Don't Try This at Home (9 page)

White Lie

DAVID BURKE

The chef/owner of davidburke&donatella, David Burke first
rose to prominence at New York's River Cafe. He then went on
to become executive chef of Park Avenue Cafe and vice president
of Culinary Development for the Smith & Wollensky Restaurant
Group. Burke trained at the Culinary Institute of America and
alongside legends such as Pierre Troisgros, Georges Blanc, and
Gaston Lenotre. He has been a part of several American
Culinary
Gold Cup Competitions, was voted Chef of the Year by
his peers in America in 1991, and was the first non-Frenchman
to win the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France Association medal and
diploma, France's highest cooking honor. He is the creator of
several gourmet packaged goods and the author
o/Cooking with David Burke.

S
EVERAL YEARS BACK, one of my customers, a real nice lady, told me that she wanted me to cater a fiftieth-birthday
party for her husband. They were an artistic pair, with friends in the arts and entertainment field, and she flattered me
right into it: "We love your food. It's unique and different, and I know you'll do something that'll make him happy. Please,
won't you do it?"

How can you say no to that?

The details were manageable: Two hundred people. A huge, rented event hall with a decent kitchen. A couple of hors d'oeuvres,
two main courses to choose from, dessert. The usual.

I said I'd be happy to. Hell, it'd be my honor.

And
then
she tells me that there's a hook. The birthday boy loves surprises, and is a souffle fanatic, and she wants to combine these
passions, blowing him away with a giant floating island—the classic French dessert that features clouds of meringue adrift
in a sea of custard—his favorite thing in the world. She envisioned an island big enough to serve two hundred rolling into
the room as the climax of the celebration, the piece de resistance.

I didn't know how in the world I was going to make such a thing, so as we shook on it, I said what any good chef would say.

"No problem."

I had to be out of town for a few days leading right up to the day of the party, so my team and I had a planning meeting before
I left. We went over the canapes, the meal, and then came up with a pretty straightforward strategy for the dessert. The pastry
chef would make twenty enormous meringue clouds and bake them. Then we would press them together and, simply because of the
tacky nature of meringue, they would stick to one another. Finally, we'd transfer them into the biggest bowl we could find,
surround the island with creme anglaise, shower it with mint and powdered sugar, and float candles in the creme.

We weren't going to serve this thing, mind you. No, no, no. We were going to wheel it into the hall on a cart—like a wedding
cake, if you will—let everyone sing "Happy Birthday," then wheel it out. Behind the scenes, we'd have already made two hundred
individual servings, ready to be presented in their ramekins. Everyone would think that the giant island had been divvied
up; in reality it would just be thrown away.

On the day of the party, I was about to board an airplane back to New York, when one of the guys called me on my cell to tell
me there was a problem with the meringue.

"Don't worry about it. We'll deal with it when I'm on the ground," I said, and hung up. How bad could it be?

Arriving at the banquet hall that afternoon, I was impressed. My customer had spared no expense, turning it into an elegant
dining space, with white linens, exotic floral centerpieces, and a very sexy lighting design.

But when I left this little paradise and pushed through the door into the dark kitchen, I saw that the meringues had all collapsed
when baked. They were flat and big as manhole covers, and totally useless.

I turned to my pastry chef.
"And"
he said with the grin of one who thrives on adversity, "there ain't no more egg whites to be had."

He knew what he was talking about. It was a Sunday, and a few of the cooks had made a trip to all the markets in the immediate
vicinity, only to discover that they had been mercilessly picked over, with maybe a carton or two of eggs remaining per store.

There's some genetic thing that chefs have. A perfectionist gene, I guess. I could have done something easy to get out of
this predicament. I could have piled up the two hundred finished servings in a big pyramid, lit the hell out of it with candles,
and probably everyone would have been happy. It wouldn't have been a
Guinness Book-worthy
floating island, but it would have worked fine.

However, one of my customers had ordered a floating island, damn it, and I was gonna give it to them.

"We have to do something," I muttered to myself. "This is the piece de resistance. We have to do something . . ."

I stood there, eyes closed. Thinking. Thinking. All the while feeling the gaze of my team upon me . . .

"Okay, I got it!" I said, and my crew's eyes lit up. Here was the quick thinking they expected from their leader.

But what I said next was definitely
not
what they had planned on: "Everybody, bring me your dirty laundry. Aprons, towels, chef coats, whatever." I paused, then clarified:
"As long as it's white."

I went over to our supply table and found the big white garbage bags we used to clean up after ourselves at events like this.
I walked around, holding the bag open wide with both hands, like somebody taking a collection, and the guys threw all their
linens inside.

