Authors: Micol Ostow
“You should talk,” I replied, eyeing her up and down.
The thing about being a food critic is that most of the good chefs in town know exactly who you are, and they brief their staff on your stats—sometimes even going so far as to paste your photo somewhere in the kitchen. This way, everyone can recognize you.
Naturally, when a restaurant critic is recognized, he or she is suddenly given the VIP treatment, which compromises the review.
So Mom came up with her own rules (and by “came up with,” I mean “borrowed them from a big
New York Times
critic”). First, she always visits a restaurant three times before she writes up her review. That way, she’s got a sense of the average overall performance of the place, and she can judge more fairly.
Second, she retains her anonymity by wearing costumes. There’s genius in its simplicity.
Wait—did I say simplicity? I meant simplicity of concept, not execution. Because her costumes are more elaborate than a Vegas showgirl’s. I’m not saying that she dresses like a stripper, of course, but when she goes undercover, Mom really goes whole hog.
Today, for instance, she wore her Muriel costume. Muriel looks like a distant relative you see only at Christmas, when she pats you on the head as if you are permanently eight years old and regales you with the details of her latest low-grade health concerns.
There was not a lot of vanity involved in becoming Muriel, so I felt that my mom had earned my arched eyebrow. No matter how many times I saw her dressed up—and believe me, it was a lot of times—the success of her transformation always took me by surprise.
She rolled her eyes right back at me. “I’ll have you know that Muriel very much enjoyed her dinner at the Blue Pelican tonight.”
“The Blue Pelican? Isn’t that the place where they only serve raw foods?” I shuddered. Who in their right mind would leave
the house and pay good money to be served food that hadn’t even been cooked?
“Yes, it is, and believe it or not, the food was outstanding. I had a lasagna made from pureed zucchini.”
I made another face, this one gaggier, with sound effects. “I like my pasta made with pasta, thank you,” I told her.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it,” my mom insisted. She paused, finally starting to take in the disaster zone of the kitchen, and slowly shook her head.
“Laine,” she said, “what exactly happened in here?”
I smiled sheepishly. “I had a fight with some slow-simmered tomatoes, and the tomatoes won.”
While my mom was out eating “lasagna” made out of sliced squash, I’d been home creating a carbo-loaded lasagna masterpiece with actual noodles that needed no sarcastic air quotes. Yes, the kitchen was a tad bit messy. But whatever. The sauce had been divine. And everybody knows that if you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.
“I see,” she replied drily. “I suppose this house is going to be a disaster zone until you have your interview?”
“Uh-huh. And probably even after that. If I get the job, I’m still going to have to test recipes at home, you know?”
”Just try not to demolish the kitchen.
Please?”
She sighed.
“Would I do that to you?” I asked.
“Do you really need me to answer that?” she shot back. She gestured limply to the carnage that surrounded us, making sure to point out some dried chopped spinach crusted onto the front left hip of my pajama pants.
“I have no interest in disasters,” I assured her. Rogue chopped spinach notwithstanding, of course. “This was more like a minor tremor.”
Yeah, so it turns out? Cooking a lasagna? Can be tricky.
I hated to play out my mother’s worst expectations of me. And yet, in my attempt to become the teen Mario Batali, I somehow managed to coat every available kitchen surface in spatters of tomato (marinara sauce from scratch), cooking spray (to prevent sticking), and—I really have no idea how this happened—a thin crust of ricotta-spinach mixture that was rapidly hardening into a stubborn paste. Scraping away at it
with a butter knife, I had to entertain the possibility that I might never be able to restore the kitchen to its previous state of order. That was going to be a problem.
“Forget the cleaning for right now,” my mother said kindly.
“Thanks.”
“I think we’re going to have to buy some of those special Brillo pads if we really want to make a dent in this mess,” she added.
Right.
”Thanks,”
I sniffed, slightly offended. “Keep in mind, Mom, that a good meal is like a work of art,” I reminded her.
She wrinkled her forehead skeptically. “Hence your decision to transform my kitchen into a Jackson Pollock.”
“It’ll be fine.” I waved my hand dismissively. “And as you always say, traditionally, the kitchen was the heart of the family.” I batted my eyelashes at her beatifically. “I was just trying to bring a little more heart into our home.”
