Cooking as Fast as I Can (16 page)

Then two sous chefs appeared at the side door. They approached me, wringing their hands.

“You are okay?” said one of them in heavily accented English.

“I'm not sure,” I said.

“Do not worry,” said the other. “This will not happen to you.”

“You are our guest,” said the first. “This is for the boys who are young and learning. Not for you.”

I wasn't thrilled to hear that in this world-class kitchen, what Americans consider child abuse was de rigueur, but felt consoled by their words, and after a few more minutes of deep breathing, followed them back inside. The boy was back on his feet and at his station, as if nothing had happened. I peeked at his new pile of chives. They were perfectly cut, with the ends collected into their own impeccable mound.

The first two weeks raced by in a blur of adrenaline-fueled days and exhausted nights spent drinking cheap beer and eating canned ravioli alone in my room. I was subsisting mostly on the family meal, the spectacular staff meals we ate every day before dinner service. The only thing I knew about Vonnas was the route down the hill to the restaurant in the morning, and back up the hill to my dorm/mental institution at night. The beer and ravioli cost fifteen francs at the convenience store I passed every day, and that's what I ate. The meal was within my budget and filled me up, and that was good enough. Somewhere deep down I understood how pathetic this was, but I told myself I was there to learn
and work, not splurge on local cuisine. And anyway, there would be plenty of fabulous, refined meals in my future that I would have a hand in both creating and savoring, and that thought helped me tough it through can after can of ravioli.

One night, back at the dorm, I was hunched over the stovetop in the common room, and I felt a light tap on my shoulder. It was Kimiko, one of the Japanese chefs. She pointed to the orange globs simmering in the saucepan and shook her head. Then she removed the pot from the burner and gestured to a bag of groceries on the counter. An hour later, I joined her and her countrymen for a delicious meal of stuffed quail, golden tempura, and a cheap but good bottle of white wine.

Once I settled in, I realized I'd landed at Georges Blanc at the perfect time. Nouvelle cuisine, which he'd helped pioneer, was having its moment. It included lighter, fresher interpretations of French food infused with exotic, unexpected ingredients like saffron or vanilla, plated simply. This new style was shaking up the old guard of French cooking. In my darker moments I'd wondered whether there was actually a point to doing a
stage
in France, or whether it was simply another hoop to jump through. But as I got more comfortable, I realized how fortunate I was to be at the beating heart of this new movement, learning from its founder how to create its signature dishes. After I got over the initial culture shock, I began to feel as if I belonged. Mississippi was home, but I'd always felt the deep urge to be out in the world. And now that I was, I wanted nothing more than to excel in Georges Blanc's kitchen, creating exquisite dishes, each one inspired, sublime, and flawless. I'd been hungry for that level of commitment, perfection, and engagement my whole life. My contributions were important and appreciated. Ultimately, my gender made no difference. My sexual orientation made no difference. My
height made no difference, nor did my funny accent. I could cook. That was all that mattered.

Six weeks into my
stage
I found my groove. I rotated through each station. I cleaned fifty pounds of potatoes in one go. I peeled and chopped pounds of vegetables harvested in the morning from the kitchen gardens. I helped Henri, the
boucher
, debone animal carcasses. I assisted Luc, an internationally celebrated
pâtissier
, in pouring sugar and assembling his ingredients. I spent five hours picking herbs. I scrubbed mountains of pots, platters, and utensils at the
plongeur
station until my hands were raw.

Eventually I got out a little and realized that the entire village was dedicated to gourmet gastronomy. Fine dining was the town's heartbeat, and every business, every citizen strove to keep it alive and well. Everything that could not be grown right outside the restaurant was purchased from the village farmers—enormous morels, exquisite porcini, delectable truffles. Day in, day out I saw ingredients come straight out of the ground into the kitchen and out into the dining room in a matter of hours. I had never felt so connected to food before.

Meat didn't magically appear, cleaned and butchered and ready to be cooked. A farmer would deliver the day's order of the region's famous blue-footed chicken—
poulet de bresse
—and within twenty minutes the birds would be slaughtered, gutted, and dressed. The chefs wanted to be in charge of the entire process, down to burning off the feathers. The work was time-consuming, but resulted in meat that was unmatched in its tenderness. And, as with everything else at Georges Blanc, it exemplified care and excellence.

In the mornings I jumped out of bed, climbed into my chef whites, and hoofed it down the hill in the morning chill to report to the kitchen by 7:00 a.m. A chorus of
bonjour
and
ça va?
greeted the staff as we filed in and fueled up for the long day with croissants and coffee. Then I reported to the station I'd been assigned to and worked like a madwoman until noon.

The family meals served at Georges Blanc were like nothing I'd ever experienced. Braised endive with lamb, lobsters in champagne sauce, composed salads that were works of art. The meals were transcendent, a gift from the chef-owners to the people they relied upon, reminding us daily that we weren't just cooks, we were part of a large, devoted family that worked together to create something beautiful and nourishing to give to others. The way chefs approach the family meal conveys a lot about them. Do they put thought into what to serve? Do they make an effort to make it special? A good chef will use the family meal to bring his staff together and create a sense of camaraderie. It's one of the secrets to running a first-class restaurant, and the family meals at Georges Blanc were beyond compare.

After family meal, we geared up for the dinner shift. My job was simple, yet demanding. Anything the chefs on the line needed, I ran for it. Saucepans, plates, more garnish. I ran with the urgency of an EMT. The energy in the kitchen was both intense and frenetic.

