Under the Table (32 page)

Chef Septimus said, “Bravo, Miss Darling. Your timing is impeccable,” before moving on. Things were going so well, I was ticking things off my mental checklist at a gallop.
Sauce américain
prepared, strained, seasoned, tasted, ready. Check. Espresso crème anglaise prepared and resting in an ice bath. Check. Potatoes and celeriac peeled, boiled, mashed, and ready. Check. Bass marinating in olive oil, orange slices, and jalapeños over a tray of ice in the lowboy refrigerator. Check. Chocolate cakes prepared and waiting in the refrigerator in the pastry kitchen. Check. I was way ahead of schedule! I cleaned up my work area in the kitchen, retasted everything, prepared my chervil sprigs to garnish the fish, and took a peek into the main kitchen.

It was while I had my head poked around the corner, watching my classmates cooking frantically, that I began to have an uneasy feeling that I had forgotten something. I still had a half hour before I had to begin plating my fish course—the fish would take only five minutes to sauté. What was I missing? Fish, celeriac puree,
sauce américain,
green herb infusion, chervil sprigs, and what else? I racked my brain. There was something missing, definitely. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tried to envision the finished dish. I
thought back to the day we had prepared it in the
poissonnier
station, but all I could remember was showing Wayne how to make a beurre blanc sauce—that was it! I needed a beurre blanc sauce to garnish! The celeriac puree would go in a mound on the middle of the plate, surrounded by a moat of the pink-orange lobster sauce. The herb infusion would be evenly spaced, deep green circles in this sauce. Nestled next to this mossy green was supposed to be a drop of white beurre blanc sauce. A toothpick was then pulled through the two sauces, making a very pretty pattern. The fish would go on top of the celeriac puree, skin side up, with a chervil sprig and, and, and—oh, no! I had forgotten something else! A crisply fried, paper-thin slice of celeriac was supposed to crown each fish fillet. CRAP! How could I have forgotten not one but two things! I was running out of time!

I sliced celeriac like lightning and threw it in the deep fryer, willing it to crisp. I pulled it out before it was perfectly browned—no time, no time!—and flew back to my station to mix the fastest beurre blanc sauce on record. Beurre blanc sauce is made from a series of reductions—shallots are sliced and put in a small pot with white wine vinegar to reduce. When the vinegar has almost completely reduced over a low flame, heavy cream is added. When the heavy cream has been reduced by slightly more than half, then the whole is pulled off the heat and vast quantities of slightly chilled butter are vigorously whisked in. The resulting creamy, velvety sauce is strained and kept warm in a bain-marie until ready for use. A classic beurre blanc sauce does not have heavy cream in it, but this addition was a secret Chef Pierre had taught us—it helped the notoriously unstable sauce stay emulsified during a long service. I reduced, reduced again, the sweat sliding down the back of my neck and congealing somewhere near that frozen lump of dread in my guts that had come back full force.

I started to pray.

Time had run out.

I sautéed my four fillets of bass and began to plate. My hands
were shaking so badly, I slopped sauce all over the plates and had to wipe it up with my trusty kitchen towel. I suddenly took comfort in the fact that I was last, and had these few precious seconds to work. Chef Pierre called time, and the Level 3 student in charge of carrying my dishes out swept away with my tray of fish held high. I let out a deep breath. There was nothing I could do about it now, I was halfway through. Time to clean up and move on to dessert. I scrubbed the stove, wiped out the lowboy refrigerator, washed my knives and spoons. I took my last load of dishes to the dishwashers, packed up my bag, and headed into the pastry kitchen.

At some point, I realized, I had burned my wrist badly, and a huge blister had formed. Definite points off for carelessness if any of the chefs noticed it. I pulled the sleeves of my chef 's jacket down and soldiered through my last few tasks for dessert. In no time it was 2:42, and my four plates of molten chocolate cakes with espresso crème anglaise had been dusted with a beautiful shower of confectioners' sugar and sent off.

I was through.

 

But time refused to slow down. Almost immediately, it seemed, we were all back in the kitchens, in fresh uniforms and full of nervous excitement. We were finished! All that remained was hearing our critiques from the judges, receiving our official chef 's toques and diplomas from Chef Pierre, and finding out who had graduated with honors. We filed out to sit in front of the judges, promising Chef Pierre we would sit quietly and listen with no backtalk to what the judges—all distinguished members of the New York restaurant world—had to say about our efforts. I cannot remember a single word that was said about either of my dishes, but the overall critique didn't seem too scathing.

Suddenly, there we all were, in the school's auditorium, lined up alphabetically, waiting for Chef to call our names one last time and place the tall chef 's toques on our heads—the symbol of our
successful transition from student to chef. When my name was called, I waved to my parents and to Michael, barely visible in the crowded auditorium, before turning around so that Chef could place my chef 's hat on my head. At last.

