregano leaves off these stems for me? I need them for the dressing.”

  “No problem.” I took a handful of the fresh herbs from his hand, pulled my chair closer to the table, pushed my computer aside, and began plucking leaves. That was fun for all of eight seconds. Then I realized what an excruciatingly annoying job this was.

  2. Removing oregano leaves from stems, even when helping hottie boyfriend.

  “I want a different job,” I complained.

  Josh came closer and peered at my piddling pile of leaves. “Here, hold the end of the stem in one hand, then pinch it between the thumb and forefinger of your other hand, and glide down the stem to pull off the leaves.”