Red Beans and Vice

by Lou Jane Temple

  Will pulled his fancy Porsche up to the locked gate at the hotel and honked. “Things sure are interesting with you around, Heaven. That was quite a story. I don’t want to leave you here alone. I suggested either staying with you or taking you home with me. Those are two good offers still on the table.”

  Heaven shook her head. “I do still have to make prep lists for tomorrow. Now that I’ve survived another night here in New Orleans I’ll be expected to produce some product tomorrow. Thank you for seeing me home. You still think I shouldn’t call the police?”

  “More trouble than it’s worth, in my opinion. But talk to Mary about it in the morning.” He reached over and kissed her on the lips.

  She was too wrung out to give him any static and the next thing she knew she was kissing right back. She broke away finally. The concierge was standing at the open gate watching them. Without saying a word or letting Will say one, she quickly got out of the car and waved good-bye.

  French Onion Soup Beignets

  3 onions, sliced

  2 T. olive oil

  2 T. butter

  1 T. kosher salt

  1 T. sugar

  8 oz. Gruyere cheese, cubed

  1 cup milk

  2 T. butter

  2 tsp. dry yeast or 1 pkg. dry yeast

  1 tsp. sugar

  1 egg

  3 ½ cups flour

  grated Parmesan cheese

  To caramelize onions: peel and slice three onions. Heat the 2T. each butter and oil in a large sauté pan, add onions and reduce the heat. When the onions have turned translucent, add the sugar and salt, and stir. Sauté over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the onions are a caramel color, about an hour. Cool and refrigerate. This can be done a night ahead of making the beignets.

  For the beignets: Scald the milk with the butter and let cool to lukewarm. Add yeast and sugar and let stand about five minutes, until the mixture is bubbly. Add egg and flour and mix well. Let rise about an hour. Punch down and roll out the dough on the floured surface to about ¼ inch. With a 1 ½ inch round cutter or the top of a juice glass, cut rounds from the dough.

  To assemble the beignets: Cover a cube of cheese with a spoonful of onions. Put in the middle of the dough round and seal with a little warm water. You can roll these so they are round or let them be irregular. Chill for at least an hour, then fry in about an inch of medium hot peanut or canola oil. Using tongs, turn the beignets until they are brown on all sides. Drop them in a plate of grated Parmesan and roll them around. Serve warm so the cheese in the middle will be soft.

  Six

  Heaven, you have a delivery,” a voice called from the front of Peristyle.

  Heaven had been working at the restaurant for several hours, trying to get most of the work done on her two starters today so she could concentrate on her dessert tomorrow.

  Heaven was no pastry chef and Pauline Kramer, the pastry chef and bread baker at Cafe Heaven, had sprained her wrist badly and couldn’t come to New Orleans to do her thing as they’d planned originally. But with the help of the whole Kansas City kitchen staff Pauline had formed four hundred thirty—thirty extra for breakage—individual pie crusts made out of a very special shortbread dough in throwaway pie pans, baked them, frozen them, and sent them overnight UPS to Heaven packed in dry ice. Heaven was going to have to do the rest.

  Heaven went up to retrieve her package. It had been relaxing to work in the kitchen, after the stress of the night before. Now, in the cold, clear light of day, she was embarrassed she hadn’t just gone straight to a phone and called the police.

  “And Susan said to remind you and Annie that there’s a short meeting over a bottle of wine at Bayona around 5:30. The others chefs will all be here by then,” the maitre d’ reported. He was there confirming reservations for the evening.

  Heaven took her package to the back and opened it, to check the condition of the pie shells. They looked good. Pauline had packed them well with bubble wrap and other materials plus plenty of dry ice. Heaven set them in the freezer. They would defrost tomorrow in the time it would take to assemble the rest of the dish.

  Committee members and local chefs had rounded up a group of volunteers to help with the preparations and at the dinner. Two volunteers had been helping Heaven with the rice cakes. They were cutting small rounds out of sheet pans filled with the thick rice batter and placing the rounds on baking sheets covered with parchment paper. Tomorrow the cakes would be finished on the flat top grill that was part of the portable kitchen.

