Stanley Park (46 page)

“Order one rabbit, one risotto, one flatfish, another risotto,” Jeremy called. Henk shot him a quick look. “Busy, busy, busy,” he said, finishing Conrad’s goose and prawn plates and jogging back around the range.

There were more meltdowns but, as always, it was over before you thought possible.

“Aaaaah,” he said, sighing loudly. “Wine, anyone?” He poured Tempranillo all around. By the time they’d sipped and laughed their way through a glass, there was applause coming from the dining room again. Jeremy straightened his white toque, wiped his hands, pulling sharply downward on his uniform front to straighten himself, took another glug of wine.

“Wash your hands,” Jeremy told them. “And get ready for adoration.”

The clapping started again as he entered the dining room, but he made them stop with two hands up, palms out. “Now wait,” he told the seated group. He went back to the kitchen and pushed open the door.

They paraded in, vamping like runway models, making a point of it. Angela in the lead, the boys following in a line behind her. They stretched their necks upward, pouted, looked hard right or left over one shoulder and then the other. Hands in pockets or arms rigid and held slightly away from the body, hands flared out. They walked out to the top of the riser this way.

Everyone clapped and laughed.

“All right, all right,” Jeremy said to the squad. “A little dignity, please.”

But he was smiling. Benny could see it. Dante could see it. The Chef was smiling. There was warmth there, pride too.

Dante leaned over to Benny. He whispered in her ear.

“I did not make a mistake, did I Benny?” Dante said to her.

Benny leaned away from Dante so she could see his face. “Of course not, Dante. You thought you might have?”

His eyes were back on Jeremy. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

Back in the kitchen the squad was all grins. They were slapping hands and back to making fun of the standing eight counts.

Henk quieted the group down to ask a question. “How’d we do Chef? Seriously.”

Jeremy told them honestly. There was work to be done. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, he was going to continue the drills. Friday and Saturday, if they were ready, they could take off.

“But the kitchen opens 0900 Sunday, the big day,” Jeremy went on. “I’ll be here earlier. Please, nobody later than 1000. We have mountains of prep. One hundred-plus bodies for an early service about 1900. Dante wants people done and partying by 2100.”

“Menu changes, specials?” Henk said.

“I’m coming to that,” Jeremy said. “One other thing first.”

He pulled out the new jacket that he had made for Henk. He’d picked the throat colours himself, two bands of colour: black and orange. Henk did not want to grin like a kid, but his cheeks were rigid with the effort.

Jeremy helped him on with the jacket. The group gathered around and touched the sous chef colours and smacked him on the arm and teased. It was a group compliment, and Jeremy let them quiet down on their own. He let their comments fly and spark and settle.

“Opening nights are special,” Jeremy began when he had their attention again. “After opening night you become a normal restaurant again. You open, you close. You buy, prep and cook. You clean up and restock. Go out and have a drink. Sleep too little. Do it again. But on opening night you put on a play about yourself. Like theatre, like a culinary monologue. You stand out there in front of a new house and you say: This is my kitchen. This is who I am. This is how we have become Who We Are.”

And then he gave them every detail on Sunday’s performance. A performance about memory, a tribute to the way things once were. He ran down the menu changes, one by one, watching the group expression come to a simmer of new and sharp-edged interest. They did not exchange looks. They were listening only to him.

“It’s important to be able to do something like this once in your life,” Jeremy said, wrapping up. “Because you’re going to learn that in the kitchen, your work is destroyed almost before you know it’s finished. It’s the nature of cooking, of eating. A six-top, half a loaf of your dill sourdough is gone in minutes.”

Torkil nodded. The collective group expression had risen above a simmer now, approaching a gentle boil of Guerrilla Grill enthusiasm.

“This is my work. This is what I do,” Jeremy finished. “Maybe it lasts twenty minutes on somebody’s plate, but it has to be made. For me. For this house. And the plate is where it belongs.”

It was going to be a busy weekend. Chladek and Jeremy met Thursday evening at Lost Lagoon to plan an extensive restocking of the meat, poultry and fish supplies.

