Last Bite: A Novel of Culinary Romance

by Nancy Verde Barr

  Meanwhile, Jonathan was relating in long, painful, drawn-out detail exactly how he had been. Sally listened and commented as she heated the butter and sugar, coaxing it into a caramel with a clean wooden spoon.

  “. . . so, after I spent my own money to paint the living room, and the bedroom, and put wallpaper up in the bathroom, just to mention a few things I’ve done, I may have to leave my lovely little apartment and look in a less desirable neighborhood—with my two cats and my dog, who really does not bark all day. It just doesn’t seem right since I’ve . . . Mrs. Woods? Mrs. Woods? Are you all right? Can I get you something?”

  “Wha eet err tuk.”

  I dropped my apples on the counter and turned. Oh my God, I thought, she’s having a stroke. She had her hand to her mouth and seemed to be struggling. Her eyes were watering. Jonathan was visibly shaken but immobilized. I reached her just as she pulled a chunk of caramel out of her mouth. “It got stuck in my teeth and I couldn’t get it off,” she croaked.

  “Jeez, Sally. You put hot caramel in your mouth? What were you thinking?”

  “I didn’t think. I just did.” She gave me a Sally look that is seldom seen by the public. It is the sheepish grin of a school-girl who has just been caught executing a major prank. I’m sure she perfected the look in her younger days, because she is known to have created more than her share of mischief.

  “Didn’t it burn?”

  “Well, yes!”

  “I’ll get some ice for you to chew. And for God’s sake, keep the spoon out of your mouth.” She gave me more of that impish grin.

  I hadn’t always talked to Sally like that. When I met her six years ago, I was so in awe of her stature that I addressed her with exaggerated reverence. At the time, I was teaching at a local cooking school that had been asked to organize a charity event at which Sally was the main attraction. It was held in a theater, so a makeshift kitchen had to be built on the stage. The “kitchen” consisted of a long skirted table with a cutting board, knives, a two-burner hot plate, a standing mixer, a food processor, and a large jar holding an assortment of cooking utensils. Sally stood behind this table facing the audience. Several feet behind her were two other skirted tables. One held three big buckets of water and served as our water source and cleanup area. The second table was our prep area and on top were another hot plate, cutting board, knives, utensils, and the food. Underneath were pots, pans, numerous small appliances, and several electrical outlets.

  Sally was demonstrating trout mousse rolled inside salmon fillets and napped—such a nice word—with hollandaise sauce. She made the hollandaise on her hot plate and handed it to me to keep warm on our back-table hot plate. When I took the pan from her, smiling for the audience, I could see that it had curdled; little bits of hard yolk were visible up close. I wasn’t exactly sure what to do about it. I certainly didn’t want to point it out to her, but I knew she wouldn’t want to use it as it was. So I made another one. I melted butter on my hot plate and crouched under the skirted table with the butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, and the blender. I waited for Sally to turn on the food processor to puree the trout, and then, knowing the processor would drown me out, I turned on the blender and whirred yolks, butter, and lemon juice into a perfect hollandaise and put it in a pan identical to the one Sally had handed me. I saved hers just in case she was planning to discuss curdling, but when I handed her the newly made one, she just gave me that schoolgirl grin and said, “Nice work” and went back to the demonstration.

  That night, Sally asked me if I would be available to assist her whenever she was working in New York. I guess being able to cook on the floor is a valuable asset. My first official gig with her turned out to be an eighteen-hour marathon of television, demonstrations, and eating. We started our day at five in the morning right here at Morning in America. Back then, they had no prep chef, not much equipment, and no Romeo, so the resources weren’t much better than the makeshift theater kitchen. But we managed to pull off one live show and three taped shows without a hitch. We congratulated ourselves with a four-course lunch and some very fine wine. Before going on to the evening demonstration, we stopped off at a champagne-and-chocolate-ice-cream tasting that the James Beard House was sponsoring. At six o’clock, we were back in another theater setup, where Sally made gumbo for three hundred people in two electric woks. She was amazing. When the show ended at ten o’clock, the sponsors brought us champagne to toast the evening. Up until this point, I had been sensibly sipping the spirits, knowing that I wasn’t called “Thimble Belly” for nothing, but now that the day was over I greedily held my glass out. As I was draining my second glass, Sally asked me where I’d like to go to dinner. Who was thinking about dinner? Mentally, my head was already on a pillow. We chose a homey little Italian restaurant, and after dinner, and more wine, I was showing Sally how to burn amoretti papers and coming close to burning down the restaurant. The next morning we met for breakfast, and I thought I should explain my behavior.

