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Prologue
Lillian loved best the moment before she turned on the
lights. She would stand in the restaurant kitchen doorway,
rain- soaked air behind her, and let the smells come to her ripe
sourdough yeast, sweet-dirt coffee, and garlic, mellowing as it
lingered. Under them, more elusive, stirred the faint essence
of fresh meat, raw tomatoes, cantaloupe, water on lettuce. Lillian
breathed in, feeling the smells move about and through
her, even as she searched out those that might suggest a rotting
orange at the bottom of a pile, or whether the new assistant chef
was still double-dosing the curry dishes. She was. The girl was
a daughter of a friend and good enough with knives, but some
days, Lillian thought with a sigh, it was like trying to teach
subtlety to a thunderstorm.
But tonight was Monday. No assistant chefs, no customers
looking for solace or celebration. Tonight was Monday, cooking class
night.
After seven years of teaching, Lillian knew how her students
would arrive on the first night of class walking through
the kitchen door alone or in ad hoc groups of two or three that
had met up on the walkway to the mostly darkened restaurant,
holding the low, nervous conversations of strangers who will
soon touch one anothers food. Once inside, some would clump
together, making those first motions toward connection, while
others would roam the kitchen, fingers stroking brass pots or
picking up a glowing red pepper, like small children drawn to
the low- hanging ornaments on a Christmas tree.
Lillian loved to watch her students at this moment they
were elements that would become more complex and intriguing
as they mixed with one another, but at the beginning, placed
in relief by their unfamiliar surroundings, their essence was
clear. A young man reaching out to touch the shoulder of the
still younger woman next to him Whats your name? as
her hand dropped to the stainless-steel counter and traced its
smooth surface. Another woman standing alone, her mind still
lingering with a child? a lover? Every once in a while there
was a couple, in love or ruins.
Lillians students arrived with a variety of motivations, some
drawn by a yearning as yet unmet to hear murmured culinary
compliments, others who had come to find a cook rather than
become one. A few participants had no desire for lessons at all,
arriving with gift certificates in hand as if on a forced march
to certain failure; they knew their cakes would always be flat,
their cream sauces filled with small, disconcerting pockets of
flour, like bills in your mailbox when you had hoped for a love
letter.
And then there were those students who seemingly had no
choice, who could no more stay out of a kitchen than a kleptomaniac
could keep her hands in her pockets. They came
early, stayed late, fantasized about leaving their corporate jobs
and becoming chefs with an exhilarating mixture of guilt and
pleasure. If Lillians soul sought out this last group, it was only
to be expected, but in truth, she found them all fascinating.
Lillian knew that whatever their reasons for coming, at some
moment in the course of the class each ones eyes would widen
with joy or tears or resolution it always happened. The timing
and the reason would be different for each, and thats where
the fascination lay. No two spices work the same.
The kitchen was ready. The long stainless-steel counters
lay before her, expansive and cool in the dark. Lillian knew
without looking that Robert had received the vegetable order
from the produce man who delivered only on Mondays. Caroline
would have stood over skinny, smart-mouthed Daniel until
the floors were scrubbed, the thick rubber mats rinsed with
the hose outside until they were black and shining. Beyond the
swinging door on the other side of the kitchen, the dining room
stood ready, a quiet field of tables under starched white linen,
napkins folded into sharp triangles at each place. But no one
would use the dining room tonight. All that mattered was the
kitchen.
From the prologue to The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister. Copyright Erica Bauermeister 2009. All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe reproduced without written permission from the publisher.
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