by Dana Bate
“Yes, well, talk is talk. . . .” He glances into the bowl. “But back to this mousse—what exactly is in it? Wait. Don’t tell me. I probably don’t want to know.”
“Let’s just say it isn’t health food.”
“I definitely taste booze of some sort. Rum?”
“And crème de cacao.”
“Where on earth did you find crème de cacao?”
“In your liquor cabinet.”
He rumples his brow. “We own crème de cacao? Since when?”
I shrug. “I’m probably not the best person to ask.”
He scoops out a heaping spoonful of mousse and shovels it into his mouth, but a not insignificant portion lands on his upper lip, making it look as if he has a mustache. I hold back a laugh.
“What?” he says.
“You just . . . There’s some mousse on your lip.”
“Oh, dear.” He sticks out his tongue and tries to lick it off. “Better?”
“No, here.” I grab my napkin and reach across the table to blot his upper lip, and as I do, I hear the clickety-clack of heels enter the room.
“I hope I’m not interrupting.”
I whip my head around to see Natasha standing in the doorway, dressed in high-waisted silky pants and a tight-fitting tank, both of which—like nearly everything I’ve seen of her wardrobe so far—are black. I immediately jump to my feet.
“Natasha—hi.” I throw my napkin on the table. “We were just taste-testing the chocolate mousse you asked me to make.”
She eyes me coolly. “I see.”
“It’s brilliant,” Hugh says. “You really must try it.”
“Here—I’ll get some for you,” I say.
I scoop a small portion into a bowl and grab a spoon, feeling her husband’s eyes on me. Natasha saunters toward the table and glances into the bowl.
“My grandmother’s looked lighter in color than this,” she says.
“Oh.” I hold out the bowl. “Well . . . maybe try a spoonful and let me know what you think? If the taste is close, I can fiddle with the ratios or type of chocolate to make it lighter.”
She hesitates.
“Try it,” Hugh urges. “It’s better than the one I ordered that time in Paris, when you were shooting Unhinged.”
A beat passes. Then she takes the bowl from my hands, examining the contents warily. She picks up the spoon and measures out a small portion, enough to fit on only half the teaspoon. She stares at the spoon as if she is confronting an old enemy. Finally, she lifts it to her lips and takes a little, leaving half of the half portion behind. As soon as the chocolate hits her tongue, she closes her eyes and lets out a long sigh.
“See? What did I tell you?” He gives me a quick wink.
Natasha opens her eyes. “My grandmother’s was still lighter,” she says. “And stiffer.”
“I can do lighter and stiffer. I’ll tweak a few things and try again.”
“But why mess with perfection?” Hugh says, going for another big spoonful.
Natasha purses her lips. “Because it’s supposed to be my grandmother’s recipe. And this isn’t.”
Maybe it would be closer if you’d given me more to work with than “chocolaty,” “smooth,” and “used liquor,” I think.
“It isn’t a problem,” I say. “I’m happy to rework the recipe.”
“Good,” she says. She hands the bowl back to me. “Do that tomorrow. And see if you can do a version of her cream of carrot soup, without the cream. She used a lot of dill. That was always the best part.”
Natasha whirls around and walks toward the hallway, the legs of her silky pants swooshing against each other as her hips swing back and forth. She pauses at the doorway and glances over her shoulder.
“Hugh, I need to brief you on my upcoming travel plans. Would you mind?”
He tosses his spoon into his empty bowl and wipes his mouth with his napkin. “Right—coming.”
She turns and walks out the door, and he starts to follow, but he stops when he reaches me and rests a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for the mousse. It was lovely.”
Then he tucks his hand into his pocket, clears his throat, and follows after Natasha.
I should probably say up front that Hugh was right; that mousse was perfection. I could fiddle with the recipe all day and night to make it identical to Natasha’s grandmother’s version, and it wouldn’t be as good as the one I made tonight. But that’s the funny thing about food. So much of our enjoyment of it stems from experience. Sure, there are foods almost universally agreed upon as good (chocolate) or bad (rotten eggs), but in between, the degree to which we love or hate a certain delicacy often has something to do with where we ate it and with whom. My mousse may, objectively, be the better dish, but that will never be the case for Natasha because it isn’t how her grandmother made it. In the same way, I would kill for a bowl of my mom’s spaghetti salad right now, but I’m pretty sure I’m the only one in the entire United Kingdom who would eat it.
