Comfort Me with Apples

by Ruth Reichl

  * * *

  “You’re going to have to be agile,” Michael said, looking out at the sea of surfers. “I don’t want anyone who can’t roller-skate stumbling around my dining room.”

  When Michael explained that all the tips would be pooled, with 10 percent going to the kitchen, 10 percent to the busboys, and 10 percent to the bar, a groan went up. “Does that mean that we’ll have to report all our tips?” someone asked, and Michael said yes. Another groan. “The kind of place I run, you’ll be audited. You might as well be prepared for that. My buddy over at L’Ermitage, his waiters get audited every year.”

  The waiters were even less enthusiastic about the next part of the speech. Michael held up the heavy Christofle silver he had purchased in Paris. “Keep your eyes on the silver. Please, if you don’t do anything else, just do this one thing. Do it as a favor to me. Everybody in town is waiting for me to trip on this one. Everyone said, ‘Michael, you can’t use Christofle. You won’t have any by the end of the first month.’ I’ve got to prove that they’re wrong.”

  He looked around to see if anybody was leaving. Nobody was. “Any questions?”

  There was just one. A guy with long blond hair held up his hand. “So when are we opening?” he wanted to know.

  “Day after tomorrow,” said Michael, “but it all depends on the inspectors. They will all be here today.”

  “They will?” said Phil, with some astonishment. “Don’t you think you might have mentioned this little detail?”

  * * *

  A day later Michael was strolling through the dining room balancing a telephone on each shoulder. “We open tomorrow,” he said into one. “J’ai besoin de vraies morilles,” he said into the other.

  He turned back to the first phone. “We’ll do dinner just for friends,” he said. “Maybe forty, fifty people. Then we’ll do the real thing the following night.” Into the second he said, “Vous les trouverez.” And he hung them both up.

  “Who are you going to ask?” said Mark. “And how are you going to convey the impression that you expect them to pay?”

  “Easy,” said Michael, with characteristic confidence. “I’ll just call up and say that we’re open for business and would they like to come for dinner. Don’t worry. They’ll come. They’ll pay.”

  He and Phil went off to the garden to draw up the list. “No, not him,” I kept hearing, “I don’t want any industry types.”

  Phil nodded at me and said, very softly, so as not to hurt my feelings, “You gonna let her come?”

  “Sure,” said Michael. “She has an expense account. Seven o’clock. She can bring one person.”

  * * *

  Colman beat me to the restaurant. At 6: 30 Michael realized he had forgotten flowers, handed me a wad of money, and ordered, “Find a florist.” By the time I had arranged the lilies and tea roses in the largest water glasses, it was 7: 15.

  “Problems?” murmured Colman as I slid breathlessly into my seat.

  “Opening-night jitters,” I replied.

  “Some of these dishes sound awful,” he said, surveying the menu with a certain skepticism. “Raw scallops with beets? Give me a break!”

  He was even less impressed when a shocking mash of pink topped with two translucent rounds of scallop was set before him. “Is this safe?” he asked, poking it with a fork. “It looks like melted lipstick topped with plastic beads.”

  “Try it,” I urged. “Michael copied it from the man he modestly calls ‘my pal Pierre Vedel in Paris,’ but he insists that Maine scallops are better than anything in France. He gets them from some woman named Ingrid who has her own boat.”

  “It’s good,” Colman conceded, somewhat reluctantly. “The sweetness of the beets works with the scallops.”

  “Now try the hot goat cheese salad,” I said. “Michael’s taking these old dried-out petits chèvres and putting them in the oven. When they come out they’re moist and runny, like really good Brie. And wait until you see the frisée! You won’t believe how beautiful it is. Locally grown, from some place down in Rancho Santa Fe.”

  “Appetizers are easy,” said Colman, reserving judgment. “We’ll see how they do on the main courses.”

  But when he tasted the squab, he put his head to one side and nodded, which is what he did when he liked a dish. He took a second bite and considered it. The bird had simply been boned, rubbed with herbs, and quickly charred on the grill. The meat was rare and rosy, the skin crisp and almost black.

