Cooking as Fast as I Can (17 page)

On the last day at Georges Blanc the staff threw me a going-away party. Jean-Claude, Marco, Luc, and the other chefs joked that the party wasn't simply a formality, that there was true cause to celebrate because they hadn't thought I would survive my first week.

Kimiko and my Japanese friends saw me off at the train station. Tokashi, a lanky chef from one of Tokyo's up-and-coming restaurants, insisted on helping me with my bags. He was so concerned that my luggage made it aboard and was properly stowed that the train departed before he'd had a chance to hop off. He just laughed and sat beside me until the next stop, a good hour away.

After we said our final good-byes, I settled back in my seat and gazed out the window. The train headed south, past tidy farms and the famous lavender fields of Provence. I'd survived. I was a different person from the one sniveling into the phone to my mom on that dank Sunday in March, and ten times the chef I'd been before.

eleven

M
y arrival in Mougins, a tiny, tree-lined village overlooking the French Riviera, could not have been more different from my arrival in Vonnas. The south of France was sunny and warm, the air infused with lavender, rose, and jasmine from the surrounding fields. Golden. That word kept coming to mind. I was golden as well. In my heart of hearts I knew I would have the life of a chef.

Roger Vergé was an institution in Mougins. He opened Le Moulin de Mougins in 1969, and by 1974 it had already been awarded its third Michelin star. Alain Ducasse, who would go on to become one of the world's most successful and celebrated chefs, the first to own three restaurants in three different cities with three Michelin stars, apprenticed to Vergé, who trained Ducasse in the Provençal style of cooking for which he would become famous. Like Georges Blanc, Roger Vergé was one of the fathers of nouvelle cuisine; part of their mission to modernize French cooking included inviting women to work in their kitchens.

Mougins is perched on a hill above the Mediterranean, fifteen minutes from Cannes, an ancient fortified village with narrow winding streets lined with stone houses. We're talking pre-Roman. From the eleventh century to the French Revolution it was administered by monks. Pablo Picasso spent the
last twelve years of his life in a farmhouse down the road from the Moulin, which means mill in French, and Vergé's restaurant was housed in a sixteenth-century olive mill, surrounded by ancient trees.

I went straight from the train station to the restaurant, where I was greeted by Serge, Le Moulin's executive chef. Serge was wiry and bright-eyed, with the energy of a terrier. Immediately, he took me aside. “I must tell you something very important that will affect your time here,” he said.

I braced myself. Perhaps my apprenticeship had been canceled? Or, alternatively, a sous chef had quit that morning and I was going to be tossed onto the line, where I would be sure to make a complete fool of myself?

He eyed me carefully to gauge whether I could handle the gravity of his news.

“There are two women who are also doing apprenticeships. But their situation is a little different,” he continued. “They paid quite a bit to be here for this opportunity to learn Roger's way of cooking. So, of course, they will be treated to his way of living.”

I nodded like a bobblehead, even though I had no idea what he was getting at.

“What this means is you will be treated the same. With long lunches and wine tastings during your evenings off. It is imperative, however, that you don't let on that you are here for free.”

“
De rien
,” I said. No problem. I guessed at the intrigue. Roger Vergé was running a mini–cooking school course on the side, and didn't want his students to realize that he also offered the traditional
stage
experience, where the apprentice doesn't have to pay for the experience of working in a three-star kitchen. My feelings were mixed. On the one hand, I
could use a little break. On the other, I found I'd developed a taste for the adrenaline-fueled rush of service. I was here to work, not sit back and sip rosé and savor the cheese course.

My experience with Georges Blanc had been focused, intense, and businesslike. The goal was always perfection, achieved at any cost. If a dish went out and it wasn't perfect by the standards set in the kitchen, it was a failure, even if the guest found it delicious and would go on to rave about it for the rest of his life.

Roger was just as serious about producing a three-star experience, but his approach was laid-back. He took the French concept of joie de vivre and applied it to cooking. He thought the whole experience, from sourcing the ingredients to sitting with his guests enjoying an after-dinner aperitif, should be joyous. Understandable, given the weather, the sun-drenched hills covered with olive trees, the acres of lavender and
rose de mai
, the faithful sea breeze. Everyone in the Le Moulins kitchen moved through their tasks with a loose-limbed ease, and I never saw anyone treated in a manner that could get you three to five in county jail back in the States. Life was easy in Mougins, even with sixteen-hour days.

Vergé's variety of Provençal cuisine was called
cuisine du soleil
, cuisine of the sun, and had more in common with Mediterranean fare than with classical French cuisine. The local ingredients he favored were familiar from the Greek dishes of my girlhood: eggplant, zucchini, lentils, and of course, olives.

