Vanilla Salt

  Carol’s vile plan is the cause of his malaise.

  The party is tonight and, though he’s been racking his brains, he hasn’t come up with a plan to foil her… and to make sure that nobody gets hurt. Time’s marching on, but he hasn’t worked out his counterattack. Of course he’s not going to say anything in the Dia i Nit interview about Annette adulterating the food and he certainly won’t poison the food. That’s for sure. He also knows that when Carol discovers he’s let her down, they’ll be felled by another kind of poison, and they might as well say bye-bye to Roda el Món.

  “Àlex, you have eaten breakfast?” Annette asks.

  “Have you seen me having breakfast? I don’t think there’s a bar in my room… yet. But there are definitely some empty bottles. Anyone might think there was a rave in there last night, with free drinks and all.”

  “Please, you taste one thing. I make you special breakfast.”

  “It’s not a day to be tasting stuff. We’ve got tons of work and we’d better get down to it.”

  “I know, I know. But only one moment.” She passes him a plate of toast.

  Apparently it’s a plate of toast. One slice has chopped cucumber on it, another chocolate cream and the third some slices of tomato.

  “Well, if it’s a feast to celebrate our first coupling, it’s a bit low-key, isn’t it? You might have made more of an effort with French champagne, strawberries, bellota ham, buttery croissants, scrambled eggs… I know we’re on a tight budget but… three slices of toast, and you haven’t even tried to hide the tomato! How am I supposed to take this? Are you breaking up with me already? If that’s the case, there are plenty of other ways of doing so.”

  “You be quiet, Professor Big Spoon. I no have interest for to feed you. I want you taste a thing I keep like diamond. I have very little quantity so let you taste it mean I love you, and you know that last night. If you like this taste I make aperitif for journalists. Unfortunately, I no have sufficient for to cook, but little aperitif, yes.”

  Àlex tastes the toast. There is one flavour in common, despite the fact that the three toppings are totally different. He knows this flavour, tries to dredge it up from his memory, but he has to dig deep, because he’s almost totally forgotten it. When he finally grasps the aromatic sweetness of the mystery ingredient, his unconscious takes him back to one long-ago summer. He’s very little, with his parents and brother in a bar in Vielha, and crying, “I want an ice cream, I want an ice cream!” When he finally gets it, he doesn’t like the taste, so he offers it to a famished-looking dog in the street. His mother smacks him so hard that the flavour is branded into his brain for ever. The toasts have a hint of that ice cream. He likes it, yes, he likes it very much.

  “What a mystery. I don’t know what you’ve put in this, but it’s magic. It completely changes the taste of the food it’s mixed with. I love it. It’s some spice, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it vanilla,” she says.

  “But vanilla is sweet and with the cucumber… well, you don’t pick up that sickly sweetness.”

  “How long you no taste vanilla? Good vanilla, the best, like this, no is sweet. It very, very aromatic but no have taste. I need make you a vanilla class. The tongue only catch basic tastes, salt, sweet, bitter and sour. The rest of gastronomic perceptions they stimulated by aromas, and aromas give real ‘taste’ that tongue no catch. It olfactif that it take aromas to brain and give this information of taste of food. So this vanilla no can to be sweet because tongue no catch it. This difficult for to explain, but simple with experiment. You cover the nose. Good. Keep the nose covered and I put in your mouth this little thing and then you tell me your perception.”

  “Salt,” he says nasally.

  “Uncover nose and what you find now?”

  “Ice cream.” Not to mention his mother’s slap that summer afternoon in the bar in Vielha.

  “Vanilla. It not sweet and not salty, but what you taste now it vanilla salt I make in Canada and bring here in suitcase. It my treasure, because quality it is exceptional, so I bring this from my country as a jewel, like Christopher Columbus. When he find out he no reach to India, and he no know where he arrive, but he spend already all gold the King and Queen give him for to buy spices, so he feel very disappointed. So vanilla and red pepper that I talk about before, solve his problem. Spanish people happy with spices because they conserve very good, so food last more in time when they no have fridge. So spices they very valuable. They also give new aromas to food which have very small variety. They no have the greenhouse for to grow strawberry, so they must to eat them only in springtime and no like now all the year. The spices they give illusion they eat many different things, but the principal ingredients they the same. The vanilla tree no grow in Spain, because it need tropical place, so it different from red pepper. They must to import vanilla from distant lands, so it very expensive, only for rich people, so they think it even more better.”