  “Sally, I think I misjudged my dinner wine last night. I seem to remember dancing on tables.”

  She put her hand on my arm, got that impish look in her eyes, and said, “You were. But you were very good.” From that moment on, I saw her not as a star but as a cool person, and before long, we saw each other as really good friends. When the position at Morning in America came up, she told Sonya she had to have me. That led to the happy place where I am today.

  “Cooking together is such fun,” Sally exclaimed between ice cubes.

  “It sure is,” Mae and I echoed each other.

  Jonathan, however, did not look as if he were having fun. He might have been unsettled by the realization that the all-time greatest cooking personality could have keeled over in the middle of a conversation with him. He would become the medical case model for proof of dying from boredom. “I’m going to go to the fish market to see if I can get some seaweed for the lobsters,” he said.

  “Great idea. Did you remember the lobster tools?” I checked my notes to see what else was on my list. We’d spent so much time on the tarte Tatin that the lobster spot was getting short shrift.

  He rolled his eyes and smirked as he held up claw crackers and lobster forks.

  “It’s my job to ask.” I smirked back.

  “How about lobster bibs?” Sally asked. She never confused cooking with heart surgery and was always ready to ham it up a bit. Not that lobster bibs were so weird, but many of our guest chefs wouldn’t consider wearing a plastic bib with little cartoon lobsters running over it.

  “What a fabulous idea!” Jonathan was clearly into this lobster thing. “I’ll get some of those too. Do you think Jim will wear one? He’s so conservative.”

  “If Sally does, he will.” Mae was right. The show’s hosts were well aware that Sally was a beloved figure, and they were happy to follow her lead in hopes of glomming on to some of her star power.

  Sonya came back into the room just as Jonathan was leaving. She spent a little more time with the script before setting it aside. “I think this is just fine, Casey. What else can I do?”

  I looked around to see where we were. I was working on the last apple, Mae had all the dough rolled out, and Sally’s butter and sugar were now caramel. We were in safe territory. No more knives or heat. “I think we’re ready to assemble the tarts. Let’s line the pans up on Romeo.”

  We put seven pans in a row down the center of Romeo and I switched the Post-its from inside the pans to the surface next to them. We took our places, two on each side, and began our assembly.

  Sally had stopped chewing ice and was now munching apple wedges. Between chews, she said, not so subtly, “I met the nicest young man in Washington, last week. He’s a sous-chef at Citronelle and very jolly. I think you might like him, Casey.” She was so sweet that way. Before I met Richard, she was always suggesting men she thought would be good for me. During one of my particularly long dating dry spells, she mentioned that she had a friend who was a “bit crumpled and dusty” but a fi
ne fellow. Would I be interested? I thought she meant that he was a poor dresser, but it turned out that he was a very old, weathered college professor who, fortunately, found a mate before I had to tell Sally she must be crazy. Since I had kept her up to date on the turmoils of my transition from break to breakup with Richard, I imagine she was dusting off a lot of old friends.

  “Didn’t I mention that I bought a gerbil? I’ve really grown very fond of him.”

  “You did. But I thought that just might be a passing fancy.”

  “Nothing passing about it. Gerbils can live for two or three years. That’s a lot longer than my past relationship. ‘It’s not love, but it ain’t bad,’” I sang.

  “Don’t know that one. Roy Rogers?” Sally isn’t much of a fan of country music—she’s more of a Gershwin devotee—but she likes to hear me sing.

  “Merle Haggard.”

  “Never heard of him. I think you should come to Washington and meet this chef.” She raised her eyebrows in a question, and I smiled at her.

