Chapter 8 #3
Sam gripped the strings of her apron tightly, fidgeting with the bunny ears of the double-knotted bow. “So what is it you’re making?” Sam asked. “If you don’t mind me asking. I don’t know if that’s against the rules.”
“Do you always follow the rules, Sam?”
Sam chuckled awkwardly, thrown by the question, by the implication that following the rules was a bad thing.
“When I’m not committing grand larceny, usually I like to keep to the straight and narrow.
” She paused, eyes widening when she realized how that sounded, horrified that she might have just given Hannah the wrong idea.
“Not straight as in heterosexual. Straight as in lawful, I mean. Definitely not the, uh, the former.”
A gorgeous smile lit Hannah’s face, laughter like the sound of bells spilling from her lips. Sam’s breath caught in her throat.
“You’re funny,” she said, and Sam only wished she hadn’t said it like it was such a surprise. “And to answer your question, I think I’m going to try my hand at making a torched hazelnut rocher pate de guimauve.”
“Oh, wow.” That Hannah even knew what pate de guimauve was, let alone how to make it, was a surprise. “That’s … ambitious.”
“You don’t have to sound so shocked. I know I don’t have your training or experience, but I’m not entirely hopeless. I’ve managed to make it this far in the competition, haven’t I?”
“H-hopeless?” Sam sputtered. Apparently, in every universe she was destined to put her foot in her mouth. “No! No, I’m … I’m impressed.”
Impressed and privately delighted; Hannah had complained recently that Sam talked too much about food and so she had tried to dial it back, but so much of Sam’s life revolved around food that it had been a …
struggle, to say the least. That this Hannah knew about pate de guimauve, that they had this shared interest? Color her thrilled.
“Impressed.” Hannah paused, then drew in a deep breath like she was weighing her next words carefully. “I told myself I wasn’t going to say anything, that I was going to play it cool, but I just have to tell you how much I love your cooking, Chef— Sam. ”
“You—you do?”
Hannah nodded and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I ate at Glut for the first time last year and it was, hands down, the best meal of my life. Everything was delicious, but your chou praliné comme un Paris-Brest?” Hannah’s eyes fluttered shut and she pressed her lips together, a look of almost exquisite agony on her face.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say that changed my life. ”
Sam smiled, a flutter in her belly, full of hope for the first time since she’d gotten down on one knee. “I’m glad you liked it.”
“Maybe, after this is all over with, you can tell me your secret to making your pate à choux.” Hannah brushed her fingers across the back of Sam’s hand. “Or maybe you can show me?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah. Yes! I—That would be—”
“What’s this?” Daphne swanned over to Sam’s kitchen, camera in tow.
“There are too many cooks in this kitchen!” She hip-checked Hannah, shooing her out of the way.
“Are you lost, Chef Liu? Vamoose! Scram! Back to your station!” Daphne barked.
“The clock is ticking, and the judges are waiting. Allons-y! Allons-y!”
She clapped her hands and Hannah jumped, darting a deer-in-the-headlights look at Sam before turning and scurrying off back to her station.
Sam shot Daphne her dirtiest look. “Seriously?”
“Kitchen congestion is a safety hazard, Chef Cooper,” Daphne said, hopping up onto the counter. “And we here at Daphne’s Inferno believe in doing all that we can to ensure the well-being of our cast and crew, including our contestants.”
“A safety hazard,” Sam repeated, dragging her gaze pointedly down to where Daphne sat perched on the very surface Sam was meant to be prepping food on. “Tell me, what’s y’all’s take on kitchen sanitation?”
“Totally a priority.” Daphne smiled and crossed one bare leg over the other. “Cleanliness is next to godliness, after all.”
Sam rolled her eyes.
“Ticktock, Sam,” Daphne said, tapping the nonexistent watch on her right wrist. “Time’s a-wastin’. You might want to hop to unless you plan on serving the judges those boringass cake pops after all.”
She looked up at the stop clock and swore. Twenty-seven minutes to prep, plate, and serve. Dammit. She’d better move fast.
The pantry at the back of the arena contained half a dozen shelves filled with everything from tapioca starch to marzipan to canned hominy to—What was that?
Cow cod? There were the usual suspects, too, white sugar and flour and spices galore, all the leavening agents one might need to make anything from pizza dough to Japanese cheesecake tucked away neatly within the pantry, which could rival a grocery store.
Any dish Sam could possibly dream up could be made with the ingredients on hand.
She just needed to figure out what it was she wanted to make. And quick.
