The Pot Thief Who Studied Escoffier

by J. Michael Orenduff

Molinero seemed to regain his composure. “What is your plan?”

  Alain said, “For simplicity, we will invent six new dishes, three starters and three entrées, all in the new style of Austrian/Southwestern fusion. Our menu will be prix fixe, nineteen dollars.”

  “Nineteen dollars? You will lose money.”

  Jürgen laughed. “We have no money to lose.”

  “And how will you invent these dishes? You are Frenchmen and Austrians. Even the Americans among you have never worked in a Southwestern restaurant. Not a single one of you knows anything about Southwestern ingredients and flavors.”

  “That is where you are mistaken,” said Alain. “We have on our staff an expert premiére classe in the Southwestern cuisine.” He looked my way. I turned to see who the expert behind me might be. Then I heard him say my name.

  Molinero scoffed. “He’s a ceramic artist, not a cook.”

  “Ah,” said Alain, “that is where you are once again wrong. In his conversations with us, he has revealed himself to have the experience and, most importantly, the palate.”

  Maria Salazar added, “When Hubie and I lunched at La Casa Sena, he understood the menu better than I did and explained about the different varieties of chiles.”

  “Yeah,” said Mure, “and I can just imagine what the dessert was.”

  “You’re just jealous that I like men rather then women.”

  “You’re a restaurant slut.”

  “And you’re a dyke.”

  “Ladies, ladies!” shouted Dorfmeister. The two of them sunk into their chairs and glared at each other.

  Masoot said to Molinero, “You did not taste the dish he prepared for the staff on the day of the opening,” then brought his pursed fingers to his lips and blew them open in tribute to my mole.

  Santiago looked like the superintendent of a mental hospital whose patients have announced they are taking over the institution. No one said anything for a full minute. Finally, Molinero asked, “All those in favor of this new plan, raise your hands.”

  Before we could vote, Juan said, “Pardon me, Mr. Molinero. I have been translating for those who do not speak English. But because this is an important vote, I feel it would be proper for you to say it to them rather than me.”

  Molinero frowned and hesitated. Then he shrugged and said, “Si les gusta este nuevo plan, levanten los manos.” I winced when he said it. His Spanish was even worse than Dolly’s.

  Every hand went up except for Wallace Voile, who had remained impassive and silent throughout the meeting.

  Alain stood up again and said triumphantly, “So we are together. Fraternité!”

  Molinero said, “I wish you luck,” and retreated to his office.

  Alain announced we would reconvene in an hour to begin planning the new dishes. Jürgen went outside to smoke. Maria headed for the women’s room. Several guys headed to the men’s room. Wallace went out the front door. The rest went into the kitchen.

  I sat in my chair dumfounded.

  Alain came and sat next to me. “What did you think of my speech?”

  “A little over the top.”

  “Then it is perhaps well that I cut the last line.”

  “Which was?”

  “Succès ou la Mort!”

  I stared at him and he laughed. “Can you not tell when I make the joke? I practice the speech in front of a mirror. I was not trying to convince the staff. They had agreed before the meeting.”

  “You thought that speech would convince Molinero?”

  “No, I thought it would, as you say, throw him off his walk.”

  “Throw him off his stride,” I corrected.

  “Precisely,” he agreed.

  39

  My natural inclination was to find a corner and hide in it while trying to figure out what had just happened.

  Plan B would have been to tell Alain he had the wrong guy. I’m not good under pressure or working with groups. Then again, that seemed to be a common trait of the people at Schnitzel.

  So I decided to roll with the plan. I drove to the produce market – actual slogan: “A fast nickel beats a slow dime” – and bought jalapeños, poblanos, habañeros and cucumbers.

  Alain gathered the staff at one of the work stations when I returned and asked me for the first dish. I looked at him, Helen Mure, Jürgen Dorfmeister, Machlin Masoot, Maria Salazar, Raoul Deschutes, Arliss Mansfield, and Rafael Pacheco. I felt like an alter boy preparing to instruct the Pope on theology.

  “What is a schnitzel,” I asked Jürgen.

