Small Plates (18 page)

“What should we do?” Albert had asked.

Faith advised a serious heart-to-heart with the chef and said they'd be back—as paying guests—the following week.

The restaurant was the talk, and laughingstock, of the island, but business was good. Everyone wanted to see what was going on, and diners from as far away as Bar Harbor had been lured by the rumor that the next Ferran Adrià was cooking on Sanpere Island.

Faith and Tom had returned the following Thursday. Although it was six thirty—people, even the summer people, ate unfashionably early on the island—the dining room was half-empty, or half-full, Faith amended. Possibly the curiosity factor had played out.

The restaurant meant everything to the Hortons, and she had been prepared to love her meal. Doreen had called to say they had had a good talk with Jake and he had changed the menu. A glance proved that he had, but there was still too much smoke and too many mirrors, Faith had thought.

They started with oysters—there were no
amuse-bouches
of any sort this time—and they were fine. Tom had his with the traditional cocktail sauce—it was how he liked shrimp too. Faith went with the “Chef's Own Mignonette.” She wondered a bit about the wording. Who else's would it be? It was okay, but substituting white rum for champagne was a mistake. Hard to taste the delicate oyster under the overly liberal dose of the strong alcohol.

The chef was definitely showcasing local ingredients, and the salads—field greens, a little dulse, and edible flowers, mostly nasturtiums with a wild strawberry vinaigrette—were tasty if uninspired. This time their table was away from the windows and a bit close to that of a couple Faith didn't recognize. Sanpere was a very small island and she knew most of the residents, so they must be renting or from off island. Eavesdropping, Faith learned the two were as interested in food as were the Fairchilds, especially Faith—Tom still unaccountably leaned toward the boiled dinners of his childhood. Soon the couples were conversing. Faith mentioned their earlier experience and that she understood the menu had changed—for the better. The woman—dressed in vintage Marimekko and with a haircut not from Curl Up & Dye on the other side of the bridge—said she'd been underwhelmed so far.

The chef himself served their entrées. Faith had caught a glimpse of him the week before and thought him more Byron than Beard in appearance. He wore a red bandanna to keep his long dark locks from his face and the food. His eyes were so blue she suspected contacts; the smile he gave them as he described what they were about to eat was almost nonexistent. When he left, the two couples burst out laughing.

“A very serious young man,” the woman said.

Faith cut into the wild duck she'd ordered. It wasn't the season for game, but she thought she should try more than the seafood on the menu. Tom was having butter-poached lobster and he was good about sharing.

The duck was almost raw. She put her knife down and touched the meat with a finger. Almost stone cold. Pink would have been fine. Overcooked duck was chewy and inedible, but underdone fowl of any sort posed a health risk.

She motioned to the server, noting that the staff seemed to have turned over. The little Eaton girl wasn't there, at least not tonight, and she didn't recognize any of the others.

“My duck is almost raw. You need to bring it back to the kitchen.”

The girl looked alarmed. “Bring it back?”

“Yes, it shouldn't be served this way. I'm sure the chef made a mistake and will understand.”

“Let me see.” The woman at the next table leaned over. “Gruesome . . .”

The cut Faith had made was now oozing bright pink blood. The server picked up the plate and headed for the kitchen. Faith felt sorry for the poor girl, who was looking panic-stricken.

It seemed like only a second before she was back with Faith's plate. “The chef says this is the way he prepares this dish.”

At that point, Doreen Horton—sensing something was wrong—came over, took one look at the plate, and disappeared with it.

Again, it seemed only a second before she was back, happily empty-handed. “Please select another entrée and the entire meal is of course on us.”

Faith hastily chose crab cakes. They would be ready to sauté and she could be out of there soon.