Finally, everyone's name had been called, and we ranged across the stage, all of us beaming, tired, and happy. Chef André Soltner gave us all a heartfelt speech about his desire that we would become part of something larger, a growing appreciation of food in this country, and hoped that we would continue to work, create, and build on what we had learned in school, for that was just the beginning of our learning. We would all be chefs for a long time, and were expected to continue to grow and evolve and change the culinary world. A tall order for a bunch of exhausted students, but we could have done anything at that point, so filled were we with exhilaration.

There was just one more thing to be done before the Champagne was popped and we were free to mingle with the audience, eat hors d'oeuvres prepared by the peons in Level 2, and bask in the glow of being actual, real, honest-to-goodness chefs. Six of the twenty-four of us students would be graduating with honors—one by one, Chef Pierre called forward Ben, Jackie, Mimi (the rat), Angelo, Tucker, and me. We stood forward and received a pin to wear on our chef 's jackets and a certificate of distinction. And now, there would be one student who would graduate first in the class. As Chef Pierre brought out the beautiful chef 's knife to be presented to the winner, I thought of all the times that I had forgotten the salt, burned the puff pastry dough, overcooked eggs, and let soufflés fall. I certainly didn't deserve the honor. I had worked hard, and I was thrilled just to be one of the lucky ones to be awarded distinction. So when Chef Pierre called my name, I was staring off into space, a smile on my face, thinking how glad I was it was over, obviously not listening to a word being said. Chef Paul was forced to poke me sharply from behind. I was floored. I kissed Chef Pierre, Chef Paul,
Chef Jean, Chef Mark, Dean Soltner, Dean Jacques Pépin (I kissed Jacques Pépin! YES!)—even Chef Robert got a peck on the cheek.

And then it was over—the audience applauded us all, and we were free. Soon I was flagging down extra glasses of Champagne and fighting my way to the hors d'oeuvres tray, remembering Chef Paul at orientation, coaxing me to have one and enjoy it before having to make them by the hundred spoiled it for me. Nothing tasted more delicious. But soon, the food had run out, there was no more Champagne being poured, and my fellow alums were leaving to change back into street clothes and celebrate with their families. We all made plans to meet at Toad Hall to raise one more glass (or two or three or four) together, but right now, it was time to go.

As we trundled into the women's locker room one last time, each of us was met with a sign recently posted on her locker. It read “Congratulations, recent graduate. Please remove your belongings from this locker before 5 pm. Thank you.” It was 4:52.

The journey was over, and it was time to go home.

A
fter graduation, despite our vows to stay in touch, we went our separate ways. Surprisingly, though most of us work with food in some capacity, there are few working chefs among us.

Tucker couldn't wait to return to his wife and little kids in Michigan. He does work as a chef in the posh restaurant in town, and spends his weekends training as a National Guardsman.

Amanda moved to the city permanently to chef full-time, but the long hours and extremely low pay forced her out of the kitchen after a year. To keep up with her student-loan payments she works front-of-house as a restaurant manager on the Upper West Side.

Angelo is still around, working as a sous chef at a three-star hotel in New Jersey. Angelo had resisted our efforts to become a Manhattan transplant, saying that even if he did get a job here, he would commute. I guess you can't take the Jersey out of a “Jersey boy.”

After returning home to Virginia, Imo snagged a job at the Pentagon, working as a chef for the top-secret posh dining room. She prepares lunch every day for the country's top brass.

Keri moved back to Utah and decided to get a degree in business. She is happily married and making some gourmet dinners for her growing family.

Penny has dropped out of sight, to no one's surprise. She had managed to alienate almost all of us, especially those of us who had been her teammates. But as I looked over our class as we ranged across the auditorium's stage, I caught sight of Penny. She was
clutching the blue linen envelope containing her
grand dîplome
in her bird-claw hands and her eyes were wet. I wondered whether she had managed to squeak through the final or whether her envelope contained a blank piece of paper. I hope she made it, and that her dream of being the only real chef in her little midwestern town came true.

Wayne shipped out on a cruise liner to work as a chef for the buffet, and ended up cruising the world while churning out lobster thermidor by the gallon.

Jackie landed a job as a food stylist at the Food Network, her dream job. She had taken courses in food styling before becoming a chef, and now combines the two to make some of the best “food porn” in the business. She spent every free minute planning her wedding and baking her own wedding cake—chocolate, of course.

Mimi, my social nemesis, used family connections to land an internship at Daniel. I heard she didn't last long.

