Hungry Woman in Paris (19 page)

Then I looked up and saw the vagina—I mean the purse—of my dreams. It was a black leather bag with a gold zipper standing
high and mighty all by itself. I approached the counter and stared at the bag. Yves told the unoccupied LV saleswoman to bring
it down for me to look at. I immediately opened the bag and inspected the suede interior. It was so brand-new, not a scratch
or a speck of dust. Just holding it made me feel like a virgin again. The gold zipper looked like a garden snake with a gold
line, all curved. Yves saw the genuine excitement in my eyes until I saw the price: 695 euros… almost a thousand dollars!

“Can I buy it for you?” Yves asked. I took a moment to absorb his question.

“You want to buy it for me?” It didn’t feel like a gift to celebrate our lust for each other as much as a good-bye present.
I guess I’d done such a good job of convincing him how much I cared for him that he was now afraid I had serious feelings
for him and had to say good-bye.

“Yes. Let me buy you this bag,” he insisted.

“Yes. I would love that.
Merci, chéri,
” I said, accepting that whether he bought me the bag or not, whatever we had was over. Yves gave his French ID to the LV
saleswoman and she quickly found his account. I took a peek at the monitor when he wasn’t looking and saw he had made so many
purchases of bags that either his mother was getting an LV purse for Mother’s Day every year or he was a serial purse giver
and this was his M.O. for getting rid of women. I guess American men take you on a romantic weekend getaway and then break
up with you, and Frenchmen give purses. Hey, at least he didn’t take me to a Dodgers game to break up with me, like some Latino
men do.

Yves’s platinum card cleared and the transaction was complete. We were given a receipt and told to wait for our merchandise
at the main counter by the entrance. Yves held my hand and told me I was beautiful. Now he was being so sweet. Yves was going
to break up with me or not call me again and this was the way he did it. He’d started out as a fine wine and ended up being
just fermented grape juice.

Close to us, an American tourist grabbed a purse that a Muslim woman was considering buying. The Muslim woman reached for
it and took it away from the American woman. She was shocked by the American’s rudeness and pulled it out of her hands.

“Don’t you be pulling it out of my hands when I’m looking at it!” screamed the American tourist. The Muslim woman yelled back
in Arabic or bad French and a tug-of-war ensued. The LV “CIA” agents quickly escorted the American woman out while she shouted,
“You fuckin’ French bastards, why aren’t you kicking her out too! Kick the veiled rich bitch out too!” Everyone watching shook
their heads and silently thought to themselves, “Stupid Ugly Americans.”

C
ooking is too serious a job to leave to women,” Chef Sauber said via the translator at a demonstration. Sage turned to me
and rolled her eyes. That comment was almost as bad as one of Chef Tulipe’s—“That is why women should be in the kitchen; for
those special jobs that require little delicate hands”—and Chef Plat’s—“You have to be strong to be in a kitchen because it
requires a lot of stamina and strength, ladies.” Chef Chocon was the worst with his comments: “This is the kind of steak that
keeps your husbands happy” and “Handle the quail the same way you would handle a young bride.”

“Have any of the chefs ever called you ‘Chef’?” asked Sage. I thought about it. “You mean refer to me as ‘Chef’?” I asked
for clarification.

“Yeah, especially after they grade you. I’ve only heard the chefs calling the men in my group ‘Chef.’”

I took a few seconds to wonder why I’d never heard the chefs telling the male students, “This is the kind of fish that keeps
your wives happy so they won’t do the plumber.” Or “When you graduate from here you will go home to your girlfriends and your
wives and make them very happy and satisfied.” It was clear to me, and to many of the women, like Sage, who were serious about
becoming chefs, that for the French chefs the women were there to become better cooks for their husbands. The men were there
for a career; the women, for self-improvement.

“There is only one woman who owns a restaurant with a Michelin star in all of France, and she inherited it from her father,”
revealed Sage. I saw how upset she was and sympathized with her. She had worked as a cook and was tired of the sexism she
personally experienced in the culinary industry.

“What does it matter if you are talented and ambitious if you are a woman?” she lamented, shaking her head. “It’s just not
fair,” muttered Sage.

“All the nuts in this school have a rancid smell; even the chefs,” Henry once said when he was being a naughty translator.
That joke summed up everything. All the chefs who taught at the school, with the exception of Chef Plat and Chef Frédérique,
were in their fifties and came from a different generation, one in which sexist comments were perfectly fine; or maybe “politically
correct” had no translation or place in France. Henry had also jokingly informed me, “Didn’t you know, Le Coq Rouge is the
place where old French chefs come to die?”

Nobody studied for the written exam. It was ridiculous to study so hard for a test that didn’t matter. In a professional kitchen
no one will ask you which fish has four fillets; they will just want to see you filleting them and doing it right. So when
the woman giving the test turned around to talk to Françoise, everyone would whisper to his or her neighbor for the answer.
I rushed through it and finished it quickly.