In the dining room the mood was relaxed and tranquil. The chic nineteenth-century decor boasted Louis XIII chairs, floral tapestries on the wall. A roaring fireplace cast the scene in a golden glow. We served a hundred covers a night, dishes such as
poulet de bresse
in foie gras and champagne sauce,
crêpe vonnassienne
with salmon and caviar, pear tart with almond cream and macarons that rivaled those at Ladureé. Georges spent ample time in the front of the house, effortlessly charming his guests, greeting each table between trips to the kitchen, ensuring that the nightly performance was seamless.

There was nothing rock-and-roll about Georges. He was handsome in a quiet way, and looked less like a world-class chef than a country doctor who made house calls. His presence was subdued and commanding. During my three months in his kitchen I would only see him lose his temper once. An American diner had sent a steak back with the complaint that he'd asked for it well done. Georges marched into the kitchen, his mouth set in a line. He tossed the plate onto the counter and yelled, “
Oh merde. Casse-toi.
” Loosely translated in this context as, “Oh shit, fuck off, Americans.” All eyes turned to me, as if I was personally responsible for my countryman's poor taste.

“Hey, don't look at me,” I said. “I like mine medium rare.”

Even though I had cooked under other chefs before I landed at Georges Blanc, I was inspired by Georges's dignity and quiet correctness. I never once saw him in anything other than a spotless, freshly starched white chef's jacket. He was an artist who took pride in every aspect of his profession. That was the kind of chef I wanted to be, and to this day I will never enter a kitchen without a perfectly laundered jacket.

We worked every night until 11:00 p.m. Feet aching, knees aching, hands raw from washing dishes, we would trudge back up to our dorm, climb onto the roof with a bottle of wine, and talk about our favorite chefs and their innovations. Our French was improving rapidly, and we'd sit under the stars and talk about Marco Pierre White's new cookbook or whether anything was truly going on out in California, dreaming about what it would be like to get to that place. Life was good on that rooftop.

By the third month, I was cruising through my sixteen-hour days. The sous chefs, whose respect we'd earned by refusing to quit, or give anything less than 110 percent, would
show their appreciation by taking us on tours of nearby villages. Money was tight and I couldn't afford even an extra
café crème
in a cheap cafe, but they insisted on picking up the tab. We indulged in every local fine wine, cheese, and four-course lunch within a hundred miles of Vonnas. We laughed and called it research.

One Monday morning I was summoned by Jean-Claude. “Today you are on the line,” he said, without elaborating. I knew my skills were improving, my palate evolving, but clearly Jean-Claude, and perhaps even Georges himself, could see it, too. This was a major promotion, and a serious honor for a mere apprentice. No longer would I be peeling asparagus and fetching saucepans but working with sauces, a notoriously technical and difficult aspect of French cooking. I was practically levitating with confidence:
I'm nailing this! I'm going to be a chef! I am unstoppable!

Then late one afternoon I was making my way through a “deep six” pan of shallots, one of those enormous professional vessels in which you could easily bathe a toddler. It was brimming with shallots, those Ping-Pong-ball-size bulbs that look like an elongated onion, but have a milder, smoother flavor. I was tasked with peeling and chopping them all, a surefire recipe for carpal tunnel syndrome. After two hours I was about three-quarters of the way through. I grabbed a shallot and beneath it I could glimpse a wink of stainless steel, the bottom of the pan. The end was in sight.

Suddenly, while I was turned toward the pan, I glimpsed my supervising chef coming up on my other side. In one swift motion he swept my pile of chopped shallots into the garbage. “You are not doing this right!” he snapped.

What in the hell was he talking about? I could chop shallots in my sleep. Chopping shallots was one of the first things I'd mastered
back when I learned how to make Taki's Lyonnaise dressing. Furthermore, I had been chopping shallots this way for going on three months and no one had ever said a word. Before I could stop to think about what I was doing, I stormed past him, hurling a “fuck you” before stomping out of the kitchen. I stood outside, my eyes hot with tears. But I was pissed. I wasn't sorry.

He followed me outside. I glared at him, and he stared down at me. I was not about to break eye contact first.

“Cat, do not cry,” he finally said. “Get back in the kitchen.” His voice was surprisingly calm given an apprentice had just committed the ultimate breach of protocol.

“I'm done. I'm just completely done,” I said. I blotted my tears with the heels of my hands, then threw my arms up for good measure, to demonstrate just how done I was.

“You cannot be done. You have come this far. That”—he gestured toward the kitchen door—“that was nothing. Do not let shallots ruin you.”

I took a few deep breaths. He was right, of course. Chefs have committed suicide over losing a Michelin star, and on the grand scale of life in a three-star kitchen, this was a minor episode. Nothing less than perfection was acceptable, and my shallots, which I'd chopped a little unevenly, had not been perfect. That was all.

I remembered an incident at the Culinary. One of my instructors threw a pan of salmon filets across the room because they were slightly overcooked. He then bent over and cussed me out, screaming profanities an inch from my nose, like a demented sergeant in an army movie. “Yes, Chef,” I'd said. “You're right, Chef.” My basic instinct when faced with criticism was to become more determined, not retreat. So what was I doing outside in the weak late-spring sun, with
three weeks left to go at Georges Blanc, pitching a fit? That wasn't me. I marched back in the kitchen, filled another “deep six” with shallots, and began again.