Chapter 4
CLAUDIA
It wasn’t bad enough he had to be a complete jackass. No, he had to insult me in front of the entire kitchen. The kitchen that had gone somewhat quiet and still when moments ago it was full of frenetic activity.
The worst part was how he stared at me—defiant, nasty, daring me to talk back as if he wished I would give him a reason to fire me.
And it would have been so easy to give him that reason too.
After a handful of days in this kitchen, I had come up with more than a few observations he wouldn’t have been very happy to hear.
They could live in my back pocket until the time came to drop them on his head.
Be the bigger person. How many times had I heard that during the course of the show?
Twelve weeks spent keeping my thoughts to myself, staying quiet when there were obvious injustices going on.
What would all those people out there in the dining room think if they heard about the quiet, secretive sabotage that went on behind the scenes?
When the producers decided which members of the group helped the ratings and which didn’t.
That mysteriously broken oven? Missing ingredients? They were not accidents.
Somehow, I had made the cut, but it was all hollow in the end. The win was supposed to be a stepping stone or a springboard to something bigger for me.
And this was something bigger?
Getting berated in front of my coworkers?
All I could do was shake. That, and be glad there was nothing sharp within an arm’s reach, or that conversation might have gone a whole lot differently.
I was going to quit. I had to quit. There was still enough in my savings to float me for a little while until I found another job.
A better job, with a better boss, one who wasn’t completely psycho about everything staying exactly the same.
No wonder the damn restaurant hadn’t actually grown or evolved beyond its original concept—modern twists on classic dishes. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.
Big, frustrated tears filled my eyes. There were two articles I was supposed to be interviewing for in the next couple of days, both of which pertained to my new position and how my presence would shake up the Strip.
Something about leaving other pastry chefs shaking in their clogs, not that I would ever come up with a line as corny as that or put anyone else on alert that I was in town, gunning for their jobs.
Not even close. I wasn’t out of my mind, looking to piss people off.
I wasn’t born and raised here, but I knew a thing or two.
People relied on each other. And unlike the man whose name was on the sign out front, I didn’t take an enemy’s animosity as a sign of success.
I got what he was going for, but his approach was all wrong.
There was no need to piss people off to get ahead.
“Don’t let him get to you.”
Shit. I turned, sniffling, to find Lucas wearing a sympathetic expression.
His dark eyes were soft, the corners of his mouth pulling downward.
“He’s tough, but so are you. And I like your bread,” he added, coming to a stop and leaning against the prep table currently bearing my weight.
For a big, sharp-tongued guy, when things were going wrong in the kitchen, he struck me as being surprisingly kind.
Standing up straight, I replied, “Thank you. I don’t usually let anybody get to me that way.”
“You’re in a new place, a new job, a new kitchen.
But everybody’s been treating you pretty well, right?
” he asked like he was trying to encourage me.
I almost told him not to bother, it was a lost cause, but then again, I couldn’t remember the last time anybody went out of their way to be nice the way he was now.
He didn’t have to. He was a busy guy in a busy kitchen, keeping the gears turning while his boss joked around with buddies and got all the praise.
“Everybody here has been decent,” I assured him, arching an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?”
His fair cheeks darkened. “What do you mean?” He turned back to his work plating entrées, but not quickly enough to hide the slight grin that had started to stir.
And there I was, letting myself believe I wasn’t being hazed because everybody around here had respect for me.
Or that at least this was too busy a professional kitchen for anyone to have the time.
“I can take care of myself, you know,” I murmured.
“Thank you if you told them to lay off. It’s been sort of a… crazy situation lately.”
“Tell me about it. It’s been crazy here too.” Eyeing me up, he added, “You’re supposed to turn all that around. So far, so good, at least from where I’m standing.”
There was something in his words that gave me pause. Maybe it was the way he said it—a little too approving, maybe a little too familiar. But the way I was feeling, I welcomed it. I had an ally in the kitchen.
Make that two. “He can be such a hard-ass sometimes,” Allie whispered as she approached. Raising her voice, she called out, “Behind you.” Lucas was careful to avoid a collision.
“He’s stuck in his ways,” Lucas agreed, pushing up his sleeve when it fell across his forearm. The many tattoos were fascinating. “You just keep doing what you do. And remember, you’ve always got a taste tester right here if you want to try out a new project.”
“I’ll keep you in mind,” I promised. By the time I returned to my corner of the kitchen, I had pushed back the tears, locking my emotions behind a steel door in favor of getting a rundown from my assistant, Stella, a middle-aged woman with a tart tongue and no problems telling off anybody who made the mistake of screwing with her.
There was nothing but love among the crew, though tensions could run high at times.
