Mediterranean Summer

by David Shalleck

  Once the guests began eating, I turned to dessert. My original idea of layering the fruits and mascarpone in individual glasses like a parfait had to be shelved. As if a lightbulb suddenly flashed in my mind, I recalled a syrup method I had seen the great chef Jacques Pépin make on television years ago. I grabbed some apricot preserves from the pantry and blended them with a nice splash of cognac, thinned the mixture to light-syrup consistency with a little tepid water, and strained out the pieces of fruit. I brushed savoiardi—ladyfinger cookies—in the syrup, the same way as when making tiramisu. The cookies were arranged on the platter as a base, topped by a layer of sliced peaches, then a layer of halved strawberries. I spooned the remaining syrup over the fruits and stirred freshly grated nutmeg into the cream that was to be served on the side. A slightly grandiose presentation on a platter offered a bit of that abbondanza thing la Signora liked at dining events. Kevin, curious as to how I was going to handle the last-minute crisis, watched from the mess table, offering a hand if needed, and was impressed with how I spun the menu. As he left the galley, knowing how much time and effort were put into a meal that went through a last-minute makeover, he offered a roundabout compliment: “Better you than me.”

  To be truthful, even though I might complain about not having been given sufficient warning, I knew I could handle this type of situation. It took just a little bit of flexibility and ingenuity to extend a meal. But the lack of an open-air market in our part of Sardinia gave me a little anxiety about dinner and the upcoming party. Long before Sardinia, I had worried about running out of ideas and how to keep the menus fresh and exciting. And I had conditioned the owners to assume that regardless of our location, I would surpass their expectations with freshly minted, authentic regional cuisine. Now I was in a quandary.

  I tried to explain my problem to Patrick, but his answer was: “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, you’re the chef.” Rick at least offered sympathy, but for once he, too, had no quick answer.

  If I couldn’t find decent fresh ingredients, what could I do? With nowhere else to turn, I decided it was time to go on a treasure hunt below—in the stores of the galley.

  As a safety net, I routinely kept a large inventory of pantry ingredients on board, but prior to Sardinia the open-air markets and shops had been so rich with choices that I used pantry items only as addons. Now it was time to rifle through my stockpile, not just to augment my daily buy, but to create dishes anew. Before this European sojourn, it was easy to view a pantry as nothing more than a home for collected staples—a small bottle of some type of sauce or condiment here, used-once spices there—not a valuable cache of conserved foodstuffs. Now I would have to do what Italian cooks did in times of war and occupation—use what I had.

  It’s not as if I didn’t have experience varying a single basic ingredient in my pantry to make a dish a little more special each time. And by using these ingredients in different proportions and combinations, I had almost endless variety. I had been doing just that in creating flavored mayonnaises as well as la Signora’s new favorite canapé with spuma di tonno—spreadable tuna mousse—adapted from a recipe given to me by the chef at Albergo del Sole, one of my stages. At first it stood alone very well with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a few hot red pepper flakes, but while in Sardinia I shaved a little heady bottarga di muggine—cured and dried gray mullet roe—over the top. Thus, an ingredient of modest beginnings, fish roe, became a delicacy, and I was using a preserved foodstuff indigenous to an area. The same went for many of the crew pasta sauces, and items on the dessert menu such as panna cotta, the chocolate cake, and the crema di mascarpone. It had become time to turn some of my most everyday pantry items into true “hero” ingredients, which in turn lessened what I needed to find onshore.

  On an evening when the owners were invited by one of the guests to a restaurant for dinner, the crew took their own well-deserved night on the town. I decided to join them.

  We prowled the manicured streets of this jet-set community smitten by the very per bene women everywhere, before hopping into taxis to Sottovento, Sardinia’s infamous nightclub. Rick in particular appeared energized, like a long-caged animal finally let loose back in the wild, darting off this way and that, not yet fully confident that he was really free. He said words I had not heard since Antibes: “Hot, hot, hot ’cause it makes you feel good, good, good!” Our old Rick had reappeared, and it elevated the mood of everyone in our group.