Since ghostwriting cookbooks is all about pleasing the client, I spend the next two weeks doing as Natasha asks: refining the mousse recipe, developing a creamless cream of carrot soup, streamlining a recipe for baked apples, and concocting a gluten-free version of her grandmother’s crumb cake. I manage to persuade Natasha to taste small amounts of all the recipes except the mousse, and whatever is left after numerous rounds of testing I either leave in a special section of the refrigerator for Mr. Ballantine or take home with me to my own tiny fridge, which, at this point, is bursting.
My refrigerator may be bursting, but fortunately, even after all of the recipe testing, my waistline is not. I wish I could credit my steady weight to something other than genetics—a healthy devotion to exercise, say, or reasonable self-restraint—but a fast metabolism is one of the few genetic gifts my mother passed along to me. Given her diet, she should have weighed more than 200 pounds, but she never broke 120, even in her later years. It was one of the ways she could trick people into believing she was in decent health: Sure, she might blow through an entire jar of sour cream and onion dip in one sitting, but she could still fit into the Lee jeans she bought in 1989, so everything was fine. Never mind that she could barely make it up a flight of steps without pausing to catch her breath.
But for me, the upshot is that I can basically eat whatever I want, within limits. In a job that sometimes requires me to eat chocolate mousse five times a week, that’s definitely an advantage. By my third week in London, my diet relies heavily on crispy sesame chicken, a dish Natasha says her mother and grandmother used to serve at family gatherings. It’s the first time Natasha has mentioned her mother, but when I inquire further, she stiffens. “She was a very good cook, just like her mother,” she says. When I try to push her and ask about her father, she says, “Let’s stick to the task at hand, shall we?”
So that’s what I do. From what Natasha described, the sesame chicken is a variation on oven-fried chicken, with a crisp, garlicky coating speckled with sesame seeds. My first attempt is a total disaster involving burnt sesame seeds, unappetizing flecks of fresh garlic, and more oil than is in all of Saudi Arabia. Whatever the chicken is supposed to taste like, I know this isn’t even close.
I fine-tune the recipe all week, swapping out the fresh garlic for powdered and preheating the oiled pan in the oven for a good ten minutes before baking. For what I hope is my final adjustment, I marinate the chicken pieces overnight in a dry rub, leaving them covered on a big sheet pan in Natasha’s refrigerator Wednesday night.
When I show up at Natasha’s place Thursday morning, Poppy is hurrying around the house, stuffing various odds and ends into a matching set of black Louis Vuitton suitcases congregated by the front door.
“Is someone going somewhere?”
She looks up from one of the bags. “We’re going to Paris for the week.”
“We?” My heart leaps. I’ve always wanted to go to Paris.
“Natasha and I. She’s shooting an ad for her new
fragrance and decided to stay the week.”
“Oh. Okay.” I watch as Poppy stuffs a box of vitamin C tablets into a carry-on. “Does this mean I have the week off? Or should I work from my flat?”
She zips the carry-on shut. “I believe Natasha still wants you to use her kitchen. Olga will be here. So will Mr. Ballantine—though he will obviously be very busy with work.”
“So you’ll be back when? Next Thursday?”
“Friday. That’s the plan now, anyway. With Natasha . . . well, sometimes things change.”
“Do I overhear you two talking about me?”
Natasha glides into the hallway, dressed in a pair of black cashmere leggings and a gray blazer thrown atop a dip-dyed gray-and-black tank top. She smiles, though a slight edge in her voice belies her relaxed expression.
Poppy immediately stands up straight and smoothes the front of her coral wrap dress. “No. I mean, yes. I mean . . . I was just telling Kelly about the Paris plans.”
