The Secret Ingredient

by Dianne Blacklock

  He straightened. ‘I missed you . . . at the restaurant, you know. I’m used to seeing you there.’

  She smiled. ‘I missed being there.’

  ‘Well, come on through,’ he said, leading the way. She followed him past a narrow staircase on the right, and what looked like a sitting room on the left, though she only caught a glimpse as they passed. The floor had been stripped to timber, and all the walls were white, but the original features remained – deep skirting boards, ornate plasterwork. They walked through into a large open space that was obviously a new extension. It comprised a large kitchen and eating area, with a wall of glass facing the courtyard off the back. It was all white and stainless steel, sparsely furnished with a white glass-topped dining table and white chairs.

  ‘This is stunning,’ said Andie. ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘A few years now,’ he said, as he walked around the long, sleek island bench topped with white marble. ‘It was mostly as you see it when I bought it, I just put in a new kitchen. Hazard of the profession, though I don’t get to use it much. Can I get you a drink?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, though I am driving, I’ll have to keep track,’ she added demurely.

  ‘Well, you can always catch a taxi home . . . or whatever.’

  Her heart jumped and he turned away abruptly to open the fridge. They both knew what ‘whatever’ meant. It was strange, going through the paces, knowing what was likely to happen before the night was out. She felt tingly and breathless already. She really needed a drink to calm her down.

  ‘White wine?’ Dominic offered, peering into the fridge. ‘Or I have beer, or I could open a red?’

  ‘White wine’s good, thanks.’

  ‘So how’s the new apartment?’ he asked as he poured the wine.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ she said. ‘I feel at home already.’

  He passed her a glass before picking up his. ‘To feeling at home,’ he toasted.

  They clinked glasses and Andie drank from hers. ‘So, what’s for dinner?’ she asked.

  ‘Hamburgers and chips,’ he said plainly.

  She lifted an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

  He nodded, smiling. ‘I hope you’re hungry.’

  Andie was well aware of the trend, even in high-end restaurants, of including gourmet hamburgers on the menu. They certainly wouldn’t be served at Viande, which was cutting edge, but always classy; fine dining, not funky. It would be interesting to see just how far Dominic could slum it.

  ‘I’m very hungry,’ she lied. Right at the moment, she wasn’t at all sure she would manage to eat.

  ‘Then let’s get started,’ he said. ‘Do you mind helping?’

  Even better than having Dominic Gerou cook her dinner was to be able to cook alongside him. He had already prepared the patties, and they were chilling in the refrigerator, so he took her through the process of making the sauce, a reduction of heritage tomatoes with fresh herbs. He’d cheated with the buns, he said, having picked up some brioche from a local bakery that morning.

  ‘So we only have to get started on the chips.’

  ‘Are you going to use the method of cooking them three times over?’

  He nodded. ‘So you know it?’

  ‘I know of it,’ she clarified. ‘I’ve never tried it myself.’

  Dominic had already completed the first stage, steaming the thick-cut chips until they were half-cooked. They were cooling in the refrigerator. He instructed Andie to wrap them in a tea towel to remove all traces of moisture while he heated the oil, testing it with a thermometer. They proceeded to fry the chips in batches until they were pale yellow, before draining them and returning them to the fridge again, while they prepared everything else.

  ‘I think you can’t go past iceberg lettuce on a burger,’ Dominic said, fishing one out of the crisper and passing it to Andie.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘There are stronger-tasting lettuces, but they’re usually bitter, which is great in a salad with dressing, but they just compete with the other flavours on a hamburger.’ He handed her a stalk of truss tomatoes, then grabbed a slab of cheese and a bowl, closing the fridge door with his elbow. ‘And knowing the Australian obsession with beetroot, I roasted some for you earlier,’ he said, revealing the reddish-purple bulbs in the bowl.

  Andie clapped her hands together. ‘I love beetroot on hamburgers.’

  ‘Hm, just as I thought.’

