A Fine Food Flambe Affair
By T.K. Garrison
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Recently Cindy and I attended a cooking show and wine tasting. Neither of us had done this before, though we have watched such things on TV. I was expecting something like Emeril with lots of POW; kick it UP a notch; fling-your-hand-towel-around-like-a-matador; flames shooting up from a sizzling pan; and maybe even a few jokes. What we got was a man cooking food.
My gal and I arrived promptly at the appointed hour of 6:30. We were greeted warmly by an employee who gave us our Random Seating Number (a number written on a piece of paper folded in half). She explained that we were to proceed to the Matching Random Number on a table. Since there were only 22 people signed up and 20 of them were already seated, it wasn’t difficult to find our spot: the table wayyy in the back. There were two ladies already there and two empty chairs - both facing away from the kitchen. The ladies smiled politely as we sat, our backs to the stage. They had bested us by being early and were smugly basking in their victory.
The cooking area was a full kitchen with a big island chopping table in the middle. There was a 6-burner stove in the wrap-around bar which separated the kitchen from the gallery. Along this bar were shoehorned a dozen or so attendees. Our table had a view of people’s hair and the island but not much else.
The chef was the owner of a fine Seattle restaurant. His name was not Emeril, nor Strombolini, nor LaBoulongeret. No, it was Jim. When he spoke, people yawned. His voice was as monotonous as a bad answering machine. The only hint of panache about him was a goatee but it was oddly groomed so that in a sideways glance I once mistook it for parsley.
Jim started by introducing his sous chef, a scraggly lad who might have weighed a hundred pounds if he was on the business end of a centrifuge. His hair was short and spiked so severely it could have been used as a cheese grater. I secretly wondered how much hair goo he’d wrung into those bristles? What if his head happened to be positioned over the stove when Jim was doing flambé? Would there be a mousse meltdown into the roux? A sparkler fountain a-la-‘do? I don’t remember the fellow’s name, so I’ll call him Sparky. He might have been of legal age. Apparently he was because he was throwing back wine like a washing machine. Which irritated me because the rest of us got only three “tastes”.
Here’s a math question: What volume of wine constitutes a “taste”? In my way of thinking, a “taste” is a small fraction of a much larger whole. In other words, if you like your first taste, albeit a small quantity, you can have another, and another, and so on. Particularly if you paid an entry fee. Apparently it doesn’t work that way at cooking shows. The “much larger whole” in our case consisted of exactly three bottles. And first in line were the chef and his crew, who’s glasses were filled to brimming. That left two bottles to be shared among 22, or one bottle per eleven. I don’t know about you, but my gal and I have, during the course of a meal, been known to polish off an entire bottle, just the two of us. I must say, however, the wine lady did an outstanding job of masking this swindle with expansive, flowery verbiage concerning the wine’s extravagant virtues as she decanted our individual dribbles. To make matters worse, for me anyway, she served white, not red.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that the bit with the Random Seating Number was a ruse. We got there “late” and paid the price. Instead of working his culinary magic at the copious chopping table in plain view of everyone, Jim did his work at the bar, directly behind a rather portly teenager who had obviously been dragged there by his grandmother and her sisters. I couldn’t see a thing and neither could Cindy.
But maybe we weren’t supposed to? After all, much of the show was merely Jim chopping food - a mundane task if there ever was one. He spoke as he did it. “Now we take the yellow beet and cut off the peel. Now we dice the yellow beet into small cubes. Now we take the cucumber - it’s an Armenian Cucumber - and cut off its peel. Now we dice…” and so on. Where was the flame… the POW… the towel-snap? Maybe it was coming and this was the boring part, that, on Emeril, occurs during commercial break?
After ten minutes of this I determined that, no, this WAS the show. That we were being entertained. And that I was missing it. Hadn’t I paid my forty dollars just like everyone else? Would it be considered rude if I slyly walked to the other side of the rotund teenager and observed from a standing position there? My heart raced at the thought. I was way out of my league even being here, let alone risk breaching cooking show etiquette by moving about inappropriately. Should I have even been interested in the chopping of vegetables? The stress, the stress.
Then Jim did something that caught my attention. Said he, “Now we will form the appetizer into its mold. For a mold we are using a ring OF SCHEDULE 40 PVC PIPE that I bought at the hardware and cut using my BAND SAW.” Now we’re talking! But just that quickly his talk veered back to food that I couldn’t see and my interest waned.
My wife kept eyeballing me during the evening because she knew the menu was highfalutin; way out of my league. I already mentioned beets. You see, beets are my one food. In our house everyone gets one food they don’t have to eat. And you can change your one food yearly on your birthday. Both of my sons have chosen onions as their one food since I started the program during their picky toddler years. Cindy’s one food is canned peas. Mine is beets; always has been, always will be. Can’t stand the smell or taste of them: boiled, canned, pickled, beet greens, you name it. This system has yielded excellent results concerning the eating habits of our children but that’s another story.
