And now Perillo had us cooking this stuff. One day, we were given a fillet of salmon to poach in a court bouillon (water, wine, vinegar, bay leaf, carrot, onion, garlic, celery) and serve with a sauce béarnaise.
I made the bouillon and set it to simmer. Then I started the béarnaise: beat egg yolks with a vinegar–shallot–cracked peppercorn–tarragon reduction; ladle in clarified butter; beat the hell out of it with your whisk; hold it over hot water until you’re ready. When the bouillon was set, I tasted it. It was pretty much all you can expect from water, vinegar, wine, and so on. I tasted the béarnaise. A little rich, a bit thick. I thinned it with a few drops of water. Then I tasted it again. I added some more salt.
The bouillon was now at about 175 degrees. I figured the heat would drop ten or so degrees when I added the fish, which would still be in bounds for proper poaching temperature. I laid the fillet in, gently, and let it poach. Killing time, I stirred the béarnaise. I waited ten minutes, watching the salmon fillet float dumbly around the liquid. The color began to fade and turn from red to pink. At some point near the eleven-minute mark, it looked just done. I removed the salmon from its bath and blotted it dry. I poked it with my finger; it seemed to have the requisite amount of give. Then I put it on a warm plate, sauced it with the béarnaise, grabbed a couple of utensils, and carried the whole thing over to Perillo.
“Hey,” he said, tipping the plate back and forth. “Nice consistency with the sauce.” He cut the fillet open. It had the same appearance as the salmon that had defeated me at those dinners. He tasted it, chewed, and looked at me. “Okay, take a bite.”
I hesitated.
“Do you need a fork? Here.” He handed me a fork.
“No, I have one.” Another couple of silent beats went by.
“Well, the clock’s ticking—let’s go.”
I reached over, cut a piece off, and put it in my mouth. I wrinkled my face.
“Well,” he said. “What do you think?”
“Oh, man,” I answered. “It tastes like …” Shit? Yes, it does. But no, you better keep it clean. “It tastes like mud.” He looked distressed. He leaned in with his fork and speared another bite.
“No, no, no,” he said, chewing. “It’s not that bad. Okay, you need a little more tarragon in the béarnaise, but it’s not the end of the world.
Don’t beat yourself up. The salmon’s done really nicely. It’s not mud—you did a nice job.”
I thanked him and walked back to my station. I paid close attention to the color of the fish. I started poking it again and again with my fingers, just to remember the texture of it for next time.
WE HAD OUR SKILLS II final on the last day of class. There would be a written component after dinner, but during class we’d cook. We’d gotten our menu assignment: beef medallions—sautéed—to be served with a sauce chasseur, along with deep-fried onion rings, potato gratin, and broccolini. I had to present my plate at 5:41.
There were things that could be done in advance. At 4:45, I heated up a gallon of water, salted it heavily when it came to a boil, blanched the broccolini, and shocked it in ice water to keep it green. I rolled it between paper towels and set it off to the side. Later, a few moments before presentation, I’d heat it up with a little butter and a splash of water, season it, and put it on the plate.
For this test, each minute you were off, you lost five points. I had not been off for the two weeks we’d had our appointed times. I’d watched others continually come up two minutes, three minutes, even, with Carlos and Ox, fifteen minutes late.
By 5:00, my gratin had been in the oven for a while. We’d run short of the right type of pan to use, so the one I was forced to employ was too small. The gratin kept bubbling up and over the sides. I could hear the liquid sizzling when it hit the bottom of the oven and smell the burning as it cooked away.
I had been working with Lombardi for three weeks, and I liked him quite a bit as a partner. After an initial feeling-each-other-out period, we watched each other’s back: turned things down when the burner was too high; got supplies, equipment, and ingredients for each other; and stayed out of each other’s way when our minute came to pass. This day, he was set to go about twenty-five minutes before me.
I tied butcher’s string around my medallions to give them some shape and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I cut up the onions for the onion rings. I chopped some parsley last minute for my partner’s garnish. I wiped my station down. It was about 5:10.
