Recipe for Disaster (7 page)

While he was waiting for these things to happen and
applying for hundreds of jobs, he spent his days stacking
shelves for Mr Patel, who didn't really need anyone to do
this and could only afford to pay Jake in the various goods
that had reached their sell-by date. But no one else wanted
to give him a job. Despite references from his lecturers at
college saying he was superbly talented and totally honest,
the Capital had given him a bad reputation. Which stuck,
like grease round a fryer. In the frantic world he wanted to
work in, no one had time to listen to the full story.

Almost the worst thing about this experience was the
boredom. Because he didn't have any money, he couldn't
even cook for himself at home, and after a while he had to
stop going into bookshops because the assistants at
Waterstone's were starting to give him nasty looks for
riffling through the cooking section and then wearing out
the cushions on the sofas, but never buying anything. He
couldn't even become a busker on the London Underground
because he couldn't sing.

He spent so much time hanging around places, people
watching, he half thought of setting up his own food stall,
which would also offer culinary counselling. For twenty
quid he could tell people what a terrible diet they had and
then offer them some decent grub instead. It was astonishing
how much crap people bought: garishly coloured
sweets; chocolate-flavoured things; health bars full of sugar
and sandwiches containing what the manufacturer called
cheese, but Jake reckoned was possibly only one molecule
away from plastic.

There were far too many people in this world shoving
food into their mouths without thinking. None of it seemed
to make them any happier, even for a minute. They rushed
from one place to another, barely even aware that they were
eating. Jake knew that when he was allowed to be a chef he
was often too busy to sit down for a proper meal, but when
he did put food in his mouth he was always intensely aware
of its flavour and texture. He couldn't imagine living
without such sublime experiences.

Maybe he should become a food bandit, a culinary pirate.
He would kidnap people, force them to give him money so
he could cook for them and show them what they were
missing. He would rob those starved of real food and make
them rich in eating experiences. They would start to insist,
like the French, that they had a decent breakfast in the
morning and a two-hour lunch break so they could enjoy a
proper meal served on a plate, not in a piece of cardboard.
The country would grind to a halt but he would be a national
hero. Oh crap, if he didn't get a job soon, he would go
completely bonkers. He seemed to be halfway there already.

Eventually, when he was beginning to think he would
have to give up and apply his new-found shelf-stacking
experience at Sainsbury's, where at least they paid in
money, he found work at a seedy hotel near Waterloo. After
a couple of days it was quite obvious some people used it,
not as an eating place, but to close mysterious and deeply
illegal deals. The only reason he didn't get mugged on the
way home was that he was cooking the muggers' dinners.

One day Jill came to see him. She wasn't wearing a habit,
but he was shamefully pleased to see she was looking pale
and unhappy.

'This is so unfair and it's all Harry's fault. You can't let
him get away with it!' she cried.

'Right. I'll take him to a tribunal then. No problem,
except that I've got no money, and it could take years and
there's no guarantee the truth will come out anyway.'

'Well, what are you going to do?'

Jake shrugged. 'Nothing. Keep trying to find decent
work, I suppose.'

She hung around for a while, looking like she was waiting
for him to ask her out for a drink, but he didn't. She had
screwed him over and he was as stubborn as hell. You only
got one chance with him and she had blown it.

And so it continued for about two years.

Jake's family had been through more ups and downs
than a yo-yo. When you were down, you picked yourself up,
and started again. So that's what he did, but in a more wary,
less innocent way. But there was no denying he seemed to
camp out permanently at Rock Bottom.

He went on to do some really terrible jobs, which made
the hotel at Waterloo look like the Ritz. But he had to: if
there wasn't cooking, there was nothing. When things got
really bad he would clench his teeth, until he remembered
he didn't have enough money to go to the dentist. Still,
looking back, he might not have made it in the end if Louis
hadn't come to his rescue.

Louis Challon had learned his trade in the bistros of Paris
that are now just a distant memory in the minds of those
lucky enough to have eaten there – where the floors were
covered with sawdust, the chef wore a beret and rows of
enormous salamis hung from the ceiling. Sometimes the
only food on offer was a
plat du jour
, but of such sublime
quality people would queue halfway down the street to get
in.

