Evan’s anxiety made me long to alert Leo’s wife, Francie, to the imminent arrival of her husband and his newfound group of television friends. It was five thirty, and I guessed that Leo’s wife might be home any minute. I couldn’t believe that most people would welcome strangers with a camera into their homes with absolutely no notice. It was easy for me to imagine times when even I, who would drop almost anything for a gourmet meal, wouldn’t want Chefly Yours descending on my condo. Of course, I didn’t have Francie’s number and had no way to find it. I didn’t even know her last name. The poor woman! And what if she freaked out when we all showed up at her house? What if she ruined Josh’s chances of winning? For all I knew, the unknown Francie might toss us out like yesterday’s fondue!
Evan cut samples of the powerfully flavored cheese for us all and moved on to a mouthwatering Explorateur. “Decadent and luxurious is how this cheese is best described.” Evan cut through the rind to reveal a creamy center. “This is a triple-crème at its finest.” He really was nervous! He knew as well as I did that cheeses should be eaten in order from mild to strong. He spread the cheese onto four crackers, and in spite of the competition from the lingering taste of the Gorgonzola, all of us, even Robin, groaned and murmured approval.
Decadent and luxurious indeed! I closed my eyes to savor the rich flavor. The thin, crispy, free-form crackers were perfect. Others might not appreciate the need for a good cracker, but I hated ruining an extraordinary cheese by smearing it on the equivalent of cardboard and then having the whole mess break apart in my hands. Just as bad were the kinds of crackers loaded with seeds, nuts, or spices, textures and tastes that bonked you over the head, obliterating the taste of the cheese. Ick!
Evan gestured around the store at the walls filled with bottles. “Tell me about your meal, and we’ll match you up with the right wines. I have a few open bottles that have been breathing for a while, so we can start by trying those.”
Josh described the menu, and Evan helped with the choice of wines. My mind wandered. I was more interested in the food than I was in what we’d drink with it. In particular, the little samples of cheese had whetted my appetite for more, and I had no idea how I’d resist absconding with Josh’s cheese tray and leaving none for anyone else.
When we’d left the shop, Robin again started giving orders. “I’ll ride with Leo so I can fill him in on the release papers he’ll have to sign. And you’ll follow us. Don’t lose me! And we’ll meet you outside Leo’s house, okay? This is it, people! Are we ready to roll?”
“You bet.” Josh clapped his hands together. “This is going to be a fantastic meal, Leo. You’re going to be in great hands tonight.”
THREE
FOLLOWING Robin turned out to be easy. Leo’s house was only a few blocks away. Its appearance surprised me. Fairfield was so uniformly upscale that I’d expected to find Leo and Francie living in a large, beautifully maintained place. As it turned out, their house was a brown-shingled Victorian in decent condition, but the yard, which must once have been attractive, was a neglected mess. My parents run a landscaping business, Carter Landscapes, and I had the strong urge to sic both of them on Leo and Francie. On the upside, the house, much older than the others in the neighborhood, had the charm notably missing from the new construction that dominated the street. I’d waited in the parking lot to make sure that mine was the last car to leave; I hadn’t wanted to get there until the rest of the group had arrived. Lingering, I again primped in my rearview mirror, and then locked my purse in my Saturn, took my keys with me, and made my way past overgrown shrubs and weeds to the back door, which stood open. Through the screen door, I saw Josh standing at the kitchen sink.
“There you are,” he called to me.
“Sorry.” Smoothing my hair and reapplying makeup must have taken longer than I’d calculated.
My first thought on entering Leo’s kitchen was that Robin must be having a fit. So much for the theory that Leo’s appearance meant that he’d have a fancy, photogenic kitchen. At a guess, it had been updated thirty or forty years earlier, and renovations done since then had been partial. The cabinets were made of a pale synthetic material intended to simulate birch, and the floor was covered in brick-patterned linoleum. The walls were white, as was the refrigerator, but the dishwasher was black, the sink was stainless steel, and the stove a hideous avocado green. Although the room itself was large, there was little free counter space, and the layout had evidently been planned by someone who didn’t cook. The refrigerator was far from the sink and stove, and I wasn’t sure that it would be possible to open the refrigerator door without smacking the new-looking but awkwardly placed granite island in front of it. I sighed softly. Well, if anyone could work in this space, it was Josh. And at least the range was gas, and at least Josh had a cooperative subject, Leo.