“I’m jealous,” I say. “I’ve never been.”
Natasha’s green eyes widen. “You’ve never been to Paris?”
“Until this job came along, I’d never left the United States.”
“You’re kidding,” she says.
“Nope. I’ve had a passport for two years, just in case, but this is the first stamp on it.”
Natasha stares at me wide-eyed, as if I just told her I’ve never used a proper toilet. “Well, now that Paris is right across The Channel, you have to make the trip before you head back to the States. Given how much you love food, it would be a crime not to.”
“I’d like to, if I can find the time,” I say.
Poppy clears her throat. “Sorry to interrupt, but I’m going to keep packing. We still need a few more items in the hand luggage.”
“Sounds good,” Natasha says. “Oh, but make sure you pack the active silver. Last time you forgot, and I swear that’s why I got sick when we landed in Copenhagen.”
Poppy nods anxiously and rushes up the stairs, and Natasha turns back to me. “Anyway, before we leave, I wanted to talk to you about how things will run while I’m away. Olga will meet you at the house at eight tomorrow to let you in. I know that’s an hour earlier than normal, but she has a bunch of appointments and errands in the morning, so please, please be on time. Olga has been a loyal and hardworking employee for years, and if you make her wait around . . . well, let’s just say I won’t be happy.”
“I’ll be here at eight. Not a problem.”
“Great. And in terms of cooking, why don’t you plan on finishing the sesame chicken and moving on to some of the recipes from my time in LA. Start with the poached salmon.”
“Remind me about that recipe?”
“When I first started working in LA, there was this restaurant that made the best cold poached salmon with a mustard-dill sauce. I’d murder for a plate of that right now. It was so good.”
“What was the name of the restaurant?”
“Bon Cuit. They closed about five years ago. So sad. They also made the best raw carrot salad, so take a stab at that, too. I can try them both when I return Friday.”
Before I can ask any more questions about my responsibilities in her absence, Poppy comes tearing down the stairs, visibly frazzled.
“There’s a problem,” she says.
Natasha does not look happy. “Oh?”
“I can’t find either the magnesium tablets or the lavender eye mask.”
“Did you check the hall closet?”
“Yes. And they aren’t there.”
Natasha checks her watch. “Let me look. We’d better hurry. Sunil wants to leave at nine thirty sharp.”
She heads for the stairs, and Poppy follows.
“Have fun,” I call after them. “I can’t wait to hear all about it—especially the food.”
“We’ll definitely report back,” Natasha says. Then she turns to face me, a tight smile on her face. “Maybe we’ll try that chocolate mousse Hugh ordered while I was shooting Unhinged—the one your version seems to have dethroned. I guess we’ll see if he was right—or if he was just trying to make you feel good about yourself.”
Then she turns back and, with Poppy nipping at her heels, disappears upstairs.
CHAPTER 12
Bzzzz. Bzzzz.
I roll over the next morning to the sound of my phone buzzing on my nightstand. I turned off the ringer, as I do every night, though that’s more out of habit than necessity, since the only person who uses this dedicated line is Poppy, and we barely speak. But when I glance down at the screen, I see Poppy’s name flashing up at me. Why would she be calling me? Isn’t she in Paris?
“Hello?” I say, my voice still scratchy with sleep.
“Where are you?” Poppy barks into the phone.
“At home. Why?”
“Because Olga has been waiting for you for twenty bloody minutes, that’s why.”
I glance over at the clock. It’s 8:20. Crap!
“I’m so sorry—I have no idea how this happened. I must have forgotten to set my alarm.”
“This is precisely the sort of thing Natasha didn’t want to happen. She will be very unhappy when she hears.”
“Please don’t tell her. Please? I’ll leave right now—I’ll just throw on clothes and grab a taxi. I won’t even shower.”
“I don’t need the details, thank you.”
“Okay. Just . . . don’t tell Natasha. She’ll kill me.”
Poppy hesitates. “Fine. But I can’t make any promises for Olga. I have no control over her.”
I jump out of bed. “Thank you, Poppy. I swear this won’t happen again.”