Mom almost had an aneurysm trying to stifle her laughter.
“Mock me all you want,” I said, spooning up a bite of my masterpiece for her. “We’ll see who has the last laugh.”
Mom convulsed, chortling, all over
again, but she did somehow manage to extend her fork with a shaky hand and shovel up a healthy bite. “H-h-ot,” she said, waving her hand in front of her mouth.
“Yes, steam does generally indicate heat,” I said, quickly pouring her a glass of ice water. I really wasn’t looking to destroy her taste buds. For one thing, her taste buds were kind of our livelihood. For another, well, that just wouldn’t be very nice. And she was being a pretty good sport about the condition of the kitchen.
She chewed thoughtfully for a moment. I watched her curiously—I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking for some sort of validation. She swallowed very deliberately and took a long sip of her water.
After a moment of watching her Adam’s apple bob up and down, my floss-thin thread of patience disintegrated. “What do you think?” I asked.
She cocked her head at me. “Did I taste pesto in there?” she asked.
I nodded proudly. “Homemade. I added it to the cheese and spinach to give it a little kick.”
“Huh,” she said, as though she’d never considered that before. Maybe she hadn’t.
I mean, even restaurant critics hadn’t tasted every single food in the world, right? I mean, that would be, like, a lot of food.
She smiled at me warmly. “What a great idea,” she said. “I love it.”
“Enough to forgive me for trashing the kitchen?” I asked.
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Don’t push your luck, Laine.”
Over the next few days, I put my culinary skills to the test. After all, I’d need to be in top form if I wanted to wow the folks at the rec center. I dug out old recipe books (in perfect shape, since my mother rarely cooked), and slogged my way through them, trying to add my own twist here and there when I could. Sure, there were a few missteps. My enchiladas with mole sauce, for example, were more like enchiladas with mole cement. I had to call for an emergency backup pizza that night. And when I tried to make chocolate chip cookies with white chocolate chips, the entire batch came out so sweet that I nearly went into sugar shock. My goal was to figure out both what I enjoyed cooking most and what I was best at cooking. The interview was Saturday
morning, and I wanted to be 107 percent prepared.
Gradually, I progressed from simpler dishes like pastas and casseroles to more elaborate, elegant fare, like pan-seared lamb chops and pureed parsnip and leeks. And, other than a
tiny
misunderstanding regarding the Cuisinart (Who knew that the plastic thingy had to be securely fastened to the top of the machine when in use?), nothing that I made really seemed all that toxic or dangerous if ingested. I was growing and stretching and learning, which I felt made me the perfect candidate to teach little kiddies how to spruce up their PB and J sandwiches.
I was putting the finishing touches on a goat-cheese tempura salad one evening when my mother walked through the front door.
“The place smells amazing,” she called from the foyer. “What are you making?”
I dashed to meet her. “It’s a salad. Fried goat cheese. But it’s for one,” I admitted guiltily. “You said you weren’t coming home.”
“Muriel was supposed to visit Hype, that new place off Rittenhouse Square that’s billing itself as ’eclectic.’”
Mom shivered. She always says that restaurant critics learn to be wary of terms like “eclectic” or “fusion.” Both are trends that can easily veer off course in the hands of a less skilled professional. “But the opening was delayed by a week.”
I sucked my breath in quickly. The only thing potentially worse than amateur fusion cuisine is a much-delayed restaurant opening. “Wylie Dufresne is the only man who can get away with that,” was my mother’s mantra (he’s some big-time New York City chef).
“Unfortunate,” was all I could muster.
“Tell me about it,” Mom said. She hung her coat up in the hall closet and followed me back into the kitchen. She stuck a finger experimentally into a hunk of goat cheese tempura.
“Excuse me,”
I growled at her playfully. “Has someone forgotten her manners?”
“Your texture is perfect,” Mom said approvingly. “And it’s not too greasy. Well done.”
Okay, then. If she was going to compliment my cooking, then I’d let her poke at my cheese all she wanted.
“I think there’s some leftover lentil soup from last week in the freezer,” I said. “Why
don’t we heat that up, and we can split the salad as a first course?”