It turned out that the catastrophe of the evening had nothing to do with the end of Barlow's stint at the Sanpere restaurant, which occurred that night, and everything to do with the couple at the next table. The woman wrote a regular column for
Bon Appétit
magazine and had planned to spotlight the rising new young chef from Maine. How Jake found out about it Faith never knew, but when he did he called her and the blast he delivered wasn't a chilly one. He blamed her, her “uneducated palate,” and her obvious envy of an up-and-coming chef for the food writer's change of plan. Later that summer he disappeared from the food scene only to emerge two years later having lived in Asia and trained, he'd proclaimed, with “real” chefs. He'd opened a small restaurant in Jamaica Plain that he'd labeled “Pacific Rim Fusion Cuisine,” and it took off. Like Billy Gold, he turned his brooding romanticism—some would say surliness—into an attribute. Unmarried, he soon had a bevy of foodie groupies. The small restaurant had morphed into a large one in Boston's South End where reservations could only be made a month in advance with a hefty cancellation fee. It was immediately the hottest one in town. The Fairchilds had avoided it.

Unlike the other two chefs, he'd lashed out at Faith the moment he'd walked through the door.

“I wouldn't have taken the gig if they'd told me you would be here. No, wait. I take that back. I wanted to whip your ass once, and now I will.”

The event planner had been somewhat taken aback at his words but quickly realized they meant more drama for the fund-raiser. “Now, now . . .” she murmured unconvincingly.

It was going to be a fantastic night.

M
inutes earlier Faith had been dying to get out of the greenroom, and now she was dying to go back. How on earth did those chefs on TV do this? There was no way she was going to be able to produce anything palatable and presentable in the time allotted for the appetizer round, only twenty minutes.

“The ingredients you must use are in the boxes in front of you: anchovies, baguettes, rainbow chard, and smoked Ghost Pepper flakes,” the head of the culinary arts program at the school announced. “Your time starts now!”

The other three chefs raced from their stations to the pantry and the fridge. Students had been assigned to assist each, though they couldn't help with the actual cooking. They were there to whisk away dirty pots and utensils only. Before the competition started, the high school principal had introduced the group by name, her “Very Own Michelin Three Stars” and described the mentor program that paired students with local chefs for a semester. “Chef Gold was one of our first mentors and I'd like to thank him, as I'm sure Jennifer, his current intern, will.” Cue Jennifer, a petite teen who appeared very nervous. She was darling, Faith thought, and wished her well in the culinary world, an extremely tough one for female chefs. She was also obviously extremely shy or extremely nervous about speaking in front of a group. Gold had patted his intern avuncularly on the shoulder—her whole body had been trembling, as was her voice, as she managed to stammer a thank-you to the chef. The students spread out to select chefs, but before Jennifer could follow her mentor to his station, a boy twice her height elbowed his way to the spot. Jennifer came over to Faith, who hoped the girl wasn't too disappointed at what was obviously a second choice; but Jennifer gave her a radiant smile. She really was very pretty. What would have been called a Pocket Venus in another era.

And then it all started. The audience was a lively one, clapping and cheering the chefs on. The judges were talking softly among themselves. Faith felt like the proverbial deer in the headlights—frozen. She had to get something on the plates. Snap out of it, Faith! she chided herself and began to whirl through the Rolodex of recipes she kept in her head, desperately searching for one with all four ingredients. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Claudia dip a teaspoon into the small jar of Ghost Pepper flakes and raise it toward her lips. No matter what she thought of the woman, Faith couldn't let her put that amount in her mouth. But before she could call out, Billy Gold beat her to it.

“Claudia! Don't eat that! Ghost Peppers—Bhut Jolokia—are just about the strongest on earth!”

“I knew that,” Claudia snapped. “I was just smelling them to see whether they were smoked or not.”

Of course she had had no idea what they were, Faith thought, and if she had tasted the spoonful, she'd be smoking herself and out of the competition. She looked over at Jake and realized he was thinking—and wishing—the same thing.

The ovens had been preheated to a time-saving 350 degrees, which was a relief. Faith would make a savory bread pudding. It worked as an appetizer and also as a brunch dish. The individual ramekins would take ten to fifteen minutes to cook. She didn't have a second to spare. She joined the others as they darted around the kitchen for ingredients and returned to her spot.