“We’re fine through the rest of tonight’s service,” she explained, then went on her break. I reviewed the list of desserts we were offering—tiramisu, chocolate cake with ganache frosting, and apple tart with cinnamon ice cream, a seasonal offering playing on traditional apple pie.
Boring. All of it.
Delicious? Sure.
Add enough butter, sugar, and chocolate to just about anything, and it was possible to make a really delicious dessert.
But having looked through the books and done the required work to identify the supplies being ordered for these and other desserts left me with a pretty stark understanding—not enough people were ordering another course after their meals.
Why? I had a theory. It wasn’t worth the money and the calories if the result wasn’t spectacular.
Sure, there were plenty of people up and down the Strip who would gorge themselves on anything remotely tasty-looking, but this wasn’t some cheap buffet.
People who dined here were a little more sophisticated, a little savvier.
Home by Sebastian Kennedy was known for its warm, classic dishes, not for a stellar dessert menu.
I could change that. I knew I could. Just thinking about the recipes clogging my binder made my heart ache. I’d really fooled myself into thinking I would have a chance here, but my hopes were just about diminished.
Rather than give in, I rolled up my sleeves and began working on pastry crusts for tomorrow’s apple tarts. The shells were parbaked, then finished once the dish was ordered by filling them with chopped, cooked apples in a sweet and slightly tangy sauce.
Predictable. Average at best.
Rather than go through the motions of preparing the crust based on the recipe, I rummaged around in the cool room and found a block of gruyere, of which I cut a piece to grate into the dough.
It was hardly revolutionary, but it was a step up from the bland and predictable version that had been served here for far too long.
Slowly going through the motions of preparing the dough calmed me—grating the cheese, working cold butter into the flour.
I lost myself to the rhythm of the work, reflecting on how I would have killed for the privilege of doing this back when I was a kid when every cent counted, and the idea of using precious resources for experiments was beyond insane.
Unthinkable. How many mornings had I watched Mom scrape the thinnest pat of butter imaginable over a piece of toast?
How many mornings had she gone hungry or drank her coffee black because there was only enough milk for one of us to have cereal?
And here I was, grating pricy cheese into a tart crust made with European butter.
I had come a long way.
But there was so much farther I wanted to go.
Rolling out the dough, I cut away enough for a single, individual-size tart and pressed it into the mold, pricking it all over with a fork and sliding it into the oven.
“What’s that for?” Stella asked when she returned from her break, and I pulled the shell from the oven.
By now, the others were waiting in the refrigerator, set to be used tomorrow night.
“Just a little something I’ve been thinking about.” I looked to the left, then the right, then held a finger to my lips. “Don’t tell the big, bad boss,” I whispered. “Wouldn’t want to get in trouble.”
“It smells amazing.” She stood back and watched while I fried sliced apples and pears together in a pan, having browned the butter first to add a nutty flavor and a deeper richness.
The apples I’d used were slightly tart and the pears were sweet, meaning the flavors would play off each other in the finished dish.
“You’ll have to test it for me,” I offered, smiling with her eyes lit up.
“You know how he feels about the apple tart,” she warned just the same.
“It was hard enough to convince him he didn’t need to serve actual pies just because they were what his grandmother made.
” He needed to let go of the obsession he had with tradition.
Of course, there was room for it, but not if somebody wanted to make a name for themselves.
Rather than leave the tart as it was once I filled the shell, I sprinkled finishing sugar on top, then placed it under the broiler for a few minutes until a nice caramelization bubbled on the surface.
When it was finished, I left it out to cool before adding a scoop of cinnamon ice cream on top.
We watched, both of us smiling dreamily as the ice cream began to melt.
“Help yourself,” I offered, handing her a spoon and waiting while she managed to get a mouthful that included all three elements.
I then watched her eyes close once she took that first bite. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus,” she whispered. “The brown butter? Genius. And what is that in the crust? There’s something different.”
“Gruyere,” I confirmed.
“That’s incredible.” She tapped her chin, narrowing her dark eyes. “Do you know what you should do? You should make it just like this tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?” What was tomorrow night?
“Oh, it’s family dinner night,” she explained and took another bite. “He has his whole family come in twice a month for a big dinner… parents, sister, aunts, and uncles. And his nonna,” she concluded.
Nonna, whose recipes were law, never amended, never to be trifled with. “Nice people?” I asked, though I found it hard to believe they would be. If so, how had somebody like him resulted?
“Oh, the sweetest,” she replied, groaning softly. “You should make this tomorrow. For her. Don’t tell him in advance.”
The woman was a mind reader. “We’ll see,” I decided, though my mind had been made up before she said a word.