“Now you’re talking,” Mom agreed. “I’m so glad that I taught you to share.” She opened up a cabinet and pulled down place settings for the both of us. She smiled at me. “Table for two.”
Two
“So, on a scale of one to ten, how prepared are you for the rec center interview?” Mom asked, pausing for a moment from scarfing down her half of our salad.
“Fourteen,” I said. I winked at her.
“I worry sometimes about your self-esteem.” Mom grinned, so I knew she was joking.
“Yeah, I’ve got too much of it. But the thing is, I’ve been practicing in the kitchen for weeks now. And I’ve done up a bunch of sample menus. I mean, there’s no way I’m not qualified for the gig. I just have to charm the interviewer. Make her want me more than any other qualified candidate.”
“Who’s the interviewer?”
I shrugged. “Nora something. The info is written down somewhere in my bedroom. I’ve been trying to save my mental energy for the interview itself.”
“Fair enough,” my mother said. “Just as long as you give her actual name as much study attention as your whole spiel.”
“I will, I promise.” I took a sip of Diet Coke. “I have to get this job. It’s one of the only gigs I could find that would look good on a college transcript that also pays cold, hard cash.” I wasn’t too proud to admit it; the money actually meant something to me. Most counselor-y sorts of positions were either volunteer or so low-paid that they might as well have been volunteer.
“You know,” Mom began casually, “the Lifestyles section has a pretty tight relationship with the community center. I could probably put in a call—”
I groaned. “Not necessary. I don’t need any favors.” Besides, my last name spoke volumes as it was. Everyone knew about my mother. I figured it was classier to let my family tree speak for itself, rather than to call in a favor.
“Fine with me,” my mother said. “It just
so happens that I’ve got some friends on the Halliday board.”
Halliday is shorthand for the Miles Halliday Community Center. I have no idea who Miles Halliday was, but in addition to a community center, he also at some point seems to have funded a library, a town hall, and a community pool just outside Philly. The last time I’d been to the community center was for gymnastic lessons. I was seven.
“‘Friends on the board?’ Are you part of some sort of Philadelphia culinary mafia?”
She waved her hand at me impatiently. “Sweetie, I know that you’re great in the kitchen, but for this job, you need to be great with kids, too.”
I stared at her in disbelief. “You don’t think the Robinsons would vouch for me?” I’d au paired for them for the past three summers—at the Cabana Club, as a matter of fact.
“I know that you’re great with kids. I’m just saying that it wouldn’t hurt for the folks at Halliday to know too.”
“Hence the References section of the job application,” I reminded my mother.
She nodded at me. “Gotcha. You’ve clearly thought this through.”
I gave her a look.
“Not that I’m surprised,” she added hastily. “You were born prepared.”
Nora Ellwood sounded accommodating enough on the phone, but as it turned out, she and I had very different ideas as to how to interpret the phrase “You can’t miss it.”
For instance, in reference to her office on the second floor of Halliday, what she obviously meant was, “You’ll need a divining rod, a miner’s cap, and possibly a bloodhound to find it.”
Unfortunately, I had none of those things on me, which meant that at 2:16, fully one minute late for our meeting, I was blindly groping my way out of a supply closet and back into the hallway in the direction of a placard marked ROOMS 220-230.
It was
much
more likely that she was somewhere in rooms 220-230 than in the supply closet. So clearly I had a problem. I stepped back out of the supply closet, unsure of what to do next. I really needed to brush up on my navigational skills.
A face framed in salt-and-pepper curls peeped out from one of the offices that dotted the hallway. “Lost?”
I shook my head vigorously. “No.” I blushed. “More like … directionally challenged.”
She laughed. “Laine Harper?”
“That’s me.” How humiliating. I hoped she wouldn’t hold my deficit sense of direction toward my eligibility for this job.
“Come on in.” She waved me toward her.
I followed Nora into her office and seated myself at the proffered chair that sat facing her desk. The room was cluttered, but in a comfortable sort of way. If the place had been big enough for a bed, I could easily have camped out there. Various posters featuring endearing animals and encouraging affirmations adorned the walls alongside dry-erase calendars and multicolored cork boards.