She needed to rinse the salt from the anchovies before sautéing them with a small amount of garlic, just a hint. The anchovies would melt and lose their “fishiness.” But where were they? The tin, which had been there when she'd left, was gone. So that's how it was going to be. Fortunately she'd seen a stack of others on a pantry shelf. She grabbed one, got the sauté going, then beat her eggs, adding some cream and ground pepper, and, using a microplane, grated some Parmesan from a chunk she'd found in the fridge into the mixture. It didn't need salt. Cautiously she added a tiny pinch of the Ghost Pepper.

More tricks. While she'd been racing around, someone had removed a few of her knives, including the bread knife. She'd deal with finding the culprit later. Chef's knives were expensive; they didn't come from a five-and-ten. All Faith's had her logo on the handles, so they wouldn't get mixed up with others when she was on a job. They'd be easy to spot, although whoever took them probably would have hidden them.

With speed she wouldn't have thought possible, she tore the baguette into rough cubes and added them to the liquid to soak. While the bread absorbed the liquid, she greased the ramekins and removed the stems from the chard. They were pretty, but there wasn't enough time to cook them through. She shredded the leaves, dumped them in, and finally added the anchovies. At the last moment, she sprinkled some golden raisins from the pantry into the mixture for some fruitiness. The ramekins went in the oven and while they were baking, she made small glasses of Virgin Marys to indicate it could also be a brunch dish. Besides the traditional ingredients—all in the pantry save the alcohol—she used another pinch of pepper.

The puddings came out and miraculously they were done, even developing a nice golden crust. She put them on the plate, happy to see they were cooked through but moist, and stuck a small, bright pink or yellow chard leaf with stem in each shot glass (what were those doing in a high school kitchen?).

“Hands down!”

On TV this was the moment where the competitors high-fived each other, even hugged. That didn't happen tonight. The round was over and Faith realized she really, really hoped she would win.

Claudia had produced some pedestrian-looking bruschetta.

“I'm not sure I'm getting a chard flavor,” Mandy Klein commented.

“I just used the stems for color, chef,” Claudia answered.

“And unfortunately there is a little too much of the pepper,” Mandy continued. “It's a tricky ingredient.”

“
Mais, très bonne
.” Pierre Jacques beamed. He was such a darling, Faith thought.

Simon Lake didn't say anything. He was gasping and drinking water.

Billy had done a quichelike custard, and it was pronounced delicious, as was Jake's version of the Thai dish Tom Yum Gung. He'd topped the soup with croutons and incorporated all the other ingredients, adding fresh lime juice and sliced ginger. Both men had been judicious with the chili flakes.

Faith's bread pudding brought raves. All three judges consumed the entire dish, commending her on the transformation of the ingredients and her playful presentation.

The verdicts would be swift. No sweating it out in the greenroom, although all the chefs would wait there while the guests hit the buffet and got more drinks. The students would clean up the stations and prepare them for the next round.

Simon had his voice back. “I'm sorry, Claudia, but you have been ‘Sliced,' ” he said.

She bowed to the judges and in a slightly tremulous voice—meant to show how very, very moved she was—she thanked everyone for giving her this opportunity. Faith half expected her to go on to say she'd devote herself in the future to cooking for orphans or some such thing and prove herself worthy to return to cook another day.

B
ack in the greenroom Claudia wasn't as gracious, and after she vented, she started in on Faith, reminding her that bread pudding was her, Claudia's, signature dish, and hinting that Faith had stolen the idea. About to come back with something like “I think Mrs. Beeton got there before you,” Faith left the room instead. Again no one had told them they couldn't wander. She'd avoid the “stage.” She didn't want to be accused of peeking.

In the corridor she remembered she hadn't mentioned her missing knives. She'd ask Jennifer where the school kept theirs. They would have to do and shouldn't be too bad. The program had an excellent reputation, and the equipment she'd used so far had been of the highest caliber.

Killing time, she let her thoughts wander as well as her restless body. At one point she found herself in the automotive wing. She turned back and wished she could just go home. Tom hadn't been able to be here tonight. One of his parishioners was close to death and Tom had gone to be with him. But it would have been very nice if her husband could have been here in the audience. It was an enthusiastic one, but she needed more than a friendly face. She needed one that loved her.