Spiced

by Dalia Jurgensen

  “Gotta love having pasta,” grumbled another thanklessly. “Every day.”

  Over time and through conversations with my more experienced fellow cooks, I came to realize that it wasn’t personal. They’re just frustrated artists. Miserable fucks ’cause they have to be here waiting tables rather than doing what they really want. It wasn’t long before I easily fed into this ideology: Fuck ’em. They’ll eat what I make, and they’ll like it.

  Pastry people (fair or not) never have to make family meal unless they expressly choose to. The smart pastry chef never chooses to as there are only two possible outcomes. If the meal is a success, the cooks will resent it and undercut that success: I could make a good family meal, too, if I had that much time. Or, should a pastry chef ’s family meal not succeed, the cooks will tear it apart with great satisfaction and lose even more respect for the pastry chef, who, in their minds, has an easier job as it is. My family meal responsibilities came to an abrupt end once I made the switch to working pastry full-time, and so the seed of resentment planted in me during my early years never fully blossomed. Still, I try not to get involved with family meal: I don’t complain and I don’t offer to help.

  It’s easy for cooks to feel like cogs in a wheel, one that is often churned by a demanding chef for long, hot hours, yielding little monetary reward. Add ungrateful, whining waiters to this grind, and you have a recipe for disaster. When cooks finally have the chance to feel superior, to wield what little power they have in the form of family meal, they take the chance. And they take it out on waiters.

  Sometimes it’s passive-aggressive. A cook might go out of his way to make something delicious, only to purposefully keep it from the waiters and share it only with the other cooks. Sometimes it’s more overtly aggressive. Charlotte, the daytime sous-chef at Tonic (the sadism is by no means limited to the males), always had family meal ready and waiting for the cooks but would intentionally withhold serving utensils from the staff, just so she could gleefully watch them stare helplessly at the cooling food. She would deride any waiter who dared pop his head into the kitchen before the appointed time, sniffing for family meal: Are you stupid? What did I say? Not until four o’clock. Other times, she would go out of her way to make an outstanding meal and then lord over it, attacking anyone who didn’t partake—Stupid waiters, they don’t know what’s good—or punishing those who didn’t give her the appreciation she felt was due her—Why do I waste my time? Of course, no amount of thanks or appreciation would ever have satisfied her. It was the power that she craved, not the thanks.

  But why do cooks really treat waiters this way? Why do they hate them? Mostly because cooks think waiters are lazy: Do you believe that lazy bitch? She won’t even walk downstairs to get some chocolate truffles for her VIP table. Or because waiters whine about bad tips in front of cooks, knowing full well that even on the worst nights they make far more money than the cooks do: They have no idea how easy they have it, fucking waiters. Because they are selfish: Look at him, picking out all the pieces of meat from the pasta. Selfish prick. Because they are vegetarians (gasp!), artists (no!), or, what was especially appalling to Culo, liberals (the horror!). The only waiters who have half a chance are the cute ones (most cooks are still boys, after all, and suckers for a pretty face), and the few who happen to behave exactly how cooks think a waiter should, which entails a fair amount of ass kissing. Cooks don’t need a reason to hate waiters, that they are waiters is reason enough. As one chef friend put it, Waiters only care about three things: When can I leave? How much money did I make? What’s for dinner? Every mis step, every offhand comment, fuels the fire of the cooks. They hate waiters because they can. Adrienne was entrenched in a losing battle, and there was nothing she or I could do about it.

  When I went back up to the kitchen, family meal was in full swing. Culo and Carter, waiting for Adrienne to arrive, had knowing grins on their faces. Carter nudged me and nodded at his cutting board.

  “I made pork-skin pizza,” he explained. “I took the skin from the pork belly and roasted it until it got really crispy. Then I loaded it with melted cheese and lardons, and drizzled it with chorizo oil. I put the little herb salad on top just to throw them off.” He winked.

  “Operation Foie Gras?” I asked.

  “You know it!” he cried. I shouldn’t have smiled, but I couldn’t help it.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Just Desserts

  I can’t get enough of these nuts!” Chatos said, grabbing a handful of the bee pollen almonds I’d made that morning.

  I fried the sliced almonds and then, when they were still warm, tossed them in sugar, salt, and finely ground bee pollen. Along with fresh raspberries, the almonds were the garnish on my newest dessert: bamboo honey panna cotta, a dessert I was especially proud of. After years at the same job, sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in a rut and simply make the same desserts over and over. And while the customers might not ever notice that the menu had stalled or know that I’d been serving the warm banana tart Tatin for more than seven years in different restaurants, I certainly did. Whenever I felt myself slacking off, I forced myself to think outside the recipe box.

  Three times a week I walked through the Union Square farmer’s market looking for inspiration. Fresh fruits—colorful, flavorful, and versatile—were my favorite ingredients to work with. I waited all winter and spring for the summer fruits to arrive so that finally I could make more fruit desserts. Of course, these days, we can have almost any fruit any time of the year flown in, but that doesn’t mean that we should. Locally grown fruits (and vegetables, for that matter) are almost always better than anything flown in (with tropical fruits being the exception).