In contrast, Francie, as I assumed her to be, looked less than cooperative. She was a slim, almost scrawny, woman with frizzy waves of dark hair. She stood with her arms crossed while addressing Robin in a high-pitched voice. “It’s just that we don’t seem to have the best setup here, and . . . well, I just don’t know about all this.” She uncrossed her arms and waved her hands around almost in the manner of a startled infant. “I’m not, uh, someone who belongs on TV.” Then, as if having hit on an effective argument that stood a chance of driving her unwanted guests from her house, she said with confidence, “I really think you could do better.” She ruined the effect, however, by throwing a pleading glance at Leo.
“Hey, it’ll be fun, Francie! Lighten up. I was a little nervous at first, too, but wait until you see what this chef here, Josh, is going to make for us. Actually, what he’s going to teach us to make. There’s lamb for you. Lamb chops. You love lamb chops. Come on!” Leo whispered something into wife’s ear.
She shrugged and forced a smile. “Well, I guess so. Why not? I am starving.” Francie took off a navy linen blazer and tossed it on the back of a chair by a small breakfast table. When she turned to face us, she had a hint of a smile. Although she was not even close to beautiful, she was striking, with high cheekbones and a strong jaw. With the right makeup—she wore none that I could see—she’d have looked distinguished. Now that she’d taken off her blazer, her white linen shell revealed a surprisingly curvaceous build. “So, what do I do?” she asked.
Josh already had the cheese selections unwrapped and coming to room temperature on a plate, and the rest of the ingredients were spread out across every available space. Within minutes, Josh, who was used to running a restaurant kitchen, had finished assigning all of us to separate work areas. Digger, Marlee, and I were given the humble task of peeling potatoes for the gnocchi. Josh was showing Leo and Francie how to make the arugula pesto. We potato peelers were stationed at a small table, and although we kept bumping elbows, our spirits were good. Josh had had the foresight to bring a lot of his own kitchen equipment, including some pots and pans, but Leo and Francie did have an adequate supply of the basics, including a Cuisinart food processor.
At the counter near the sink, Josh was teaching Leo to make pesto in the Cuisinart. Standing next to Leo, he was supervising as Leo put the ingredients in the bowl of the machine. “So, we have arugula, pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan cheese, Calamata olives, lemon juice, a little salt, and olive oil. We’ll blend this all up and have a fantastic, spicy pesto for the homemade gnocchi.”
The loud noise from the food processor almost drowned out Nelson’s voice. “Sorry. Sorry. Hey, Josh? Excuse me. Can we do that again, Josh? Something is going on with the camera.”
I gritted my teeth. What was Josh supposed to do? Cast some magic spell that would make the pesto ingredients fly apart and reconstitute themselves? Josh was a great chef, but he was a chef. He wasn’t Harry Potter.
“Seriously?” Josh glared at Nelson but kept his cool. “Okay, we have enough here to make another batch.” Josh emptied the Cuisinart bowl, had Leo repeat the process of making the pesto, removed the container from the food processor, dipp
ed a spoon in, took a taste, and nodded to himself. “A touch more salt, and that’s good to go.” He handed spoons to Francie and Leo and let them try. Both responded with smiles.
Robin squeezed between Josh and Leo, grabbed the Cuisinart bowl, and angled the pesto toward Nelson. “You have to hold it like this so we get a good view. Here, let’s put it in something more attractive.” Reaching across the counter, she wrangled a spatula out of a ceramic vase that held cooking utensils and knocked over the vase and its contents. Ignoring the mess she’d made, she grabbed a little hand-painted bowl that sat on a windowsill. “There, here’s a nice bowl for the pesto.” Nelson lowered his camera and waited until Robin had finished meddling in Josh’s business.
When Josh had dutifully transferred the pesto into the pretty bowl, I reluctantly realized that Robin had been right: the reds and oranges of the hand-painted bowl made the pesto look especially green and appetizing. In this instance, anyway, Robin’s bossiness was justified.