I sharpened my knives and went over the ten recipes in my head. Bassie and I were taking turns describing all the steps we
had to memorize. Becky came up to us and told us that someone who worked in the kitchen had seen the ingredients and the recipes
for
pavé de boeuf
or the
blanc de barbue poêlé,
the beef and the fish dish. Bassie and I disregarded the eight other recipes and focused on those two instead. Sage came
over and sat next to me and began sharpening her knives violently.

“So what are the two recipes again?” she asked me.

“It’s the
pavé de boeuf
and the
blanc de barbue poêlé
… Man, I hope I get the beef recipe because the fish one has so many steps and we still have to have enough time to make
the hollandaise sauce by hand, which is the extra recipe to prove our technique,” I admitted.

“If you get the fish recipe, I’ll exchange with you. I like the fish recipe,” Sage said while scraping her chef’s knife against
the sharpening steel.

“Thanks,” I said, touched that she would do that for me.

Chef Plat came down to the courtyard and asked Group D to come up; they were ready for us. We marched upstairs and waited
in the hallway, as was the routine. The chef informed us that a red chip signified beef, and blue indicated fish. When my
name was called I said a silent prayer, stuck my hand into the pot, and pulled out a red chip. I smiled triumphantly, knowing
I would have more time and could make fewer mistakes.

Pavé de Boeuf
Beef Steak

4 rump steaks, 140 grams

peanut oil

CELERY PUR´EE

600 grams celery root

500 milliliters milk

salt, pepper, nutmeg

CELERY FLAN

400 grams celery purée

20 grams butter

100 milliliters to 150 milliliters heavy cream

2 eggs

salt, pepper, nutmeg

Decoration for flan: carrot, celery, and the green part of 1 leek

GARNISH

1 kilogram potatoes (waxy type) turned
anglaise
style

150 grams goose fat

Decoration: 1 bunch chervil

SAUCE

100 milliliters Madeira wine

400 milliliters veal stock

15 grams butter

1 truffle

Chef Plat opened a small tin can with no label and took out the truffles for the beef dish. He handed me a small truffle as
carefully as if he were passing me the baby Jesus.

“Take care of your truffle,” he advised. “If you lose it or it’s stolen you will not get another one.” I cut the truffle in
half and used half of it for the sauce and the other half to make thin strips for decoration.

Half an hour before the exam was to be over, my flan was still not fully cooked. It had been in the oven for almost fifty
minutes and it was not cooked! The toothpick I stuck in came back moist. I checked the oven to see if it was at the correct
temperature; there were no signs that it wasn’t working. Perhaps I added too much cream or maybe the oven was not functioning
properly. I quickly seared the meat and made one piece rare, another medium rare, another medium, and another well done to
show that I knew how to cook meat. I grabbed a pan for the meat to rest on, but I dropped it and it made a thunderous noise.
Everyone stopped and looked at me. My hands were trembling so much I couldn’t make them stop. Chef Plat yelled, “Relax” in
French. I had never been that nervous before. On many occasions my life had been threatened, but I had never felt scared;
here I was merely trying to make food and I was mortified.

With ten minutes left I started the hollandaise sauce for my technique test. I placed the metal bowl with the eggs over the
bainmarie and whipped away like Minutemen were chasing me in the desert. I was dehydrated and dying to get to the finish line.
With two minutes left I poured the failed hollandaise sauce into the presentation saucer and added salt and cayenne. It tasted
watery and I knew my eggs weren’t cooked. I felt like such a failure: not only had I failed to fertilize my eggs by my societal
deadline, but I also couldn’t even cook them on time. As my mother would say, “¡Ay, que vergüenza!” How embarrassing. What
a disgrace.

“C’est fini!”
yelled the chef, announcing that time was up, ready or not. Sage yelled and begged for more time:
“Une minute, s’il vous plaît!”
I handed him my platter with my beef and my deformed celery flan. I swear I’d done everything I was supposed to do and yet
it had turned out like dog doo-doo. Even the beautiful bird of paradise I had painstakingly designed on my flan looked like
a cockroach. The chef covered my sauce and platter with clear plastic and wrote a number on it for the judges. Next to the
other beef platters my dish looked mediocre. I sucked at turning potatoes and shaping them into perfect little oval things.
No matter how hard I tried, I did not have the coordination to get them to look even or professional. This was not one of
my talents, and it was painful to accept that even Benino, who was not the brightest guy, could turn out potatoes that could
be served at a three-star restaurant.

At the graduation ceremony the graduates of Intermediate Cuisine were called in alphabetical order and their ranking announced
after. When they called Miyuki’s name, Sage made a face.

“I knew she was going to come in first! It’s not fair,” Sage whispered angrily into my right ear. Bassie said a little too
loudly that Miyuki had originally gotten the fish, but she didn’t want to do it so she smiled at the chef in charge of the
exam and asked for the beef, and he happily obliged. This only added fuel to the fire. Sage had gotten the fish and was still
pissed off at herself for being so nonchalant about the exam and finishing five minutes late.