  “So you’ve flavoured salt with vanilla. That’s a great idea. You can make some money out of that. Set up a little stall in the market and sell salt flavoured with different spices. You can call it ‘Annette’s Aromas’.” He’s teasing her. “But till you start making a fortune selling little pots of salt at the price of spices these days, we’ve got to work and, in particular, cook for this show tonight. Otherwise when the journalists arrive we’ll only have a teaspoon of salt to offer them, and then they’ll think we’re just a couple of saltimbanqui leaping about with nothing to offer.”

  Annette doesn’t get the joke, as she’s lost in thought, her freckles consulting the ceiling. Then she exclaims, “Àlex, what you just say for to tease me is brilliant idea. Why no? You famous chef, your cooking celebrated and many people wish to discover your secret. In home people they no have time and they cook very basic and very repeat like grill, boil, steam or sometimes vegetables in frying pan. Everyone complain that home food is boring, like we go back to the king and queen of Columbus time when they no have variety. No time, no knowledge, no imagination – it all make the food very monotonous in home. If they have your ‘secret’, the food very flavour and fun and they can to change taste without they change the food.”

  “I was joking before! You’ve taken me too seriously, I fear. Are you ‘cooking up’ some new product, perhaps?”

  “I no sure if you make joke, but I very serious. We have product and it very success product. You listen me. This very simple. We aromatize salt with spices and we combine spices to make bouquet salt also. When people make the grilled chicken in home they can put rosemary salt one day, and ‘Bouquet Salt One’ another day or ‘Bouquet Salt Two’ or ‘Three’ or ‘Four’… This salt it have taste of Àlex cooking, so it have melange of spices you put in restaurant for the chicken. We can to make catalogue of many flavours of salt. The chicken it stay same every night, but it seem different chicken because it have the new flavour.”

  “You’re completely batty, Annette. As if we didn’t have enough work in the restaurant without getting caught up in a new project. It’s not as easy as you think. Who’ll buy it? Our customers! All half-dozen of them?”

  “I no have batty in belfry! This is very good idea. What it cost us for to make product? Few cents for the salt. Salt! It cost nothing. Salt, spices, pots we only need for to start. It no go spoil. On the opposite, salt and spices they conserve the food. Yes, we can to sell it in restaurant and try in shops also. It good business, because it cost almost zero. Listen me: ZERO!”

  “Hmm. You might be right. Let’s talk about it tomorrow. Let me remind you that we have fifty journalists coming here for dinner tonight. We’ve been here in the kitchen for half an hour and haven’t as much as washed a lettuce.” Àlex ties up his apron, which means serious work.

  Annette’s barely heard his last words, because she’s distracted by someone ringing the doorbell. Eric, the fish boss’s son, has arrived for his first day of work. If the father was a caricature of the self-made man, the son is a parody of the obtuse sixtee
n-year-old, for whom life consists of body piercing, tattoos, discos and motorbikes. Looking him up and down, Annette thinks that the difficulty won’t be teaching him, but getting him to let himself be taught, and he doesn’t seem in the least willing in that regard. There’s no question about it: this kid isn’t going to save work, but will create more.

  “What do I have to do?” The boy seems to think this is a greeting.

  “Work hard,” Annette tells him. “Àlex, the chef, he give you the work dress and you do what he say. He the head and you the legs.”

  “What time do you knock off here?”

  The boy’s an expert in insolence. Annette chooses not to answer his question, but shows him the restaurant and explains how things work. They go into the kitchen and she introduces him to Àlex. Eric’s in luck, because Àlex is in a good mood and very absorbed by what he’s doing. Otherwise, the boy wouldn’t last five minutes.

