Off the Menu Read online

  Why, you might ask, is a world-famous chef and gadabout television celeb ringing my bell at a quarter to one in the morning on a weeknight? Because I am his Gal Friday, Miss Moneypenny, executive culinary assistant, general dogsbody, and occasional whipping post. I help him develop his recipes for the shows and cookbooks, and travel with him to prep and sous chef when he does television appearances and book tours. I also choose his gifts for birthdays and holidays, order his apology flowers for the Legs, as I call them, listen to him bitch about either being too famous or not famous enough, and write his witty answers to the e-mail questionnaires he gets since few journalists like to do actual note-taking live interviews anymore. I let the endless series of the fired and broken-up-with he leaves in his wake cry on my shoulder, and then I write half of them recommendations for other jobs, and the other half sincere apology notes, which I sign in a perfect replica of his signature, practiced on eleventy-million cases of cookbooks and glossy headshots that he can’t be bothered to sign himself.

  And on nights like these, when he has a date or a long business dinner, I drag my ass out of bed to make him a snack, and listen to him wax either poetical or heretical, depending on how the evening went.

  I quickly throw on a bra and my robe, while Patrick leans on the bell and Dumpling hops straight up and down as if he has springs in his paws, and joyously barks his ill-proportioned tiny little head off, knowing instinctively that this is not some scary intruder, but rather one of his favorite two-leggeds.

  Cheese and rice, why are the men in my life so freaking demanding tonight?

  “I. Am. Coming!” I yell in the vague direction of the door, turning on lights as I stumble through my apartment.

  I open the front door, and there he is. Six foot three inches, broad shoulders, tousled light brown hair with a hint of strawberry, piercing blue eyes, chiseled jaw showing a hint of stubble, wide grin with impossibly even white teeth, except for the one chipped eyetooth from a football incident in high school, the one flaw in the perfect canvas of his face.

  Fucker.

  I gather up all five foot three of my well-padded round self, with my unruly dark brown curly hair in a frizzled shrubbery around my head, squint my sleepy blue eyes at him, and step aside so he can enter.

  He leans down and kisses the top of my head. “Hello, Alana-falana, did I wake you?”

  Patrick doesn’t walk as much as he glides in a forwardly direction. Most women find it sexy. I find it creepy.

  “Of course you woke me, it’s one o’clock in the good-manned morning, and we have a meeting at eight.” I cringe at my accidental use of my dad’s broken-English epithet. A lifetime of being raised by Russian immigrants, who murdered their new language with passion and diligence, has turned me into someone who sometimes lapses into their odd versions of idioms. The way people who have worked to get rid of their Southern drawls can still slip into y’all mode when drinking or tired.

  He turns and puts on his sheepish puppy-dog face.

  “Oops. So sorry, sweet girl, you know I never keep official track of time.”

  It’s true. Bastard doesn’t even wear a watch. It would make me crazy, except he is never late.

  “It’s okay. How may I be of service this, um, morning?” He’ll ignore the emphasis on the hour, but I put it out there anyway.

  Patrick reaches down and scoops Dumpling up in his arms, receiving grateful licks all over his face. Damned if my dog, who is generally indifferent to almost all men, doesn’t love Patrick.

  “I had a very tedious evening, and a powerfully mediocre dinner, and I thought I would swing by and say hello and see if you had anything delicious in your treasure chest.”

  “Of course you did. Eggs?”

  “Please.”

  “Fine.”

  Patrick follows me to the kitchen, carrying and snuggling Dumpling, whispering little endearments to him, making him wiggle in delight. He folds himself into the small loveseat under the window, and watches me go to work.

