White Truffles in Winter: A Novel Page 3

  “Are you sure you don’t want to make chocolate-covered ants?” he said. “We can tell the children what they are after they have eaten them. The looks on their parents’ faces could be great fun.”

  Delphine took his ink-stained hand and held it in hers.

  “No. No ants. And no cooking books, either. You need to write about your famous clients, tell their secrets. That would sell. Everyone wants to know how the famous really lived and you are one of the few left who can tell them. You’ve already written so much about cooking, so many articles, a magazine even, and all those recipe books. La Riz and La Morue? Who needs cookbooks about rice and cod? Ma Cuisine, for home cooking, was just published. And you revised Le Guide. What? Two years ago?”

  “Fourteen years ago. And although as you say Le Guide Culinaire is merely a recipe book, it is my most profitable to date. Every kitchen needs several guides to the art of fine cookery.”

  “But no one has the money. To write another type of book like this would be a waste of time. People want to read about the beautiful lives of the rich now. They want to know the secrets of kings and queens and you could tell them.”

  “People who cook are still very interested in technique. They would buy dozens of books if I wrote them.”

  “But Germany—”

  “Always Germany.”

  Delphine could not bear to hear any more. “Sabine!”

  The girl was standing behind her with a box of empty champagne bottles.

  “There’s no need to shout, Madame,” she said.

  “And these tomatoes,” Escoffier said. “They are everywhere. We are making sauce now?” He had that look in his eyes that was so familiar, the look of a chef addressing an unexpected bounty.

  “They will be crushed and poured into the champagne bottles. Is that not how it’s done? As it was done at Le Petit Moulin Rouge?”

  “Could the factory not send us the Escoffier label?”

  “It’s August. Everyone is on holiday.”

  “And we could not wait?”

  “Sabine. Bring Monsieur a tomato.”

  The cook put the dusty box down and wiped her dirty hands on her apron. She picked up a tomato from the sink. It was so large that it filled the palm of her hand, and so ripe that the juice of it ran down her arm onto the floor. She held it out to him. With the afternoon light streaming behind her, her wild hair and defiant eyes, he suddenly was struck by the resemblance he hadn’t seen before.

  “Sarah?”

  His voice barely scratched the surface.

  Although this was exactly the reaction Delphine had expected, the look on his face—confusion mixed with joy and love—pained her.

  I have become an old and foolish woman.

  “Her name is Sabine,” she said. “Put the tomato down and leave us, Sabine.”

  Escoffier took the fruit from the girl. Sniffed it. He held it up into a shaft of sunlight that streamed into the kitchen. His hand shook. “The color is good,” he said to Delphine. “Unafraid of its own boldness. Much like yourself.” He took a bite and slowly chewed the flesh. Juice ran down his arm, staining his carefully pressed cuff.

  “Is it lovely?” she asked.

  “Oui,” Escoffier said. “So very lovely.”

  He held the fruit out for Delphine to taste. She leaned into it. Closed her eyes and took a bite. “Summer. The taste of summer.”

  “Exactly. Makes one reckless, no?”

  “No.”

  Sabine cleared her throat. “The ants should be sprayed with poison.”

  “Not in the kitchen,” Delphine said.

  Escoffier handed the fruit back to the girl. There was a stray ant running up her arm. He plucked it from her. “Sabine, do you like ants? They are very good covered in chocolate.”

  “Non.”

  “Tomatoes?”

  “Non.”

  “Tomatoes are so sad a fruit, are they not? Bruised like a heart?”

  “Non,” Sabine said, grinding stray ants into the counter. “Hearts, bruised or otherwise, are muscles that are usually purple or pink. At least that is true of cows. This is a fruit that is rotting in my hand.”

  “She is a delight,” Escoffier laughed. “Even the ants seem to like her.”

  “She is Sabine,” Delphine said.

  “I know that. Do you?”

  “She is the cook, nothing more.”

  “But the cook is everything.”

  “The chef is everything. The cook is just a girl.”