  While they were cutting out the cakes, Heaven had worked on the other starter, assembling all the pieces so the volunteers could put them together.

  “What’s next?” one of them asked Heaven as they smooched the last rice into a biscuit cutter and tamped it down.

  “Next is something I’ve named a French onion soup beignet. I’ve already rolled out the beignet dough. Now what you do is take one of these cubes of Gruyere cheese and wrap some of these caramelized onions around the cube. I cooked the onions earlier and cooled them down so they should be easy to work with.” Heaven looped some of the cold onions around the cheese. She’d brought a full set of biscuit cutters with her and now found a small one and cut a little round out of the dough. “Then you wrap the cheese and onion into a ball with the dough pulling the dough slightly and sealing it with a little water on your fingers and rolling it round again,” she said as she did just that to show them how. She had two shallow bowls of water there for them to work with. “We’ll put these in the walk-in and chill them good so they stay together. Then tomorrow night they get fried and tossed in Parmesan cheese.”

  “Now that’s what I call a New Orleans-style appetizer,” one of the volunteers said approvingly. “Fat and grease.”

  Heaven worked with them for a while, making sure they got the hang of it. She was lost in thought when once again a voice called to her from the front of the restaurant. “Heaven, a friend of yours wants to see you.”

  Heaven walked out, expecting Mary. They hadn’t actually talked yet so Heaven could tell her about the attack. She’d left an urgent message but Mary was in court until this afternoon. To her surprise it was Amelia Hart, gorgeous in a peach-colored sleeveless shift.

  “Amelia, what are you doing here? I mean, after last time, I didn’t think you’d ever speak to me again if you didn’t have to.”

  “I didn’t think so either,” Amelia said with a slight grin.

  There was an awkward pause.

  Amelia cleared her throat as if she was going to recite in grade school. “I thought about what you said, and I realized I took the wrong tack with those women. I laid myself open to exactly what I got from you. There are plenty of reasons for people to support my auntie’s order. I didn’t need to put down the precious Sisters of the Holy Trinity to make that point and I especially didn’t need to make my aunt vulnerable by attacking the sisters’ slave-holding.”

  A little part of Heaven wanted to stick her tongue out and say, “I told you so.” Instead she tried to sound sympathetic. “I’ve gone out on longer limbs than that. I think if you remind these society Catholics that your aunt’s order could use some help in giving out scholarships, they would respond. They seem like they’re good-hearted.”

  “I hate saying anything close to ‘I’m sorry,’ so I’m glad that’s out of the way,” Amelia said. “Now I want to ask you something in my capacity as a reporter.”

  Heaven assumed Amelia was going to ask her about last night’s attack on the Moonwalk, not that she could figure out how Amelia would know about it. Did the German joggers call the police and tell them a woman had been attacked on the Moonwalk? But how would that lead anyone to Heaven? Could it be Will giving Amelia a news tip?

  “And what could that be?” Heaven said innocently.

  “Have you received any threatening mail, any poison-pen letters, hate mail, extortion?”

  To say Heaven was surprised by this turn would be understating it a great deal. “What are
you talking about?”

  “When someone writes to you and says defamatory things or asks for money not to reveal certain things. Usually unsigned,” Amelia answered patiently, as if Heaven were too dense to understand the definition of her words.

  “Why?”

  “Usually because the person is mentally unstable or has criminal intent,” she said, continuing her answers in the same smart-ass vein.

  Heaven wanted to slap her. She lulled me into thinking this was a peace visit, then she hits me with this, Heaven thought. “Amelia, now why would you ask me such a question?”

  “Why won’t you answer me without all these questions back?”

  “Because I don’t understand what… Has this got something to do with the vandalism against the convent?”

  “Then I take it I should report that Heaven Lee refused to comment?”

  “Fine with me. You’re going to have to give me a reason for this line of questioning before I say a thing,” Heaven said, and turned and went back to the kitchen.