  “Even the French chefs are saying these Santa Barbara squabs are better than anything in France,” I said.

  He shook his head. He took another bite. And then another. “What’s the sauce?” he asked.

  “Raspberry vinegar, reduced,” I said. “The vinegar was a problem. The bottle said ‘raspberry’ in English, but ‘strawberry’ in French. It was just white vinegar with a squirt of fruit syrup. So Ken made his own, with fresh fruit.”

  “Okay,” Colman conceded at the end of the meal, “these guys are onto something.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Michael’s arrogant as hell, and you have to take everything he says with a grain of salt. But there’s a real idea here. The food they’re doing is fresh and local, but it’s different than what my friends are doing up in Berkeley. It’s less earthy. It’s got attitude.”

  Colman cocked his head and said, “Don’t waste this speech on me.”

  “I know, I know,” I said. “The article.”

  “You’re going to have to work fast,” he said. “You should probably go right home and start writing.”

  “Can’t wait to get rid of me?” I teased.

  He looked embarrassed and said nothing, not even a polite response. I noticed that his forehead was dotted with sweat. He seemed so acutely uncomfortable that I suddenly remembered the early-morning tennis and the midnight deadlines. “There’s another woman?” I asked.

  He nodded solemnly.

  The pain didn’t register at once. It was as if I had hit my thumb with a hammer and was waiting for the throbbing to start.

  He kept his eyes on mine and took a deep breath. “I don’t think there’s an easy way to tell you this,” he went on. He stopped for a moment and then blurted out, “We’re going to get married.”

  “Does Claude know?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I called to ask his permission. We’re going to Paris for the wedding.”

  That hurt more than anything. I lifted my chin, trying to keep the tears from spilling onto my cheeks. I croaked a bit, speaking over the lump that was in my throat. “I’m married,” I managed to choke out. “Why shouldn’t you be?”

  ASPARAGUS WITH BALSAMIC VINEGAR

  This is the simplest recipe: All it requires is fat asparagus, excellent balsamic vinegar, and a few fingers.

  Because you want this to be lavish, count on a pound of asparagus per person. Buy the fattest stalks you can, and choose ones that are closed at the tip end. (Asparagus open up as they get older, and they don’t taste as good.)

  Trim the bottom of the stalks with a vegetable peeler. Unless you have an asparagus pot, trim the asparagus so that they will fit into your largest skillet.

  Fill the skillet halfway with water, bring the water to a boil, and add salt to taste; then add the asparagus. Cover and cook 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the asparagus, or until the spears are still firm but soft enough to pierce easily with a skewer or fork. Don’t overcook; they become mushy.

  Drain well. Set them on two plates, arranging them attractively. Sprinkle with sea salt.

  Serve with a small dish of balsamic vinegar to dip them into. Insist that your guests use their fingers.

  MICHAEL’S PASTA AND SCALLOPS

  I took notes on this dish one afternoon while Jonathan was noodling around in the kitchen. The notes were pretty sketchy, so Lori Powell, who tested the recipes for this book, completely revised the directions. But I like the result; this dish has the freshness, the simplicity, and the luxurious qualit
y that characterized the food Michael served when he first opened his restaurant. The dish later turned into pasta with scallops and chardonnay-cream sauce, one of Michael’s signature recipes.

  1 cup fish stock

  1 cup heavy cream

  1/2 pound sea scallops, tough muscles removed

  salt and pepper

  1/2 pound fresh linguine

  1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, or to taste

  3 ounces golden caviar

  Garnish: 12 fresh tarragon leaves and 12 small fresh basil leaves

  Boil the fish stock in a large saucepan until reduced to 1/4 cup (about 4 minutes). Add the cream and, being careful not to let cream boil over, simmer until reduced to 1/2 cup (about 6 minutes).

  Prepare the grill for cooking.

  Pat the scallops dry and season them with salt and pepper. Grill the scallops on a lightly oiled rack until just cooked through (1–2 minutes per side). Transfer scallops, as cooked, to a covered plate and keep them warm.

