There were many moments early on when I wondered if it wouldn’t be better to be eaten alive by a wild animal than to show up for work. But in the midst of those hours, there was one that I always loved. It begins around 3:30 p.m., when the servers set up the dining room. They set the tables, light the votives, and fill the water glasses. On the surface, it seems pretty mundane. Sometimes it also includes a bit of chaos, like when a wine delivery has come late and there are enough cardboard boxes in the entryway that passersby, on more than one occasion, have asked if we’re moving or going out of business. But even then, for that hour, the room has this calm, consistent thrum to it, a sort of potential energy that feels peaceful and reassuring. I looked forward to it every day, and I still do.
CHILLED PEACHES IN WINE
This was one of our opening desserts, and the recipe is based on an idea I found in David Tanis’s first cookbook, A Platter of Figs. For the wine, you don’t need anything expensive: just a light, crisp, dry white. You can also try this method with a rosé of similar character. And for the peaches, it doesn’t matter whether they’re white or yellow: just be sure to use great, fragrant ones with firm, dense flesh. This recipe depends almost entirely on the quality of the fruit. (At Delancey that summer, we used peaches from Frog Hollow Farm in California, growers of the best stone fruits I’ve had.) You can serve them after only a few hours in the wine, but after twelve hours—or twenty-four, if you’re good at advance planning—they’re translucent, totally boozy, and very much worth the wait.
This recipe is also wonderful with nectarines.
4 medium-sized ripe peaches (700 g, or about 1 1/2 pounds), rinsed and patted dry
2 tablespoons (25 g) sugar, or more to taste
2 cups (475 ml) crisp, dry white wine or rosé
* * *
Slice the peaches very thin (I aim to get 12 to 16 slices per peach). Combine the peaches and sugar in a large bowl or storage container, and toss gently to mix. Add the wine, and toss gently again. Taste, and if you’d like more sweetness, add sugar, a tablespoon at a time. Brandon likes these peaches a little sweeter than I do, so for him, I might use 4 tablespoons in all. When they’re sweetened to your liking, cover the container and refrigerate for several hours—or up to a day.
Serve the peaches very cold, straight from the refrigerator, in short, wide glasses, with a small ladleful of their liquid. Eat the peaches, and then drink the liquid left in the glass.
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
A TRICK FOR RED WINE VINAIGRETTE
Brandon loves to make vinegar, and one of the first salads we served at Delancey had a mustardy vinaigrette that used his homemade red wine vinegar. But after only a couple of weeks, we ran out of our stash. The vinegars that we could buy on short notice seemed thin and tinny in comparison, so Brandon devised this trick. It turns out that if you add even a little bit of red wine (ideally a fruity, light- to medium-bodied, not-too-tannic type) to your red wine vinaigrette, you can boost and deepen the flavor of the dressing, making up for imperfections in your vinegar. It makes a grocery store vinegar taste like a fancy one.
A word about Dijon mustard: We like our vinaigrettes on the mustardy side, and over the course of a lot of salads, we’ve discovered a few things about brands of mustard. Grey Poupon, it turns out, can taste bitter in large quantities, and Maille can taste too salty. Instead, keep an eye out for Roland Extra Strong, Beaufor, or Edmond Fallot. We use them interchangeably. They’re not too expensive, pretty easy to find—two of them are sold at our neighborhood grocery store—and their flavor is balanced but insistent. We use them for everything.
I like this dressing best on tender lettuces, with thinly sliced fennel or radishes and shavings of Parmigiano-Reggiano. But it’ll be delicious on anything you’ve got.
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons red wine
Pinch of fine sea salt
Pinch of sugar
1/4 cup (60 ml) olive oil
* * *
In a jar or small bowl, whisk together the mustard, vinegar, wine, salt, and sugar. Gradually add the olive oil, whisking to emulsify. The dressing should look opaque and somewhat creamy, almost peachy in color.