Early one morning, not long after I arrived, I was sent out back to pick garnishes. The day would wind up hot and sunny, but the morning air was chilly and smelled of ocean brine. The sun was cresting over the hill, and I shielded my eyes with my hand, surveying a full acre dedicated to growing edible flowers: delicate purple chive blossoms, soft blue borage,
lemon verbena. I placed the tiny flowers in a basket on my hip, like a peasant woman of yore. The flowers were hardly an integral part of the meal, but their gorgeous presence on the plate would ensure that a meal was unforgettable.

As at Georges Blanc, our family meals at Le Moulins were first-rate. The bulk of our workday lay ahead of us—we still had to prep for dinner service—but we enjoyed the meal as if we had nothing but time. Serge was a talker. He possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the local produce, and was a master at preparing it so that the freshness and flavors spoke for themselves. He loved to lecture us on how to hunt for wild mushrooms or grow giant squash blossoms.

One of Le Moulin's signature dishes was constructed around the billowy golden blossoms we grew in the greenhouse. They were ten times the size of any squash blossom I'd seen in my life, and brought to mind bad jokes about plants cultivated in the field next to a nuclear power plant. The dish they starred in was pure decadence. The bottom of each blossom was filled with
duxelles
, a mixture of wild mushrooms, shallots, onions, herbs, and high-quality French butter cooked down into a paste. A golf ball–sized truffle was then pressed into the duxelles, and the mixture was held in place by ends of the petals, which were gathered together and tied off with chives. It was served with a foie gras truffle sauce. And it was only an appetizer.

On my days off I'd take the local bus down the hill to Cannes. I'd walk for an hour or so, then stop for lunch in an outdoor cafe, where I'd treat myself to a plate of fresh mussels and write letters home, one to my parents and Grandmom, one to Hannah.

Drowsy and buzzed from the wine, I'd wander down to the beach, where I joined the topless locals, lying on my back in the sand, worshipping the sun. I felt young, free, and adventurous.

One day after this ritual, I went to the bank of phone booths I usually used to call home. I called Hannah, and while we talked, an exquisite French girl came into the next booth. She stared at me as she carried on her own conversation. After she completed her call and disappeared into the crowd, I kicked myself for not speaking to her.

I'd been in France for nearly six months by this time, and even though Hannah had been supportive of my taking the apprenticeships, she'd grown restless and fed up with waiting for me to come home. She complained often that she felt like her life was on hold, waiting in our Rhinebeck apartment, staring out the big picture window at the Hudson.

During a recent phone call she'd said, “It's always all about
you
, Cathy.” I couldn't argue with her. I knew it had been a lot to ask. But on the other hand, she'd never claimed to be anything but 100 percent behind my ideas and schemes, happily quitting her job at Allstate to backpack through Europe, throwing herself into creating the business plan for our ill-fated Caribbean concept restaurant, enduring our separation during my first unsuccessful stint at the Culinary, pulling up stakes and moving north with me to Rhinebeck for my second successful go-round, and now waiting while I completed my
stages
in France. We were at an impasse. Before I'd arrived in Mougins, during yet another tense phone call, we decided to take a break from our relationship. We kept up with our weekly calls and we still cared about one another deeply, but our relationship was on hold.

Wandering around Cannes on that summer afternoon, occasionally stopping in at a shop just to feel the pleasure of using my now nearly fluent French, I considered my future. My experience in France had given me everything I would need to be a chef—confidence, courage, and the best training
in the world. I had no job waiting for me at home, and with the experience I'd gained with Georges and Roger, I could easily find a job in any kitchen in Europe. I tried to imagine myself in a small French village, or even Paris, arriving at work in the blue dawn, returning home to an empty flat on a cobblestoned street. I couldn't make the image stick. My goal, I realized then, was to make it as a chef in America.

twelve

S
ometime between our last, frustrating weekly call and wheels down on the tarmac in New York, Hannah had met someone else. She confessed that they'd kissed, and the rest I didn't want to think about.

During the first month I was home, in the midst of my jet lag and growing freak-out that I had no job and no prospects, I tried to woo her. I cooked for her, took her out to the movies, and listened for what seemed like hours on end to what it was like for her to be the one left behind. While we'd been together she'd been so sweet and accepting, just happy, it seemed, to be in a loving relationship. I'd been a jackass, self-absorbed, with jobs, work, school, ambition, travel, my apprenticeships. So self-absorbed that I hadn't noticed her growing and changing. Now she wouldn't warm up to me, had no interest. She was indifferent verging on coldhearted. I remembered suddenly how impressed I'd been when we first met, that she'd been out and proud despite the disapproval of pretty much everyone she knew. I was reminded she had a backbone.