Sauce chasseur was one of the first things we made when Skills II started. It’s usually used for chicken, but tonight it would be plated with the beef. You sauté some mushrooms until they begin to caramelize, throw in some shallots, and wait for them to turn translucent. You take some cognac and white wine, deglaze the pan so all the brown bits come up, and let the liquid reduce by half. You add demi-glace. Cook it for a little bit, strain, and wait until you’re just ready to use it. If you’ve read the recipe instructions correctly, you’d know that some seeded, diced tomatoes get added and briefly simmered, and the whole thing is finished by adding a little butter and stirring until it dissolves.
At 5:25, the oil for the onion rings was way too hot. I turned it down, floured them, then put them into the batter. I’d let them sit for a few until it was time to fry them. I’d taken the gratin out of the oven, where it had been drooling over the edges of the pan, about fifteen minutes earlier. I fired up a pan to sauté the medallions, which I’d let rest after they were done for about seven or eight minutes.
I tasted my sauce. It was a little sharp, but I’d add the butter right before serving, so that sharpness would be blunted. I dribbled a little clarified butter into a sauté pan, waited a moment, and threw the medallions on. I’d had the heat way too high. I pulled the pan off the heat and told myself to put it back on in a moment. Time was beginning to erode much more quickly than I’d anticipated. It was almost 5:30. The onions needed to be fried. I’d forgotten about the broccolini. I fired up another pan to heat it. The kitchen clock was right in my line of sight, and the seconds were liquid and slippery. After a minute or two, the onions went in the oil. When I turned the heat down, I’d accidentally turned it off. They bobbed for a moment with a few timid bubbles popping away at the rings’ edges. I cranked the heat up and put the medallions back on the burner. A skin was forming on the sauce. I was also missing something, and I couldn’t remember what. It was 5:35.
I stopped myself for a second, watching the medallions sear. I tried to bring to mind what it was I knew I needed moments ago. I had no idea. The heat on the onions was back to what I wanted, but the rings I’d thrown in a minute ago were no good—just by looking at them, you could tell they were oil soaked and terrible. The oven was on, the flattops were going full tilt, most of the burners were on; it was pretty hot. I felt two trickles of sweat run between my shoulder blades and I very much wanted a drink of water. I got the old onions out of the oil and tossed some new ones in; they began to brown right away, and I suspected maybe they wouldn’t be entirely done when I had to serve them in five minutes. But then again, five minutes—even as fast as they were evaporating right now—was a pretty long time.
I flipped the medallions, and they looked great: a nice, dark brown sear. I put the broccolini in the appointed pan, dribbled some water over them, and tossed in a generous pat of butter. The butter melted, started to emulsify with the water, and I pushed and pulled the pan so the vegetable would jump and flip and coat itself with the glaze. I seasoned it quickly and put it aside. One task down. It was 5:36.
Some pools of red juice showed on top of the medallions and they came out of the pan to rest. I would have preferred they rest for ten minutes, but it wasn’t going to happen. The oil in the pan was almost smoking, and I poured it out in the compost bin positioned right behind my station. I deglazed the pan with a healthy shot of wine, ladled in some sauce chasseur, checked the onions—another minute, maybe two—and realized what it was I’d forgotten. I grabbed a plate and threw
it in the oven to warm up. There. As simple as that: problem alleviated. The sauce was bubbling nicely; the pan came off the stove. 5:38 and counting. I pulled the onions out, shook the basket, tossed the rings into a bowl and pelted them with a handful of salt. The clock said I had about ninety seconds. The plate came out of the oven, a ladleful of sauce went on it, with the two medallions set on top. The gratin—I’d spaced on that one; out of sight, out of … So I cut a wedge with my paring knife and shoveled it alongside the medallions. The broccolini got plated. I bit into an onion ring—maybe it could have gone another minute, but it was a minute I just did not have.
What I did have was about thirty seconds. There was some sauce on the edge of the plate and I wiped it off with a clean paper towel. Then, strangely, I put the towel to my lips and tasted.
Shit, I thought. Dammit.
It hadn’t been the warm plate I’d forgotten about. The sauce was sharp on my tongue, very acidic. I’d completely forgotten to swirl some butter in to finish it. I’d done some pretty good cooking that afternoon, and it was about to go to ash because I’d forgotten one simple step—one of the most basic steps in finishing a sauce like this—and the doneness of the broccolini, the perfect medium rareness of the beef, the beauty of the gratin was all going to be overshadowed by the lack of a tablespoon of butter.