The appetizer was this tube of several foods layered in a ring of schedule 40 pipe and served cold. One of the layers was beets. Another was raw fish. Now, I know some folks rave about eating their fish raw. How flavorful and tender it is! Maybe so, but I was raised on a cattle ranch in Modesto, California and we ate our meat cooked to approximately the texture of a shingle. That’s all meat, fish included. I can’t imagine biting into a brook trout or large mouth bass like a cold ear of corn. It just wouldn’t be natural.
“The last layer on the appetizer is a glob of mango juice which resembles an egg yolk,” announced Jim. (I don’t think he actually said “glob” but his True Chef Word for it escapes me.) Jim continued: “In order to congeal the mango juice, I will add a pinch of sulfuric pyrominate [or something like that] which you can’t buy because it’s illegal.”
A loud murmur erupted from the crowd. An elderly woman said, “Why is it illegal, Jim? It’s not dangerous is it?”
“Oh no, heh, heh. Sulfuric pyrominate is a very powerful seaweed derivative. It was none other than Euell Gibbons who discovered the toxic qualities of seaweed just prior to his untimely death at age 63. However, I assure you that science has come a long way since then, and that this contraband chemical is safe if used in minute quantities. It’s kind of like pufferfish. Highly toxic if prepared incorrectly. A world-class delicacy if done precisely right.”
A few nervous glances were exchanged. I noticed the eyes of the wine concierge suddenly had more white showing than pupil.
“Now we plate the appetizer,” said Jim. I was not aware that plate could be used as a verb. I have, on occasion, heard the word dish used in a non-culinary sense, as in: Monty’s biker girlfriend is quite the dish. And even in sports: The Mariner’s pitcher dished up a fat one, right over the middle of the dish. I looked up plate in the dictionary and was shocked to discover four verb meanings. However, none of them indicated action with food. I think Jim may have been funning us.
The appetizer had a fancy French name that I can’t remember, so I’ll call it Gagamay-inna-tuba-daveeda. I stared at mine on it’s small square plate, garnished with a rope of mystery sherbet-colored sauce that entirely missed the Gagamay-inna-tuba-daveeda and instead wove around the plate’s perimeter. Some might argue that the sauce was not supposed to be on its food. Perhaps. But in Modesto we always put the steak sauce ON the steak.
Everyone was now munching happily on their appetizer. I knew I had to follow suit or risk being accused of poor taste and indecent exculture. I fixed a bead on the faux yolk glob and grabbed my fork. My appetizer stared back. As my fork neared I was startled by what appeared to be the unfortunate donor Ahi Tuna’s eyeball locked in fierce eye-to-eye combat with me.
It was a face off! Who would win?
Mr. Ahi was not giving up and he let me know it with a ferocious left fish-eye. I squinted back. Now my competitive hackles were raised and so was my knife. I stabbed savagely.
“What in God’s green earth are you doing?” my wife hissed.
“Knocking out his eyeball. See? It’s right there staring up at me.”
“Tim, would you please STOP!” That’s a cube of yellow beet for crying out loud!”
“Oh. Yes, yes I see that now. Sorry.”
What could be worse than beets and raw meat in a single dish? Timidly I forked off an edge and braced for the gag reflex. But it didn’t come. As I chewed I felt like Sam I Am’s counterpart with his green eggs and ham. Say, this wasn’t bad. I would eat it on a boat, I would eat it in a moat. I would eat it here or there, I would eat Gagamay-inna-tuba-daveeda anywhere. However, I would switch the Ahi for steak, and the beets for sweet potatoes. The special sauce was tasty, but I’d make sure to aim better with it. And for the top layer, I’d just grab a plain old egg yolk.
The main course was uneventful: boiled chicken. Yep, Jim took a boneless, skinless chicken breast, put it in a baggie along with some white sauce and lavender, and boiled it.
Probably the highlight of Jim’s narrative came when he startled us with the riveting piece of trivia that Washington State is the lavender capital of the USA, second in the world only to France.
There was one small hitch in the main course preparation. It would be the closest thing to flambé we’d see. One of the baggies lapped a little too far over the edge of the pot, touched the burner’s flame and ignited. Sparky was on it in a flash, though, flailing wildly with his hand towel to smother the flames. He ultimately managed to quell the conflagration, but only after spackling the poor teenager with scalding water. The grandmothers in the front row got quite a charge out of this, issuing forth with many cackles and oh-my’s.
Lastly, dessert. Would you believe two-layer blood-orange chocolate pudding bar sprinkled with salt; with blueberry and black pepper compote; with basil ice cream? Jim assured us that the basil ice cream would be reminiscent of mint. I found it reminiscent of herbal essence shampoo. Regarding the salt on the pudding bar, when I say salt, I mean big chunks of it, the kind they use to de-ice roads. Cindy didn’t much care for the savory blending of so many flavors so I ate hers too. Good thing. I was nearly starved.
If you ever decide to attend a cooking show, a word to the wise: If they claim that you’ll be fed, beware. The truth is, yes, some (weird) food may be put on your small square plate, commensurate with a microscopic amount of wine. I recommend preparing yourself by eating a meal beforehand. Because, as near as I can figure, it is considered in poor taste to ask for seconds.