“Racoon?” Chladek suggested. “There is certainly no shortage.”

Jeremy smoothed the menu on the stump between them.

“What’s it like?” Jeremy asked.

Chladek thought for a minute. “It’s like dog,” he said finally.

“Well, as long as it’s not like cat,” Jeremy said.

“No, cat is more like chicken.”

Jeremy mulled it over.

“Right here,” Chladek said, pointing at the last main on the menu.
“Racoon tenderloin with red wine sauce and leek frite
. Sounds pretty good to me.”

“You realize, Chladek, we’re not actually putting the changes on the printed menu for guests to see.”

“How will people …,” Chladek said.

“Notre gastronomie
. A tribute to Caruzo, to you. To my father. To …” He waited for a memory of his mother to pass on through. “Even as a one-off thing on opening night, I’m guessing people might not partake voluntarily.”

When Chladek understood that there was subterfuge involved, his face brightened. “So, here.” Chladek pointed again at the menu item. Winking.
“Beef
tenderloin.”

Jeremy wasn’t sure. “What are our meat options, anyway?”

Chladek rhymed them off. “Cats, dogs, black rats, mice, rabbits, eastern grey squirrel, Douglas red squirrel, skunks. The odd opossum.”

“Rabbits?” Jeremy said.

Lots of rabbits, in fact, Stanley Park having been used for many years as a dumping ground for unwanted pets. Whatever their fed-up owners had anticipated, the rabbits thrived. There were probably fifteenth-generation Stanley Park rabbits.

“Are they scrawny?” Jeremy asked.

“No,” Chladek said, clenching and pointing at his biceps. “Big and strong. Well fed.”

“Fine,” Jeremy said. “Rabbit for the rabbit.”

Chladek jotted a note in a spiral-bound notebook. “Ducks?”

“Canvasbacks, please,” Jeremy said.

“What are you doing for prawns?” Chladek asked. “We could use goldfish.”

Jeremy shook his head. “Queen Charlotte prawns is what I’m doing for prawns. They are excellent in the market right now. We need goldfish for the escabeche.”

“Right boss,” Chladek said. “And lamb?”

“Saltspring Island Lamb,” Jeremy said. “They came in this morning.”

They went over the rest of the menu, noting the items that needed to be harvested.

“The squab?” Chladek asked.

“How about rock dove?” Jeremy said. “They hang out near the pitch-and-putt. They’re a lighter colour.”

“Roger.”

Jeremy continued itemizing. “Canada geese, OK fine.…”

“How about,” Chladek said, “for the flatfish we get some of those Beaver Lake carp?”

“I think they’re prehistoric,” Jeremy said. “Bad karma. Anyway, I thought you said you could buy flounder off those Chinese guys who fish under the Lions Gate Bridge.”

Jeremy would take care of all the conventional materials from conventional suppliers.

Chladek looked disappointed. “What about the racoon?”

“All right,” Jeremy said. “Three racoons.”

“Three only?” Chladek asked.

“Four, if they’re small.”

And when they had completed these tasks, the kitchen at Gerriamo’s had begun to look not unlike how Bueckelaer would have painted it. Friday late afternoon (doors to the dining room now locked) Jeremy surveyed Chladek’s first shipment. There was a bucket of dandelion greens and fiddleheads, as well as a garbage bag full of salal, salmon and huckleberries. A dozen plump Canada geese, a dozen grey rock doves, six canvasbacks, four large rabbits, fifteen
squirrels (greys, fatter and more plentiful than reds) four huge racoons and a swan.

“Why the swan?” Jeremy said. “I didn’t want swan.”

“I thought …,” Chladek said, “you might …”

“Chladek,” Jeremy yelled. “I did not want swan! Why did you bring me swan?”

Chladek was confused by the reaction, and clearly hurt, but to Jeremy the swan was ominous. “Take it out of my kitchen,” he said. “It’s not even indigenous.”

Chladek shook his head. “And the grey squirrel? These came from England in a boat.”

Jeremy sighed and looked away. Not the point. “I’m sorry, but I cannot have swan.”