He moved to London with his French wife, Maria, and
set up Brie, which swiftly became one of the best restaurants
in town. He named it not after the cheese, but because it was
the old name for an ancient province of France, somewhere
east of Paris, where he had grown up. Although everything
he touched turned to manna he became famous for his
oreiller de la belle Aurore
– a dish containing pheasant,
woodcock, hare, pork, veal, foie gras, truffles and chicken
livers, named after Brillat-Savarin's mother, and shaped
like a sublime but terribly fattening pillow. Louis spent
eighteen hours a day in his kitchen, tasted everything, but
burned off more calories than an Olympic sprinter, and
shouted, cajoled and praised his staff until they became the
best team in town.

Any commis who wanted to work there was put through
a grilling ordeal that started something like this.

'I don't give a fig how old you are, what your middle
name is or how many cooking qualifications you have!'
Louis roared. 'Get in that kitchen and show me what you
can actually do!' It was the day-long trial in his kitchen that
counted, and whether you were still on your feet at the end
of it. Some enormously talented chefs weren't and were
shown the door, which they reached on their knees.

The only job on offer was for a kitchen porter. Jake had
decided it was better to expire quickly in a good kitchen
than this slow death of the spirit in an awful one. He washed
up like a maniac, uncomplainingly, for three weeks, until
one day, in the afternoon shift break, Louis came in to the
staff room to find him asleep, using a cookbook as a pillow.

'Sorry,' he mumbled, getting up, ready to leave the great
man in his domain, but Louis ignored him.

'I am going to make the mousse of fishes. Seeing as you
are here you can help.'

Jake went to get his washing-up apron.

'No, no,' said Louis irritably, 'did I ask you to wash up?'

'Well, no, Chef.'

'So, show me what you can do with this,' and he passed
Jake a tray of fish and a filleting knife.

It turned into a brilliant afternoon, even though Louis
shouted, scolded and shook his head in despair at least
every five minutes. When Jake proved more than
proficient at simple tasks, Louis gave him more complicated
things to do and even thanked him when they
were finished.

'No, thank you, Chef – it was like being in a master class.'
Jake went off to wash up, leaving Louis looking after him
thoughtfully. He knew talent when he saw it and didn't
intend to waste it.

Jake found he was being asked to do more cooking than
washing-up, sometimes with Louis's nephew and second in
command. Pierre was a huge and taciturn man of about
thirty, with a luxuriant red beard that made him look
piratical and which hid the fact that he was really quite shy.
Then, more and more often, it seemed, Jake was working
under the eagle eyes of the great man himself.

One night, at the end of service, he was getting ready to
go home when Maria appeared. 'Come upstairs. I have
cooked far too much casserole and you must help us finish
it. You know how Louis hates waste.'

Bemused, he followed her upstairs to their flat. Louis was
in his shirtsleeves, uncorking a bottle of red wine. 'First we
eat. Then we discuss which rabbit dish we put on the menu
next week.'

During the meal Louis listened attentively to Jake's
suggestions and then disagreed with them all. But Jake
didn't mind – he was having a wonderful time. When, at the
end of the evening, he was hustled into the spare room on
the grounds that the tube wasn't safe at that time of night,
he didn't even try to argue. After a couple of weeks of this,
he gave up resisting and moved in completely. This never
stopped Louis from dishing out tons of criticism at work if
he thought Jake needed it. Jake did protest, though, when
Maria took his whites away for washing.

'I can do it myself.'

'Yes, but I have far more knowledge than you of the best
ways of getting blood out of one's clothes.'

'Do me a favour and don't ever say that in public,' said
Jake with a grin.

'I hope you don't mind that my wife fusses over you,' said
Louis rather gruffly one day.

'Of course I don't – I love her,' said Jake simply. 'It's hard
to explain, but before I met you I thought I had lost
something very precious to me. But you gave it back. I owe
you everything.'