  The chips would only need about another five minutes of frying, so it was time to start the meat. Dominic fired up the barbecue plate on the wondrous cooktop – the kind Andie had only seen in magazines, with every function imaginable: gas jets, induction elements and stone hotplates.

  ‘I believe I can leave the buns and the salad to you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes you can,’ Andie nodded. ‘I know everything there is to know about bread and salad.’

  ‘Which is why you’re moving on to main meal prep as of tomorrow.’

  She turned to look at him, wide-eyed. ‘Dominic, I —’

  ‘We’ve already been over this, Andie. Cosmo and Tang came to me, I simply gave them the go-ahead, like I do for anyone they recommend.’

  ‘But —’

  He leaned across to give her a light kiss on the lips before she could say anything else. ‘Congratulations,’ he said.

  Andie had to let it go for now, as the final stage of cooking got underway. The aroma was incredible; Dominic admitted that he’d gone the full gourmet route and used wagyu beef, because it really did make the best hamburger patties. He added a wafer-thin slice of Gruyère right at the end of cooking, so it just melted onto the beef. It was all in the timing with burgers – buns had to be toasted and still warm, ready for the patties, vegetables waiting, sliced and shredded, and the chips needed to be served hot at the same time. Dominic left Andie to lift the chips from the oil in batches and drain them on absorbent paper, while he plated up the burgers with the same care and attention to detail as he showed at the restaurant. She watched him spoon an elegant smear of the sauce over each perfectly circular patty, then fuss over the exact placement of each tomato and beetroot slice and every shred of lettuce. The result was sublime. Andie had never seen such a perfect hamburger, except in commercials, but she knew that stylists had to do weird things to food to make it look right, usually rendering it inedible. The burger in front of her was anything but. Andie felt like she was living in some parallel universe, sitting opposite a renowned, award-winning chef, in his kitchen, eating the most luscious wagyu hamburgers. And the best chips ever.

  ‘They are good,’ Dominic agreed after she waxed lyrical. ‘But in the end it’s just potatoes and oil, the same as they use in any corner takeaway. Goes to show what you can achieve with a little attention to technique.’

  ‘Is that what you like about cooking?’ Andie asked him. ‘The technique, or the process? I mean, what you do now is so meticulous, so precise. Makes me wonder if you were into making models when you were a kid?’

  He smiled, shaking his head. ‘No, I don’t recall ever making models.’

  ‘Do you recall what you wanted to be?’

  He shrugged. ‘Probably all the regular things when I was very young – you know, fireman, astronaut . . . But as I got older, well, it was such a foregone conclusion that I would go into law, I didn’t really think about what else I might have wanted to do.’

  ‘It must have been a pretty big deal then, to drop out?’

  He nodded. ‘Big deal is putting it mildly.’

  Andie paused, giving Dominic the opportunity to go on, she was beginning to feel like she was interrogating him. But he just picked up his burger and took another bite.

  ‘I know what it’s like for a parent’s expectations to override your own,’ Andie said carefully. ‘My mother was desperate for her daughters to go to uni because she missed out herself, she thought cooking was for housewives.’

  He wiped the corners of his mouth with a napkin. ‘Yet here you are, a chef.’

&nb
sp; ‘I did start uni, but I didn’t go back after she died,’ said Andie. ‘My dad said life was too short . . .’ She paused, becoming wistful. ‘I just wish my mother had realised that her disappointment didn’t come purely from missing out on an education, at the heart of it was that she didn’t get to fulfil the dreams that mattered to her – whatever they might have been. I know she meant well, but she was forcing the same frustration and disappointment onto me.’

  ‘But are you at peace now that you are following your dream?’

  ‘I am.’ She nodded. ‘What about you? When we were at Elliot’s, it sounded like cooking had never been your dream, or your passion.’

  ‘It wasn’t at the beginning.’

  ‘But it is now?’

  He thought about it. ‘I don’t know about passion, it’s more like a very long marriage – albeit a successful one, where you’ll probably grow old together, but the thrill has gone.’