  “Sabine. Le Guide Culinaire. Quickly. You must prove your worth to Madame.”

  Sabine placed the tomato back in the sink and washed her hands over it. The smell of olive oil soap filled the air.

  “Sabine. Be careful. Now the tomatoes are covered with soap and will all have to be rewashed,” Delphine said, but no one seemed to notice she was speaking. Escoffier slowly removed his dress coat; for a moment his arm was caught but he shook it off. He rolled up his shirtsleeves. He took a clean apron from the drawer. Sabine pulled the cookbook from the shelf.

  “Page twenty-two,” Escoffier said. “Salt pork. Carrots. Onions. Butter. And white stock, is that correct?”

  Sabine read the recipe and nodded. There were thousands of recipes in the thick book. She was clearly amazed that he could remember the page number of even one.

  “Is there white stock made?” Escoffier asked.

  “Poultry, not veal.”

  “That will do.”

  The old man suddenly seemed ageless. He stood with relative ease and walked to the chopping board without a trace of ill health. Sabine handed him an onion and the vegetable cleaver. He sniffed the onion for freshness and then began to chop while she gathered ingredients and laid them out in front of him on the marble counter.

  His small hands were a maze of bulging veins and liver spots, curled like claws, but once they held the knife they moved with the grace of a young man’s.

  “We will also make noodles,” he said. “One pound of flour, one-half ounce of salt, three whole eggs and five egg yolks—then we’ll say a short prayer: the making of noodles is a difficult thing. Saint Elizabeth will often intercede, but since she is actually the patron saint of bakers, noodles are not her responsibility. Still, she has such beautiful eyes and a heart of great kindness, so I always pray to her. She has never failed me. Pray to her and she will take mercy on you and your noodles will not be leaden.”

  Escoffier chopped the onion into uniform pieces and diced the carrots into equal cubes with startling efficiency.

  “If anyone asks, Saint Laurent is who you should actually be speaking to in this matter; his responsibilities include restaurants, pasta, candy makers and dieters. But I prefer not to speak to him at all. How could he aid both candy makers and dieters? I fear he must be ineffectual at both tasks.”

  Escoffier made the girl laugh. Delphine suddenly felt uneasy and slow witted. The old anger rose in her, sharp and acidic, as if each of his indiscretions, each mistake, each inept investment, each moment of ill-placed trust, was new and fresh.

  She tried to push through the dullness to form the words, a sentence, anything that made sense, but all she could think was, All these tomatoes—and was panicked by them. She knew she should have had the cannery simply send cases of tomato puree for the household—it was the Escoffier Ltd brand specialty, after all. They would have done so happily. More than likely they would have also included, as a kind gesture, the Escoffier Pickles, the Escoffier Sauce Melba, the Escoffier Diablo Sauce and maybe even some of the tinned meats. Even though the factory was no longer theirs—it had failed as everything else Escoffier invested in had failed—the new owners were kind enough and somewhat generous.

  Her thoughts ran together, making her exhausted.

  It was inev
itable.

  Even before the world changed, before the Germans rose again, everyone seemed to make money off Escoffier except for Escoffier—the hotels, his collaborators—and then that Philéas Gilbert suddenly claims to be the author of Le Guide Culinaire and co-writes Larousse Gastronomique with recipes stolen from Le Guide.

  Betrayal after betrayal but no money.

  Escoffier and Sabine chopped and peeled. Delphine couldn’t stop thinking about the money.

  Even the help Escoffier had given Mr. Maggi and his cubed soup paid nothing to them. And now the world cans tomatoes! No one even considered processing tomatoes in cans until Escoffier convinced a fruit cannery to produce two thousand cans for The Savoy. For years he begged them and then—Voilà!—the next year they produced sixty thousand. Now in Italy and America millions and millions of cans of tomatoes are sold.

  Thought upon thought rolled tighter and tighter inside her head. Morphine always made her feel this way, like a whining engine burning itself out.

  And where is the money?