  Annette has to make cakes, and Àlex is preparing most of the dishes they’ll serve at the party. There’s not a second to waste. They give Eric a box of anchovies to clean, meaning he’s got to remove the heads and gut them. He gripes and grumbles that if he’d known he had to clean fish he would have gone to work with his dad, where the underlings at least treated him with all the respect due to the boss’s son. But in the end he gets down to the job.

  Concentration is the order of the day in the kitchen, where all three of them are busy with their tasks. Sometimes Àlex breaks the silence with an order. Graça arrives mid-morning and immediately launches into the considerable amount of work involved in setting tables, polishing glasses, arranging flowers and fine-tuning every detail in the dining room for the party.

  “You got blacks working here too?” Eric asks disdainfully. “There are lots of them working for my dad and I don’t like being around them. They’re thieves.”

  “Thieves come in all colours,” Àlex retorts, containing his urge to thump the boy. “Here people work. Some have dark skin, or are thin, Annette has freckles and I have a terrible temper. Graça is the wife of Frank, the distributor who works in your father’s company. They are very good friends of ours, and if any idiot does anything to upset them, then we’ll get very angry.”

  “That black, that Frank doesn’t work for my dad any more. My dad kicked him out about a month ago. He was nicking stuff. A box of fish disappeared every day and my dad found out it was him. He’s a thieving bastard,” Eric declares with appalling serenity.

  Annette and Àlex look at one another in horror. They knew nothing about this. Graça has said nothing. Maybe she doesn’t know. A box of fish every day… a box at the door of Roda el Món every day. True, they haven’t had any fish from Frank for more than a month, but they assumed that Frank had decided that the charity season had come to an end.

  14

  CHOCOLATE

  One can turn one’s back on a father, a mother, a husband or a lover, but never a chocolate cake.

  MANUEL SCORZA

  The Dia i Nit journalist turns up just after lunch to find Àlex in the kitchen dealing with some sea urchins, which he’s going to cook in cava, the traditional way. They’re really delicious done like that. He’ll put them under the grill till they’re just cooked, taking on a golden hue, but without losing their characteristic deep-crimson colour. Chef and journalist sit down at one of the tables in the dining room. They have to get started at once, because the guests will be arriving in a few hours and there’s still plenty of work to do.

  Àlex opens a bottle of cava to help the flow of the conversation. The journalist seems to be a very pleasant man and, moreover, he likes cava. They talk about Àlex’s career, his culinary philosophy, his taboo foods, the restaurant’s change of direction and, in fact, all the usual things that are discussed in a typical interview with somebody who is eminent in his or her field. Àlex barely sips at his cava, because he’s doing the best he can to come up with intelligent answers to the usual questions. However, when he goes to top up the journalist’s glass for the seventh time, there’s not a drop left. Bloody hell, this guy’s drunk a whole bottle all by himself! They crack a second bottle.

  “Thanks very much Àlex. It’s been most interesting being able to talk with you. I think I have enough now, except for one detail. What was that you said you wanted to do with Annette? Set up a business of aromatized salts?”

  The journalist wants to keep chatting, as he’s settled in very comfortably at Roda el Món. In fact, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.

  “Yes, we want to create a new line of products so that people cooking at home can enjoy the aromas of my specialities and of Roda el Món in general.”

  “That’s really interesting. If you want a hand, give me a call. I’m available.”

  Available? What does he mean by that? This question buzzes round Àlex’s head after the journalist leaves. He returns to the kitchen, turns over some caramelized almonds and mulls on the journalist’s words. “I’m available.” Àlex doesn’t like the way he said it, because there was something desperate there, the tone of someone clutching at straws.

  He expects anything from Carol but ingenuousness. She’s as sharp and cunning as a fox. Very perceptive too. He finds it strange that she hasn’t turned up for the interview to make sure he’s done what he promised, namely condemning Annette’s way of running the business and insinuating that she adulterates the food for fatter and faster profits, which was supposed to be the sensational exclusive: Roda el Món was guilty of fraudulent practice, because Annette’s only concern was money. He’d also been ordered to say that he had no longer had any connection with the restaurant, he’d been sacked and he hadn’t cooked any of the dishes that were being served at the dinner.