  I was really relaxed and having a great time in the club, but my cash was evaporating quickly with drinks priced at thirty-five bucks each. I also wished I had better clothes to wear as everyone looked sharp in summer casual attire. Tanned women were in very short colorful dresses, men wore linen slacks and summer knit tops. I would have liked to stay longer, but the responsible side of me took over. I still had to shop for the big party, and I knew that when I woke up less crisp after a late night, my foreign-language skills slowed considerably and it was hard to put thoughts into words. I couldn’t afford that, especially in August. So I made my regrets to everyone, including Rick, who was now anchored next to the bar buying rounds for every woman within hailing distance.

  The next morning, while I prepared to make my way to the market, I realized Rick was still not up to start breakfast. I had never known him to oversleep. I went into the fo’c’sle.

  “Rick,” I said, shaking him. “What time did you get in?”

  “Five-thirty,” he said groggily, his cheeks blotched and puffy, looking like a prizefighter halfway through a tough bout.

  “You need to get out there, the owners are almost up.”

  “I can’t go out there,” he murmured, burying his head under the pillow.

  “Why not?” I became concerned.

  Rick recounted his last moments at Sottovento, when the club owner presented him with the bill for the night. Rick was shocked by its size and informed him that he did not have anywhere near the four and a half million lira, about three thousand dollars, with him. He suggested since the money was on the boat, he would come back the next day to settle up. Clearly, the owner of the club had been down this road before, so along with the head bouncer he drove Rick back to Serenity. With no resources to pay the tab, Rick was forced to wake il Dottore, who came out of his cabin and paid the bill by check without many words. La Signora never stirred, which is why Rick still had a job today.

  “Il Dottore immediately sent me to the quarters and dealt with the club owner himself,” he told me.

  “Then he’s the only one who knows,” I reminded him. “Let it go and get out there.”

  But Rick knew he had crossed a line and broken a code, humiliating himself in the process. He could not bear facing up to the damage he had done to his reputation with his boss. He kept repeating, “This is so not me.”

  With the humidity in the confined crew quarters, I could smell the alcohol emanating from his pores. I offered to help him up, just as he had stuck out his hand to me when we first met on deck four months back. “Come on, mon pote,” I said. He let me pull him up, but there wasn’t much more I could do. As much as I wanted to stick around, talk him through the day, and let him know it would be okay, sixty people would soon be descending on Serenity, and I had to feed every hungry mouth among them or two of us would be in trouble with the owners.

  Like a moth drawn to a flame, I also put myself in a spot that became my most embarrassing moment of the voyage. When the attractive cashier at the supermarket saw Serenity’s embroidered insignia on my uniform, she was jubilant because one of her favorite yachts was in the marina. When she asked if it was my yacht, I lied and said I was the son of the owner. She told me how lucky I was, to which I responded that every time I came to the boat, I was delegated to be the cook. As ridiculous as that line was, she bought it. She beamed with pride to be in the company of a member of the well-known family standing before her. I paid about eighteen hundred dollars in cash for two carts of groceries and hurried out.

  I hadn’t co
unted on how much of a favorite Serenity was to her. She came by on the morning of party day to see the boat. The owners were in the cockpit having breakfast, but in the confidence born of the belief that she was a friend of one of the family members, she called up to them and asked to speak to their son Davide. La Signora looked over the rail of the aft deck and must have asked her, “And this son of mine, Davide, what does he look like?” The girl must have described me to a tee, for la Signora came directly to the galley to inform me that there was a young lady on the quay asking to speak to her son. She was not amused. But when I went out to deal with my visitor, I had to pass the cockpit. Il Dottore looked up, smiled, and said in a low voice in front of his friends, “Bravo, bravo.”

