Hungry Woman in Paris

by Josefina López

  Wow, maybe someday I really could be a chef, I thought to myself. My mind wandered off to the future and I saw my dream restaurant, made to look like a rose garden. I imagined being the chef in my own kitchen, making exotic dishes with pomegranates and mangoes and figs and kiwis. It would be a nonsmoking restaurant and I would change the menu every season. I would have little tables for women’s purses that would go under the main tables, and candies to take home in little boxes at the end of the meal. I would make rose-petal-covered tamales de foie gras… Wait a minute: that’s like fat covered in fat. It’s a recipe for heart attacks and lawsuits.

  My excitement soon dwindled when I studied my schedule and realized that I was due to be an assistant along with Dick on the fourth week. How, I asked God, could I be so unlucky? I went over to Miguel Angel, the student from Mexico, and begged him to change slots with me. He agreed to help me out and committed to getting the supplies up with Dick; then I would clean up and bring down the supplies. The first day worked out okay, but then Miguel Angel was late most of the time and Dick just thought I was getting back at him for being a jerk by not doing my part. I tried to explain to Dick that Miguel Angel had switched with me. He continued being the assistant until he came to practical pissed off. Miguel Angel was absent that day and Dick had had to get all the supplies by himself. Akiva looked around for the tomatoes and asked Dick for them.

  “I just got screamed at by the pastry chef for the mess Miguel Angel made yesterday because he left the flour out, and I had to mop it up. So from this day forward I am no longer the assistant and you can all fuck off!” Dick exploded. “I resign being the assistant, so someone has to go get the tomatoes because I’m not doing it!” he declared.

  Everyone just stared, silently calling him an asshole. I was happy on the inside thinking, There is a God: every jerk always has a bigger jerk stomp on him. No longer worried about having to deal with Dick, I went downstairs to the basement kitchen and brought up all the ingredients he’d forgotten. I returned to class with the supplies and everyone thanked me. When Dick needed something, I ignored him, and he was forced to go to the basement and get whatever he needed himself. I didn’t like Dick, but I felt sorry for him. He was indeed the Ugly American everyone hated, not just in class but all around the world. He wanted to come in first so badly that he didn’t care to share his resources, or give a shit if everyone had enough materials to succeed. And now the time had arrived when the others turned their backs on his needs just as he had turned his back to theirs. How did this sad little person get through life not understanding that it takes a global village to make a good meal?

  The six-hour practical exam was a good way to experiment with our recipe and learn from all the mistakes we made because we had two extra hours to experiment. At the final we would make the same dish but everything had to be perfect and we had to make four identical dégustation plates. We were also supposed to have an original written recipe with all the ingredients and a detailed plan of every step of our preparation and technique. We couldn’t get spontaneous at the exam because we had to show that we’d actually thought about the dishes we were making and were completely aware of everything necessary to execute them. My first attempt at making my dish was successful, except I burnt the phyllo dough. I quickly removed it and salvaged the lamb, which came out only a little overcooked.

  “It is better to have it be undercooked than overcooked because lamb is supposed to be served pink; otherwise it’s too rubbery to eat,” Chef Papillon warned us. He advised us to cook the meat last, so it would not be overdone or cold by the time we served it.

  I cleaned out my tools at the sink and heard Chef Papillon chastising Akiva for his lack of originality. Akiva could barely understand French and was always asking someone to translate. My French still wasn’t great, but I felt so bad for the guy that I began to translate for the chef.

  “This dish you have made is so elementary. This looks like Basic Cuisine, not Superior. You will not be able to get your diploma with this dish. You must create garnishes that show at least a two- or three-step process,” I translated for Akiva. He nodded his head and grabbed his chin, trying to figure out what recipe to do tomorrow. Akiva was so fast he could work at McDonald’s, but he had no originality. He was embarrassed by the chef’s remarks, especially since he would brag about working at the Atelier de Joël Robuchon and the amazing things he was learning there. I was hoping that whatever he had learned he could use on his final and save his ass.