'You certainly owe me the story of how a gifted young
man like you came here to wash pots. But for now, that
Jerusalem artichoke risotto will not make itself, so what are
you waiting for?'

Nothing went right for Jake in the week before opening
Cuisine. The hotel room cost a fortune; he had finally fallen
asleep in the jacuzzi and woke up in cold water from a
nightmare in which he was trying to cross the Channel in a
pizza oven. Staggering into the bedroom, he found Georgia
fast asleep on the bed with her mouth open, a position only
she could make look adorable.

The new cooker he'd ordered arrived three days late and
the maniacal youth they'd sent to install it somehow
managed to cause a power failure down the whole street, a
fiasco for which Jake was continuing to apologise every time
he dared set foot outside.

The first commis chef, who at interview claimed he was
so reliable and keen he would rather cook than eat, sleep
or even have sex, ran away three hours into his first
shift and one of the waitresses sent by the agency seemed
to have a vocabulary of only three words – one of which
was 'fuck'. Luckily, Kirsty, the other one, was hardworking,
willing and only swore
in extremis
, which was
quite understandable. Her only drawback was a tendency
to tell long, complicated stories about people no one had
ever heard of. By the time Jake had worked out who was
who, he found he had missed the point, if there was one.

His supplier, who had promised the earth in edible form,
delivered a case of broccoli so old it was practically
mummified.

'What am I supposed to do with this, cook it or display it
in a museum? Fresh from the fields? You have got to be
joking! It looks like it has come straight from Tutankhamen's
bloody tomb,' Jake snarled.

The one bright spot was the replacement commis.

Tess had spiky blonde hair, six piercings in one ear and
a stud through her nose. She was small, thin and tougher
than the broccoli.

She gave the worst interview Jake had ever experienced,
being practically monosyllabic and radiating waves of such
angry energy Jake had to turn the heating down. She had
left school without any qualifications but with a baby.
Despite this, she had never been out of work.

Jake didn't care that she was about as chatty as a Trappist
monk. The real issue was, could she cook?

She bloody could. Not only that, she was organised,
efficient and meticulously neat when she was working. She
might look like her only hobby was biting people in the
neck, but that was fine by him. It was as good a way as any
for dealing with incompetent suppliers.

The only slight problem was Angelica, her daughter.
Now six years old, Angel, as she was called, was a plump and
gorgeous blonde who combined devastating charm with a
will of iron.

Tess worked like a Trojan getting set up and even
volunteered to come in on her day off.

'Trouble is, there's no one to look after Angel.'

Jake considered this. He knew by now that Tess burned
with a zeal almost as strong as his own. She was a real
kitchen junkie.

'Well, bring her in, if you want. What trouble can one
small child cause?'

Tess snorted with derision at the stupidity of men.

Angel arrived with a pink plastic suitcase, containing
Barbie, Barbie's entire wardrobe and Barbie's pony. The
doll had more clothes than Georgia.

Angel was quite happy to sit in the office, showing Barbie
how to type on Jake's computer and setting up an obstacle
course for the pony with all his cookery books. But she also
adopted Jake as her uncle, which made Tess blush, and she
followed him everywhere, giving a running commentary on
the work in progress.

'Kim's made a big puddle, Uncle Jake.'

He went to investigate. Kim, the vocabulary-challenged
waitress, was standing by the dishwasher, which was
spewing its contents over the floor.

Kim moved her chewing gum to her cheek, in order to
tackle the fine art of communication. 'It's broken. There's
water all over t'floor.'

Jake considered this. She reeked of smoke and had obviously
just been out for another fag, her third that morning –
he had been counting. If she had any more breaks she would
forget how to work all together, if indeed she had ever
known. Instead of doing something remotely intelligent and
useful, like getting a mop, she just stood there, chewing. She
was the sort of person who could make a cow look clever.

Jake mulled over several approaches, but as usual, went
for his favourite: the unvarnished truth. 'You are idle and
inept and you smell like an old ashtray. You're sacked, so
fuck off.'

There was an audible intake of breath, but not from the
witless waitress.

'Uncle Jake, you used that word again. You said you
would give me fifty pence if you said it again.'

