I
“Dorsey, look, we’ve talked about this before and then I get this on my desk, today? What gives, where are we, French onion soup under a quote “blistered blanket of melted Gruyere cheese” unquote, what year is this?” asked the Editor. “For God’s sake, our readers are among the most wealthy, prestigious people in the world and you want them to read about a small mom and pop restaurant they wouldn’t take their kids to? Oh, you’re kidding right, you’ve got to be kidding.”
Dorsey had nothing to offer. He sat forward on his chair, his elbows on his knees like a man about to stand up, but he didn’t. He sat there and looked out the window of the Editor’s office, wishing, as he had many times before, that he had window looking out over the world’s greatest financial district, not just a cubicle tucked away on the dark side of the newsroom.
“Ya got anything else?” asked the Editor, finally, losing all patience.
“I can review the new midtown joint Alexandra’s, slap something together on that,” said Dorsey, finally, still peering out the window.
“Yeah, your bill was what $1850? You could at least give me 185 words,” said the Editor.
“Hey the kids got a little adventurous, to be expected,” replied Dorsey in his defense.
“Yeah, and who said the restaurant AMEX could be used with two interns, by the way?” demanded the Editor.
“I felt sorry for them, getting yelled at all day, low pay, the damn fools eat dirty water hot dogs on the corner every day,” grumbled Dorsey.
“Right, they’re interns, dumb…”trailed off the Editor, “just have it done before we go to press today.”
Dorsey sat at his cubicle until lunch, working with renewed enthusiasm on his current best idea ever. He went back into his archives and found a review of another midtown eatery from three years ago. He changed the name and a few details in the first couple paragraphs, and then started through the article line by line to make the necessary changes for “Alexandra’s” but curiously many of the dishes were nearly exactly the same, as was the decor and wine list. “Well this’ll be easier than I thought,” Dorsey mumbled.
One of the interns wandered by and the two of them talked a bit, as people in cubicles do regularly, making sure they’re still a known entity, part of the living world. “To be honest with you,” started the young man, “I got some terrible indigestion, for like the first time ever, after that meal. Don’t get me wrong, it was unbelievable, but wow, I don’t think I was able to sleep more than a few hours.”
“Yeah,” laughed Dorsey, “I had the same experience once with a ‘tasting’ menu and haven’t made the same mistake again. And I noticed you ate everything on the plate, quite remarkable, I’ve never seen anyone do that before; you were even sopping up those little puddles of sauce with bread.”
“C’mon,” the intern laughed, “it was was a once in a lifetime experience, a midtown like four star place. My facebook blew up when I posted the photos. My Dad went berserk, thought I used his credit card!”
“I can imagine! When you took that photo of the two champagne bottles, one full and one empty, I thought ‘that’s not going to look good to the Editor’,” laughed Dorsey. “Ah, but to hell with him, he’s a man without humor anymore. You know when we were young and on the staff here together, he and I would pull some shit, man, just crazy stuff, and have a helluva time. But he’s the Editor now, so the fun’s all over. He grew up into I don’t know what, he started to believe the bullshit. It’s one thing to write the bullshit, it’s another to believe it. By the way, what would you give the place, I mean now that you’ve eaten a whole bottle of Tums and been yelled at by your old man?”
“You know,” the intern started, suddenly quite serious, “we discussed it in some detail just last night, and really I think three, maybe three and a half stars on the long end, would be appropriate. There were some little things that I think really stood out, you know, like towards the end there, when we were like the last table in the place, I really felt like they were quite impatient to have us out of there. I mean a brandy after a meal like that, from everything I’ve read, is quite appropriate.”
“But you had two brandies,” noted Dorsey, amused to no end by the intern’s enthusiasm, “and your buddy had fallen into a stupor of some sort, head right on the table for God’s sake, like some crazy Russian general after the Battle of Vyazma and three bottles of vodka.”
“Battle of what?” asked the intern.
“Oh, the Napoleonic Wars, man, nothing, nothing,” murmured Dorsey, waving the intern away, and smiling broadly. “Thank God for the kids,” he thought.
In an hour he had the new article nearly finished. With his feet up on the side of his desk, he opened an old, badly used thesaurus and found some new adjectives for a final touch, methodically replacing the worn out originals with arcane ones that few would know, but all would understand. He laughed to himself about the intern’s “three or three and a half” stars. The Editor would get a big kick out of that, having to explain it to his friends, the investors in the place, over drinks this weekend at the ‘club’. “Maybe one day, on my way out of here,” thought Dorsey, “I’ll do him the honor of a two star review, just to screw him.”