  The night before the exam I had another nightmare. This time I was doing surgery on Blanca and I was cutting her in all the wrong places and she ended up overcooked. I woke up stressed, but I calmed down by telling myself, It’s just food!

  On the day of the final we were scheduled to have a demonstration class at eight-thirty in the morning. Only six people attended out of the fourteen. I arrived and was trying to write out my recipe while I waited for the chef to finish his demonstration, which would become my breakfast. I originally sat in the back, thinking I could ignore the chef and finish translating my recipe, but because hardly any of the students showed up I thought I better sit in the front and pretend like I was paying attention. I got busy studying my recipe, which I called agneau à la Mexicaine-Américaine, writing down a list of all the steps I needed to execute my process. Chef Papillon gave us advice on how to write out our recipes and reiterated not to overcook the lamb. A former graduate student gave us advice on how to keep our plates warm by using four bain-maries and setting up our dishes on top so we could dress them strategically. None of the Spanish-speaking students, including me, hid their nervousness; we can’t hide our feelings so easily.

  In the locker room Pepa confided that she’d got her period that day, which only added to her stress. It was all going to be over in less than five hours. She had come in first and second in the last two classes and wanted to get first place again.

  “Did I have to get my period today?” she screamed in the locker room.

  “Yes, God, did it have to happen to me too, today of all days?” I whispered to myself in the ladies’ room.

  Everyone except for Dick and Craig decided to go to the local bar, which also served strong coffee, and fill our veins with caffeine for the four stressful hours ahead. I took out my translated recipe and finished drawing my proposed dish. Blanca saw that I could draw and asked me to draw her a picture too. I drew it and it came out quite polished.

  “Why don’t you draw mine too? Mine is horrible,” said Pepa. She showed it to me and I tried to improve what she had. The recipes and the drawing were important because as soon as we walked into the practical we were supposed to present them to the chef, and once you gave over the recipe that was it.

  All the Intensive Superior students waited in the courtyard; at fifteen-minute intervals, the students were supposed to come upstairs to the large kitchen and begin the exam. Four hours later we all had to have four plates exactly alike, three for the jury of chefs to taste and one for the photo.

  I was so nervous I sharpened all my knives until I could cut paper with them. I looked up at the clock. Five minutes before my exam time I started fixing my tie and hanging my hand towel in my apron, preparing as if I were a soldier going off to war. I picked up my knives and all my equipment and walked past Dick, who was studying his recipe. I prayed that they wouldn’t put that passive-aggressive jerk next to me just because his last name followed mine. I took my time getting to the second floor, slowly passing the Sabrina movie poster in the stairway. I arrived at the designated practical kitchen and peeked in. I was still early, according to the clock on the wall in the practical room. I took deep breaths and studied my recipe.

  Agneau à la Mexicaine-Américaine

  Lamb Mexican-American Style

  Okay, no way would this lamb be spicy enough to be called Mexican; but it’s spicy enough for France. At least it ends up looking red and green. It’s closer to an Italian dish, and the Italians are more like Mexicans, so I guess th
at’s okay.

