Safe in my kitchen, I opened the envelope.
I shouldn’t have felt bullied by the piece of paper on my table, but there it was. A save-the-date card from an old college friend. A glance at the calendar told me I was free.
Dang.
I didn’t mean that. Not really. Of course I wanted to celebrate my friend’s happiness. Just like I celebrated the happiness of so many others—including my sisters, Sophie and Caterina. At two years shy of thirty, I was old hat at celebrating other people’s happiness.
Before she passed, my grandmother would pat my hand and tell me that someday I would meet the right young man and that I should hold on to him with my whole heart. She’d always said it like that, from the time I worked her register with my pink and yellow braces until I was an adult at Caterina’s wedding. My whole heart. For years I waited, believing that my grandmother’s prediction would prove true, and for a little while, I thought it might. I was still young—barely twenty-three at the time. Nico had his own restaurant, and I was bursting with ideas for him about marketing and décor and menu. Nico, five years older, had no intention of listening to his baby sister, even if I’d successfully rebranded and revitalized three other restaurants belonging to family friends. Instead, he wanted me to keep quiet and manage the front of the house.
Nico’s sous-chef and best friend, Éric, however, had listened. Originally from Morocco and seven years my senior, Éric was too old for me at the time, but I didn’t care. He was handsome and talented, spoke beautiful French, and liked what I had to say about his food.
He took me to restaurants all over Portland, delighting in introducing me to all kinds of foreign cuisine. We ate pho and curry, octopus and tagine, sashimi and sopaipillas. I gained five pounds, and I’d never been happier.
Of course it couldn’t last.
No man I’d met since Éric had ever measured up, whether it was to Éric himself or my memory of him. Our relationship ended four winters ago, but its echoes still resonated in my personal life.
Or lack of a personal life—echoes are the loudest in empty spaces.
I tucked the save-the-date card away and with it my own feelings of regret. Instead, I busied myself with dinner preparations. In one pot, I set the red pepper sauce to reheat gently. I filled a second pot with water, threw in some sea salt, and had just placed it on the burner when my cell phone rang.
“Etta, ya got a minute?”
I wedged the phone between my shoulder and ear while opening my pantry to look for pasta. “For you, Nico, I might even have two. What’s going on?”
“Are you home?”
“Yes …”
“Can I come over?”
“Are you going to explain why you’re being evasive?”
“Tell you in a minute,” Nico said, just as my doorbell rang.
RED PEPPER PASTA
1 lb pasta of choice (I like campanelle and farfalle at the moment)
4 red peppers
1 large shallot
2 to 3 cloves garlic
Crème fraîche
Heavy cream (optional)
Red pepper flakes
Some sugar
Some salt
Some milk
Grated parmesan cheese (pecorino works too)
Fresh arugula, for garnish
Note: This recipe is not particularly … precise. But we’re not baking here. It’s okay to make things the way you want them in a sauce like this.
Roast the peppers. This can take a bit, so have handy a book or your phone or your child or something. You can use an oven, placing the peppers on a baking sheet covered with foil and placing them under the broiler, top rack of the oven. A hot grill works too. Once the tops get nice and blackened, turn the peppers and repeat until they’re completely black and blistered. Using tongs, place the peppers in a Ziploc bag and let them sweat for a while. You can alternatively place them in a bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap.
While the peppers are sweating, chop the shallot and garlic. In a medium saucepan, heat some olive oil over medium heat. Add the shallot and garlic. Throw in a pinch or two of red pepper flakes—if you like things spicier, use more. Sauté until the shallot is golden but not dry. Remove from heat.
Pull out your blender. Slip the blackened skins off the peppers and scoop out the seeds; don’t worry about having little tiny bits of charred pepper skin in there—it’s good for flavor. Stick your finished peppers in your blender. Add the shallot and garlic mixture and purée.
When the mixture is quite smooth, transfer it back to the saucepan. To get every bit of sauce from the blender, add about ¼ cup of milk to the blender, swirl it around, and pour the liquid into the pot. Add a couple of dollops of crème fraîche. Add some heavy cream (or don’t, if you prefer). Stir, and bring sauce to a gentle simmer.
Taste it. At this point, I added some salt and about ½ teaspoon or so of sugar to bring out the sweetness of the peppers. Maybe even a whole teaspoon. Not a lot, but enough.
Let it sit on the burner on low while you cook the pasta.
Rinse and drain the pasta, and add to the red pepper sauce. Stir to combine. Serve with grated cheese and snipped arugula over the top. You could also put some extra crème fraîche on the top, if you’re not afraid of the extra calories.
Serves 6
All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.
—CHARLES M. SCHULZ
The sound of the doorbell resonated inside my apartment.
I massaged the bridge of my nose. “Please don’t tell me you’re outside.”
“I’m outside” came the answer, both from the phone and from the other side of my door.
Oh brother, my brother. “If you’re thinking you dodged the family’s flair for drama,” I said, as I opened the door, “think again.”
“I would never suggest such a thing,” he said, standing in my doorway with a briefcase in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other, which he handed to me. “For you. For your collection.”