When the potatoes were peeled and cooked, Josh had Francie and Leo put them through a ricer and spread them out on a tray to cool. The next step, I knew, was to work in eggs and flour. “Make sure your potatoes are nicely cooled,” Josh warned, “or you’ll cook the egg when you blend it in.” With Josh keeping a close eye on the dough, Leo and Francie rolled it into long snakes, cut off small pieces, used forks to make ridges in each piece, and then curved the gnocchi into C shapes.
“Oops, sorry.” Nelson careened into me while trying to capture me slicing the peaches for the peach and raspberry cobbler.
“Watch it, Nelson!” Marlee shook her head in disgust at the cameraman’s clumsiness.
“Yeah, man,” Digger added. “Watch where you’re going.”
Nelson looked truly apologetic. “I’m sorry. It’s crowded here.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine,” I assured Nelson, who was right about the crowding. Although the kitchen was spacious in the sense of being a large room, the work areas were infuriatingly cramped.
“No, you’re not fine,” Robin informed me. “Nelson, get yourself and your goddamn camera over here. Here, where the chef is cooking the food!” She pointed sharply at the innocent gnocchi. “Zoom in and give me something to work with. Stay on the food until I say otherwise.”
Despite Robin’s demanding attitude and Nelson’s repeated need to reshoot cooking steps and instructions, Josh was able to teach Francie and Leo how to prepare the rest of the meal and how to coordinate the timing so that the separate components of the dinner were ready at the same time. When the gnocchi floated to the top of the pot of boiling water, the lamb chops were perfectly cooked in a nest of herbed vegetables, and the fish was seared to perfection. At that moment, Josh popped the peach and berry cobbler into the oven to cook while dinner was being served and eaten. The cheeses were on a platter, and the tomato salad had been tossed in an aromatic dressing. The cheese and salad course would follow the main course, and the cobbler would be served last.
I was not used to watching Josh cook without being free to sample his delectable creations. Although he’d put me and everyone else to work, I felt stuck at the periphery of the scene. My stomach obviously did, too: it began to growl. When Josh tossed the hot gnocchi into the pesto, I couldn’t resist any longer. Catching his eye and glaring at him, I transmitted the message that unless I got some of this food, he was going to have one cranky, miserable girlfriend. I was absolutely ravenous, since it was nearing eight o’clock. As Josh must have sensed, everyone else clearly felt the same way I did. In the chaos of getting plates and serving platters to the table, he let everyone get in a few spoonfuls of food and practically had to swat Robin away from the gnocchi. He also remembered to set aside gnocchi with butter only for Leo. I grimaced when I saw Marlee double-dip her spoon back into the bowl. How uncheflike! Between her dirty fingernails and germ-sharing tasting method, I wondered how this woman’s restaurant ever passed a health inspection.
At last it was time to film the dinner scene. The large dining room was painted a deep green that I hoped wouldn’t be too dark for the camera. Francie and Leo took their seats on delicate Windsor chairs at a round wooden table beneath what I thought was a fake crystal chandelier. The table was too small for the generously proportioned room and too chunky for the chairs. The piece of furniture that dominated the dining room was a gigantic sideboard with little mirrors and elaborate carving. It seemed to me that the dining room, like the kitchen, had been assembled bit by bit, without any sort of overall plan or theme to guide the selection of elements, none of which had anything in common with any of the others. While I’d been busy in the kitchen, someone had tried to impose eye appeal on the unfortunate dining room by creating an attractive table setting. The matching runner, place mats, and napkins were made of a Victorian-looking fabric with stylized flowers and vines on a black background. The stainless flatware was heavy and oversized—at a guess, the pattern had the word Hotel in its name—and each of the two places had two stemmed wineglasses, one large and one small. Someone, maybe Marlee, had opened two bottles of wine, one red and one white, and had placed them on the table. Although I knew very little about wine, I knew that red wine, or at least some red wine, was supposed to be opened ahead of time so that it could breathe. But white wine? And wasn’t white wine supposed to be cold? Or at least cool? I didn’t ask. Fortunately, as I reminded myself, the show was more about food than about wine; it certainly wasn’t supposed to be about interior decorating.