We loaded the bag into the enormous bowl that was supposed to have the meringue in it, teased the plastic to create little
meringuelike wisps, and poured the creme anglaise around it. Then we dusted it with powdered sugar and mint leaves, and lit
the floating votives that were standing in for birthday candles, setting them afloat in the custard.

It looked just like it was supposed to—a giant floating island—even though it was really a miniature garbage barge.

Right before we wheeled this decoy out into the banquet hall, I instructed my guys to stand around it and sing "Happy Birthday"
along with the other guests. Their mission was twofold: one, to provide a security detail for the barge, making sure nobody
touched it; and, two, to sing at a really fast clip, so the song would be over and the island was out of sight as quickly
as possible.

We walked out into the room singing "Happy Birthday" and the entire place stood up and cheered, oohing and ahhing at the sight
of the beautiful floating island. As soon as the last speedy note had been sung, my guys helped the guest of honor blow out
his candles. He maybe blew one out himself.

Then we ran the cart out of the room and into the kitchen. We dismantled it immediately, just in case someone came back looking
to take a picture or something.

The desserts were served and nobody was the wiser. It was a triumph of on-your-feet thinking, if I do say so myself.

I'm still pretty friendly with that woman, and her husband. I never did tell them about the secret of the floating island,
though if they see this, the jig is up.

Well, she
did
say that he loved surprises as much as he loved meringue.

Surprise!

A Simple Request

SAMUEL CLARK

Samuel Clark is partners with his wife, Samantha Clark, and the
couple are known to the British food lovers simply as Sam and
Sam Clark. They met working at the Eagle gastropub, and then
worked together at London's famed River Cafe. They spent their
honeymoon touring Morocco and Spain, then opened Moro in
the Clerkenwell district of London in 1997, with their associates
Mark Sainsbury and Jake Hodges. The restaurant won both the
Time Out
and BBC Good Food awards for Best New
Restaurant.
Sam and Sam Clark are authors of
The Moro Cookbook
and
Casa Moro: The Second Cookbook.

I
N THE LATE 1980s, when I was a young cook just out of cooking college, not yet employed in a restaurant, the famous
British art dealer Adrian Ward-Jackson, a friend of my mother, informed me that he was having Princess Margaret round to dinner.

"Perhaps you'd like to cook for us," he suggested very sweetly, downplaying the enormity of the suggestion.

How could I resist? It was a thrilling proposition.

"Great. Sure," I said, attempting to contain my excitement.

When the day of the dinner arrived, I shopped for the freshest and finest of ingredients, as befitted a royal affair such
as this, and then made my way to Adrian's flat in Mayfair. It was a beautiful home, modest in scope but very richly and ornately
decorated. Adrian also dealt in antiques, so the sitting room was crowded with paintings, sculptures, and various objets d'art.
And the overall design of the home was the equal of the collection it housed; every fabric was textured; every surface, polished
to the perfect finish. Despite the lavish decorations, it was also remarkably cozy, and had the effect of putting one quite
at ease, rather than causing any undue intimidation.

The kitchen, too, was delightful, done up in wonderful decoupage. For instance, the refrigerator was made to look like a bookcase
loaded with clothbound classics; but when you pulled on the door, it of course opened and inside were the bright, fully functioning
shelves of a refrigerator.

In preparation for the evening, I had made a number of careful decisions, all of them intended to eliminate any element of
risk. I hadn't yet worked in restaurants or developed my own personal style, so for the menu, I turned to the same dishes
most cooking students would make: I prepared a soup (though I can't for the life of me remember what kind), and a rack of
lamb with potatoes Dauphinoise, and for dessert a rhubarb fool, a mousse made by folding rhubarb compote into whipped cream.

My goal was to prepare a meal that could be described as unadventurous but delicious, if only ultimately of very average quality.
Put another way: my mission was not to embarrass myself.

To remove any lofty expectations, I even downplayed my culinary education, dressing for the occasion in a beautiful shirt
and apron, in no way indicative of any professional training.

My attire and the meal selection were also intended to make me as comfortable as possible. I had been cooking in a home setting
since I was a child, so I created the environment to which I was accustomed.

By all accounts, as the dinner hour approached, my plan seemed to be working. I spent the better part of the afternoon making
the meal at a relaxed pace, feeling quite at ease. Adrian left me to go about my business, though I could hear him moving
about, talking on the telephone, and so on.

Finally, I heard the princess arrive and felt a tingle of excitement. A member of the royal family was going to be enjoying
a meal prepared by my hand! I was confident that she would enjoy it because most of the dishes were nearly finished: the lamb
was attaining a lovely burnished golden brown exterior in the oven; the soup was done and kept nicely warm under a pot lid,
even the rhubarb fool had been set to cool in the traditional serving vessels, long-stemmed, glass wine goblets that show
off its brilliant ruby-red color.