The job finished, Dorsey rose and took a look around. The editor was gone to his Friday three hour lunch and whorehouse rendezvous, the interns were out on the street trying to run into other interns of the opposite sex. All clear, Dorsey scheduled an email to send at 2:00, with the new review, about the time the editor would return and expect it. Then he collected a few things and made his way out for the weekend, hoping not to run into anyone who might notice the early exit.
Outside, the day was rare, rare as hell, as Dorsey scanned the blue sky. Sunny but just cool enough that a long walk was easy and without the heavy perspiration normally a part of any city activity. He unzipped his jacket and removed his tie to his laptop case. At a few intersections he could see the Brooklyn bridge rise up over the East River, its ancient steel a reminder of foregone days of heroic feats. “How many died building the bridge?” thought Dorsey, “and was it worth it? I get to walk home to Brooklyn, walking across it in the bright sunshine with the East River below, polluted but still able to sparkle across the ripples. They never even crossed it.”
Dorsey at 52 still had a little youth left in him. He was fifteen pounds heavier than high school basketball and cross country, a fifteen that kind of sagged around his tall bony body. His joints were the most noticeable parts of his anatomy, popping out everywhere, it seemed. Before you saw his biceps, you saw his elbow and shoulder, both looking like they were ready to escape the thin confine of his skin. His gait however was a machine like long stride with little sideways movement. He got where he needed to go without a lot of time or trouble, and no needless exertion.
Just as he was about to ascend the Manhattan side of the bridge he was surprised by a tap on the shoulder. He turned to find the two interns behind him, also on their way to an early weekend. “Sorry boys,” laughed Dorsey, “I can’t use the AMEX card twice in the same week.”
“No worries,” said one, “how bout we return the favor, well kind of anyway, and buy you a beer at our local watering hole?”
“Sure,” said Dorsey, surprising himself at his quick agreement to partake in alcohol at this early hour, not his normal. It would be different, fun even, to shoot the bull before arriving home to a quiet evening alone.
As they walked the bridge and then the Brooklyn neighborhoods on the other side, Dorsey asked all the questions, as older men are wont to do, plying the boys about college, studies, families, girlfriends, city of origin, teams followed, plans for the future. Finally in front of large glass of cold beer in a neat little bar, the boys started to ask the questions and Dorsey gave them the full story:
“Well, let’s see, like you I always wanted to try New York. Course back then it was a completely different place. The 70’s hadn’t been good to the city, lots of crime, burnout, the Bronx was a mess, but still it had some vibrancy when I arrived, fresh out of Illinois, class of 80. We were in terrible shape at that time, the country I mean, high inflation and an economy going backwards. I got a job reading copy at a paper that no longer exists, the Herald, which they tried to resuscitate at exactly the wrong time. Anyway, I ended up doing two jobs there. I read copy during the day and at night I went to movies and little, unknown restaurants, and even some plays, mostly off Broadway, and wrote reviews. No extra pay for the writing, but they didn’t have the money for a full time writer, so I guess I was an intern like you. I did that for three years and then finally the economy started to turn around and I met a guy at a party, a New Year’s Eve party of all things, who’d read my work and thought it was ok, or so he said. He got me a job at the Journal and I’ve been there ever since, working one desk or another, and now I’m back doing reviews of restaurants, almost where I started.”
“But you said the other night you don’t really like restaurants anymore,” one of the interns mentioned.
“No, to be honest, I really don’t. They’ve lost the thread, I don’t know, they used to be fun, interesting, a place to break bread and laugh, and fall in love. Sure the food was great, and the wine, wow, the wine. When your only wine experience was MD 2020, or mad dog as we called it, the Bordeaux, the Burgundy, they blew you away back then. Now, I guess I feel like the food has become, well, holier than thou, very precious. The chefs are not great cooks anymore, just wizards of invention without meaning. And the wine, the big Californian wines, are like fermented prune juice. I can’t tell you when I had a great bowl of soup, well I actually had a great bowl of French onion recently at a small restaurant in Queens but I got, or my review got, chewed up and spit out as they say. And the meal the other night, I can’t remember anything we ate, to be honest, and the plates were so busy, so overdone. I don’t understand who they’re trying to impress. I mean, have we really become so jaded about food that we need ten ingredients on every plate, half of which we’ve never heard of before?”
“So it’s changed? What was it like back in the day,” the other intern asked.