  “It is simply meat with a crust.”

  “And a weinerschnitzel?”

  “‘Wein’ is the Austrian name for Vienna. They like veal, so a weinerschnitzel is a veal cutlet with a crust.”

  “Can you use pork?”

  “Of course, but it is then called wienerschnitzel vom schwein.”

  “And suppose it was made in New Mexico. What would you call it then?”

  “A bad joke,” snarled Mure.

  “A chile schnitzel,” said Maria.

  “Voilà!” cried Alain. “This will be our new name.”

  “Oh, brother,” said Mure.

  “I don’t know,” added Arliss.

  Masoot said, “I like it. I have toyed with the idea of a chile dessert.”

  “Now I’ve heard it all,” said Mure.

  “We’ll get to the dessert later,” I said. I swallowed hard. “I want to show you how to prepare our new signature dish – schnitzel con tres chiles.”

  I stepped up to a stainless steel work surface and emptied the bag of produce.

  “I will be your assistante,” said Alain as he stepped beside me.

  “Me too,” said Rafael, stepping to my other side.

  I had no idea where everything was. “I need a knife.”

  Alain asked, “A chef’s knife, a carving knife, a paring knife, a serrated knife, a boning knife, a filleting knife, a—”

  “Stop!”

  This was insane. I turned to look at the group. “I have no idea what I’m doing here. I like to cook, but cooking at home and cooking professionally are worlds apart. I have only two knives in my kitchen. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but your confidence in me to help you do it is misplaced. I am not a chef.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Alain. “We will do the cooking. We look to you for the ideas.” He smiled at me. “What do you call your two knives?”

  “The big one and the little one,” I said and heard Maria giggle.

  “Do you want a big knife or a little one?” asked Alain.

  “A little one, please.”

  I used it to slice the stem end off a dozen large jalapeños. The thing being sharp as a razor made the task easy, but it was scary to wield. I sliced the jalapeños lengthwise and removed the ribs and seeds. I pushed the prepared jalapeños aside and picked up a cucumber.

  “Do you want them peeled?” asked Rafael.

  I said I did, and he made short work of them.

  “Seeds?” he asked.

  “Out. And I need them sliced.”

  He halved the cukes longwise and removed the seeds deftly with a spoon. He sliced them so quickly and uniformly that no machine could have been more precise. He then ran a hand over them, arraying them like the cards of a deck. It was a shame to see the slices so perfectly displayed because they were destined for the blender.

  I moved to a cooktop and cranked the flame to its highest position. I selected a deep pot to avoid splattering and coated the bottom liberally with corn oil. When the oil was just starting to smoke, I threw in the jalapeños and stirred them vigorously. After about a minute, I yelled, “sugar” because I had forgotten to have it at hand. Arliss grabbed a plastic container from an overhead rack and thrust it in front of me. I took half a handful and dumped it in the pot. I hope this won’t shock you, but I had been watching them cook for weeks, and I knew they used their hands freely.

  I gave the jalapeños one last stir to coat them with the sugar. Some of
the skins had begun to darken, but they had not burned, which was exactly what I wanted. I pulled the pot off the heat and covered it.

  We returned to the work surface. Maria brought me a blender. “The saucier should do this,” I said.

  She smiled. “Maybe later. For now, I prefer to watch and learn.”

  The blender looked like something you might see in an auto repair shop, maybe something used to grind down pistons. I don’t know what pistons do or whether they have to be ground down, but that’s what came to mind.

  I threw in the jalapeños, the cucumbers and some heavy cream. I looked around for a button or switch, but couldn’t find one. Maria placed the lid on the device. When she twisted it, the beast roared to life. From the noise the device made, I didn’t know whether the ingredients were being blended or vaporized. She shut it off quickly. I spooned out a bit and tasted it. The texture was perfect. I added a bit of salt and pepper. I tasted again. It was the taste I hoped for. But what would the professionals think?

  Just in case you are wondering, I used a second spoon for the second taste. But then I’m more fastidious than the average cook.

  Maria tasted it and said, “Splendid.”