  It was at the farmer’s market that I bought the incredibly strong-flavored grade B maple syrup for the maple crème caramel I had on my menu all winter long. The simple dessert (served only with some candied pecans and sour cherry sauce) was so popular that I bought the syrup by the gallon nearly once a week.

  Around the corner from the Vermont Maple Company stand was the honey guy, who had up to eight different kinds of honey, my favorite being the bamboo. The actual flower that the bees used for this honey was a Japanese ragweed, but the honey guy didn’t think that sounded too appetizing and wisely named his honey after the better known botanical that it resembled: bamboo. The bamboo honey was dark and strong and complex, with definite butterscotch overtones. Perfect, I thought, for a dessert.

  To showcase the honey I decided on one of the simplest desserts on the planet: panna cotta, a simple mixture of cream, gelatin, and sugar, which in this case I replaced with bamboo honey. After a single test I had my recipe. It used to take me endless trials to achieve the perfect flavor, chemistry, and texture. Now, after years of practice, it rarely takes me more than two tries.

  I loved my bamboo panna cotta, but it was sweet, right on the edge of being too sweet, which, for me, could be a problem, since overly sweet desserts were my biggest pet peeve. In fact, when diners complimented me for my desserts, they often used the phrase . . . and it’s not too sweet!

  I countered the sweetness of the honey with raspberry sauce that I kept just a touch on the sour side. The acidity of the raspberries helped cut the honey, too. Finally, the bee pollen. Sliced almonds alone added textural contrast, but the bee pollen, a bright yellow dust with a floral earthiness, gave the dessert an added edge, a personal touch that made the dessert special: You would not find it just anywhere. I loved my new dessert, and I was especially glad that Chatos liked the almonds, since they were a little bit unusual and therefore a possible risk.

  “Yeah,” I said to him, “they turned out pretty good. I was worried that the bee pollen might absorb moisture or something and they’d get soggy, but it worked out.”

  “Thank God,” he countered, ignoring my attempt at normal conversation. “Nobody likes soggy nuts.” He grinned. I shook my head. After two years of working with Chatos, I should have expected as much.

  “So, Dalia.” It was Cu
lo, casually walking over to my station.

  “Yeah?” I said, looking up from my cutting board.

  “You gonna help me out with my new restaurant?” he asked.

  In a few weeks he’d be moving back home to open his own place. He’d talked about hiring some of the other Veritas employees as consultants for both wine and service, but I couldn’t imagine he’d want me to do the same. Though we had been getting along better lately, I couldn’t forget (or forgive) any of the times in the past that he’d bad-mouthed my desserts to the cooks, declaring that they were not “three-star material,” as though he were an authority (Veritas was his first three-star restaurant in New York City and my third), or ridiculously charged that I used crème anglaise on too many plates, as if he knew the difference. He had even eighty-sixed a dessert for the entire night because a single customer was unhappy with it. The other cooks told me they thought the tartes Tatins were fine, and I was convinced he was simply trying to get under my skin or intimidate me. To top it off, he threw out the entire tray of Tatins, dumping hours’ worth of work into the garbage and effectively destroying any evidence.

  “What do you mean?” I asked innocently.

  “You know, help me out with some recipes for desserts,” he explained. He was smiling, like we were buddies.

  I helped out people all the time with techniques, recipes, and ideas. Joey still called me from time to time for help with his menu or with some sort of pastry emergency, as did Barton. But those people were my friends. I was happy to help them out, and I knew they’d do the same for me. Culo was not my friend. I’d had to work with him for more than two years, tolerating his nasty comments, standing by while he insulted me on nearly every level. For two years, I’d had little in the way of recourse and could find no way of upsetting him the way he’d upset me. My only consolation had been the constant barrage of “Culo is gay” comments he’d had to endure. (And Chatos had no intention of ending the torment: He planned to bombard Culo’s new restaurant with subscriptions to gay porn magazines taken out in Culo’s name.) I couldn’t believe that Culo thought I was just going to give him recipes for his restaurant, recipes that I’d worked hard on, that contributed to my reputation as a pastry chef—the only thing I really had.

  “So,” I asked him, choosing my words carefully, “you think that after all the times you bad-mouthed my desserts behind my back I’m going to help you? Just hand over recipes I’ve spent years working on?”

  He looked stunned and held up his hands in mock surrender.

  “I never bad-mouthed your desserts!” he said, his eyebrows lifted, his mouth agape.

  “Come on,” I said, my head cocked to the side. “We both know that’s not true.” My assistant, Peter, as well as the cooks with whom he’d worn out his welcome, had been more than happy to rat him out. I couldn’t help smiling a tiny bit.

  Culo turned away shaking his head angrily, muttering under his breath, and I went back to finishing up the rest of my work.

  Culo spent the rest of the afternoon ranting well within my earshot about how all women are cunts, and though he didn’t mention me by name, I knew he was talking about me, and I knew his bellowing was for the benefit of my ears. I had finally gotten under his skin, and all I’d had to do was dangle my recipes—my hard work, my ability—just out of his reach. Culo could yell all he wanted.