  Between culinary school, a year and a half of apprentice stages all over the world in amazing restaurants, ten years as the personal chef of talk show phenom Maria De Costa, and six years as Patrick’s culinary slave, I am nothing if not efficient in the kitchen. I grab eggs, butter, chives, a packet of prosciutto, my favorite nonstick skillet. I crack four eggs, whip them quickly with a bit of cold water, and then use my Microplane grater to grate a flurry of butter into them. I heat my pan, add just a tiny bit more butter to coat the bottom, and let it sizzle while I slice two generous slices off the rustic sourdough loaf I have on the counter and drop them in the toaster. I dump the eggs in the pan, stirring constantly over medium-low heat, making sure they cook slowly and stay in fluffy curds. The toast pops, and I put them on a plate, give them a schmear of butter, and lay two whisper-thin slices of the prosciutto on top. The eggs are ready, set perfectly; dry but still soft and succulent, and I slide them out of the pan on top of the toast, and quickly mince some chives to confetti the top. A sprinkle of gray fleur de sel sea salt, a quick grinding of grains of paradise, my favorite African pepper, and I hand the plate to Patrick, who rises from the loveseat to receive it, grabs a fork from the rack on my counter, and heads out of my kitchen toward the dining room, Dumpling following him, tail wagging, like a small furry acolyte.

  “You’re welcome,” I say to the sink as I drop the pan in. I grab an apple out of the bowl on the counter and head out to keep him company while he eats. I’d love nothing more than a matching plate, but it is a constant struggle to not explode beyond my current size 14, and middle-of-the-night butter eggs are not a good idea.

  Patrick is tucking in with relish, slipping Dumpling, who has happily returned to a place of honor in his lap, the occasional morsel of egg and sliver of salty ham. Usually I am very diligent about not giving the dog people-food, but I don’t have the energy to fight Patrick on it, especially since I am feeling a bit guilty about how little time I have had to spend with the pooch lately. Barry is out of town playing Oscar Wilde in a Philadelphia production of Gross Indecency, so it has been all day-care all the time for the past three weeks, and another three to go. So a little bit of egg and prosciutto I can’t argue with. Patrick manages to inhale his food and pet Dumpling nearly simultaneously with one hand. With his other hand, he is fiddling with my laptop, which I left open on the table when I went to sleep, after a night of working on new recipes for his latest cookbook. He pauses, and looks me right in the eyes.

  “Damn, girl, you make the best scrambled eggs on the planet.” Patrick is a lot of things, but disingenuous is not one of them. When he lets fly a compliment, which is infrequent, he makes eye contact and lets you know he means it very sincerely.

  I let go of my annoyance. “I know. It’s the grated butter.” I can’t stay mad at Patrick for longer than eighteen point seven minutes. I’ve timed it.

  “I know. Wish I had thought of it.”

  “According to the Feast episode about breakfasts for lovers, you did,” I tease him. I’m not mad about this. It’s my job to help him develop recipes and invent or improve methods. And since I am petrified at the idea of being on camera or in the public eye in any way, shape, or form, he is most welcome to claim all my tricks as his own. Lord knows, he pays me very, very well for the privilege.

  “Well, I know I inspired the idea.” He’s very confident of this, thinking that I came up with the technique to enhance his dining experience when he foists himself upon me in the middle of the night, which I also think he believes I secretly love.

  He is enormously wrong on both counts.

  I came up with it for Bruce Ellerton, the VP of show development for the Food TV Network and senior executive producer of our show. Bruce comes to Chicago periodically to check in on us since we are the only show that doesn’t tape in the Manhattan studios, and he and I have been enjoying a two- to three-day romp whenever he is here or I am there for the past four years. We are, as the kids say, friends with benefits, and I like t
o think we enjoy a very real friendship in addition to an excellent working relationship and very satisfying sex. We have enough in common to allow for some non-bedroom fun, and easy conversation. We also have a solid mutual knowledge that we would be terrible together as a real couple, which prevents either of us from trying to turn the relationship into more than it is. We stay strictly away from romantic gestures; no flowers or Valentine’s cards or overly personal gifts. If either of us begins dating someone seriously, we put our naked activities on hold.

  Or, I’m sure we would, if either of us had time to actually date someone seriously.

  Bruce’s favorite food is eggs, so I developed the recipe for him one evening when bed took precedence over dinner and by the time we came up for air, take-out places were shut down for the night. Patrick is blissfully unaware of the special nature of my relationship with Bruce, so I just let him think they are “his” eggs.