  The art collection: sold. The good silver: sold.

  “I don’t understand,” she shouted, although no one was speaking to her. The sound of her own voice surprised her. It was too loud, too shrill.

  Escoffier put down his knife.

  “Madame Escoffier,” he said. In his white apron, he was again the man she loved. The gentle man who only spoke in whispers.

  “I am sorry,” she said.

  “I am not.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. His lips tasted of tomatoes, sharp and floral.

  The moment, filled with the heat of a reckless summer, brought her back to the gardens they had grown together in Paris in a private courtyard behind Le Petit Moulin Rouge. Sweet Roma tomatoes, grassy licorice tarragon, thin purple eggplants and small crisp beans thrived in a series of old wine barrels that sat in the tiny square. There were also violets and roses that the confiseur would make into jellies or sugar to grace the top of the petits-fours glacés, which were baked every evening while the coal of the brick ovens cooled down for the night.

  “No one grows vegetables in the city of Paris,” she said, laughing, when Escoffier first showed her his hidden garden, “except for Escoffier.”

  He picked a ripe tomato, bit into it and then held it to her lips. “Pomme d’amour, perhaps this was fruit of Eden.”

  The tomato was so ripe and lush, so filled with heat it brought tears to her eyes and he kissed her.

  “You are becoming very good at being a chef’s wife.”

  “I love you,” she said and finally meant it.

  Pommes d’amour. The kitchen was now overflowing with them.

  “I love you,” she said again.

  Escoffier nodded. “Should I get the nurse?”

  “It was just a moment.”

  “Good. We are nearly finished.”

  He went back to his work and Delphine looked into the box that Sabine had brought up from the cellar. The champagne bottles were covered with cobwebs and layers of dust, but to Escoffier they were priceless. Every one had been part of a historic menu; that was why he’d saved them. Some dated back to his days at Le Petit Moulin Rouge. She had heard Escoffier tell visitors their stories over and over again. Even though many of the labels were gone for more than fifty years, the shape of each bottle, the color, held its history, and Escoffier never forgot a dinner or a menu.

  Delphine held out a clear bottle in her good hand. It was obviously old, with flaws, bubbles of air lurking beneath the grain. It appeared to have been blown very quickly.

  “Tell me, Georges,” she said, “What is the story of this one?”

  Escoffier was slicing salt pork; he didn’t look up.

  “The chop is important,” he said to Sabine. “The carrots, onions and pork must all be cut into the same size cubes; it is more pleasing that way.”

  “Georges, you look tired.”

  Escoffier continued to cube the pork. “Make a note, Sabine. When you go to the butcher, ask that he give more fat on the salt pork. That is the entire purpose of it, is it not? The more fat, the more the flavor permeates.”

  “Georges,” Delphine said loudly, “come sit with me.”

  Again, he didn’t answer. He may have forgotten, she thought.

  It had been a very long time. “Georges” was not Escoffier’s name—although at one point in his life he embraced it so fully that he had it placed on a visiting card and even wrote it into early editions of Le Guide Culinaire. But it did not appear on his birth certificate nor would it appear on his grave. It was a name that Delphine had given him years before: the same day she had said that she would take the children back to their home in Monaco and leave her husband to live in London alone. She was pregnant with their third child and told everyone that she hated London and didn’t want the baby to be born there.

  “It is just a few months before the winter holiday season begins in Monte Carlo,” she told Escoffier. “You will join us then.”

  “People will talk.”

  “People are already talking.”

  Escoffier could not deny it. He had been less than discreet.

  “It is not as you think,” he said, although he knew it was exactly what she thought—but even more complicated.

  “I think that the distance may make us strangers,” Delphine said as she loaded their children onto the train. “So I will call you ‘Georges’ so that you are reminded that I am not sure who you are anymore and you must win my hand over and over again.”

  “Don’t go.”

  “Goodbye, Georges.”

  “I will become undone without you.”

  And they were gone.

