White Truffles in Winter (32 page)

T
WO WEEKS LATER, LA VILLA FERNAND WAS NEARLY
empty, hollowed out by grief. “Papa wants to be alone,” Paul told everyone, although he did not like the idea of leaving him with strangers. He was eighty-nine, after all. And not well. But the old man insisted.

“Just for a few days,” he said.

Escoffier also ordered Sabine to clean the kitchen. “Package everything that is not needed. Label it. Place it in the cellar.”

“And your bottles?”

“Break them.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

And so late that night, one by one, Sabine and Bobo threw the bottles into the calm azure sea. The ships of the navy,
La Royale
, were dark, the harbor hushed. Each bottle bobbed in the waves for several moments, awaiting reprieve, then took on water and spun into the depths.

“Are you crying?” he asked.

“Are you hungry?”

At
2
a.m., when Sabine delivered his nightcap, Escoffier was not in bed, but waiting for her at his desk. He was dressed in his Louis-Philippe dress coat and striped trousers. “For you,” he said. “
Le Guide Culinaire.”
He opened to a page and began to read.

“The expression ‘boiling hot' is unsuitable. Fat never boils. It burns first. This is true of all fat. To fry, oil should only be moderately hot.”

“What are we frying?”

He handed her the book. “Joy, my dear. Do not forget joy.” And then walked down the hallway, unsteady, to Madame Escoffier's bedroom and closed the door behind him.

Sabine was unsure of what to do. She sat on the floor outside Madame's room for a long time, listening. She was afraid to leave him alone. When she finally gathered her courage, she opened the door. The room still smelled of Madame Escoffier, of lavender and talc.

The curtains were pulled back, the lights of the city and the harbor below looked like so many fallen stars. Escoffier was asleep on top of the white lace sheets, still dressed in his Louis-Philippe dress coat and striped trousers. He seemed peaceful; she didn't want to wake him and so she gently closed the door behind her.

The next morning, Sabine laid out the food that Bobo had brought from the Grand. “I think these are the last truffles in the region,” he told her. “We should stay with him.”

“He wants to be alone for a while.”

“He could burn the house down. Or cut himself. Or become disoriented.”

“Or find joy.”

When Escoffier finally came down to the kitchen that morning, he sat for a long time in the quiet. The smell of bleach, the silence—they seemed the same to him. Both had erased all traces of life from the room. Instead of rows of copper pans polished and waiting, there were only two pans—a Windsor and
pôele
, the “fraying-pan.”

The warmth of the sun shining through the window made him sleepy but there was still so much work to do.

It is, after all, a terrible thing to be forgotten; he had never thought of it that way before.

A wire basket of eggs awaited: some were green, some the palest of pink. Some were speckled brown and others, blue and green. There were a few tiny gull eggs, a smattering of quail and two fat duck eggs. The farmer gave every egg he had to Bobo for Escoffier. Each one was beautiful in its own right.

Escoffier chose six of the brown. He'd not cooked by himself for years. The shells were tougher than he remembered. He had to tap them with a knife several times before they cracked; yolks broke, bits of shell fell into the bowl. He beat them gently and placed a clove of garlic on the end of the knife, a knob of butter in the
pôele
and closed his eyes.

The smell of sweet cream. The edge of garlic. His leaking heart.

At sunset, Bobo and Sabine arrived at the house with the rest of the food on Escoffier's list. They managed to get nearly everything including Russian caviar and angry lobsters but the Grand Hôtel could no longer get
foie gras
. There was talk of rationing; plans were already being drawn up.

Escoffier had changed into his chef's whites and was seated at the kitchen table surrounded by colored inks, a drawing pad, and dozens of old menus. He wore a single medal, the Rosette of an Officer of the Legion, which had been conferred upon him in
1928
. Surprisingly Wilhelm II, the former Emperor, King and Commander-in-Chief, was there at the ceremony and said a few words.

“Of course, I came,” he told him later. “We're friends after all, aren't we?”

After all.

After war, after Daniel, after it all—there he was.
Queen Victoria's grandson. The war broke him. Germany had abandoned him. Escoffier had heard that he'd been living in exile in Holland, longing for English tea. And that he'd become afraid of barbers. That looked to be true. His hair had turned white and hung down his back. Untrimmed, his mustache grew wild around his lips.

He'd renounced the war. “It was nothing that I ever wanted,” he told anyone who listened but few did. It was not just that he had been the enemy, but accusations of homosexuality had made him an outcast.

“Have you forgotten me, old friend?”

He had. The last time Escoffier even thought of Wilhelm was the night he retuned home to La Villa Fernand after his voyage on the RMS
Berengaria
. That was the last night Madame Escoffier had been well; the last night she had actually cooked for him with her own hands.

“We are friends after all,” Escoffier reassured him. And the battered man kissed him as a brother would. Embraced him, weeping.

To be forgotten is the saddest thing.
The Rosette of an Officer of the Legion now served as a reminder of that.

“Where do we begin?” Bobo asked.

“Bones,” Escoffier said. “They hold memory in their marrow; they are the essence of a life lived.”

“And so we begin with stock?”

“Sabine, the small Canton bowls, please. One ladle. Then taste. Truly taste it. In silence. In reverence. Then ask yourself what you are tasting. And then add another ladle, this time with thin slices of truffle, enough to cover the top. Using too little truffle is wasteful. You need an opulent amount for full impact. Let the heat from the soup warm it. Then again, taste it. In silence.”

The old man handed Bobo a recipe. “
Oeufs Brouillés à la Bohémienne,
Bohemian Scrambled Eggs. It has truffles and is served in a brioche. Lovely.”