  I couldn’t fault Culo for being such a loudmouth—he was just being who he was and maybe trying to make up for what he wasn’t. And I certainly couldn’t blame the kitchen environment, because the very same lack of rules that allowed Culo to run his mouth and insult everyone also allowed me to brazenly call him an asshole from time to time or ignore him altogether. Kitchen law demands that cooks blindly obey their chef like unquestioning recruits, but as long as the food gets made the way the boss demands, there is enormous personal freedom. Over the years I’ve tolerated lots of hard work, long hours, and the occasional unpleasant coworker, but I have never, ever had to compromise who I am.

  More than once I’ve compared my life in the kitchen to that of my office life so many years ago. I imagine the president of the company roaming the halls yelling that the vice president of sales and marketing is gay—although the odds of that actually happening are very slim to none, given the fact that there are now laws preventing that kind of behavior. But had I remained there, I would have had to expend lots of energy on superficial things like my personal appearance, small talk, and office politics—things for which I have no natural knack—to advance. Instead, freed from these kinds of distractions, I’ve been able to focus on the work at hand—the craft—that I really love.

  But as I grow older I cannot deny that my place in the restaurant world may have to change. As turning forty comes closer, it becomes more difficult to imagine a future spent in front of the oven of a high-end restaurant. And while the restaurant world may be slowly (very slowly) evolving into a slightly less antagonistic arena, kitchens largely remain unfriendly places for anyone unwilling to fully dedicate the entirety of their lives to the job.

  It is only in hindsight that I can truly realize how lucky I’ve been to have worked with chefs like Joey, who not only taught me how to be a good cook and an even better pastry chef but also never once gave me cause to think that I was any less qualified for my job simply for being a woman. On the contrary, he was not shy about pointing out what he saw as the advantages of working with women. Thanks to chefs like him and all the wonderfully talented women I’ve worked with, I’ve been able to ignore the sexist comments and managed to work through the fears and failures. I can now look forward in my career without second-guessing my abilities or my place in the kitchen. But with age comes a slow shift in priorities that for me includes having a child.

  With all of the experience and knowledge I’ve gained, I know better than anyone that if kitchens can sometimes be unfriendly places for women, they can be downright dangerous for a pregnant woman. There are the obvious hazards for a pregnant woman (the long days spent entirely on her feet, the heavy lifting), which are nearly impossible to avoid despite the well-meaning but misguided suggestions from innocent outsiders, like bringing in a stool on which to work or simply asking someone else to take care of all the lifting. There are less obvious obstacles. I’ve heard of one pastry chef who had to quit her job early on simply because her severe morning sickness made her retch at the first breath of the kitchen smells. And never mind the slew of regular doctor’s appointments. You can’t just take two hours out of a restaurant workday. An extended maternity leave might seem like a logical answer, except that in businesses with fewer than fifty employees (i.e., lots of small restaurants) maternity leave is a lucky extravagance rather than a legal mandate.

  Of course chefs and pastry chefs do have children, but in my experience it requires a well-paid and supportive partner or family so that she can take off the time she needs. And what about returning to work? Most pastry chef salaries hardly allow for full-time caregivers, especially when full time for us is in excess of forty hours a week. And as much as the determined, resolute woman inside of me believes it can be done, even I have a difficult time imagining myself slipping away to the filthy restroom for half-hour breaks every day to pump breast milk. And should I have to call in sick one day because my infant is ill, who will make the desserts? In small restaurants of precisely the type I have worked in over the recent years, the answer would mostly likely be: no one.

  Despite all this, after twelve years, I still love cooking, still love making desserts, still love even simple tasks like peeling apples. I love the joy that comes with knowing that something I made brought a smile and maybe even sincere pleasure to people, and I love that slices of warm, freshly baked brioche can quiet a kitchen full of foulmouthed cooks. The novelty of finding a new restaurant, discovering a new taste or a fresh way of mixing flavors remains endlessly invigorating, and food is still the most exhilarating part of any trip: to my mother’s farm in Tennessee, to the Sinai Desert, even just
to another borough. For now, at least, I’ll continue cooking and baking and feeding people in some shape or form, providing the most basic of needs and the simplest of pleasures. And shallow though it may be, I will always love the rote question And what do you do? because I know I’ll get a look of surprised delight in people’s eyes when I tell them that I am a pastry chef.

  Acknowledgments

  Many sincere thanks to—

  My editor, Peternelle van Arsdale, and my agent, Kirsten Neuhaus, for believing I could write this book in the first place.

  Everyone at Putnam for their overwhelming support of Spiced, but especially Ivan Held, Kate Stark, Marilyn Ducksworth, Mih-Ho Cha, Lisa Amoroso, Dick Heffernan and the entire sales force, and Rachel Holtzman.

  Sarah Shatz, photographer extraordinaire, Mary Jones, and Gail Schoenberg.

  The very accommodating Restaurant Jean Claude and everyone at Dressler restaurant.

  All the cooks and chefs I’ve worked with who have made my life infinitely richer, but especially Scott Bryan, Scott Barton, and most of all, Joseph Fortunato.

  Janah and Lara Feldman, for their lifetime of support and friendship.

  And finally, my parents, brother, and extended family, without whom I would not be who I am today.