  Her threat did not work. Escoffier stayed in London—a city Delphine never returned to. He never came back to Monte Carlo for the winter season, or hardly any other season. Just a yearly post-Christmas visit, at least most years, and then back to work.

  They had letters. He always signed “Much love, Georges, and sweet kisses” and often included a bit of professional news, such as a speech that he had given about the importance of suppressing poverty or a new menu he’d created for Prince Edward, his “Dear Bertie.” But when Escoffier moved to Paris, to the Hôtel Ritz, Delphine would still not join him. Or maybe he didn’t ask. Or maybe she didn’t. It was so long ago, neither could remember. All in all, they lived apart for thirty years. Work, grandchildren and the luxury of freedom always got in the way.

  After all those years, when Escoffier decided to retire, he appeared unannounced at Delphine’s door with steamer trunks, boxes, crates, endless cases of used champagne bottles (and more than a few that were filled) and an assistant. He was her own Ulysses but smaller, stooped. The white of his hair made those fierce eyes seem even deeper. His elegant nose was more finely etched by time.

  “I have told everyone that Madame Escoffier cooks better than I do,” he said, and then removed his hat and bowed.

  Her heart beat with the rattle of broken wings.

  Yet less than a year after he arrived, Escoffier returned to work. The widow of his friend Jean Giroix, with whom he worked at Le Petit Moulin Rouge and whose place he had taken at the Grand Hôtel in Monaco, asked if he would help her develop two projects. He told Delphine he could not refuse.

  “One more year.”

  And he was true to his word; he only stayed a year. However, there was still so much to do. The articles, the essays, the fourth edition of Le Guide Culinaire needed revising and so he went back to Paris alone, to work, and then on to London, and America, and back to Paris and continued to leave until his doctor forbade him to travel anymore.

  “I am a better husband in retrospect,” he told her.

  But there was something more, something dark and unforgiven between them. She had no idea what it w
as; he wouldn’t talk about it. And there was so much of his life she knew nothing about. And time was short.

  She decided to give it one more try. Maybe the secret is in the bottles.

  “Georges, is this not from a Veuve Clicquot rosé? Did you not tell me once that they blow these very quickly because it is difficult to keep up with demand?”

  Escoffier turned to her.

  “Enough,” he said quietly. “Do not call me ‘Georges’ ever again.”

  Delphine was surprised to see that there were tears in his eyes. The bottle slipped out of her hand and shattered on the floor.

  The Complete Escoffier: A Memoir in Meals

  POTAGE SARAH BERNHARDT

  Chicken Consommé with crayfish quenelles and a julienne of black truffles and asparagus tips

  In case you have a question, this is not made from the famed actress herself, although the name could suggest that. But, yes, of course, that would be impossible. She barely has enough meat on her to make it worth the skinning.

  This is a problem with all actresses.

  This is a soup for Miss Bernhardt. It is simply as delightful as she was. I personally have served it to her on several occasions and it is one of the many dishes that she asked for repeatedly, although once it’s served she will not eat it. She only requests it to make you happy.

  To begin, you must add three tablespoons of tapioca to one quart of boiling chicken consommé. Simmer. For the pan—copper. I prefer the Mauviel for this, their Windsor pan is widely available. The narrow base quickly heats liquids while the wide top speeds evaporation.

  Simmer, do not boil, this broth at a low heat for fifteen minutes. Or eighteen. Do whatever you feel is long enough to make the broth rich and the texture substantial and yet not lose its pristine clarity. Use your best judgment here, although she will not eat it in any case and so you cannot be in error no matter how long you choose to cook it.

  Miss Bernhardt eats nothing. Well, that is untrue. She eats my scrambled eggs. Or appears to. But if you do not feed her as if she were a child, she will scoop the eggs onto the floor for that cheetah of hers. So you must always feed her. I find that the best technique is a bite of egg, then a sip of champagne to make sure that she swallows it. This is the only way that one can, with absolute certainly, know that Miss Bernhardt is taking nourishment.