  Cook the linguine in a 6- to 8-quart pot of boiling salted water until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking water and drain the pasta in a colander. Return the pasta to the pot and toss it with the cream sauce, 1/4 cup of the pasta cooking liquid, and the lemon juice; add salt and pepper to taste over moderate heat until hot (adding more liquid if necessary, a tablespoon at a time).

  Serve the pasta mounded on plates. Top with scallops and caviar. Garnish with tarragon and basil.

  Serves 4.

  5

  GARLIC IS GOOD

  When I woke up the next morning I was stretched across the couch in the large, empty living room of Michael’s Malibu house. I opened my eyes and found Jonathan sitting on a big chair, peering fearfully at me. “You okay?” he asked.

  I moaned. “You were in no shape to drive last night,” he said, “and we didn’t know where to take you. In the end I just drove your car here.”

  My lips were cracked and my head felt like an enormous watermelon. When I tried to stand up, I fell down. I was finally able to stand long enough to negotiate the steps to the car, and I sat there for a moment, breathing hard and waiting for the nausea to pass.

  The trip up the curving coast road was excruciating; the sun was very bright, its rays piercing my forehead and stabbing into my eyes. My stomach had become a separate and alien creature whose sole mission in life was attack.

  I barely remember the flight back to Berkeley, and the drive from the airport has been mercifully erased from my memory. I hauled myself up the stairs, my head pounding with each step, and sank, gratefully, into my own bed.

  Maybe it was pneumonia, I said. At the very least it was the flu. It was not a complete lie; for days I felt hot and queasy, as if I were burning up with fever. Swallowing anything, even water, was impossible. I lay in bed with my face to the wall, feeling as if my world had ended.

  Doug came home to care for me; his solicitude broke my heart. He brought me cold compresses and glasses of ice water, and when I could no longer pretend that my ailment was physical he spoke wisely about the depression that often follows a fever.

  If he only knew, I thought to myself, and was horrified, all over again, by the way I had betrayed him. I listened to him working in his studio, comforted by the familiar sounds, thinking that maybe I could resign myself to a life without children.

  I would have liked to stay in bed forever, liked to forget that I had ever embarked on this sorry episode. The phone kept ringing, but I refused to answer it. I knew what the calls were about: Colman was marrying another editor at the magazine and everybody wanted to discuss it. The one person I was foolish enough to talk with informed me that Colman and his fiancée had been seeing each other for months. “But they had to keep it hidden,” the woman confided, “because he was living with someone else. Nobody knows who.”

  After that I avoided the phone altogether, but I still had a deadline to meet. Three days before the piece was due I dragged myself out of bed and walked down to my workroom.

  I stared at the blank paper for a moment and then, from out of nowhere, the first line arrived. “In the kit that they sent to the press,” I typed, “they look more like rock stars in a group called ‘The Chefs’ than people who actually cook.” The words came pouring out. Writing the article saved me. If, in fact, I could be said to have written it; the article seemed to write itself. It was finished in three days, and afterward I found that I was, once again, able to eat.

  When Colman called to discuss what I had written, the sound of his voice brought it all back, and I shook so hard I could barely hold the phone. The conversation was quick; he was like ice and he stuck to business. He got married, and for weeks afterward I tortured myself by calling his apartment, but his wife always answered, and each time I heard her voice I banged the phone back into its cradle.

  “Stop doing that,” said Colman the first time I reached him at the office. Almost a month had passed, and the sound of his voice had become a little less painful.

  “Doing what?” I replied as innocently as I could.

  “You know,” he said. “It makes my wife crazy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “I need to discuss something with you. I want to write a story about garlic.”

  “Garlic?” he asked. “Who cares about garlic?”

  “Berkeley cares about garlic,” I said, launching into my pitch. My plan was to exorcise Paris by going back to my roots. What did I care about champagne and caviar? I was a Berkeley girl, and I was going to write about something earthy, something elemental, something that really mattered.