  The women chefs and their sous-chefs were sitting in the courtyard at Bayona. They had run through the schedule for the dinner and each chef had talked about their course, how it should be plated and how many people it would take to get that done. Heaven had remained quiet throughout the briefing, except when she presented her course. Now that they were nearing the end of their business she made up her mind and stood up. “Now that we know how organized we are, can I ask you all a very personal question?”

  Someone made a crack about sex, and everyone laughed.

  “I received a terrible letter at my restaurant. It was unsigned and it said some very bad things about the restaurant and my employees. Not only did I get a copy but the newspaper in Kansas City received the same letter and so did the health department. I’ve been very upset and I’ve been trying to figure out who in Kansas City might have it in for me. That wasn’t exactly a small list.” She paused for the laugh and got it. “Now I’ve come to wonder if it might have something to do with the vandalism at the convent. And I wondered if any of you had received any hate mail. And I would ask that, either way, you not repeat what I’ve told you tonight. The reputation of a restaurant is very fragile, as you all know.”

  It didn’t take long for a response. “Good work, Heaven. I would have never figured out that that piece of trash had anything to do with this,” Lidia said. “I got one two weeks ago and so did the New York City health department. I can’t tell you what it said, it was so disgusting.”

  “I’m so relieved. I thought someone was going to blow my cafe up because my letter said Bacchanalia should be a parking lot,” Annie Quantero from Atlanta said.

  “Since I don’t have a restaurant, I got one saying Hitler was right and why didn’t I have recipes for cooking Jews,” Rozanne Gold said.

  There was shocked silence for a moment. Then, one by one, the whole group confessed to some kind of an unsigned written assault on their businesses and sometimes on them personally.

  Heaven felt like a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. From the looks on the faces of the other women chefs, everyone had harbored the same fears, that unfounded accusations would be the death of the businesses into which they put their hearts and souls.

  “This doesn’t mean that there isn’t still some nut who wrote all the letters,” Heaven pointed out.

  “Yes, but probably it’s the nut who is trying to sabotage the Sisters of the Holy Trinity and wanted to cast the chefs in the worst possible light, hoping it might make the news somewhere,” Susan Spicer said. “What do you say we hire a guard to be at the food tent at all times and each of us chip in to pay for it?”

  That idea was met with enthusiastic response and they sealed the deal with a few bottles of Dom Perignon.

  Heaven looked around the table. They were at Upperline, a wonderful uptown restaurant near Truely and Mary’s. The four of them, Mary, Truely, Will and Heaven, had formed an easy alliance. Their evenings were comfortable, as if they’d been dining together for years. All four were quick-witted, slightly sarcastic, and good storytellers. Heaven thought of Hank. It would be a totally different dynamic with him at the table, much sweeter.

  Sometimes it was fun to hang out with people your own age.

  “So not only did you get chased all over New Orleans last night, you admit that you’ve been getting hate mail and so have all the other chefs, and you call this a good day?” Truely shook his head and poured more wine, a bottle of Flora Springs Cabernet Sauvignon.

  “It came as a great relief to all of us that this was a group problem, not someone singling us out. I was worried sick,” Heaven said.

  “And you hadn’t told us a thing about it,” Mary said, scolding her.

  “The fewer people that know about something like that, the better. I would never have taken the chance to tell my tale to the other chefs if Amelia hadn’t come over and questioned me about it. That bitch,” Heaven added with a chuckle.

  “Who do you suppose told Amelia?” Will asked.

  “Maybe Amelia knew about it because she did it,” Mary offered.

  Heaven shook her head. “I don’t think so, but I don’t have any reason except a weird fondness I’ve acquired for Amelia. I think the person who did all this, the vandalism, the cross, the letters, sent copies to Amelia at the television station. But I couldn’t ask her that today because I wasn’t admitting that I received a letter.”

  “What will happen tomorrow night, will the fish give us all a tummy ache?” Will said, still not taking the threats to the nuns very seriously.

  “The chefs decided to all chip in and pay for a guard for the food tent,” Heaven reported.