As Josh served Francie and Leo, I noted that he deserved a lot of credit for seamlessly putting together separate dishes for a couple with radically different food preferences. Leo’s plate of halibut and buttered gnocchi, Francie’s plate of lamb chops and pesto gnocchi, and a platter of roasted vegetables all looked divine. Probably because of the shared vegetables, I had the sense of one coordinated meal, not just a collection of separate items. Leo’s willingness to eat the vegetables had surprised me, since they’d been cooked in the same roasting pan as the lamb, as Leo knew. Leo had participated in the cooking, he’d seen the vegetables in the roasting pan, and Josh had even pointed out that they’d been cooked with the meat, but Leo had said that they were fine for him. I’d heard him myself. In any case, now that the main course had been served, the table looked beautiful.
Nelson’s camera light shone on the pair of diners. Looking jovial and pleased with himself, Leo poured white wine into his own glass and red into Francie’s. Then, just as Leo raised his glass, presumably to make a toast, Robin stopped him. “Wait!” she cried. “We need to get some good footage of the dishes before anyone eats them. Marlee and Digger? Why don’t you carry everything back to the kitchen, to the breakfast table, and Nelson can shoot the plates there, where the light’s better.”
“Sure thing,” Marlee said as she handed the vegetable platter to Digger and then removed Francie’s and Leo’s plates. “While we’re at it, we’ll sneak a little taste for ourselves from the leftovers in the bowls.”
Josh, I knew, would take it as a compliment that another chef wanted to sample his food. My private thought was that Marlee was hungry. I certainly was, and I suspected that everyone else was, too.
Digger sighed as he carried away the platter. “At this rate, the food is going to be dead cold by the time they get to eat it.”
He wasn’t kidding. It must’ve taken Nelson ten minutes to film the food that had been taken away, and when it was finally returned and Leo and Francie finally got to take their first bites, Nelson stopped them and announced that they’d have to reenact their first tasting. Poor Josh looked ready to wring someone’s neck, and Francie and Leo were exchanging glances of exasperation. Marlee and Digger both looked uncomfortable in some way that I couldn’t interpret. Was Josh’s competition sympathizing with him? I doubted it. And when Digger suddenly started to beckon Josh, as if he wanted to call him aside to have a word with him, I was furious. This was no the time to chat it up with Josh! This was his big moment! The thought crossed my
mind that when Digger and Marlee had carried the food back to the kitchen, they’d concocted some nasty plot to spoil Josh’s chances of winning, a scheme that began with getting him away from the table. Fortunately, Josh ignored Digger and, with Robin’s unwanted help, rearranged the food on the plates. My heart went out to Josh. He took tremendous pride in everything he prepared. Although the plates now looked appetizing, Josh’s hot food must now be lukewarm, if not outright cold.
Even so, once Leo and Francie were at last permitted to eat, Leo raved about his halibut. “This is just spectacular. The fish is cooked perfectly, and I love the sweet crust on it. That’s just from the sugar you sprinkled on it?” He took a bite of the gnocchi. “These are heavenly. And the roasted vegetables smell incredible!”
Francie, on the other hand, looked anything but enthusiastic. After she’d tasted her lamb, she grabbed a water glass and took a large gulp. My stomach dropped as I watched her force herself to swallow a few more bites. I looked nervously at Josh, who was staring so intently at Francie that he looked frozen in place. What could possibly be wrong? Even the best chef makes a mediocre dish now and then, but Josh had never cooked anything inedible. Of course, the lamb chops should have been served hot. Maybe the fat had congealed, I told myself. Still, even if the lamb wasn’t at its best, it just couldn’t be as repugnant as Francie seemed to find it. Francie, I told myself, must be a picky eater, someone who whined and complained about everything she tasted.
“And how’s your dish, Francie?” prompted Robin, who had been so focused on Leo that she’d obviously failed to notice Francie’s grimacing.
Francie dropped her fork and made eye contact with the camera. “The truth is,” she said emphatically, “it’s just awful.”
Fed Up Page 3