  “You inspire all my best ideas. Or at least you pay for them. So was tonight business or pleasure?” I crunch into my apple.

  “Biznuss,” he says around a mouthful of toast and egg. “The New York investors want to push the opening back a few months. Michael White is opening another place around the same time we were going to, and everything that guy touches is gold, so we don’t want to end up a footnote in the flood of press he will get. Mike is a fucking amazing chef, so I don’t want to invite any comparisons. Let him have a couple months of adulation, and then we’ll open.”

  Patrick, to his credit, is a chef first and a television personality second. He keeps a very tight rein and close eye on all of his restaurants, develops all the menus in close consultation with his chefs de cuisine, who train the rest of their staff in his clean and impeccable style. For all his bluster, and as much as he has the vanity to enjoy the celebrity part of his life, the food does come first, not the brand. He is at the pass in each of his Chicago restaurants at least once a week, and checks in on his out-of-town places once a month or so. And he is secure enough to recognize when someone else is really magic in the kitchen and to not want to muddy the media waters. Having eaten at almost all of Michael’s restaurants over the years, I can’t blame Patrick for wanting to bump his own stuff to let the guy have his due. The words culinary genius come to mind immediately and without irony.

  “So, late spring then?” I’m mentally adjusting my own schedule, since whatever Patrick does inevitably impacts my life not insignificantly.

  He takes the last morsel of toast and wipes the plate clean, popping it in his mouth and rolling his eyes back in satisfaction. “Yup.”

  “I’ll go through the calendar with you tomorrow and we can make the necessary changes.” Crap. I have eight thousand things to do tomorrow, or rather, today, and this was not one of them.

  “Sounds good. You just tell me where to be and when and what to do when I get there!”

  I wish. “How about you be at your house in ten minutes, and go to sleep …”

  He laughs. That is not good. That means he is choosing to believe that I am joking so that he can stay longer. There is not going to be enough caffeine on the planet to suffer through tomorrow. Er, today.

  “So guess what started today?” He smirks at me, pushing his empty plate aside and moving my computer in front of him.

  “I can’t begin to imagine.”

  “EDestiny Fall Freebie Week!”

  Oh. No.

  “Patrick …”

  “Let’s see what fabulous specimens of human maleness the old Destinometer has scraped up for our princess, shall we?” He chuckles as his fingers fly over the keys, logging into the dating site with my e-mail and password, settling in to see what new profiles the magical soul-mate algorithm has dredged up for me. It should be the last thing I would ever let him do, or even tell him about, but my ill-fated brief stint as an online dater somehow became part of our business practice. And it is my own damn fault.

  Dumpling nuzzles under Patrick’s chin, another betrayal, and I clear Patrick’s plate and flatware, and go to wash dishes, while my bosshole in the other room yells out that there’s a very nice-looking seventy-two-year-old bus driver from Hammond, Indiana, who might just be perfect for me.

  2

  I should go to bed, but the computer is taunting me.

  RJ. 49. 6’0”. Lives in Chicago. No kids and doesn’t want any. Internet media consultant. Likes wine, cooking, travel, art, music, reading, his job, his family, and his life. About twenty-five words that say nothing, and yet, all hit me where I live. No profile picture. No hobbies or favorite films or inspirational quotes. Really, the bare minimum of information you can put online and have your profile accepted by EDestiny. But something about it has haunted me all day, ever since I spotted it during Patrick’s assault on my account last night.

  It is nearly eleven p.m., and I have just gotten home after a brutal day of meetings, six hours of recipe testing, and a long after-work therapy session with the latest casualty of Hurricane Patrick, a new show prep cook just out of culinary school who was on the receiving end of the famous “Fifteen Minutes on Knife Skills” rant. Patrick asked for carrots in batonnet and celery root in allumette, or large sticks and small sticks, and got everything in fine julienne, or very small shreds. Easily remedied, and a classic newbie error, but Patrick is nothing if not precise, and since this was a test run for an upcoming shoot of a stir-fry episode of Academy, where size and shape of ingredients is paramount, he just lost it.