Jake was outraged. 'I said twenty pence, actually.'

Angelica started to laugh and a lemon sherbet exploded
out of her mouth and landed on Kim's jumper.

'I will sue you for unfair dismissal and damage to my
clothes. This place is a dump anyway.'

'The only thing that was unfair was the fact that you were
employed in the first place,' Jake yelled.

'If Uncle Jake tells you to fuck off, I really think you
should,' advised Angel.

Jake escaped to the relative sanity of his office and
Barbie's pony, but he only had peace for ten minutes before
Angel, who was turning into a messenger of doom,
reappeared. 'God's here.'

'Well, I hope He's come to take me away from all this,'
muttered Jake.

God was actually Godfrey, who arrived for interview
straight from his father's sheep farm, in a pair of wellingtons
that were so disgustingly dirty Jake made him leave
them ten yards outside the back door. Godfrey was at least
six and half foot tall and extremely red in the face, having
run down a fell to get to the interview on time.

'I'm sick of animals crapping on me and having to stick
my hand up their bums. I do all the cooking at home and I
want to learn how to be a chef. I'll do anything you ask, if
you give me a chance.'

'If I do, you will, believe me. You may find your farming
experience comes in handy when I ask you to stuff twenty
chickens. Seeing as you are the only applicant the agency
sent who can speak English, you've got the job. Still,' Jake
continued, 'cooking is quite like farming in many ways. The
pay is abysmal, the hours are appalling and the customers
can be full of shit, so you'll feel quite at home.'

'Er, what exactly will my job title be?'

'Slave,' said Jake briskly. 'Basically you will do whatever I
ask you to. This will include some hideous jobs that you
probably didn't even know existed. But every so often, as a
special treat, you'll have a sort of holiday, when all I ask you
to do is peel tons and tons of vegetables until your fingers
are raw. Basically, you will have only one ambition – to say
with utter conviction "Yes, Chef". It is all I want to hear. If
I don't hear it, I may get slightly upset and feel the need to
express myself loudly and in a politically incorrect way.'

Godfrey was so tall he lived in constant danger of knocking
himself out on the extractor fan. He was immensely
cheerful and willing, and didn't seem to have a temper to
lose, which, in a kitchen, put his price above rubies.

Angel fell instantly in love and basely transferred most of
her affections from Jake to Godfrey. She lent him her pony
and wound her arms so tightly round his legs she had to be
bribed with an ice lolly so he could do some work.

The final member of Jake's team was Hans, the barman,
a skinny youth from Munich, who had started off his
travelling gap year in Scotland and was supposed to be
making his way south. But he had got pleasantly stuck in
the Lake District at Easter and showed no signs of wanting
to budge.

Georgia was away on a fashion shoot, for which large
mercy Jake thanked whichever god happened to be
listening. He had to focus on opening night. The paying
public gave a restaurant only one chance, and every penny
he owned, plus a huge loan, was riding on this.

Before anyone could even start cooking, they had to find
things to cook with, which at the moment were still in their
boxes and covering every available surface in the kitchen.
Also, none of the boxes was labelled correctly so it was a bit
like Christmas. Every so often someone would shout
triumphantly: 'I've found the cutlery. It was in the box
marked "frying pans". Oh blast, where are the frying pans
then?' and so on.

As Jake couldn't afford a restaurant manager, he went to
help Kirsty arrange the tables and chairs, confident that
Tess could be left in charge.

'I don't think we should put this table here, 'cos there'll
be a draught from the door. My gran went out for dinner
once with her best friend, Mary. They've been friends ever
since their prams collided when they were two months old.
Anyway, Mary's married to the guy that has the garden
centre – the one in Easedale, of course, not the one on the
way to Ambleside – you must know him – he's got a
withered arm. Well, this was just before the wedding. Or
was it just after? Oh, silly me – of course it was before – that's
the whole point of the story –'

'Kirsty, I feel as if I am going to take root here, which
could be awkward for our customers.'

As they pieced the restaurant together, like a giant 3D
puzzle, Jake listened with one ear to Kirsty's pointless
anecdotes and with the other to the dialogue in the kitchen.