  I told Colman about Les Blank, a Berkeley filmmaker who was making a movie about garlic. Colman was not responsive; the Museum of Modern Art was presenting a retrospective of Les Blank’s work, but no one in Hollywood had ever heard of his cult classic Spend It All. I explained about The Garlic Book, a big best-seller in Berkeley, but since it was not a must-read in Tinseltown, Colman didn’t care. Trying to interest him in Berkeley’s obsession with garlic sausages seemed hopeless, and I suspected that a restaurant in the High Sierra with a menu dedicated entirely to garlic would hold little fascination for him. But I knew that there was one thing in Berkeley that could attract Colman’s attention.

  “Alice Waters . . .” I began, and I was rewarded with a quick intake of breath, “. . . has an annual garlic festival.”

  “She does?” he asked.

  I knew that would get him. “I’m surprised you didn’t know,” I said smugly.

  There was a silence. Then, very slowly, he relented. “You might be onto something,” he admitted. “Will she talk to you?”

  “Of course,” I said with a certain degree of pride, “she’ll talk to me. We’re both from Berkeley.”

  * * *

  I found Alice standing in front of the open fireplace in the Chez Panisse kitchen, slicing garlic into slivers and then stuffing them beneath the skin of several plump ducks. A big spray of apple blossoms framed her head; Chez Panisse was the only professional kitchen I had ever seen that was decorated with flowers.

  She put down her knife when she saw me. “An article on garlic?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron. “That would be perfect. The next garlic dinner is going to be a benefit to raise money so Les can finish his film. A little article would help. What can I do?”

  “Give me the menus from the past few festivals,” I replied. “I need to persuade a skeptical editor that this is a good idea. He lives in L.A. and he doesn’t think anyone is interested in garlic.”

  Alice gave a little sigh and cast me a sympathetic glance. “Of course,” she said. She wiped her hands again and added, “Let me find you some good-looking copies.” As she walked into her office she called over her shoulder, already a co-conspirator, “And if that doesn’t work, maybe we can think of something else.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said when she came back with the menus. “These will do the trick.”

 
; * * *

  Colman called as soon as he got the menus. “Grilled tripe with garlic, herbs, and bread crumbs sounds wonderful,” he said, perusing the menu from the first garlic festival. “So does poached fish with tomato and aioli whisked into the fish broth. And I love the idea of fresh figs, white cheese, and garlic honey.” He began reading the dishes from the second year, stopping when he got to the Troisgros recipe for roasted pigeons stuffed with whole garlic. “We should have gone to Troisgros when we were in France,” he said wistfully. For a moment it was as if the past few weeks had never happened. Then he remembered and hurried on. “Just imagine how good Japanese buckwheat noodles with seaweed in a soy, garlic, and chive sauce must taste.”

  “Which festival was that?” I asked, hoping to get the good feeling back.

  “The third,” he said. “She served it after the garlic baked under ashes. And before the roasted suckling pigs from garlic-fed sows.” He stopped for a moment and asked, “Do you think that the piglets really tasted like garlic just because their mothers were fed garlic?”

  “Alice assured me that they were very potent,” I replied huskily. My voice was sticking in my throat; talking to Colman had suddenly become so painful I would have said anything to get him off the phone. But our conversation had come to an end. The menus had the desired effect, and Colman was converted to the garlic cause.

  Before long Colman seemed convinced that the idea had been his in the first place. Or maybe it was just an act; maybe he only wanted to reinforce the notion that our relationship was strictly business now. Whatever the reason, he kept throwing statistics at me. Did I know that garlic consumption had gone up 200 percent in ten years? Was I aware that California grew 90 percent of the garlic consumed in America? He wanted me to visit a garlic farm. He wanted me to spend time with Les Blank. He wanted me to interview Alice Waters. And wasn’t there some restaurant up in the mountains that made a specialty of garlic?

  I had no desire to keep him on the phone, so I refrained from reminding Colman that a few weeks earlier this restaurant had bored him to tears. I merely replied that Les was going to Truckee that weekend to film the restaurant’s owners, and that he was taking some sausage maker along.