Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

Author:Gabrielle Hamilton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Restaurateurs, Gabrielle, Chefs, Cooking, General, Personal Memoirs, New York, Chefs - New York (State) - New York, Restaurateurs - New York (State) - New York, Biography & Autobiography, Hamilton, New York (State), Biography, Women
ISBN: 9781400068722
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-28T10:00:00+00:00

11

MELISSA CALLED ONE DAY, WHEN SHE WAS STILL WORKING AS AN editor at Saveur.

“Gabs,” she says, her voice very, very low, not whispering, but very quiet, “get this, guess who’s here,” and then, even lower, “Jacques. Pepin.”

Top Chef, Iron Chef, The Next Food Network Star? We don’t give a shit. Flavor of the month, right place at the right time, big-fish-small-pond? We are not moved. Jacques Pepin breaking down and boning out a whole chicken with a paring knife?

Five phone calls. A play-by-play re-enactment. Later, when we meet for drinks, a physical demonstration. I stood here.… Jacques stood here.… He said … I said …

She commutes into the city from Jersey. Sleeps on my couch three nights a week while her husband does the role reversal, dad-as-mom thing. Compared to those bleak winter days in that Williamsburg loft, we love being roommates. She’s the only one in my family who’s held on tight to me, and I will never let go of her.

“What’s he doing there?” I ask.

“We’re doing a piece on The Greats. The French New York Greats. Soltner. Saihlac. Pepin. You know, Lutèce. Le Cygne. Le Cirque. Before what’s going on now with the CO2 guys, and the Aspen swanaround. You know, Alsatian onion tart. Soltner, who missed only five nights in thirty-four years at Lutece … Anyway, Pepin; I’ve invited him for lunch.”

“Very cool,” I say, understanding perfectly every word of this slightly free-associative answer.

The following week, after Pepin, she invited Soltner. To anyone under thirty he’s not famous, and he’s not doing a show on the Food Network, not using hydrocolloids or glycerin. For us, however, he is a big deal and the real deal. She was prepared. And called to run it by me. As we do.

“So he’s coming for lunch on Tuesday. Nothing big. Just casual. Just a visit. I’m not really even going to cook—that would be stupid. Can you imagine trying to cook for Soltner?”

And I’m on the other end, forty minutes before we open for dinner service, phone on a long curlicue cord up between my ear and my hunched shoulder; I’m blanching beans, finishing anchovy butter, having sign language conversations with the dishwashers about getting these trash bags changed now, please before dinner guests arrive, and dodging my fellow cooks who are hustling to get their stations set up, too. I’m just grunting “un-hunh, un-hunh, un-hunh, right, yes, un-hunh,” the whole time as she works it out with me on the phone, which is mostly just about her working it out—out loud—with me as a sounding board.

I’m listening but I’m also working. The thing with Melissa is that I fully and completely and 100 percent understand and comprehend what she is saying—to its fullest meaning—within the first fifteen seconds. And unfailingly by the end of the third sentence. I’m not saying I’m that smart. I’m saying I get her that well. We Two Are One.

But her purpose is not to merely convey to me the story or the information until I have comprehended.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.