‘Back in the day’ Dorsey ran it around in his head. ‘Yeah, I guess that’s pretty accurate’, he thought.
“Back in the day, the city was still in the midst of a love affair with French food. Man, it was a great time. I mean the first time you had a beautiful pâte de campagne, followed by steak au poivre, galette de pommes de terre, with a nice Bordeaux, and then flambeed crepes tableside for dessert, what a time. People were even making French food at home, my wife and I were in one of these dinner groups where each couple hosted a weekend a month. We made some memorable meals, all French, too,” remembered Dorsey, feeling the beer and the nostalgia all at once.
“You were married, then?” asked the intern.
“Yeah, yeah of course, Christ I have two kids you know,” started Dorsey. Then he realized why they might be surprised. “Well my wife Deneen passed a couple, well three years ago November, now. Wow, a lot has happened, a lot of time has passed.”
The three quieted for a little while, looking out the window, the street mostly empty except for a dog walker from time to time.
“Yeah, back then we had a place in Manhattan. Rent controlled, but when the kids got a little older we took the big risk and bought a condo here in Brooklyn, by the park. It was great for the kids. When I got home from work I took them out almost every day, rain, snow or shine,” said Dorsey, lost in the past.
“What the hell is ‘steak au’ what’d you call it?” asked an intern.
“Au poivre, or pepper steak usually served with a cognac cream sauce, what a dish,” replied Dorsey.
“Jeez, and there’s nowhere that serves up anything like that today?” asked the intern.
“God, no, classic French is a thing of a yesteryear, my friend,” replied Dorsey.
“So do you know how to cook classic French, as you called it?” asked the intern, “after all the dinner club meals?”
“I’m not bad, actually I enjoy cooking, though now that I live alone, you know, I don’t have as much ambition for it. But I still make a decent meal most nights. I’m bored with carry out, and I’ve never eaten a frozen dinner since I was a kid and my Dad bought 10 cent pot pies.”
“Hey, think you could show us how to make a French meal like that, like that one you described,” the other intern asked, “I mean we’ll pay for the ingredients and all that, but I would love to learn how to cook like that, man.”
“Well,” pondered Dorsey, “let’s think about that one.”
II
The two interns, their elbows resting on the wall of Dorsey’s cubicle, were flush with excitement over the pending meal, a meal which Dorsey had reluctantly agreed to host and the boys had reluctantly agreed to pay for and to clean up afterwards.
“Ok, well, we gotta come up with the menu, right? Are we still on for steak and pepper?” asked one intern.
“I don’t know about that,” negotiated Dorsey, “let’s talk about budget first. What can you two high lifers fork over for the meal, in total, food and wine?”
“Eighty-five, we’ve got eighty-five,” replied the other intern, bouncing proudly on his toes.
“And we’re feeding how many?” asked Dorsey, leaning back in his chair to take a good look at the two of them, his brow scrunched.
“Six,” they both said.
Dorsey leaned forward in his chair to contemplate the ground and how he’d gotten himself into this, taking these two out to eat on the company AMEX, infecting them with nostalgic reminisces of classic French food. “I thought it was five, how did it become six?”
“The two roommates, well one of them, her mother is coming in for the weekend, from like Roanoke I think, so we have to include her, she’s supposed to be very nice lady though,” offered one of the interns, trying with a soft voice to lessen the impact.
“Ok,” said Dorsey, accepting his fate, “we’ll have to go with chicken then, I’ll make a nice fricassee, and for the first course we can do soup, I’ll figure it out, and maybe something chocolate for dessert, if I can afford it. Two bottles of wine should do it, one white and one, well, I’ll figure it out. You two come by at 10:00 tomorrow and we’ll hit the markets and get the party started. Dinner at 5:00 sharp.”
III
When he finally heard the buzzer, sitting in a chair near the door with a light jacket and his umbrella and a notepad of ideas on his lap, Dorsey was both relieved and reluctant to stand up and get started. He didn’t buzz the interns up, so the buzzer continued to sound as Dorsey put on his shoes and locked the door; in fact, he could hear it still as he stood in front of the elevator. “These two are going to be the death of me,” he thought.
“Ok, fellas, don’t break the buzzer, let’s get moving,” said Dorsey as he bounced down the stairs, “we have at least four places to visit. Gonna be fun, right?”