“For Madame?”

“
Non.
For Bobo, our
‘Bohémiene.'
”

“And for Madame?” Sabine asked.

Escoffier put his arm around Bobo. “Do you know how to make an
aligot
?”

“I know of it, of course. I've never made one. Potatoes and cheese. Whipped for a very long time. Very simple.”

“It only seems simple. Make it for Sabine. Madame Escoffier would like that.”

Escoffier put his arm around Sabine, too, and held them both for a moment. They could feel his thin bones rattle with each breath.

“And the dish for Madame?” Sabine asked.

He walked away without another word.

“He just needs some sleep,” she said.

“Or help. What would it hurt if we made a menu and said it was his? Who would know?”

Sabine unpacked the baskets. “Champagne. Caviar. Eggs. Lobster. Tarragon. Crème fraîche. White truffles. Peas and pigeons.”

“The makings of a romantic meal.”

“What of the
aligot
?
There is cheese and potatoes.”

“Bourgeois.
This is the wife of Escoffier.”

Sabine put the veal stock in the Windsor pan to heat. When it was ready, she measured one ladle of stock into each blue bowl. They sat in the stark kitchen, in silence, in reverence. One spoon after the other—the stock was dark, primal. Roasting the bones added a surprising richness and depth. “You were right,” he said. “But then you knew that.”

She took the white truffle from the basket. “Let's not,” he said. “We'll save it for tomorrow. Papa can join us.”

“Then this,” she said and picked up the two lobsters and set them on the table near the bowl. They smelled of the ocean. “Now close your eyes and taste again.”

The stock was scented with lobster, as if the creatures were already part of the meal.

“Clever girl.”

“Lobster,
crème fraîche,
tarragon and shallot?”

“Lobster with tarragon cream?”

“And veal stock. The preparation? Not boiled, too common. Broiled dries.”

“Fricassée d'Homard à la Crème d'Estragon.”

“Fricassee, yes. And named à la Madame Delphine Daffis Escoffier?”

“It would sell many covers.” He took ink and paper and began to write.

“Very good,” she said. “Write this, too—‘When it comes to the act of preparing lobsters, one must first open a bottle of the very best champagne that one can find. I am quite fond of the Moët.' ”

Sabine poured the champagne they had brought into a glass bowl and without hesitation plunged the struggling lobsters into it head first. “Hold the lobster until he is sedated and a peaceful death can be assumed.”

“An entire bottle?”

“He told me this himself.”

They watched as the lobsters began to slow. Sabine turned the oven on high and continued to dictate.

“Now you must ask yourself an essential question. Are you a sensitive person or a beast like me? If you are a beast, you should simply cut the lobsters cleanly down the middle without a second thought.”

“That's ridiculous. How else can you fricassee if not to cut them in two?”

“You can put them in a hot oven until they stop moving.”

“No one's going to do that.”

She tossed the lobsters into the oven. Slammed the door shut.

“They'll overcook.”

“They'll be fine.”

Bobo poured some Moët from the bowl into the two jelly jars. “To Papa.”

“The tears of lobsters.”

Sabine checked her watch; it was well past supper. She hadn't eaten. She wanted a cigarette, but not now. Not in the kitchen.

“The rest of it should be simple,” Bobo said. “Chop tarragon, shallot. Add butter to a
pôele.
Sauté. Add shelled lobster tail and then
crème fraîche.
Cover.
10
minutes.”

“Even a housewife could do it?”

“Even you. It can be on the menu next week.
Un Dîner d'Amoureux from Escoffier to Escoffier.
We will begin with scrambled eggs served in their shell with wild osetra caviar and follow with a casserole of pigeon and peas. Pigeon would be an amusing addition.
Le Pigeon aux Petits Pois en Cocotte.
Then finish simply with wild strawberries served with Brie that has been drizzled with candied lavender and honey. A refreshing finale, not heavy. This way the lovers will still have energy for each other.”

Sabine took the lobsters out of the oven. Split them in half. Chopped the herbs. Bobo poured her another glass of champagne from the bowl.

“He could deny he wrote this,” she said.

“We'll insist.”

“If he didn't want to create a dish for his wife, perhaps it was for private reasons.”

Bobo took a long sip from his glass. “It is a romantic story that he created one last menu for his wife of sixty-odd years, is it not?”

“But it is just a story.”

“The story is everything.”

Upstairs in his room, Escoffier was still working. His hands shook so badly that the ink stained his hands, his desk and the cuffs of his neatly pressed shirt. He could barely read what he'd written, but he wrote furiously,

“This is a difficult dish; do not allow the seemingly simple ingredients to deceive you. Potatoes. Butter. Cream. Each ingredient must be put together in a particular fashion and in the prescribed manner. Every choice you make, every step you alter, affects your ability to change the ordinary into the extraordinary. You must be brave. You cannot falter. This is a dish of quiet miracles. You must believe in them.”

He wrote so quickly that his hand began to cramp. He had to hurry to finish. After all, Madame Escoffier was waiting.

The Complete Escoffier: A Memoir in Meals

CHERRIES JUBILEE

Always name a successor to manage your kitchen. Groom him well and keep him at all costs. The fire at the Carlton made me realize this. Even though I was at the age of retirement, I was unwilling to accept it.

The fire came up through the kitchen elevator and reached the fourth and fifth floors of the hotel within minutes. There are various versions as to how it started. I was not in the kitchen at the time, but upstairs in my rooms meeting with a publisher. Many of the hotel guests were changing for dinner and were in various stages of undress. Some were in their baths.