  “We’ll see.” I said.

  She turned her attention to Mae. “What about you, Mae. Are you still seeing that cute boy, Timmy?”

  “Tommy. No. I ended it last week and I’m so over dating twenty-year-olds with overdeveloped sex drives and under-developed communication skills. I’m looking for an older, sensible man who doesn’t consider beer guzzling and giving his friends wedgies cultural events. But, it’s so not happening.” Mae was in a tough position. For all that she looked like she’s playing dress-up from her nana’s closet, she is very mature. Older guys just don’t give her a chance to prove it.

  “What’s ‘older’?” Sally asked.

  “At least in his thirties.”

  “Huh!” said our septuagenarian.

  “I guess everything is relative,” Sonya said. The truth is that none of us ever thought of Sally as any age but ours. It wasn’t that she tried to act younger than she was; she was younger.

  “Hey, most boys do outgrow beer guzzling and wedgies at some point.” I wasn’t certain about the “most”; it was probably more like “a few.”

  “It’s not just that. Whenever he calls to go out, he says things like ‘Hey, you wanna go out sometime this week?’ I say, ‘Sure, that sounds great.’ Then he says, ‘Cool,’ but he doesn’t say where or when. At first I’d suggest something and that’s what we’d do. But it really began to annoy me that he wouldn’t at least once have an idea of his own. You know, call and say, ‘How about catching some sounds at the Knitting Factory Friday night’ or ‘Let’s go for Thai food and a flick on Tuesday.’ So after a while, when he’d call and say, “Wanna do something?’ I’d say, ‘Fine’ but make no suggestions. And he’d just hang there waiting for me to decide what we’d do. That would go on for days. He’d call and ask, ‘When can I see you,’ I’d say, ‘Whenever you like,’ and he still didn’t come up with an idea. I think it’s a definite sign of a couch potato in training.” She did have a point.

  “You can do better, Mae.” Having been married to the same handsome, adoring, man for over twenty years, Sonya was a creditable adviser. “I think that Danny O’Shea is pretty cute. And he’s single.”

  “I think he’s into Casey. He was, like, totally coming on to her but, you know, she was acting all chefy.”

  “Hey, I was nearly naked. I felt vulnerable. Besides, coming on to women seems to be his natural persona. He was much too obvious about it. I didn’t take it personally.”

  “I liked that he was open and direct. I’ll bet when he calls a girl he’s got definite plans,” Mae said.

  “I’m sure he does. And I’d bet those plans aren’t dinner and a movie.”

  Sally thought that was pretty funny. “What makes you think that?”

  “He’s flirtatious as hell and full of himself. He just acted like someone who spends all his free time seducing women.”

  “A real Casanova,” Sally said.

  “You got it.”

  “In my day, they would say that young men just need to sow their wild oats.”

  “Well then, my guess is that Danny O’Shea qualifies for a farm loan.”

  “So what about his party tomorrow night. Shall we all go together?” Just as we’d suspected, Sally was craving to go.

  “Definitely,” said Mae.

  “Since you’re staying out in New Rochelle, Casey, do you want to change at my hotel room tomorrow? As a matter of fact, it’s a suite, so why don’t you spend the night.”

  “That would be great. I was going to sleep on Mary’s couch, but it’s about two inches shorter than I am and it’s hard to stay curled up all night.”

  “I’m going to lunch at Gourmet tomorrow, so I’ll bring you your own key in the morning and you can just help yourself.”

  Finally, the apples were all in place. We covered three of the pans with Mae’s perfect circles of dough and slid them into the oven. As soon as they were baked, we would be ready to call it a day. Sonya looked at her watch and said she’d better run. I remembered that she was meeting with George and the suits and I was grateful the offices were in another building. I really hated to be in the same room with him. Sally said, “I think we should go out for a good, big lunch today. How about that?”

  “Count me in,” I said.

  “Oh, bummer.” Mae frowned. “I have to work at the family place this afternoon. We’re short-staffed since April and June are gone.”

  “The months or your sisters?” I asked.

  Mae had to be sick of my inane jokes about her family’s names. “That’s so lame, Casey.”