  “Good plan,” Truely said. “I wouldn’t want anyone to mess with the coffee. It’s a single estate bean from Kenya that kicks ass.”

  “Thanks for donating expensive coffee, Truely,” Heaven said.

  “Mary would kill me if I didn’t.” He gave his wife a pat on her hand. “And it can’t compare to what you’ve given, in time and money.”

  “Let’s get back to last night. I can’t believe you didn’t call the police. Will was wrong,” Mary said, looking severely across the table at both Heaven and Will.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t either. So this morning I called up the French Quarter station and they sent someone over to Peristyle to take my statement. I don’t know if they believed me. It was pretty farfetched, what with the casino and two streetcars and the Moonwalk and the Camellia Grill. But at least now if I’m strangled again, I’ll be on record,” Heaven said, watching Will for a reaction.

  She thought he shifted uncomfortably and his eyes darted around the table, meeting Truely’s for just a breath too long. It only lasted two seconds. What were those two trying to tell each other? Maybe Heaven was just reading things into Will’s reactions tonight because they had that on-the-lips kiss the night before. It was probably nothing more than two friends trying to react the same way to some woman and her ravings.

  “Heaven has survived another harrowing day in the life of Super Chef. I think this calls for champagne,” Will said, with a trademark wink and a smile. He waved a hand to the waiter across the room.

  “I hope we’re lucky,” Heaven said to no one in particular as she dealt empty plates out on the long serving tables they were using to organize the dinner.

  The cocktail hour was over and guests were looking for their table assignments. The weather was perfect and so was the setting; a slight breeze blowing the ribbons the decoration committee had tied on the tent stakes, the smell of roses wafting from the garden walls, fat white candles nestled safely in glass hurricane lamps that reflected the twinkling candlelight. Cocktails had been in the formal garden on the street side, what Heaven now knew was the back of the convent. The entire inner courtyard, facing the river, had been tented. Now people were making their way through the entryway, from the back to the front of the convent, to dinner. A brass band was leading the way.

  The w
omen chefs had decided not to list the chef responsible for each course on the menu, as most celebrity chef dinners did. They preferred to show solidarity and just list their names at the top of the menu, trusting that their fellow cooks would not sully anyone else’s reputation with something less than spectacular. So far all the starters had been devoured with gusto, although Heaven was sure the onion soup beignets were the biggest hit of all.

  The first course was already on the table, a cold English green pea soup with a shrimp-filled fried won-ton on the side. Heaven had learned long ago in her catering days that if a cold soup could be on the table, in place when the guests sat down, it really helped get the dinner rolling. You needed every bit of help when you were serving a coursed dinner in the middle of nowhere, kitchenwise.

  Earlier, Heaven had poked around the convent grounds to check out the rest of their set-up. It was an organized production. The dishwashing tent was set up right next to one of the maintenance sheds with running water. There were hoses running to big metal tubs on stands, like people used to use to wash clothes. Next to each tub were two big trash containers for busing food off the plates and bowls. On the other side of the tubs were long tables with the empty boxes from the rental company. The dishes were scraped, rinsed in the tubs and then repacked in the boxes. The rental company would rewash and sterilize them at their plant.

  Now, it was time to plate the fish course, an octopus salad that was one of Lidia’s dishes, plus a mini fritto misto, that Italian combination of fried seafood that was so popular in Venice. To do that, the cooks had several of the outdoor propane tanks and stock pots that were so popular in New Orleans to fry whole turkeys or boil crayfish. In this case they had been converted into deep fat fryers. There was delicious grouper, soft-shell crab and zucchini blossoms, all in a delicate batter that reminded Heaven of an Asian tempura batter.

  The chefs had made diagrams of the way each plate should look on butcher paper and taped these diagrams up on the inside of the tent siding. This plate had a small mound of the octopus salad on one side, a piece of grouper and a half a soft-shelled crab on the other, with two squash blossoms in the middle, their blooms facing opposite directions. The last touch was a light dressing for the fritto misto, olive oil and aged basalmic vinegar with some anchovy blended in.