'Godfrey, why have you put the pans over there?'

'Er, dunno.'

'Exactly. Every time we want a pan we're gonna have to
trek halfway across the flaming kitchen. Ooh, look, there's
a shelf here, just next to the grill. I don't know, shall we put
the wine bottles there, perhaps?'

'You don't want to do that. They'll get all warm.'

Then there was the sound of Tess slapping him with one
of the towels she kept tied round her waist.

'. . . and that's why you should never sit in a draught!'
said Kirsty, surprising him. This was the first of her stories
that actually had an ending and now he'd missed it.

'Absolutely. I do take your point.' Well, I would if I knew
what it was.

Godfrey was horrified to discover that everything had to
be washed first. 'But it's just come out of the box. It can't be
dirty!'

'You are an environmental health nightmare, you big
oaf!'

Although it hadn't seemed possible at the start,
everything found a home.

Jake came into the kitchen to find Godfrey lying on a pile
of boxes, having found this was the best way to squash them
flat. Also, he needed the rest.

'Come on, my lad, the real work is about to begin!'

Outside in the stores were even more boxes, full of the
raw ingredients needed to serve sixty hungry customers
every night for the next few days, until it had all been eaten
and the next lot would come in.

'It should have been one of the Labours of Hercules. We
get to the end of it and everyone has gone home happy,
hopefully, and then we start all over again. And so it will go
on, until we are all dead or mad, or both. Then, if you are
very lucky, I will let you have a day off.'

Just when Godfrey got to the end of one pile of
vegetables, he would be ordered off to find another. All the
gleaming pans were pulled off the shelves, thrown onto the
hobs, flung on the table to be washed, put back on the
shelves for a nanosecond, it seemed, and then pulled off
again.

The kitchen was filled with a huge crescendo of orders,
advice and intense discussion between Jake and Tess, and
over this wafted a heavenly series of smells – frying garlic,
roasting vegetables, sautéed chicken, fillet steak and pastry,
sponges and mousses.

The most wonderful thing of all, though, was that
Godfrey was allowed – ordered, even – to try everything,
including a lot of things he had never tasted before in his
life. He didn't even mind that one minute he was tasting a
fruit-filled pastry and the next, fresh mussels, which had
been briefly simmered in an exquisite sauce.

His life as a farmer hadn't been particularly full of
conversation – in fact he reckoned his dad would quite
happily go for a whole day without talking to anyone. So it
came as a surprise to him that Jake didn't seem to mind that
he had to keep asking questions and he never took the piss
out of him for doing so. So, because he was intensely
curious and always hungry, he felt that he had walked into
the perfect job.

Jake and Tess prepped the menu until their fingers were
raw, and Godfrey's shoulders felt permanently hunched in
an old man's stoop.

'Nervous, Boss?' asked Tess, who was dicing a pile of
carrots so quickly her hands were a blur.

'Terrified,' agreed Jake.

It wasn't so much the food – well, of course it was; it was
always about the food – but what the papers were bound to
dredge up about him. It didn't matter what he did, how
many awards he got, someone always resurrected the story
of how he had been sacked for stealing at the Capital.

Tess must have been in mind-reading mode.

'The reviews will be great and what if they do rake up
that old crap again – everyone knows you didn't really
do it.'

Jake shot her a glance. 'You
know
about that?'

'I did my research.'

'Bloody journalists,' said Jake, chopping a cabbage in half
with venom. 'Why do they call themselves that anyway?

They are just a bunch of storytellers who cannot tell – no –
who don't care that there is a difference between fact and
fiction!'

'What did you do, Chef, stab someone with a carving
knife?' asked Godfrey with interest.

'Ha! I wish I had. It was just a small incident a long time
ago involving someone whose name I never want to hear
again, much less see. And thank you, Godfrey, but I am not
homicidal. It's true that I might, very occasionally, when
slightly pissed off, chuck the odd, small utensil across the
room, but –' He looked at Godfrey. 'You can get your mop
and bucket out now and leave my chequered past where it
belongs.'