The interns worked to catch up, being forced to fall behind on the narrow sidewalks when meeting oncoming walkers. Finally they got to the first market, and Dorsey seemed to know the whole crew, which occurred at each of the other markets, too. Dorsey knew exactly what he needed, and the market staff knew the best of each item. After 2 hours they headed back to Dorsey’s place, arms full of packages, Dorsey once again reviewing the list he’d created. This is what they purchased:
4 shallots 1 head of garlic 2 leeks 1 celery root bulb 1 ripe tomato 1 bunch chives 1 bunch tarragon 1 head of red oak lettuce 5 lbs of Yukon gold potatoes 1 lb of basmati rice 1 bottle of virgin olive oil 1 bottle La Maille Dijon mustard 1 lb of mixed wild mushrooms 1 large, free range roasting chicken, with neck, giblets and extra livers 1 bar bittersweet chocolate 1 bottle Billecart Salmon Brut Rose Champagne 1 bottle Duckhorn Chardonnay 8 oz grated Parmesan Reggiano 1 lb unsalted butter 1 pint heavy cream 1 dozen eggs 1 quart vanilla ice cream 1 crisp baguette
“Ok,” began Dorsey, “put everything down here, fellas. There’s lots to do so I’ll give you instructions, try to pay attention. We don’t have a lot of time for everything we have to do, so unless you want to look like dufuses and lose any chance at a romantic ending to your labors, buckle up.”
The two interns immediately got serious and started to work the dozens of small tasks that Dorsey assigned them. Meanwhile he started on the chicken, cutting it expertly, for an amateur, into 12 pieces: 2 legs, 2 thighs, 2 wings and the breast, with the ribs attached, each side cut into 3 pieces. The back, the neck and the wing tips were put into a pot with water, thyme, leek greens, some of the peelings from the celery root bulb and black peppercorns for a chicken stock.
After 2 hours both interns had at least one burn, a cut and a raw knuckle. One of them was crying, whimpering really, and he kept saying “I’m not even sure she even likes me,” as he questioned the rational for the cooking bootcamp. Neither intern could understand how the tasks they performed, and the attendant pain, would eventually end up together on a real menu, served to real people in a couple of hours. But Dorsey’s mood went from anxious, to excited to calmly confident. The interns went home to change and then pick up the roommates and the visiting mother. Dorsey took the opportunity to shower and have a bite to eat. In the excitement of meal preparation he’d forgotten to eat lunch.
An hour later, it was time to put together the final touches, starting with the last course and moving backwards through the menu. He put on a small pot of milk and butter to come to the boil, with a pinch of salt, and when it did he added the flour and stirred vigorously, cooking the mixture until it was thick and gleaming and very hot. Off the flame he added the eggs, four of them at first, and the last one, beaten, in small parts until the mixture was the consistency he liked. Then he piped the mixture, the pâte à choux, onto a baking pan, making 18 small balls, brushing each with the leftover egg, and into the oven they went.
Next, he took the cutup chicken and browned the skin on all side, at the end adding the minced shallot and garlic and tarragon, and finally, after removing the chicken to a plate, he deglazed the pan with some brandy, very expensive brandy actually, and reduced it to a glaze, then he added back most of the chicken, keeping the breast pieces apart for now, his chicken stock and the mushrooms the interns had sliced and sauteed earlier, putting the whole pan into the oven to finish cooking. The last tablespoon of minced shallot with a nut of butter sizzled in a small pan, and then Dorsey added the basmati rice and the chicken stock, and set a timer for the pilaf at 18 minutes.
Finally, he took the leek, celery root and potato puree the interns had prepared, checked it for any human remains as it were, and then thinned it with chicken stock and just a splash of cream. He also took a couple of slices of white bread, cut them into quite small cubes, tossed with olive oil and put on a baking tray. He removed the chicken from the oven now, put the croutons on the oven rack, and checked the pâte à choux. It was all coming together nicely.
He answered the buzzer and let his guests in. The interns had recovered their good spirits, and covered their wounds, the roommates decided to dress themselves properly for a “New York soiree” as they called it and the mother, Jennifer, “or Jenny please,” walked in behind them with a smile that was both proud and amused at her progeny.
After some introductions and small talk, Dorsey escaped to the kitchen to finish things up. He finished the sauce for the chicken by adding a cup of cream and placing the pan on a low burner to just bubble, with the breast meat added back. He also took the baguette rounds, mounded with chicken liver puree, and put them in the oven. He put a small glass bowl of cream in the microwave to heat, and when the cream was hot, Dorsey removed it from the microwave and added the chocolate the interns chopped up earlier, and covered it. The pâte à choux, after a second baking, were now nicely browned and crisped, as were the croutons. The soup had just come to a high simmer and Dorsey finished with some freshly ground pepper and a nut of butter, as he called it. Jenny showed up at his side and carried the tureen of Celery Root Cream to the table. Dorsey followed with the croutons, minced chives and the Champagne. Everyone was served and meal began.