I figured it would take me ninety seconds to get some butter into the sauce still steaming in the pan, wipe the old sauce off, and replate. That would be ten points off my grade. How many points do you get docked for missing butter?
I carried the plate over to Perillo. I’d take the risk.
I was the second-to-last person to be evaluated. Sixteen people had gone before me. I stepped up and the evaluation began. I was already angry at myself and feeling seriously defensive.
“Nice meat—just the right color,” he said after cutting into one of the medallions. He ate a forkful of gratin. “Okay, the potatoes are cooked just right.” The fork went to the plate. “I might have taken the broccolini out thirty seconds earlier. It doesn’t have the bite it needs. The onion rings—maybe a little longer in the oil next time. It’s not the end of the world, just a tiny bit underdone.” Finally, he ate a tiny morsel of the beef. “Consistency of the sauce is good, beef is tender. Okay, nice job. Really nice job. Just watch that broccolini in the future.” He scrawled something down on his grade sheet.
I stood for a second and almost told him, “Hey, man—come on. Bust me on that sauce. It’s really sour. Come on.” But I went back to my station instead. I tried the sauce on the plate again. And it did suck. I heated up the sauce in the pan, swirled some butter in, mopped most of the old sauce off my plate and ladled on the new. I started eating my dinner. And then I figured it out. Perillo had eaten sixteen bites of meat, sixteen bites of gratin and broccolini, and sixteen onion rings. His palate had to have been sapped. He’d only mentioned textures during the critique. He probably couldn’t have really tasted everything.
The gargantuan (in myriad ways) Fernand Point, whose book Ma Gastronomie was at home on my bookshelf, wrote, “Success is the sum of a lot of little things done correctly.” I had roasted a chicken at home the previous weekend and forgot to take out the wishbone. That means I wasted meat when I carved, the wishbone getting in the way of my knife, forcing me to leave a big chunk of breast meat behind. The next day, I was making chicken stock in my kitchen, was preoccupied with all sorts of things I needed to do, and forgot to rinse the bones. When I served some homemade pasta to some friends that evening, I neglected to top it with the garnish of fresh basil I’d chiffonaded. I just simply forgot. I realized that I forgot things a lot.
If you take a shortcut now, you’ll be taking them for your whole career.
My timing had been on, my reflexes good, my prep work had gone smoothly, but it was hard to keep it from being overshadowed in my mind by the lack of a tablespoon of butter. At least, I told myself, you figured out what you’d screwed up. Chances were pretty good I wouldn’t do it again.
When Perillo’s written final was over, we went back to the kitchen to pull bags of stock from the ice bath and put them away for the next Skills group on Tuesday. Brookshire and Adam were on their cell phones and I overheard them making plans to meet up with some other students in New Paltz. There was a SUNY satellite in New Paltz, and all the bars were there. It was something akin to the East Village of the Hudson Valley, except with a greater concentration of fake IDs. Liz said she’d go. Aubrey, too. A few others agreed to tag along.
As I secured my knives, I heard Brookshire call my name. “Dixon—we’re going drinking in New Paltz. Why don’t you come? You can be the chaperone.”
“I don’t know, Mike. I think my vomiting days might be behind me.”
“You can be the designated driver.”
I saw Adam standing behind Brookshire and he made a motion with his head, as if to say, “Come on, come with us.”
“Designated driver?” I answered. “Wow, that sounds like the best time I’ll ever have.”
But I pondered for a second. I’d really been starved for conversation. I’d only seen some Brooklyn friends a couple of times since we’d moved up here. I’d often feel loneliness exert itself, like a mild headache.
Nelly was waiting, but I didn’t think she’d mind. She’d occasionally expressed concern that I had no friends in the area to speak of. I had an hour’s drive home already—longer from New Paltz—but I had a three-day weekend in front of me. I could also crash with Adam or Mike if I really needed to. I had just gotten a check from a freelance article I’d written, so there was some cash in the bank. It had been a while since I’d sat drinking Irish whiskey in a bar with loud music playing.
“I’m going to take a pass, but I appreciate the offer.” I think I saw a very slight flicker of relief on a few of their faces. “I’ll see you guys on Tuesday.”