“Good,” she says, and hangs up.
I tear through my apartment, throw on clean underwear and clothes, and run a brush through my hair. I toss a random assortment of makeup into my purse, then burst through the front door and hail the first taxi I see. Fifteen minutes later, after hitting a brief traffic jam on Chalk Farm Road, the cab deposits me in front of Natasha’s house, where I find Olga tapping her foot as she points to her watch.
“You late,” she says.
“I know—I’m so sorry. I forgot to set my alarm.”
“Natasha say eight o’clock.”
“I know,” I repeat. “I made a mistake. It won’t happen again. I promise.”
She lets out a grumpy hmpf and unlocks the front gate, leading me around the house to a side entrance I’ve never seen before. Her purse is slung over her shoulder, as if she plans to leave as soon as I get inside.
“I buy salmon and onion and extra carrots,” she says as she opens the side door. “For testing.”
“Perfect. Thank you. That will save me a lot of time.”
“No chicken today?”
“I think the version I made yesterday will do the trick.”
She nods without smiling. “Was good. Very good. Mr. Ballantine, he liked very much.”
“Really?”
“He finish whole plate.”
By the time I’d baked the chicken yesterday, Natasha and Poppy had already left for Paris, so I’d used Olga as my guinea pig and left a few pieces for Mr. Ballantine as well. Olga never displays much emotion, but she quickly wolfed down her entire piece, picking every last bit of meat off the bone. I’m glad to hear Mr. Ballantine had a similar reaction.
Olga leads me through the door into a utility room, which connects directly to the kitchen through a closed door I’d never noticed before. I guess I’d always assumed it was a closet.
I make for the refrigerator, but when I don’t hear Olga behind me, I glance over my shoulder. She is standing in the utility room, watching me.
“Could you . . . I mean, would you mind keeping all of this between you and me?”
She narrows her eyes. “I no tell Natasha this time. But next time? Big trouble.”
“There won’t be a next time—thank you.”
She stares at me, expressionless. “You work now,” she says, then shuts the door and
leaves.
Nine hours later, I stand in front of a thick piece of poached salmon, its surface carnation pink. I cooked the fish first thing this morning, slipping four filets into a simmering bath of vegetables and white wine, then let it chill in the refrigerator all day, while I searched the Internet for descriptions of Bon Cuit’s carrot salad. I made two different versions of the salad, neither of which was bad, but neither was very good either. The first was under-seasoned and bland, and the second tasted overwhelmingly of vinegar.
My fork glides through the salmon’s supple flesh, meeting almost no resistance. I take a bite and close my eyes, trying to focus on all of the flavors: what works, what doesn’t, what’s too strong, what isn’t strong enough. The silky texture is perfect, but the flavor could use a little . . . something. Maybe a leek in the broth? Or some shallots? I’ll have to work on it next week. While Natasha is in Paris, surrounded by what are probably the most amazing pastries in the world. None of which she will eat.
I pack up the leftover salmon filets and leave them in the refrigerator with a note:
Mr. Ballantine—
Please help yourself to the leftover salmon. I’m still working on the recipe, but this version is pretty good.
Best,
Kelly
I finish cleaning the kitchen and pack up my bag. As I zip it shut, Olga walks in.
“You ready?” She clutches her purse strap.
“Yep. There’s some salmon in the refrigerator if you want to take some home with you.”
She looks as if she is about to decline, then stops herself. “Is good?”
“Pretty good. Not perfect. I’m still working on it.”
She considers my offer, then waves her hand. “Meh. I leave for Mr. Ballantine.”
She escorts me out the side door and locks it behind her, and then the two of us head for the tube station, where we take different trains on the Northern line to our respective destinations.
As I emerge from the Warren Street stop, I feel the split-splat of rain on the top of my head. The sprinkle quickly escalates into a full-fledged downpour. This wouldn’t be a problem if I had an umbrella or anything resembling appropriate footwear, but in my rush to leave this morning, I forgot my umbrella and managed to throw on a pair of flats that are quite possibly the least rainproof shoes ever designed.