 

Michael took my parents and me out to dinner at Bouley that night to celebrate. I was beyond exhausted, beyond excited. Everything seemed to have happened so fast—I was one of the only students to graduate without a job already lined up, and suddenly school was over and I was officially unemployed. I couldn't wait to add “graduated first in class” to my résumé. I had accomplished my dream—at last, I was a Chef, with a capital C and a tall toque and a killer set of kitchen skills. I could make elaborate delicacies in my sleep, and no recipe, no matter how complicated, could intimidate me. As I sat at our gorgeous table at the restaurant, enjoying sautéed rockfish (I thought my bass with lobster sauce was just a smidgen better), I thought about the frenetic rush that was certain to be going on a few feet away, behind the scenes. As I munched my way through three more courses, cramming down the last of the petits fours on my way out of the restaurant (someone went to a lot of trouble to make those, as I knew better than anyone. The least I could do
would be to eat them all!), I thought I would take my time, see what kinds of jobs I could get, before rushing into something I might not love. Chef Jean's advice for making caramel came back to me again: Good things can't be rushed. Have patience, you will know when it is right.

Well, I knew it was right with Michael, and we were married two weeks after I finished school, on our Caribbean beach at sunset, with just our families around us. That night, we went out to dinner, and it was nice letting someone else cook!

Against all odds, I had done it, beating out all of my very talented friends (and a few bitter rivals) to graduate first in my class. Despite the many mistakes I had made along the way, and the near disaster during the final, somehow I had made it through and had earned my tall toque with its hundred folds. Now I was a chef.

For a moment or two I relived my old fantasy, the one I had had before chef school, of being the next Food Network superstar, with all the shiny kitchen gadgets and the adoring studio audience hanging on my every dash of salt, with a self-titled cookbook and a restaurant earning three stars from Frank Bruni in
The New York Times
. These dreams seemed a little silly to me now, a little naïve. I had dreamed them up without any idea how hard it was to get there. Even now, with months of very hard work behind me and with my diploma in my hand, I was only just beginning to learn all the things I needed to know to be a good chef. It would take lots more cooking, making both mistakes and successes, before an eponymous restaurant (let alone cooking show, line of cookware, and frozen entrées) was a possibility.

Still, with my shiny new accolade on my résumé, I was certain that it wouldn't be long before I would find work in a premier restaurant, polishing my skills and picking up recipes and tricks from a superstar chef. The Institute pretty much guaranteed job placement somewhere after successfully completing a degree, and I was sure that I could get a job without too much trouble.

Trouble was, sometimes chefs didn't want a brand-spankingnew chef just out of school. After weeks of quiet on the job front (it was Christmastime, after all), I met up with a career counselor at The Institute to see how my future was going. Almost everyone else in my class had already been placed in a position (far from the city) or simply gone full-time at the internships they had been working throughout school. My lack of internship experience in a New York City kitchen was a problem, but I hadn't had a choice about that: with my student loan payments due every month, I couldn't afford to work for free. What worked against me even more than my lack of restaurant experience was my GPA—it seemed that many chefs wanted to hire people to work in the kitchen whom they could mold to their own way of doing things, not some greenhorn know-it-all who would insist on doing things “like we did in school.” While I protested that that wasn't me, that the school's chef-instructors had done a wonderful job of breaking my spirit and I could easily work under anyone, it didn't do me any good.

Looking over my previous employment history and education, the career counselor recommended that I try for a job at a food magazine. It would fit with my work experience and keep me near the food, the only place I wanted to be. I ended up working in the editorial side of a great cult foodie magazine, and while the closest I was getting to the prep work I had grown used to was helping their test kitchen source arcane ingredients, it was about food, and that was good. Writing the occasional blurb or short piece about ice cream shacks of the East Coast, olive oils from Chile, and honey festivals in rural England combined my love of the written word with my love of food. A food pairing made in heaven, at least for me.

I still love to cook, and do it every day, but after the pressures of school, I knew I was burned out. I no longer have the deep desire to give up the next five years of my life for a spot at the
saucier
station, even at Adour. And that's okay. I have found my passion, combining my love of words with my obsession for food and all things culinary.

 

For now, my chef 's toque remains in the kitchen cupboard, next to my black Hawaiian sea salt and a set of wicked sharp garniture tools, waiting. Maybe someday, when I pay off my student loans, I will open a little restaurant, one with mismatched Wedgwood plates, real silver, and no set menu, just whatever I feel like creating from my early-morning trips to the Greenmarket. I'll have a cult following of people devoted not to the next Food Network star, but to great food. I don't think I will be resurrecting my polyester checked chef 's pants anytime soon, but maybe I will wear my tall toque on special occasions. Until then, I keep my knives sharp and my skills sharper, scoping out new ingredients from unexpected places, dreaming up new plating ideas, and sometimes whipping up a ridiculously decadent dessert, just because I can. Every time I pull a perfectly risen chocolate soufflé from the oven, its high crown a perfect dome dotted with crispy bits of caramelized sugar, wreathed in a wisp of escaping steam, I think of Chef Mark's patient instructions. Every time I flip a perfect omelet effortlessly from the pan, I see Chef Jean's smile, and I am grateful.