I got in the truck with a low note of something forlorn droning in the back of my skull. I just couldn’t stand to feel a gap deepen and widen, sitting in dim light, watching them flirt and pick up women, getting increasingly careless behind the alcohol, getting drunk the way you only can when you’re that young. I wasn’t in the mood to try and relive it, and I didn’t want to be a drag on their good time. I put the Dead on and drove home to my girlfriend. We had a drink together, watched an episode of Criminal Minds we’d recorded, and went to sleep by 11:30.
7
“COYAC’S A ROCK STAR,” one instructor told me. “Even among us other chefs, Coyac’s a rock star.”
Gerard Coyac’s résumé listed the titles saucier, poissonnier, rôtisseur, and executive chef for a dozen or so restaurants in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and Connecticut. He had been the chef for the commodore of the French navy and for the New York Stock Exchange Club.
Even before I knew who he was, I’d noticed him. White haired and red faced, eyes popping, wiry, and short, he moved straight backed down the hallways, head snapping to the left, to the right, a walking synonym for intensity.
He was, people said, a repository of tradition, a caretaker and tender of the methods and science of the gilded classics. Coyac was the CIA’s principal of the old school.
Skills III under Coyac felt like a true sink-or-swim proposition. The class devoted more time to the basic techniques we covered in Skills II—sautéing red meats, sautéing white meats, stewing, poaching, roasting—and one class to vegetarian cooking. The fruits of our labor would, for the first time, be eaten by other students, and Coyac was said to run his Skills III kitchen with no less seriousness than he’d run his professional kitchens.
My growing predilection for French cuisine would get a serious bolster in his class. But Coyac famously brought a lot of volume to his teaching and, in essence, I didn’t want to get yelled at. Viverito’s reprimands were bruising enough, but the guy still—you could simply sense it—pulled back at some point. Coyac allegedly did no such thing.
A few years prior, I’d had my arm tattooed and it hurt.
In the middle of it, I grew shaky in the stomach, and the world whooshed in and out of my vision like I was looking through fog. The tattoo came out nicely and was worth the unpleasantness. I willed myself to recall this lesson—but the tattoo took two hours. This class would last three weeks.
On a Tuesday afternoon at 1:30, my new Skills III group clustered outside of Coyac’s kitchen, waiting for the morning group to finish up. Adam was there, as were Lombardi, Carlos, Brookshire, and a few from Skills II with whom I hadn’t done much interacting: Ox, Yoon—fresh from the Korean army, and Sean—whom I had decidedly mixed feelings about. Sean seemed to rack up a serious debit of absences, sicknesses, and tardies and still talk his way out of them. He didn’t play well with others. He was greedy with communal ingredients. There were a lot of new faces, but one was familiar. Tara was in our group—the loon from my first lunch on campus, a complex of twitches and insanity. She was standing away from the rest of us, arms crossed, lips pursed, looking very much at home in the alternate universe she occupied on her own.
These were to be the members of my group until graduation. Statistically, some of us would drop out, others would experience some delays, but this was the core.
Coyac walked past, gave us a glance, and swept into the kitchen. The morning group began to straggle out, and we made our way in. A couple of people were dispatched to the storeroom to pick up the day’s food supply and the rest of us milled around. The room was narrow. There were five workstations, a bank of stoves, two sinks, and a large reach-in refrigerator. And the omnipresent fluorescent light—which made everyone’s skin look sallow, and as if we were about to have mug shots taken—followed us everywhere.
The food arrived, and Coyac made an announcement. A life in France rendered his accent hermetic. Our group was silent and still. No one had any idea what he’d just said. So he said it again, looking incredulous, but this time gestured at the food. We swooped in and began putting it away, heaving bags of whole, raw chickens, long loins of beef, and packages of root vegetables and potatoes into appropriate homes. He said something else, during which I caught the words “ingredients” and “station,” but I didn’t know what to do with this knowledge. He’d posted a chart on the wall, we noticed, and it broke us down into teams of three or four, assigned us a station, and indicated which menu our team would be preparing. I found myself at station number 2, standing with Sean, Carlos, and a new guy, another ex-army Korean student, named Joe. Joe had not spent much time in the States, and most of his English vocabulary consisted of obscenities.
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