  ‘Then what makes you stay?’

  ‘The same reason anyone stays in a long marriage: security, familiarity, loyalty.’ He looked at her. ‘Honestly, it’s probably ego as much as anything. You get to a certain level, and you’re expected to stay there, maintain that standard, or you’re deemed a failure.’

  Andie shook her head. ‘This is a tough enough industry to survive in if you don’t really love it.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, it does give me a great deal of satisfaction. The kitchen is the place I feel most in control.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s a highly controlled environment. There is cause and effect – you take a set of ingredients in the right quantities, you follow a method and you get a result. If you’re disciplined, and precise, and you pay attention, you can duplicate those same results, again and again.’

  ‘But us ordinary humans make mistakes,’ said Andie.

  He gave her a wry smile. ‘Everyone makes mistakes, it’s working at minimising them that helps you improve.’

  ‘But don’t you think you learn from your mistakes?’

  ‘Of course, you learn not to make them again.’

  ‘You’ve never made the same mistake twice?’ Andie wanted to know.

  ‘I’ve made plenty of mistakes. You’d be surprised.’

  ‘Try me.’

  He looked at her. ‘You seem to be fishing for something.’

  ‘I’m just interested,’ said Andie. ‘I’ve told you a lot about myself now, but you seem a little cagey about your deep dark past.’

  He frowned slightly.

  ‘That’s what you called it on our way home from Elliot’s.’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he said. ‘Look, I went off the rails for a few years, back in my youth, that’s all.’

  ‘So apart from drinking too much, which you’ve already confessed, what else did you do that was so bad?’

  ‘What didn’t I do, is probably a better question.’ He pushed his plate to the side. ‘Yes, there was a lot of drinking, and partying, I spent my parents’ money like there was no tomorrow, I wouldn’t go home for days at a time, I wrecked a car, you name it . . . I was really just a spoiled rich kid, totally out of control.’

  Andie found that image difficult to marry with the man hunched over the kitchen bench earlier, painstakingly arranging shreds of lettuce with a pair of tweezers.

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I fell in love,’ he said. ‘Or I thought I’d fallen in love. I didn’t really know which way was up, let alone what love was. But when you’re twenty you know everything, right?’

  She smiled. ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I certainly did.’

  Dominic smiled back at her. ‘Her name was Justine, and I thought she was the most incredible, free, extraordinary person I’d ever met. She dyed her hair crazy colours, all at once, sometimes; she had piercings, a tattoo – before they became a fashion statement. Her philosophy of life was “If in doubt, do it”, to hell with the consequences. You can imagine the effect she had on a sheltered, stitched-up English boy.’

  ‘Doesn’t sound like you were all that stitched-up by then?’

  ‘That’s true, I was already on a downward spiral, and she took me the rest of the way. My parents were naturally horrified, they tried to do everything to break us apart. But of course, that only pushed us closer together.’

  ‘Because you were twenty, and you knew everything.’

  He nodded. ‘They forced the issue, said they were going back to England, I had no choice but to go with them. So Justine and I got married.’

  Andie’s eyes grew wide. ‘That’s who you were married to?’

  Dominic gave her an odd look.

  She didn’t want to act like she didn’t know. ‘Elliot mentioned . . .’

  ‘Elliot mentioned I was married? When?’

  ‘The other day. Stan, the guy who had the apartment before me, he left some things behind, and I dropped in to Elliot’s to return them. We got to talking, Elliot and I —’

  ‘And he told you about my marriage?’ He seemed rattled.

  ‘No,’ Andie assured him. ‘He told me you had been married, a long time ago, and that it ended unhappily. That’s all. I didn’t want to pretend that I didn’t know that much.’

  Dominic nodded faintly.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. It’s not a secret, it’s just not something I talk about, it was hardly my finest hour.’ He sighed. ‘My parents were devastated, but there was nothing they could do. They returned to England, taking their money with them. So I had to get a job.’