  “Gimme that spoon,” said Mure. She took a taste. After a worrying hesitation, she turned to me. “It is good,” she said, her voice showing genuine surprise.

  Alain was next. “Délicieux. But I am surprised it is not hotter. I am also surprised you used no stock for the sauce.”

  “Caramelizing the jalapeños leaves them hot but without the sting. Cucumbers are mostly liquid, and they’re lighter than chicken stock. They give a fresh taste without changing the flavor.”

  “Amazing,” said Maria.

  Everyone praised the sauce, although I thought some of their enthusiasm arose from the general optimism they had adopted as a necessary attitude for embarking on the quixotic mission to resurrect Schnitzel.

  “It is as delicious as everyone says,” said Jürgen, “but do you propose to use this on a schnitzel?”

  “Yes. It is the first of the three chiles in schnitzel con tres chiles. The second one will be a habañero relish. The jalapeño sauce can be ladled directly on the schnitzel because it is mild by New Mexico standards, but the habañero relish will be fiery and will need to be on the side.

  I showed them how to make it by boiling finely chopped habañeros, purple onions, and chopped cilantro in sugar and vinegar.

  The third chile was in the starch that would be paired with the schnitzel – roasted, peeled and chopped poblanos added to creamy spätzle. Jürgen tried to defend the integrity of Austrian cuisine by drawing a line at poblano spätzle, but after it had been prepared and tasted, he relented.

  Alain suggested the staff prepare enough of the new dish for our evening meal and shooed me out of the kitchen. I sat in the dining room expecting at any minute that the person who drew the short straw would come through the swinging door to tell me that although they appreciated my effort, my assistance would no longer be needed.

  But when the door finally opened, they emerged carrying plates of schnitzel con tres chiles, Scruggs with two plates so that I had one as well. Alain suggested we open several bottles of Grüner Veltliner, which he thought would pair well with the dish, but Arliss reminded him we had no funds to replenish our supplies and argued that the wine should be saved for paying customers. Alain agreed, although it saddened me to see a Frenchman eating dinner without wine. I remembered him sharing his croque monsieur with me and wished I could do the same for him with a bottle of Austria’s national wine. Or, even better, a bottle of Gruet, which no one will be surprised to hear I thought would be a better pairing. I decided to do something about the fact that Schnitzel did not stock America’s best champagne.

  Although it was only six when we finished eating, we were emotionally spent. We decided to tackle the next dish in the morning. Before heading home, I went to the grocery store on St. Francis and bought some Gruet. I returned to the restaurant, but didn’t go in because I saw Arliss Mansfield leaving. The building was dark.

  After he was safely away, I went inside and put the Gruet in the bar refrigerator. And wondered why first Scruggs and now Mansfield had reason to visit the restaurant late at night when no one else was around.

  40

  “Chile Schnitzel? You can’t be serious?”

  It was later that same evening, and Susannah was sitting at my kitchen table finishing up the schnitzel con tres chiles I brought from Santa Fe and warmed in my oven.

  “This dish is great,” she said, “but you can’t name a restaurant after it.”

  “If we named the restaurant after it, we’d have to call it schnitzel con tres chiles. You like that better?”

  “I don’t like either one. You can’t put ‘chile’ and ‘schnitzel’ together. Who ever heard of schnitzel in New Mexico?”

  “No one ever heard of a hurricane in New Mexico, either, but we have Hurricane’s Drive In right here in Albuquerque.”

  “Yeah, and we also have Cake Fetish Cupcakes and Lumpy’s Burgers, so what does that prove?”

  Nothing, so far as I could tell.

  I grabbed a piece of paper and my box of colored pencils and wrote ‘Chile Schnitzel” with ‘chile’ in what looked to me like a Southwestern font, simple and informal, and ‘schnitzel’ in what I took to be an Austrian-looking style. I made the word ‘chile’ green for the famous New Mexico green chiles and ‘schnitzel’ red for the Austrian flag.

  She said, “It looks pretty, but it still doesn’t go together.”