  “Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?” Patrick swept her station prep onto the floor in one wide swipe of his arm, sending little bits of carrot and celery root shreds flying in the air like confetti, and equipment clattering to the floor. “Exactly what mail-order culinary school did you graduate from? Incompetent Twat U? This is unfuckingacceptable. You might not have noticed, but I have a few things on my schedule. One of them is NOT supposed to be looking over your sad little schlumpy shoulder to make sure you know how to CUT SHIT UP. There are only two options here. Either, one: you actually don’t know the difference between batonnet, allumette, and julienne, in which case you are desperately underqualified for this job, and whoever hired you is going to need both a proctologist and a podiatrist to get my foot out of their ass. Or, two: you DO know and just don’t give a crap, and you figured I wouldn’t notice, which makes you both a dumbass and about half an inch from fired.” Her lower lip began to tremble. But when Patrick gets on a roll he makes Gordon Ramsay seem maternal.

  “So, let’s all gather around and have a lesson this afternoon, shall we? Because obviously we have lost our passion for precision around here. Someone get me a fucking knife and some goddamn carrots.” They magically appeared at the station in half a second, and for ten minutes he turned a pile of carrots into perfect, even batonnet, allumette, julienne, fine julienne, large dice, medium dice, small dice, brunoise, and fine brunoise like some sort of human food processor. Each piece in each category was identical to all its compatriots, as if made by a machine. Minimal waste, station clean, every little pile complete and perfect. Patrick trained under both Marco Pierre White and Thomas Keller. He got his temperament from the first and an almost OCD level of perfectionism from the second. I often wish it had been the reverse. The whole time he was cutting, he muttered maniacally to himself about what a waste of time this was, mentioning, as he loves to do, that his time was worth approximately twenty-seven-hundred dollars an hour, and that everyone should be paying him for the lesson. When he finished, he picked up a leftover carrot, pointed it at her face, telling her to, “Get it right, or get gone,” biting the tip off viciously for emphasis, and then headed to his office and slammed the door.

  She sniffled for the rest of the day, and I had to take her over to Nightwood after work and let her vent. Twentysomething angst is enormously tedious, but some oversight of the culinary underlings is part of my job, so this comes with the territory. I don’t do the hiring; Food TV and Patrick’s executive assistant do that, so it wasn’t really my ass on the line for
bringing her on. And Gloria runs the test kitchen, so she is in charge of training, and I don’t doubt that she was very forthcoming about how important precision is to Patrick. But I do try to keep an eye on show prep as it is going on, and am usually able to spot a potential problem and get it fixed before Patrick is aware of it. I try not to get attached; the show is a meat grinder, and by the time you learn someone’s name, they are out the door. I mentally call them by their most obvious attributes. At the moment we have Neck Tattoo, Geek Glasses, Orange Clogs, Bubble Butt Bike Boy, and little snifflepuss whom I’ve been thinking of as Sad White Girl Dreads, who sat across from me sweating chardonnay and asking me if she shouldn’t just quit. To their faces, they are all just “Chef.” They think it is a mark of respect and honor, but it really just saves me wasting mental space on name retention.

  Six months into my “tryout,” I had been on the receiving end of my own first Patrittack. I hadn’t had time to caramelize onions the way Patrick had asked for them. He started cooking, reached for the onions, and then abruptly stopped the shoot. He came around from behind the stove and towered over me.

  “Miss A-la-na here seems to think that my pork medallion with caramelized-onion pan sauce is a little heavy-handed, that the onions need a lighter touch, a less intense flavor. Do you think the recipe needs altering? Hmmm? In your INFINITE wisdom and experience?” His voice dripped with sarcasm, smug and smooth and utterly contemptuous. And I was not in the mood.

  “In my HUMBLE opinion,” I began, equally quiet and calm, and no less scathing, “the recipe indeed needs some lightening. And since you ostensibly hired me to help make you look good and ensure that the recipes you put out in the world can actually be successfully produced by the general population, you should trust that I am going to take your recipes and make them better, and leave it at that. I do things the way they should be done, and you cook your dishes like a good little boy and STAY OUT OF MY ASS.”