  half of lamb shoulder with saddle, trimmed

  STUFFING

  100grams shiitake mushrooms, sliced, sautéed

  100milliliters port, reduced with shallots

  50grams pine nuts, chopped

  75milliliters crème fraîche

  1 piece pig intestine lining, large enough to wrap around the stuffed lamb

  DECORATION

  4basil leaves, fried

  4black olives, sliced

  JUICE

  1carrot, diced

  1shallot, finely chopped

  1stalk celery, diced

  BOUQUET GARNI

  laurel and basil leaf

  SIDE DISHES

  600grams fava beans, boiled, sautéed

  4tomatoes, sliced, baked in oil

  4artichokes, boiled and macerated

  2eggplants, baked and macerated

  6basil leaves, chopped

  4garlic cloves, sliced and smashed

  4olives, chopped

  Juice of 1 lemon

  TIAN

  1red bell pepper, cut into sticks

  1green bell pepper, cut into sticks

  1onion, sliced

  Chef Papillon finally let me in and I was calm when I handed my recipe to him. I was number seven. Lucky seven, right? I got there and everything was set up: a basket with everything I needed to create my recipe, ready to go. I had to take care of my tomatoes first because they took an hour and fifteen minutes. I went to one of the two communal ovens usually used for pastries and turned it on and got my tomatoes ready. I went to get a baking tray and Miguel Angel handed me one, trying to be helpful. I took it and a moment later realized it was hot at one end and instinctively put it down on an unoccupied stove. I looked under my forearm and saw that I had burnt my skin, in a line about five inches long. My arm felt like it was melting every time I reached over by the burners. Blanca noticed my large blister and grabbed my hand to take a closer look. She dragged me to the sink and stuck my arm under cold water.

  “You have to use water to stop it from getting worse,” she said. She went to the first-aid box and gave me the burn cream. I didn’t want to take the time to tend to my injury because I was scared I was not going to finish, but she insisted that I take care of it. Ten minutes later, my burn was bearable and I checked the tomatoes. They seemed fine and I left them in the oven because I wanted them to be really dry and nice. An hour and fifteen minutes later, when I was finally ready to get them out, Dick was right in front of the oven, putting his fava beans in the Robot Coupe. If I went over there, I figured, he would probably refuse to move just to spite me. I decided to wait a few more minutes until he was finished and away from the communal oven.

  I got caught up with other things, and fifteen minutes later I realized I had not taken my tomatoes out. When I got them they had dwindled to nothing. I debated whether I should try to do it again or settle for these. I looked at the clock and thought if I rushed I could do them again and end right on time. I proceeded forward and did my meat and sauce. I cut up my bones and put the trimmings on my pan to caramelize them along with my vegetables. The sauce I got didn’t taste like anything, so I reduced it until it was savory. The fava beans were ready in two minutes, but when I sautéed them I had a little crisis trying to get aluminum foil, and ended up overcooking them and forgot the salt.

  I didn’t want to overcook the lamb, but it became a guessing game for me to determine how long it needed to be in the oven to be pink. Then I worked on my stuffing and I really loved it. In fact, I loved it so much that I put too much of it in the lamb. I thought it was so good, so I didn’t want to waste any of it. I wrapped the lamb with crépine, or pig intestine, to seal it. I didn’t want to use too much of it because it looks weird and a little disgusting. I had the lamb in my oven, but after around six minutes I panicked. I thought if I left it in the oven for nine minutes it was going to get overcooked so I turned off the oven and took it out. I discovered I hadn’t used enough crépine because it burst open coming out of the oven. Now, why did I turn off the oven? I really thought it was cooked and I wanted to finish so badly. This is the one regret I will take to my grave! I took out the lamb, left it in the aluminum foil to settle, and figured if it was very pink it would still continue to cook under the aluminum foil. Minutes later I checked and I saw it wasn’t cooked. I turned the oven back on, but I couldn’t get it to cook the lamb anymore!

  I looked up at the clock: all of a sudden I had ten minutes left to put everything together. Praying that the lamb would somehow cook just a few more minutes, I put my four plates on the bains-marie, which had gotten too hot to work on. I turned off the burners under them and began the assembly process. I took out my circular mold and put the bell pepper tian in it, forming nice little circles. I cut the lamb into four pieces; the stuffed lamb looked huge and was too big for a dégustation plate. With three minutes left I had no choice but to leave them like that. The hard part was the olives. I wanted to use flowers as my decoration on the plate and was trying to arrange the tiny olive slices in the shapes of petals. They kept sticking to my fingertips and my hands were trembling. This was the most stressful thing I had ever attempted. As if things weren’t bad enough, next to me Dick casually began to assemble his plates over the bains-marie. He looked around for his mold and couldn’t find it.