Adrian's home was designed so that one passed by the kitchen on the way in from the front door to the dining room. As Adrian
and the princess neared, I again felt a twinge of giddiness. No sooner had they completed their pass than Adrian reappeared,
stuck his head in the door, and casually whispered, "Oh, by the way, I'd like to have some biscuits with dessert," before
disappearing again, following after the princess.

What's that? I thought. Did he just say "biscuits"? How odd, because we never discussed biscuits.

Panic set in quickly. Christ, I thought. Biscuits! What am I going to do?

I hadn't planned on biscuits, hadn't brought along the ingredients necessary to make biscuits, and—if I'm to be honest— didn't
really know
how
to make biscuits, not being a pastry cook and not having any recipe books with me.

I can't very well march out there and tell them that I don't know how to make bloody biscuits, now, can I?

Adrian had employed a waiter for the evening and I sent the first course, the soup, out with him. As Adrian and Princess Margaret
began their meal, I rooted hurriedly through the cupboards to see what ingredients I had at my disposal to pull off this last-minute
request. The decoupage didn't seem quite so charming as all of a sudden my carefully laid plans were turning to rubbish.

In one of the cupboards, I found a box of inexpensive gingersnap cookies, known to all in England as a supermarket staple
of completely unremarkable quality.

I studied the box in my hand, thinking: Okay, how can I make these taste different, better than they are?

On the counter, I espied a bottle of brandy and snapped my fingers.

I've got it!

I laid the cookies out in a glass baking dish and drizzled enough brandy over them to submerge them. Then I set them aside
to let them soak.

When the waiter returned a little while later, I sent him out with the lamb and potatoes, and concentrated on finishing the
dessert. As I began to lift a cookie from the dish, however, I discovered that it had become hopelessly limp, tearing in half
like a soggy sheet of newspaper.

Hurriedly, I turned on the oven, still hot from the lamb, delicately transferred the cookies to a baking sheet with the aid
of a spatula, and slid them inside.

It was a torturous situation: I had no time to lose, and yet I had to keep the heat relatively low, for fear of burning the
cookies—or perhaps even igniting the alcohol. That would've been a truly fine mess, if 1 had started a fire in Adrian's miniature
museum.

Time was ticking away and I stood shaking my head impatiently and looking into the oven, whispering to the cookies, "Dry,
you bastards. Dry."

Finally, I couldn't delay the dessert any longer. I took the biscuits out of the oven, only to discover that they were still
limp and soggy. As the waiter looked on in bemusement, I fanned them with my hand, trying to get them to dry just a little
bit more, but it was hopeless.

I plated the biscuits, which were slightly hard around the edges and mushy in the center, with an alcoholic aroma emanating
from them—and sent them out along with the glasses full of rhubarb fool.

To take my mind off of what must be transpiring in the dining room, I began cleaning up the kitchen, scrubbing the pots and
pans, and returning the ingredients, including that box of gingersnaps, to their proper homes.

A few minutes later, a figure appeared in the kitchen door, but this time it wasn't the waiter; it was Adrian himself—holding
the empty biscuits plate in his hands. With a twinkle in his eye, Adrian informed me that "Her Majesty would love some more
biscuits." Then he disappeared back into the dining room.

It was an unbelievable turn of events. I could scarcely fathom how the appalling biscuits had been so well received. Not that
it mattered much at that point. My astonishment was instantly overwhelmed by the realization that . . .
Christ! I have to go
through all of that againl

Hastily, I dug the box of gingersnaps out from the cupboard, sprinkled the bloody things with brandy, shoved them in the oven,
took them out, fanned them like an idiot, and plated them, noisily bumping around the kitchen as if I were in some sort of
vaudeville routine.

To this day, I don't know if Adrian and his royal guest were having a bit of fun at my expense. Perhaps, as I've sometimes
imagined, they flushed the biscuits down the toilet and were only asking for a second serving as a sort of private, though
good-natured joke.

When Adrian brought the princess round on her way out the door, she stopped by the kitchen to say, "Thank you for a lovely
meal."

I wanted to ask if she really had liked the biscuits, but there simply wasn't any appropriate way of doing so.

"You're quite welcome, Your Majesty," I said. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."

I suppose I could have asked Adrian about the true reception the cookies had received but I decided to leave it alone. It
was awfully nice of him to give me such an opportunity, and if they were having a laugh at my expense, then it was richly
deserved, the least I could do to say thank you.