NOTE: This dressing will keep in the refrigerator indefinitely.
Yield: about 1/2 cup
18
Jared was our first full-time employee. He was the first person to throw himself in as far and as deep as we had. He was excited about the place, and he had copious energy to put into it. He wanted the same thing we wanted: for the restaurant to not only succeed, but also to be a very good place to eat. He had some cheffy tendencies that weren’t our taste, like wanting the salads to be taller and more elaborate, and he was desperate to put a boca negra on the dessert menu, a “chocolate decadence”–style cake he used to serve at his own restaurant. But he did things the way we asked him to, and often better than we could.
But let’s get to the important part: Jared was ripped. Most nights, he wore a turquoise do-rag, so he looked like he was ready to dead lift at Muscle Beach. He was also handsome. You would think the do-rag would cancel out that fact, but miraculously, it didn’t. He looked a little like Axl Rose circa 1991, the Use Your Illusion era. When I first came to that realization, I felt compelled to watch the “November Rain” video over and over on YouTube for half an hour, so if you need to put the book down and do the same, I get it. Don’t miss the kiss that Axl gives Stephanie Seymour at their “wedding.” When I was thirteen, it was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.
Jared wore cologne, possibly Drakkar Noir. He called me “Molls,” which seemed weird, but I was touched that he felt comfortable enough to give me a nickname. In fact, he felt comfortable enough to, on occasion, plant himself in front of my station and strike up a chat while he changed his shirt at the end of the night. I would go rigid as a piece of furniture and fix my eyes on the plate in front of me, hoping that my silent concentration said, Hey, no biggie! No biggie at all! Ha ha ha! Nothing inappropriate happening here, HAAAAAA HA! Just plating this apple crisp!
When he came to work for us, he had a girlfriend who would often come in for dinner. She was pretty in a Carmen Electra way, and she had outstanding cleavage. When she left, he would walk her to the door and stand there, where we could all see them, while he wrapped his arms around her waist and pressed himself against her, smiling the way you might smile at someone you’re in the process of undressing. During lulls in service, he sometimes did push-ups on the floor in front of the convection oven.
Jared didn’t drink. We noticed right away that he didn’t want to taste the samples that our wine reps brought around, and we assumed that we should stop offering. We didn’t know his story, but the first hint came only a few weeks after we hired him, when one of his former bosses came in for dinner and asked the server how Jared was doing.
“Oh, he’s great! Doing really well,” she said.
“You mean he’s not drinking?” the guy asked.
It’s not the kind of comment that you can ordinarily brush aside, but Jared was sober, and what he had been before was not ours to ask. Eventually, maybe because we were tired or working a lot, or because we needed him, or maybe a combination of all three, we forgot that the conversation had happened at all.
About two months in, sometime in October, Jared started pouring himself half a beer at the end of the night. Shortly after that, he started pouring himself a whole pint. One morning, Brandon saw him help himself to a beer at the end of his prep shift. But Jared wasn’t working that night, and it had been a hectic morning, the kind that could cause anyone to want a midday drink, so Brandon didn’t think much about it. In any case, Jared seemed to know exactly how far he could go without stretching the limits of our gullibility. We wouldn’t know the full extent of his issues for several more weeks, until other staff members told us that his midday beers were not an unusual occurrence and that he’d been bullying them into doing work th
at was his to do.
* * *
I catch myself pausing when I write about Jared, because I want to believe that he’s sober again. Sometimes I wonder if he will read this book. I don’t think he’s a bad person. In spite of his ego and his exhibitionism, he was someone we thought of as a friend. Brandon once bought him a powder-blue electric bass guitar, just because he saw it at a thrift shop and knew that Jared would like it. For the first couple of months, we couldn’t have run Delancey without him. The trouble was that Jared knew it, and even when it was no longer the case, he still believed it.