  Guitar players will sometimes reverse hands to reinforce how much they’ve improved their fretwork. Switch-hitting baseball players are so adept at home plate it looks reflexive. And with professional soccer players, it is very hard to tell which foot is stronger. This is what the end-of-season party did for me and the crew. The large dining events in Monte Carlo had left such an impression that I had thought long and hard about how to establish procurement, prep, and service as routine. Ian assumed the role of second waiter. Once the party began, Rick balanced his time between plating and pouring. Scott received and scraped plates through the crew passageway. Nigel took his station in the crew shower for rinse duty, and Kevin loitered by the galley to help in whatever way he could. Patrick donned his blue blazer and tried to appear comfortable making small talk with the Italian guests.

  As I faced my ordeal, I remembered Patrick fully in control of the boat the night of the squall and how we all carried off any job he gave us without question or grumble. It became clear to me that we might not have survived that night had he shown any failure of resolve. Pulling off this dinner was not on the same scale of importance as getting us through gale forces, but that night had hammered home an important lesson of leadership. If the leader has no confidence in doing the job his way, why should those who have to carry out his instructions follow?

  On this night I had to show my own resolve, and I went about my business with the words of one of my mentors in my mind: “Be a chef in the kitchen.” The evening went smoothly. The menu, thankfully, was shorter than the first time, from the antipasti to the finish of petits fours purchased at a great pasticceria in town. And I was grateful la Signora sanctioned a meat course, giving me a free pass to take care of il Dottore’s request.

  When everything had been done, with no calamities, I took my first break. I then realized there might be calls for the late-evening snack, so I put the water on to be ready for the spaghettoni. The chanting never came. I heard the next morning that the chef on the neighboring yacht had his turn in the barrel and had got beaten up pretty badly. Antipasti, pasta, panini, salads, more drinking until three or four in the morning.

  As it became clear that the party had proved the ultimate bash for the owners, I took more than a little satisfaction in the way it had all come off. I had taken charge, made the galley my galley. There’s an old saying that goes, “Responsibility without authority is hell on earth.” Well, the responsibility had been all mine, and I wasn’t bashful about taking the full authority I needed. The best part of the experience was that my fellow crew members, with whom I had a relationship of equals, had not resented my barking out orders. To the contrary, they remained eager throughout the long evening to communicate that they were ready for the next task.

  A day later, Patrick lined the crew on the aft deck for the owners’ end of August parting ceremony. I got to the line a little late and took a place in my usual penultimate position, feeling bad for being tardy because I knew it was noticed. The owners and guests shook the hand of each crew member with a firm grip and a pause until their eyes met, then made some statement of unabashed gratitude. Dennis obviously loved his American-style breakfasts so much he gushed, “Absolutely great—you worked so hard. Don’t think it went unnoticed.” He then stuck a tip in Rick’s hand and mine, a nice gesture, but something we weren’t supposed to accept. Rick shot a quick look in my direction that said, “He ran us through so many hoops, take it.” We slipped the bills in our pockets, both knowing we would divvy the money up with the rest of the crew. Il Dottore continued on to me and said, “Bravo, grande chef.” La Signora added her own “Bravo, Davide. Everything was wonderful.” Flattering remarks like these were rare, but this time they felt particularly sincere and I basked in the praise.

  The minute the owners disappeared into their waiting car service, beers cracked open, and we all migrated to the cockpit, forbidden territory in August. Everybody breathed sighs of relief.

  The boat was “ours” again, and Patrick announced that we would sail to Corsica’s coastal towns of Bonifacio and Calvi to clean the boat and enjoy a little needed rest and relaxation. As we toasted Sardinia and the Emerald Coast, the passerelle and lines came on board, and we motored toward the Strait of Bonifacio. Once under way, I retreated from my mates to sort things out in the galley and figure out what was next.