I reached inside the bag. It was a small jar of grayish-red crystals. “Is this …”
“I had a friend pick it up for me in New York.”
“Come in. I want to take a closer look at this stuff.”
I made a beeline for the kitchen, and Nico followed behind. Under the bright kitchen lights, I examined the contents of the jar. Inside there was Amethyst Bamboo Salt, one of the rarest, most expensive salts in the world. The crystals were shaped irregularly and smelled both sweet and smoky, like a campfire for s’mores.
“Thank you,” I said, still poking at the salt with my fingers. “But my birthday isn’t for a while longer. What’s this about?”
“Can we sit down?”
I hesitated. “I’ve got pasta water on the stove. Do you mind standing in the kitchen?”
“Don’t use your new salt in your pasta water.”
I moved the jar protectively away from him. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
He took a seat on one of the kitchen stools. I added campanelle pasta to the boiling water and gave it an absent stir.
“I’ve been thinking,” he began, leaning forward.
With Nico, that could mean anything. “What have you been thinking about?”
“It’s been a while since L’uccello Blu closed.”
I put the spoon down. “If a while means four years, then yes,” I said, trying to tamp back the stinging sensation of old guilt.
“I wish it hadn’t ended the way it did, with Éric leaving like that. He was more than a sous-chef; he was a good friend.”
“I know.” After Éric left the restaurant, the kitchen never regained its balance. Nico’s dishes were brilliant, but his support staff lost their footing. Service became uneven, and the business suffered. While some less expensive eateries can survive being a hit-and-miss experience, L’uccello Blu was haute cuisine. The restaurant could only comp so many plates of cold, late food. Online reviews ranged from nos
talgia over the restaurant’s former glory, while others chronicled the many ways they’d been disappointed by their dining experience.
Discouraged, Nico closed the doors of L’uccello Blu four months later.
“I’ve learned a lot since then,” Nico continued. “Working with Dad at D’Alisa & Elle was a good experience, even if it wasn’t what I wanted at the time. And then there’s the James Beard award.”
“Really?” I teased him. “I hadn’t heard.” The nomination had come about after Nico had taken on an executive chef position. Dad had, I think, been both proud and a little jealous, but masked the latter well. After all, with Dad, Nico had learned to balance his extravagant tastes with good sense.
And yet, if Éric had stayed at L’uccello Blu, maybe Nico still would have learned those lessons in his own kitchen. We’d never know.
“I want to open a new restaurant,” Nico said, his voice quieter but resolute. “I’ve learned a lot. I’m ready.”
“That’s great, Nico. I’m really happy for you. You want me to smooth it over with Mom and Dad? After the nomination, they’re probably expecting it.”
“We haven’t talked about it directly.”
“But you’ve talked about it indirectly?” I teased with faux innocence. “What did you say? ‘So, Dad, how would you feel about it if, hypothetically speaking of course, I left Elle and opened a new restaurant?’ ”
“Would you shut up a second?”
I smirked and elbowed my brother in the ribs. “Sorry—got carried away in the fun there.”
“What I wanted to know is if you would go in on it with me.”
“I don’t think I heard you correctly. Would you mind rephrasing?”
“I want you to manage the front-of-the-house operations, like before. Except, this time I would listen to you.”
My mouth dropped open as my mind tried to comprehend the idea. “How long have you been thinking about this?”
“A while.”
“Oh.” After so many years, the chance to work at a restaurant again was tempting. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t interested. “You’ve got to know I’m useless to you as an investor.”
“As an investor, yes. But you have contacts. People love you and they trust you. And if you opened a restaurant, they would trust that restaurant.”
“So … I’m Queen Elizabeth, the figurehead—and you’re Parliament?”
“No. I just know the food. You know the business.”
“You grew up in the business too. And you actually had one.”
“But this was your thing, remember? And you were good at it,” Nico pointed out. “And with your work at the newspaper, you know even better what elements matter to diners, beyond the menu.”
I didn’t let my face betray my thoughts. I thought I was done with the restaurant business forever. Now the tables had turned in a way I’d never expected. I waved a hand, trying to stay casual. “I write about restaurants, but the business—it’s been a while, Nico.”
“You were always intuitive about what would work and what wouldn’t. That hasn’t changed. You can tell which restaurants have staying power and which ones will go under. That last place … what was it?”
“Bando.”
Nico nodded encouragingly. “You said they wouldn’t make it a year, and they closed in eight months.”
“Too much overhead, too much money spent on monogrammed everything, and mediocre food.” I shrugged. “It didn’t take a genius.”
“Maybe not, but you knew better than they did.”
“It was an educated guess.” I moved from the stove.
“Where are you going?”
“Colander. You’re awfully twitchy—keep talking.”
He shrugged. “You know what a restaurant should look like, what makes a good server, and how not to waste money where it doesn’t belong.”
“Brand-new kitchen equipment and an overgrown wine list.”
“See?”
“So …” I carried the pasta pot to the sink and dumped the boiling contents into the colander. “Explain to me how all of this will come to fruition. None of this is cheap, you know.”