Brandon and I were teetering on the edge of incompetence. We didn’t really know how to run a restaurant, though we were learning as fast as we could. Jared made us feel taken care of. We could walk in the front door around noon, and he would have already been there for hours, making sauce, slicing mushrooms, grinding the Grana Padano, shaping the dough, toasting thin slices of baguette for me to plate with burrata, a creamy cousin of fresh mozzarella. We could sleep. We didn’t have to worry.
There were many weeks that fall when the three of us would eat lunch together every Saturday. Brandon and I would go to the farmers’ market to stock the restaurant for the weekend, and while we were there, we would look for something extra, something nice, to share for lunch. Then we’d bring it back to Delancey, and Jared would jump to cook it. It was his chance to show off, and we enjoyed the performance. There might be wood-oven-roasted scallops with white wine, butter, shallots, and parsley, or maybe steamed mussels in a similar treatment. We’d each have a small pour of wine in a crystal glass, the ones we usually save for customers. I remember taking pictures of one of those lunches, because it looked so unreal, like somebody’s fantasy of a restaurant owner’s life, like something out of a magazine article about Alice Waters. I learned to like oysters when Jared shucked a few Kumamotos one Saturday, made a mignonette, and dared me to try it. I hadn’t touched a raw oyster since I was six years old, when my parents offered me one and I nearly gagged on it. Those lunches with Brandon and Jared made me feel like we were a team, and even some kind of family. They made me feel like we were doing something right with Delancey, that Brandon was right in his belief that the restaurant could be an extension of us and everything we cared about.
It was important to us that Jared was happy, because his happiness would mean that we had a good restaurant. Jared’s confidence reassured and flattered Brandon, and it calmed me when I felt overwhelmed. I trusted his judgment readily, because unlike the two of us, he looked like he actually knew what he was doing. On days when I was tired or worried, Brandon would try to comfort me, but I didn’t want to hear it from him. You got us into this, I remember thinking. Jared would get us out of it.
* * *
When the restaurant opened, I had a dozen Rolling Stones songs on my iPod, and we listened to them nearly every night. There were a couple of neighborhood high school boys who occasionally picked up dishwashing shifts when our regular dishwasher couldn’t come, and whenever we’d get to “Gimme Shelter,” they’d look out from under their early-Beatles hair, nod to each other, and without looking up from the dishes, begin playing air guitar in tandem. But before “Gimme Shelter,” there was “Angie.” She was up first. I would turn on the Stones playlist just before we opened, as we hurried to finish setting up. The door was still shut, but I could see people lining up out front. I would stand at the sink, cranking the handle of the giant green salad spinner that sounded like an airplane taking off, and though I knew I should have been out of my mind with excitement and pride that people were not only coming to our restaurant, but waiting in line to come to our restaurant, mostly I felt like we were under siege. I was exhausted. Brandon was exhausted. By this point, even a dental cleaning would have felt like a vacation, just for the opportunity to lie down for an hour. Come five o’clock, I knew, 1415 Northwest 70th Street would become the battle for Minas Tirith, the part when Sauron’s army is going after the fortress door with a battering ram shaped like a flaming wolf’s head, and the pantry station, my station, would be the first one mauled. So we would turn on the Stones, and “Angie” would build and retreat, and Mick would plead, and everything would feel very clear and poignant, as though I were hovering up near the ceiling, looking down at us. And then the resignation would settle over me: this thing is really happening, and at least we’re in it together, the servers and the host and the dishwasher, and me and Brandon and Jared.
TONI’S APPLE CRISP
This is a tweak on my mother’s wonderful apple crisp, which is, in turn, based on a recipe from an old family friend named Mimi Smith. The apples wind up sweet-tart and saucy, and there’s plenty of crunchy topping. When I was growing up, my mother would make it for dinner parties or holidays, and she always baked it in a soufflé dish. Mimi’s original version suggests adding raisins, but my mother never used them, so I don’t either.