  Eleven

  The Last Regatta

  Corsica and the Côte d’Azur

  The ride from Sardinia to Corsica, sans owners, sans stress, on our way to a week of mostly rest and relaxation, took no more than a couple of hours. We could be considered genti okay, an Italian shorthand way to refer to those that visit after the high season. A silent respect extends from those who provide to those who know when to arrive, making for a pleasant stay. As we continued to motor toward Bonifacio, I was hoping the hospitalities shown us would be as good as advertised. I must have been daydreaming a bit because I didn’t hear Rick come up to the aft deck behind me. “Hey, David, don’t look out, look down,” Rick called out as he flicked his cigarette ashes overboard, as if the sea around us was his personal ashtray. “Look down at the water.”

  How had I missed this? The waters were turquoise and aquamarine and so clear I could see rock formations of sand-colored stones on the sandy bottom. I had been fascinated by the rocks in this region—not only by their color but by their shape—and these were all worn round by time. Rick told me to enjoy the view and said that the shallow waters were great for snorkeling and scuba diving.

  “But not so good for deep-keeled boats,” he cautioned.

  I could see what he meant. The shallow waters apparently made transit through the channels along the north coast of Sardinia treacherous and not a time for distraction. Every so often, I spotted these submarine islands of perfectly rounded rocks that seemed to have bubbled up from the sea’s floor and somehow anchored themselves in place, there to seduce and destroy those who pass through these waters incautiously.

  A short while after we passed the small, almost barren islands of the Maddalena archipelago, I began to see in the distance across the Bonifacio Strait—known to be a treacherous wind funnel and seafaring challenge to cross because of the powerful mistral—vertical, sheet white cliffs rising majestically along the southern coastline of Corsica. Right in the middle of the palisades, I could see the outlines of what appeared to be a town that followed the crest and looked as if it had grown out of the stone below it. I was soon to find out that this was the vieille ville—the old town—of Bonifacio that rested above the hidden harbor area behind it.

  For some reason, for all of history’s conquerors, we remember learning early in life that Napoleon was born here and that the island is a part of France. But the locals—any local—on the island will proudly declare that they are Corsicans first and foremost. One look at the map tells you that most of its towns have Italian names or a close derivative, which is probably a result of the Genovese stronghold that reigned on the island. And Italians will remind you that the people are ethnically Italian, and some will even take the time to inform you that Napoleon’s birth record spells his name Napoleone Buonaparte. What intrigued me from reading about the island was that in the eighteenth century, the Corsican patriot Pasquale Paoli tried to set up Corsica as one o
f Europe’s earliest republics. In doing so, he adopted the profile of a Moor—la testa di moro—to be the image displayed on the island’s black and white flag, a nod back to an earlier time of rule and a symbol for pride and separatism.

  As we got closer, it became easier to make out where the cliffs flatten out and the buildings of the old town begin. Patrick, seeing me gaze in awe at this unique spectacle, completely different from anywhere we had been, came over and explained to me that every structure in the town is cut from the same white cliff rocks. The citadel at the top and the other freestanding watchtowers are said to be found all along the coast, outposts from another time that served to warn of possible enemy invasions. But the distant coastline was all a blur under the haze of the early September sun.

  Bonifacio is situated at the southernmost tip of the island, and as we approached the shoreline, I could see more clearly the true dimension of that slice in the coastline. We were heading into what seemed like a sharp ravine that flanked a narrow waterway inland, called a calanque in French, in essence a fjord-like inlet. Nature and her handmaiden time had cut through the cliffs to create one of the most protected harbors on the planet.

  Everyone kept up the merriment that started the moment of the owners’ departure. I had never seen Kevin this relaxed or jovial. The serious, sober, diligent guy who set the standard for everyone else when it came to doing his fair share was now passing out beers and big pats on the back. “Job well done, here’s to us,” and we all saluted each other and took another swig. Slowly, the party drifted toward the foredeck. For a moment, Serenity was our boat and the Mediterranean our private sea.