“After the nominations were released, I got a call from Frank Burrows.”
My eyebrows flew upward. “Really?” I had met Frank a few times—he owned and invested in several of the more successful restaurants around town. “What did he say?”
“He said that he’d be willing to invest if I decided to strike out on my own again.”
“Awards are magical things.”
“I told him yes.” Nico cleared his throat. “But on the condition that you would manage.”
I set the colander down harder than anticipated. “I could manage it? You told him that?”
“Well …”
“Nico!”
“What?” His fingers splayed defensively in front of him. “My apologies. But he seemed to get really excited about it.”
“In your perfect little world, the one you presented to Frank Burrows, what am I doing?”
“You’re managing the restaurant.”
“No, I mean …” I exhaled hard. Nico’s skull could be so thick sometimes. “Am I still working at the paper? Am I still a critic? Have I been having problems with potential conflicts of interest? Am I using my talents to put together our PR materials?”
“Good idea.”
“Nico!”
“What? You like working at the paper?”
My mouth opened and closed a few times. “You were ready to change my career without consulting me?”
He shrugged. “It’s not the career you’re supposed to have, and we both know it. And I knew that if you didn’t want to, you wouldn’t be afraid to tell me off.”
That was true, at least. “How much thought have you put into this?”
“I think we could do this,” he said, his voice sincere. “I think it could be grand.”
I ran a hand over my face. “I’m not going to jump in blind. I’m going to have to spend some time in thought. And prayer, Nico. Lots of prayer.”
“I have projections and ideas,” he said, diving into his briefcase.
“Fine. Just leave them on the coffee table.”
“Enjoy your salt,” he said.
I waved good-bye, my heart too overwhelmed for speech.
I couldn’t sleep and it was Nico’s fault.
And mine.
Honestly, opening a restaurant was up there with the “Hey, there’s an empty barn so let’s put on a show!” mentality. It may have worked for Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, but we were grownups, Nico and I. At least I was. The economy was difficult, the stakes high. Putting an existing newspaper career at risk was crazy.
It wasn’t as though I loved my job. I liked it fine. But I knew in my heart that running a restaurant had always been my dream. When I was little, I didn’t play house with my friends—we played restaurant. I liked food writing. But love? Deep love? Writing for print wasn’t a walk in the park, despite the illusions of some. There were deadlines and edits and a lot of combined right- and left-brain function, and the inevitable hurt feelings when I had to write a less than glowing review.
Like the rest of my siblings, I’d grown up at the restaurant, washing dishes, busing tables, hostessing, waitressing. I idolized my mother, my grandmother, and my sister Caterina and the food they created. But all it took was my first internship during culinary school to teach me that cooking outside my father’s kitchen was a completely different experience. Outside his kitchen, I discovered what a real working kitchen was like and what it was like to be the one everyone picked on.
Some people thrive on that kind of pressure, but I discovered quickly that I wasn’t one of them.
Discouraged but still trying to stay within the industry, I decided to study business at the University of Oregon. After graduation, I helped my father keep the books, freshened up the restaurant’s logo, and focused the branding. His friend, another restaurant owner, hired me on to
do the same for his place. I was cheap labor, fresh from school, but I had good ideas that tended to be received well. One job led to another, and when Nico offered me a position at his new restaurant, I accepted gladly.
The idea seemed exciting at the time, until I realized Nico wasn’t ready to listen to his kid sister.
And then after Éric and the closing of L’uccello Blu, I backed away from the more creative work, sticking to paying suppliers and staff. I was both heartbroken and bored, but the bookkeeping paid my bills. In the evenings, I continued to experiment with food the way I had with Éric. I ate, and then I blogged. And because of my ties to the industry, I snagged the attention of Marti.
The rest was its own kind of history.
Was I restless, or was it time for me to go back to the business? And was it fair to want change when food-writing jobs were so difficult to come by?
Either way, it wasn’t helping me sleep, not that I’d slept well of late.
What would Grand-mère have thought? Writing for the paper hadn’t made a lot of sense to her—though she understood it more than blogging. Would she be glad to see me going back to restaurant work?
I glanced at the clock: 1:26 a.m. I’d been sleeping poorly since Grand-mère passed, but this new dilemma was only making it worse. I thumped my head deeper into my feather pillow, balled my fists, and threw an entirely ineffective tantrum.
Rather than lie in bed feeling sorry for myself, I threw back the covers, planted my feet on the floor, and did what I did most nights—headed for the kitchen.
Some nights I cooked. Others I baked. Tonight, I saw my new salt on the countertop and decided to put it away, so I opened up my pantry to examine the untidiness within.
It didn’t disappoint.
The truth was, some people collected antiques; others, pig figurines. Me? I had a thing for dry goods.
Strangely shaped artisan pasta. Heirloom beans. Exotic rice varietals. Multicolored salts. Spices from around the world. I was a sucker for all of it, and the stranger the better. And while the rest of my apartment was clean enough for polite society, my pantry looked like something from an episode of Hoarders.
A Table by the Window: A Novel of Family Secrets and Heirloom Recipes (Two Blue Doors) Page 2