  ‘That’s when you started working with Elliot?’

  ‘Yes. And that’s when reality started to bite. I wasn’t quite so appealing to Justine when my parents weren’t funding our lifestyle. She hated the depressing little flat that was all we could afford, the hours I had to work . . . It’s hard being with someone who’s not in the industry, they really don’t get it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Justine partied on, but I was too tired to join her most of the time. I had to work double shifts, she spent money faster than I could earn it.’

  ‘Why did you put up with it?’

  ‘I didn’t feel like I had a choice,’ he said. ‘She’d done me a favour, marrying me, I felt like I owed her. And what else could I do? I certainly wasn’t going to go running to my parents, prove they were right.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘I threw myself into my work. I thought that once I had qualifications, at least I’d make a bit more money, things would settle down. But they never did. At first I worked because I had to, then I worked because it was all I had.’ He stopped to take a drink of his wine. ‘Justine came and went. She’d stay away for a weekend, then it was weeks at a time, then longer. I started praying she wouldn’t come back, but eventually she’d run out of money or options, and I’d wake up one morning and she’d be there, crashed out on the bed beside me.’

  ‘Why did you keep taking her back?’ said Andie. ‘You must have known . . .’

  ‘That she was with other men?’ he finished. ‘Of course. But she’d say that I was the only one she loved, promise me that things would be different. And they would be, for a while . . .’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I finally faced the truth that she was never going to change, and things were never going to be different.’ He paused. ‘One time she hadn’t been home for a week or so, I gave notice at work, and on the flat, packed up her things and left them with a friend of hers, and then I went as far away as I could get, so that she couldn’t find me.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘Europe,’ he said. ‘I stayed away the best part of a decade. I had to support myself, so I worked in restaurants right across the continent. Plied my trade.’

  ‘Were you able to mend things with your parents?’

  ‘With my mother,’ he nodded. ‘Not that she’d ever given up on me. I think mothers will forgive their sons almost anything.’

  ‘
Did you ever see Justine again?’

  He shook his head, he looked a little wistful. ‘I tried to find her after I returned to Australia. We really needed to finalise things, get a divorce, but I wanted to make sure she was all right. I was in the position by then to help her out, if she needed anything. I felt I owed her that much.’ He paused. ‘Someone told me she died, fell off the back of a motorbike, drunk. I had a solicitor look into it for me, sadly it was true.’ He became thoughtful. ‘Sometimes I think people like Justine are destined to die young.’ He took another drink, then seemed to snap himself out of it. ‘So there you have it, my deep dark past.’

  No wonder he’d been scared off relationships. But now he was taking a chance on her. Andie was caught between worrying what expectations he had of her, and wanting to fulfil every one of them.

  ‘And,’ he said suddenly, getting to his feet, ‘your glass is empty.’

  He walked over to the fridge and Andie picked up their plates and came around the bench at the opposite end.

  ‘More wine?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh . . . I don’t know,’ she said, setting the plates down in the sink. ‘I should keep an eye on the time, we both have to work tomorrow.’

  He closed the fridge door. ‘Andie, it isn’t even eight o’clock,’ he said, walking towards her. ‘Have I frightened you away?’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ she said.

  ‘Then what’s the matter?’ he asked gently, standing right in front of her.

  ‘Nothing, nothing’s the matter, really.’

  He lifted her chin so she had to look at him. ‘Now I feel like I shouldn’t have told you any of that.’

  ‘No,’ she assured him. ‘I don’t think worse of you. Why would I? You were loyal and decent. You’re a good person, Dominic.’

  He grimaced faintly. ‘That doesn’t sound very promising.’

  Andie laughed lightly, taking his hand between both of hers. ‘Elliot did say something else.’

  ‘Bloody Elliot strikes again.’

  ‘Don’t be cross with him,’ she said. ‘He just said it was unusual that you were seeing someone.’

  ‘I told you that myself, that it had been a long time.’