  “That’s the whole point. Fusion. Two very different things. Two fonts, two colors, two cuisines.”

  She studied my lettering for a few seconds. “Hmm. There is a lot of this sort of thing in contemporary art.”

  “Calligraphy is back on the art scene?”

  “No. I meant the mixing of things. Like the Japanese artist Morimura Yasumasa who does take-offs on famous paintings like Manet’s Olympia, except instead of a nude French prostitute, the person reclining is a nude Japanese male, the artist himself. Come to think of it, Manet was also playing off an earlier work, Titian’s Venus of Urbino. Parisians were scandalized by Manet’s version.” She looked up at me. “Maybe sticking ‘chile’ and ‘schnitzel’ together is just what you need. Maybe it will jar some people into trying the place.”

  “And the colors are red and green.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know, New Mexico’s official state question – ‘Red or Green?’ Don’t you think it’s a little embarrassing that other states have state birds and state songs, and we have a state question?”

  “It must have been a slow day in the legislature.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “I need to come up with five more dishes, three starters and two more entrées. You work in a restaurant, help me out here.”

  “I’m a server, not a cook.”

  “What do most people order?”

  “Enchiladas. Maybe you could have enchiladas filled with schnitzel.”

  It was an indication of my desperation that I briefly considered it. When I regained my senses, I said, “Jürgen mentioned his favorite dish growing up was Wurstknoedel, stuffed potato dumplings. That’s sort of like an enchilada, except with potato on the outside rather than tortillas.”

  “What would you put inside?”

  “I don’t know. What does La Placita put in their enchiladas?”

  “The usual – beef, cheese, chicken. We even have a vegetarian one with mushrooms and calabacitas. But my favorites are the ones with chicken mole.”

  And that’s how I came up with the second entrée.

  41

  Inspired by my conversation with Susannah and having my pencils at hand, I started sketching chiles and ristras after she left.

  I set them against a round background and played with different ways to position them, going so far at one point as to create a sort of chile version of the Vitruvian Man drawing by Leonardo da Vinci. It
looked silly. Also not quite so well drawn as Leonardo’s.

  I finally settled on two chiles – one red and one green, of course – tied together at their stems, their tips protruding slightly over the edge of the plate at different lengths. I didn’t want symmetry, fearful or otherwise.

  I dropped the drawing off at Feats of Clay on my way to Santa Fe the next morning along with instructions about what I wanted. They agreed to make the switch at no extra charge since they had not yet created and applied the edelweiss overlays.

  I arrived at Schnitzel to find I was not the only one whose creative juices had been flowing. Rafael had come up with all three new appetizers – grilled duck breast with a sauce made from dried New Mexico cherries, smoked New Mexico trout with a piñon and apricot pesto, and a Caesar salad with Verdolagas instead of romaine and an egg yolk dressing infused with garlic and cumin. Verdolaga is a Mexican green, a sort of cross between watercress and frisee.

  I asked Rafael if he had stayed up all night.

  “It was easy. I just remembered what Dagmar Mortensen had written about my salads. Fear is a great motivator.”

  “Susannah was worried about you when I told her about the reviews. I also couldn’t believe it when I read what Dagmar wrote.”

  He shrugged. “She was right. Those salads were awful. And you can tell Susannah not to worry. I don’t feel bad because it wasn’t my fault. Nobody could make a bologna salad taste good. I could have improved the potato salad, but Kuchen insisted I stick to the recipe.”

  “I wonder where he is.”

  “Back in Austria would be my guess.”

  I found Masoot experimenting with ways to incorporate Southwestern flavors into the crusty boules served at Schnitzel. I told him about my idea for a crème brûlée with chipotle sugar, and he asked me to produce some of the flavored sugar for him. That sent me to the grocery store for a can of chipotles which I drained and put in the food drier.

  I passed along the idea of a Wurstknoedel filled with chicken mole to Alain and gave him my recipe for mole. He grabbed the recipe like a kid reaching for a new toy and walked away reading it. After about six steps, he came back. “It is complicated, no? Perhaps we can prepare the first batch together.”