Cake pops were obviously a no-go, too basic like Hannah had said, but maybe she could turn the cake into a crumb and make some sort of crust instead? For a pie, perhaps? Or she could make a Baked Alaska. That was always a crowdpleaser.
But she had less than half an hour, and that wasn’t nearly enough time to firm up the ice cream, let alone chill the meringue atop the cake. Not only that, but it also didn’t satisfy the competition’s transformative requirement for the secret ingredient: The cake was still cake.
What she needed was to think outside the box. Come up with a dish that had a real wow factor, this her chance to not only knock the socks off the judges but impress Hannah, too.
Sam chewed on her lip, staring at the shelves, hoping something would jump out at her.
Back to basics—what paired well with chocolate?
Nuts were an obvious option, as were coffee and caramel, cinnamon and chili powder.
Fruits were a tried-and-true choice. Raspberries, strawberries, bananas …
none of those felt particularly inspired.
Dried figs or apricots could pair well if she—
Wait.
Pair.
No, pear .
She had it. Into a plastic shopping basket she found sitting on the ground she tossed four pears, a lemon, the canister of brown sugar, and—She frowned down into the basket.
She really should’ve thought this through better.
Setting the basket aside, Sam sprinted back to her station and rifled through a cabinet looking for— Aha!
Found it. With a pinch bowl in hand, she hustled back to the pantry.
“Twenty-five minutes, chefs!” Daphne shouted.
Shit. Sam didn’t have time to measure anything properly; a pinch of salt, two liberal dashes of cinnamon, just a smidgen of nutmeg, and one vanilla bean went into the small glass dish.
Next, she snagged a fifth each of absinthe and rye whisky, along with a teeny-tiny bottle of Peychaud’s bitters and a quarter pint of pear brandy, then hauled ass to the adjacent refrigerator, where she grabbed two jumbo chicken eggs and two sticks of unsalted butter, and she really hoped Hannah didn’t need whole milk for her pate de guimauve because Sam swiped the whole jug.
Back at her station, she dropped everything onto the counter beside Daphne, who instantly perked up and began to pick through the assortment of items in Sam’s basket.
“ Ooh , absinthe?” Daphne held the bottle up to the light, her pale face bathed in a ghoulish green glow. “What are we making?”
“ I am making a chocolate bread pudding with brown butter poached pears in a Sazerac sauce.” Sam snatched the absinthe out of Daphne’s hands and set it aside. She dropped her voice to a low whisper. “Don’t you have something better to do than harass me?”
Like host the show, maybe?
Sam glanced pointedly in the direction of the man holding the camera standing only a few feet away on the other side of the kitchen island.
“ Harass you?” Daphne held a hand to her chest. “Good golly gosh, Chef Cooper, I’m not here to harass you; I’m here to help you.”
Sam narrowed her eyes skeptically. “Help me?”
That sounded like a crock of shit to her, but then again, most of what came out of Daphne’s mouth either sounded like hooey or later proved to be, so this specific proclamation wasn’t particularly eyebrow raising.
“You had the highest cumulative score heading into our dessert round, and therefore, per the rules here at Daphne’s Inferno , you’ve won yourself a sous chef for the final round.” She beamed and it didn’t take a genius to see where she was headed with this. “Me.”
Uh-huh. “Great. Why don’t you just sit there and try not to get in my way?”
Daphne gave her a cheeky shimmy of her shoulders. “Yes, Chef!”
Sam grabbed a thin-bladed serrated knife from the wooden block and quickly cubed seven or so cups’ worth of the sheet cake, scraping off the frosting, and placing the cubes in a large metal mixing bowl.
Setting that to the side, she got to work whipping up a quick custard by combining her eggs, a quarter cup of brown sugar, two tablespoons of microwave-melted butter, a couple of tablespoons of pear brandy, and her spices, which she then poured over the cake, lightly tossing until the cubes were totally coated.
To a lightly buttered seven-by-three-inch aluminum push pan, she added the coated cake cubes, then covered it tightly with foil.
Normally, Sam would bake her bread pudding in the oven, but she didn’t have time to wait for an oven to preheat to three hundred and fifty degrees, let alone the thirty to forty minutes it would take to cook.
To the inner liner of a pressure cooker, she added a little over a cup of water and then carefully lowered the foiled pan into the pot.
With the lid locked, she set the pressure release knob to seal and the timer for twenty minutes and crossed her fingers, hoping that would be long enough for the bread pudding to set.