  “I know. I am sorry you can’t come, though.”

  “Thanks.”

  Sally suggested we try Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s new place.

  “Well, good luck, Sally. That’s one of the most happening lunch places in the city. I wonder how we will get in,” I teased. Never had a restaurant been too crowded to seat Sally.

  Sally took out her cell phone and little black address book. “I’ll make a call.” After waiting a few minutes for an answer, she boomed into the phone, “Jeannie, this is Sally . . . Woods. Do you think your brother could get two of us into lunch at Jean-Georges’s new place, today at one o’clock? Okay, call me on my cell phone.” She gave Jeannie her number and folded the phone shut.

  “Who’s Jeannie?” I asked.

  “She’s my hairdresser here in New York. Her brother is a dishwasher at Jean-Georges’s.”

  “Did it occur to you just to call the restaurant and tell them who you are? Or, for that matter, just say, ‘Hi, I need a table.’ Everyone knows your voice,” I said.

  “Oh. They wouldn’t care that it was me. They see real star types all the time.” Sally was probably the only one who really believed that restaurants weren’t wild to have her eat there. Even the haughtiest of places are willing to bend over backward to accommodate her. When we were in San Francisco on our way to Napa Valley, we decided at the last minute to eat at a trendy new restaurant known for its crab claws and attitude. I got there before Sally, and when I asked the very bored maître d’ for a table for three he looked at me as though I had warts covering my face and asked if I had a reservation.

  “No. We just decided at the last minute because we heard how remarkably good the food is.”

  My flattery did not impress him. He made snooty, snorting sounds and said, “We are full months in advance. And we never have empty seats.” That’s when Sally and Sonya arrived and Sally asked me if we could get in.

  “Not for a few months,” I said.

  There was a lot of undecipherable stammering on the maître d’s part, but we did make out the words “sudden cancellation.” Next to the crab claws, the best part of lunch was having him fawn all over us.

  Just before noon, Sally’s phone rang and she had a brief conversation with Jeannie. “We’re all set,” she told me. I hope we don’t have to wait a long time at a crowded noisy bar. I’m hungry.”

  WE ARRIVED AT THE restaurant, and Jean-Geor
ges himself met us and led us to a table in the center of the room, where a nervous-looking waiter was shifting flatware and plumping napkins. Jean-Georges pulled out a chair for Sally and with some effort shifted her back in to the table. “We are so happy to have you here, Mrs. Woods. We’d love to send some amuse-gueules to the table for you.” Loosely translated, the term refers to small, one- or two-bite portions of food meant to tickle the appetite. I was tickled already.

  Sally folded her hands together in prayer-like fashion and dipped her head demurely. “That would be lovely. Thank you.”

  “I guess he had time to Google you up and found out you were somebody,” I said when he’d left the table. “That’s great, because now we’ll get all kinds of goodies.”

  The goodies began to arrive in short order. In addition to the appetizers we had chosen, the waiter delivered three complimentary ones from Jean-Georges. Sally finished the soup she had ordered, tasted my crab spring roll, and was plunging her fork into a complimentary mushroom tart when she reached her free hand over to touch my hand, the one that wasn’t shoveling food into my mouth. “You’re still very sad about Richard, aren’t you?”

  “More disappointed. And still angry, I guess. But, truthfully, the breakup was coming for a long time. Our relationship wasn’t going anyplace. When we weren’t arguing, we were more like good friends than lovers. I just hate how it happened.”

  “It was mean. In my day, you did such things directly, like a gentleman. Unless, of course, it was during the war and you were in a hurry to marry someone else. Then you sent a ‘Dear John’ letter, but it was on decent stationery and included a little chitchat.”

  “Well, there was definitely no chitchat. Not even ‘Remember to floss.’”

  “It’s this high-tech generation.” I knew she wasn’t criticizing technology in general, because she herself was very much into the latest in hard- and software. “People are just not as courteous as they used to be. But Richard’s in the past and you have to move on to something other than a gerbil.” I gave her a sarcastic smile. “Do you know what you want?” she asked, taking another forkful of my spring roll.