Note that the recipe also scales up nicely. At Delancey, I always made a double batch, and when the pan was empty, I would scavenge the last crispy bits from the corners before I passed it to the dishwasher.
FOR THE APPLES
8 medium Granny Smith apples (1.5 kg, or about 3 pounds)
3 to 4 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
4 to 6 tablespoons (50 to 75 g) granulated sugar
FOR THE TOPPING
1 1/2 cups (210 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup (190 g) brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 1/2 sticks (170 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup (50 g) walnuts, coarsely chopped
FOR SERVING
Heavy cream or vanilla ice cream
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lightly butter a 2-quart soufflé dish, or grease it with cooking spray. (If you don’t have a soufflé dish, an 8 by 8-inch baking dish will stand in nicely.)
PREPARE THE APPLES
Peel, core, and slice each apple into 8 to 10 wedges. In a bowl, toss the apples with 3 tablespoons lemon juice and 4 tablespoons sugar. Taste: they should be bright with lemon but lightly sweet. If needed, add more lemon juice and/or sugar. Scrape the apples and any juices into the prepared dish.
MAKE THE TOPPING
In a medium bowl, whisk the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and salt until evenly combined. Add the butter, and use your fingers to rub and pinch the butter into the dry ingredients until there are no large lumps of butter and the mixture is evenly crumbly. Add the walnuts, and stir briefly to mix.
TO ASSEMBLE
Sprinkle the topping evenly over the apples. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes, or until the top of the crisp is lightly browned and the apples are bubbling. Serve warm, with a splash of fresh cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Yield: 8 servings
19
For the first four months of Delancey’s life, Brandon and I were fueled by a potent mixture of lukewarm pizza, chocolate chip cookie dough, elation, and fear. We’d gotten the place open. We were making food for people, and they actually paid us for it! Standing next to my husband in the restaurant we’d worked so hard for, I finally understood the kind of insufferable pride that inspires parents of honors students to put bumper stickers on their cars (MY RESTAURANT IS AN HONOR STUDENT . . . ON YELP). There were nights when a customer would stop to hug us on the way out after dinner. There were nights when the bar would be peopled by regulars, strangers who’d become our friends. There were nights when I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. But there were also nights when I wanted to tear off my apron and my clothes and my skin and run, screaming, out the front door.
Great restaurant cooks thrive under pressure. They’re performers. They may swear and bitch, but they like the challenge, the intensity, the urgency. Or, if they don’t actively like it, they at least have the ability to tolerate it. A restaurant cook who is properly equipped for her job, personality-wise and otherwise, is a lot like an athlete. A successful athlete gets a charge
out of the challenge, and that’s how she’s able to cope. I am no athlete—I went out for high school volleyball and wound up as team manager—and I am not a great restaurant cook. I knew that on the June night when I decided to be Delancey’s opening pantry cook, but I hoped that I was wrong. I hoped that working in my own professional kitchen would make everything different, better. A lot of the time it did. But I couldn’t change my temperament. When faced with a dozen orders, I do not get an adrenaline rush. I do what I did on Halloween night of 2009: I cry.
Halloween fell on a Saturday. We’d been officially open for about two and a half months, and we’d had a lot of busy nights, but none of them were as busy as the first seating on Halloween. When we opened the door at five o’clock, there was a long line of families outside, adults and young children in costume, waiting to eat a quick dinner before heading out to trick-or-treat. The entire dining room was seated immediately. That’s not all that unusual, and on a typical night, it’s not a problem. Only some tables will order starters, while others, especially ones with very young kids, will cut straight to pizza. Tickets land on the pantry cook’s station at a measured pace, so that if you’re moving at a reasonable clip, you’ll rarely wind up “in the weeds,” in cooks’ lingo. But on Halloween, the servers began bringing me tickets at a few minutes after five, and they didn’t stop. By five-fifteen, I had twelve tickets in front of me, each of them for two or three starters.
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