  “Who took my mold?” asked Dick loudly so that I could hear. Everyone was too busy to pay attention to him.

  “I’m missing my mold,” Dick announced. I did everything to ignore him and then he walked up to Chef Papillon. “Chef, someone stole my mold.”

  I thought, Who the fuck has time to steal your pinchi mold, gringo!

  “No one stole your mold. I’m sure we’ll find it,” Chef Papillon said to calm him down.

  “No, someone took it! I need it,” he said, practically stomping his foot like a toddler. Dick started to panic, and had I not been trembling like a freezing Chihuahua with two minutes left to finish I would have laughed in his face because his karma was kicking his ass… Dick walked up to my stove and pointed to a mold on the top shelf.

  “Well, what’s that?” he demanded. I grabbed the mold and showed him the red dot I’d made with nail polish to mark my equipment.

  “It’s mine, I just used it,” I said, trying not to bite his head off for being an inconsiderate fucking jerk. I put away the mold and placed it on my planchette. I continued to work on the last of the olive slices, settling for flowers with three petals instead of four. Then Dick walked up to my planchette and like Inspector Clouseau, grabbed the mold off my planchette, and said, “Well, what about this one?”

  “It’s the same one I just showed you,” I said. I saw his desperate look and felt sorry for that loser. “Do you want to borrow it? You can borrow it,” I said with compassion, surprising myself. I hadn’t known I’d had any kindness left for that ass. He shook his head and continued hunting for his mold. With one minute left I threw the sauce on the four dishes as Chef Papillon and his assistant came up to my stove like Nazis ready to take away my four children. They grabbed the hot plates and ordered me to carry the saucer with my sauce down to the first floor, where the three chefs on the jury awaited my dish. Two of the chefs on the jury were retired chefs with more opinions than white hair. Chef Chocon saw the dishes coming in with the giant pieces of stuffed lamb and immediately commented on how my dish agneau à la Mexicaine-Américaine was really a dégustation plate for Americans. I hated being there for his joke and immediately slipped out before they commented on my undercooked lamb.

  Four hours of labor and the results were disappointing. I’d done the best I could, but it was a mess. I went back to my stove to clean up and saw that Dick’s presentation looked great. The fact that my plates looked like a disaster would only make his shine even more, since he was the next to present. Glad I could be of service, jerk. Dick’s plate was so simple. I should have done something stupid and simple like him, but my dish ended up being
so complicated. I felt like such a failure after I finished, though when I saw Akiva scrounging around for leftover tomatoes, I realized that maybe my food was not perfect but I’d finished on time and hadn’t burnt anything. Akiva had burnt all of his food and had had to restart, making a whole new dish that he was forced to improvise with all the leftovers from the other students. I remembered my promise to just enjoy this class and not get caught up in the competition and started to clean up my station. When I was washing my dishes I saw Bianca crying and offered to help her, since I was done. But she was such an emotional mess that she snapped at me and told me not to talk to her. I gave Bianca her space and went down to the locker room.

  After I dressed I looked for Blanca, who had finished an hour before me. She was calm about the whole thing and had no mishaps to report. She was a pro and was very satisfied with her work. Blanca told me she had to run off to work and said she would see me the next day at the restaurant where we were supposed to celebrate our graduation. I walked outside with her to get some fresh air and commiserate with all the other students who had also just finished. Pepa was smoking her lungs out and got close to tears when she revealed to us that her lamb was undercooked. She reflected on her whole process like a boxer who couldn’t explain how he had been knocked out when everything was going in his favor. Pepa shook her head and counted the minutes until they posted the grades on the wall. She couldn’t imagine not passing the class after all the personal sacrifices she’d made. If she didn’t pass she could not come back and try again. Her family life and her schedule would not permit it. This was the first time I had seen Pepa so distraught. Normally she was the fearless wisecracking mother hen who was in charge of the kitchen.