  That was what Carol had decreed, but he’s gone along with his own plans, following the dictates of his heart, telling the journalist that the Roda el Món food is wonderful, made with the region’s best-quality products and that Annette is an exemplary boss. To add insult to injury, he’s also let the cat out of the bag by talking about their future project of producing salt aromatized with spices, because this will bind him to Annette for ever, God willing.

  He’s got work to do, but he can’t let this go. He sits down at the computer, goes to Google, types in the journalist’s name and that of the newspaper. There are hundreds of pages, thousands of articles, interviews and reports he’s signed. Yes, he’s prolific. He looks at the dates. There’s no recent article. The last one is from the 20th of last month. A journalist who writes nothing in a month? Àlex smells a rat and calls the newspaper, asking to be put through to him. The very helpful receptionist informs him that this man no longer works there. They’ve cut back on staff and the man’s now unemployed. Unfortunately she can’t give contact details.

  Àlex’s head goes into overdrive. An out-of-work journalist comes to do an interview for a newspaper where he no longer works. What’s this all about? It can only be something nasty cooked up by Carol. “Now I get it!” It’s so devious it’s like the worst kind of B-movie. She knows he won’t stick to the plan, so she’s paid a fake journalist, a hatchet man who won’t publish the interview in which he so highly praises Annette.

  Carol had foreseen his reaction and was determined to thwart him at any cost. She might have saved herself the comedy of the journalist and interview, but she probably thought she’d be more certain of his trust by putting on the show. But her crystal ball hadn’t shown the journalist downing almost two bottles on an empty stomach and letting slip, with childlike naivety, that he no longer works for Dia i Nit, or that, in consequence, Àlex would deduce that Carol wasn’t honouring her part of the bargain. Knowing that the interview is never going to appear, Àlex feels lost. He can’t begin to imagine what kind of plot Carol is hatching. He’s going to have to be extremely watchful. And the whole night long.

  * * *

  Carol’s very pleased with herself. That loser of a journalist has told her that the idiot cook has fallen into the trap and has been m
ore than willing to waffle on the whole interview, because he’s so thrilled at the idea of having the centre spread all to himself in a newspaper with such a big circulation. Her subterfuge couldn’t have worked better. After that night when she’d registered how much Àlex and Annette secretly fancied one another, she’d correctly guessed that Àlex had no intention of doing anything that might harm his precious freckled redhead.

  Carol was incensed when she realized that her sentimental plans were just a pipe dream. Rage boiled in every cell of her body, building up an insatiable thirst for revenge in her brain. She wasn’t going to wipe out Annette alone. Àlex would go down with her. Carol wanted both of them dead. There were many ways she could annihilate them, but the most painful and effective one was to make them see their darling Roda el Món project in ruins. This would be lethal for them both, economically and emotionally speaking. She could burn the place down, but that would be too unsophisticated. It wouldn’t be much fun either and, worse, people would feel sorry for them. She could just see the newspaper reports:

  Chef Àlex Graupera is distressed by the fire in his beautiful restaurant in Bigues i Riells but says, “We’ll come out of this stronger than ever and shall build up Roda el Món all over again, with the very latest in technology and tremendous commitment.”

  No, she doesn’t want to give them any chance to tug at society’s heart-strings with their misfortunes. She wants to destroy them by killing the restaurant’s good name.

  “Hi, lovelies!” Carol sweeps into the restaurant, a jabbering tornado swirling in all directions at once. “My God, what an incredible amount of work. I can guarantee this will be a huge success. Everyone’s dying to find out about what Roda el Món’s up to and what you’re offering. Talk about great expectations! Oh, Annette, what beautiful flowers you’ve got in the dining room. Congratulations. And Àlex, how did the Dia i Nit interview go?”