“Fine,” Chladek said. “It’ll get eaten, I can tell you. Tonight maybe.”

“How’s my fish coming?”

“Fish tomorrow,” Chladek said. “Goldfish, flatfish, periwinkle …”

“Mushrooms?”

“Yes, yes, fungus too,” Chladek confirmed. “They’re still around but not so many.”

Friday night Jeremy worked late butchering, portioning and making stock. The rock doves, geese and ducks all had to be plucked and drawn. The doves he stored for Sunday’s crapaudine, the geese livers for the faux foie gras. Duck and geese breasts were set aside for their respective marinades. All the remaining bird carcasses went in to roast.

Squirrels he skinned and boned, then ground the lean meat for the consommé and put it in the walk-in. The rabbit he jointed, removing the two pieces from each saddle and the two rear legs. What was left of these went on for stock, to be combined later with mirepoix.

He turned last to the racoons, opening the first gingerly, peeling away its fur, severing the feet above the claws. Gutted, the carcass was meagre, but Chladek’s instinct had been
good. There were two tenderloin pieces running parallel to the spine on either side. Jeremy removed one and smelled it. Distinctly gamey, he thought. They’d need pepper to tamp down that flavour. The rest of the meat he divided in two for the terrine. Half went through the grinder and was seasoned with salt, thyme, rosemary, black pepper and Dijon mustard, then moistened with reduced apple cider. The other half he smoked over hickory and ground with diced pork fat. Three large pâté moulds were lined with bacon fat and brandy-simmered prunes. And finally, in alternating layers, Jeremy built his pâté. Seasoned racoon mince, pork fat, minced shallots, parsley and smoked meat. He packed the terrines tightly and put them in the oven to cook in a water bath.

When the duck and geese carcasses were brown and rendered of their fat, Jeremy drained them, added water, caramelized mirepoix, bay, peppercorns and a half-head of garlic, and brought them slowly to a boil. He started a mushroom stock for the risotto with a few pounds of button mushrooms and imported dry porcini. Last, a clear white vegetable stock, which he made with sweated onion, celery and carrots.

It was almost midnight by the time he had the meat stored and the four stocks going at a lazy bubble. It was time for the kimchi, which would need the two intervening days to marinate and develop its piquant flavour. Shredded cabbage, onions, vinegar, sesame oil and chilis. It aged best in clay, he knew, so he rooted for fifteen or twenty minutes after assembling the kimchi, looking to find the urns he’d bought especially for this preparation. They were buried under boxes in the dry storage area, and by the time he found them, filled them, sealed them, put them at the back of the walk-in and turned to his final task of the night, the boutifar, it was one in the morning.

“Damn,” he said, noticing the clock and wondering if he should get to bed. But he had the buzz, the zone. He
was cooking by feel, instinct. He wasn’t tired, so he dug out the two frozen quarts of pigs’ blood he’d been sent from the butcher. Just enough to make the sausage he’d need for tomorrow.

He melted the frozen blocks on low heat and steeled the Sabatier to prep the vegetables, swiping the blade down the length of steel. It made a reassuring sound in the silent kitchen:
zing, zing
. He was leaning over the saucepan with the blood, steeling. Not looking.
Zing. Zing
. He didn’t even realize he’d cut himself until he moved away from the saucepan to put the steel away. Skimming the Sabatier down the outside of the long, carbon steel rod, he had apparently jumped the guard and cut the first knuckle of his index finger, removing a very neat disk of skin. It was one of those painless, non-life-threatening cuts that bleed a great deal. The ones you do not feel and which require a very sharp blade.

“Damn,” he said aloud, startled at the sight of his own blood, now spilling down his hand and covering all his fingers, his thumb. It had dripped down the steel too and onto his pants.

He dropped the knife and the steel onto the cutting board and clamped a hand towel over the cut, applying pressure. He walked the length of the bridge to the first-aid kit and put on a bandage, shaking his head. He went back up the line to clean the cutting board, the steel and the knife. And it was only when he finally turned back to the range that he realized just how much of his blood had been distributed over the stove top. Dime-sized drops, up the front of the unit, across the burners. On the hood.