Dorsey and Jennifer let the young carry the conversation, which was actually quite entertaining. They talked about the food, the markets and then a recent movie and a local scandal concerning a new basketball arena. The interns eventually removed the bowls and the soup garnish. Dorsey, already in the kitchen, pulled the chicken out of the pan to a large serving dish and poured the wild mushroom sauce over it and some fresh tarragon leaves, and then garnished the dish with the chicken liver croutes hot from the oven. Jenny carried it to the table with serving pieces, and Dorsey followed with the basmati rice pilaf. They drank the white chardonnay with the fricassee, the interns finishing the last pieces of chicken and cleaning up the cappuccino colored mushroom sauce with torn bits of baguette. The roommates then got into the act until the serving dish was ready for the cupboard again. Quite good, Dorsey thought, I’ve still got some latent skills. Jenny was having a very good time, happy to help and laughing out loud at the jibber jabber of the interns and roommates.
Back in the kitchen Dorsey stirred the cream and chocolate and explained to Jenny that the easiest chocolate sauce was just a simple ganache, as the French called it. He split the little pâte à choux in half and into each one he put a large tablespoon of vanilla ice cream. With three on each plate, he drenched them in warm chocolate sauce. He and Jenny got the six plates to the table and served the Profiteroles au Chocolat, washing them down with the final glass of champagne.
The meal a success, the conversation turned to French food, classic French food in particular. “It is rich,” started Dorsey, “but it needn’t be overdone. I used less than a pint of cream and a little butter in this meal, which isn’t a lot for 6 people, and when you consider the whole thing, it was pretty balanced. It would have actually been more balanced, but I forgot to serve the salad after the main course. Oh well, these things happen. I wanted to write down the menu but ran out of time.”
The evening carried on. One of the interns mentioned that there were cooks in Brooklyn who hosted parties in their homes that you paid to attend, like running a little restaurant every Friday and Saturday night. “Really?” asked Dorsey, “they take reservations and people come and pay for a meal in an apartment?” The interns had never attended one of these private caterings themselves, but knew people who had.
“Well, this is the same thing, really” one of the roommates reminded everyone, explaining that the three of them, including Jenny of course, had put in $20 each for the meal that night. Dorsey was embarrassed and a bit red in the face, looking across the table at the interns in bemused disbelief. He started to collect empty dishes and in the kitchen told both interns they deserved their cuts and burns, only more of them.
He also took the brandy down from the cupboard where he had hid it almost three years earlier and offered the table a brandy nightcap. He opened the large glass door to the balcony and they all took their drink out to look over downtown Brooklyn in the dark of evening. There were lots of people on the street now and then Dorsey realized that Jenny was standing next to him. She was an attractive woman, short black hair, a sleeveless top now covered with a sweater, and dark slacks. She had a good sense of humor, that’s the thing that Dorsey noted more than anything else. They started to talk, this and that, while the interns and the roommates collected on the other side, circulating plans for the rest of the evening.
She was also widowed, four years now, and working as a marketing rep in Virginia. She was selling the house she raised her family in, “they’re all on their way now, and it’s just too much to take care of anymore,” she said. “Hopefully, by spring I’ll be in someplace new.”
Dorsey explained his own circumstance, thirty years and counting in the newspaper business, and ready for something new, something above board, as he called it, less bull and more real. “It used to be an honest trade,” said Dorsey, “I have to remind myself sometimes.”
The interns and the roommates decided on their next steps, and with the dishwasher loaded and the kitchen pretty clean, the five of them said their good byes and thank yous, and took the elevator to the street. The interns were smart enough to find a cab for Jenny, back to her hotel, and then the four of them, lost in youth and wine, wandered off, into the night.
Once in the cab, Jenny mentioned the hotel and then at the next corner said “You know what, let’s just go around the block and back to where you picked me up, Ok?”
After making sure that there was nothing left on the counters, Dorsey finally sat down with the remote and tried to find a game on tv, when the buzzer went off again.
“Hello,” said Dorsey into the intercom.
“Jenny,” came back the answer. He buzzed her in.
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Great story, Thomas. I’d bet that you’ve prepared those recipes more than a few times. Thanks for sharing. More butter!!!