The Kitchen Child-2
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Reading and w>９9lib?</a>riting e to me easy. I learn my letters as follows: A for asparagus, asperges au beurre fohough never, for my mothers sake, with a sauce batarde); B for boeuf, baron of, roasted mostly, with a pouding Yorkshire patriotically sputtering away beh it in the dripping pan; C for carrots, carrottes, choufleur, camembert and so ht down to Zabaglione, although I often wonder what use the X might be, si figures in no cooks alphabet.And I stick as close to that kit as the cro?te to a paté or the mayono an oeuf. First, I stand on that stool to my saus; then on an upturned bucket; then on my own two feet. Time passes.
Life in this remote mansion flows by a tranquil stream, only vulsing into turbulence a year and then for two weeks only, but that fuss enough, the Grouse Shoot, when they all e from town to set us by the ears.
Although Sir and Madam believe their visit to be the very and unique reason for the existences of ead every one of us, the yearly climacteric of our beings, when their staff, who, as far as they are ed, sleep out a hibernation the rest of the year, now spring to life like Sleepiy when her priurns up, in truth, we get on so well without them during the other eleven and a half months that the arrival of Themselves is a iterruption of our routine. We sweat out the fht of their preseh as ill a grace as gentlefolk forced by reduced circumstao take paying guests into their home, and as for haute cuisine, fet it; sandwiches, sandwiches, sandwiches, all they want is sandwiches.
And never again, ever again, a special request for a soufflé, lobster or otherwise. Me mam always a touch broody e the Grouse Shoot, moody, distracted, and, even though no order came, heless, every year, she would prepare her lobster soufflé all the same, send the grinding boy off for the lobster, boil it alive, beat the eggs, make the panada etc. etc. etc., as if the doing of the thing were a magic ritual that would raise up out of the past the great question mark from whose loins her son had sprung so that, perhaps, she could get a good look at his face, this time. Or, perhaps, there was some other reason. But she never said either way. In due course, she could struct the airiest, most savoury soufflé that ever lobster graced; but nobody arrived to eat it and none of the kit had the heart. So, fifteen times in all, the chis got that soufflé.
Until, one fiober day, the mist rising over the moors like the steam off a é, the gr<mark></mark>ouse taking last hearty meals like ned men, my mothers vigil was at last rewarded. The house party arrives and as it does we hear the faint, nostalgic wail of an accordion as a closed barouche es bounding up the drive all festooned with the lys de France.
Hearing the news, my mother shakes, es over queer, has to have a sit down on the marble pastry slab whilst I, oh, I prepare to meet my maker, having arrived at the age when a boy most broods about his father.
But whats this? Who trots into the kit to pick up the chest of ice the duc ordered for the bottles he brought with him but a beardless boy of his own age or less! And though my mother tries to quizz him on the whereabouts of some other hypothetical valet who, once upon a time, might possibly have made her hand tremble so she lost trol of the ne, he claims he ot uand her Yorkshire brogue, he shakes his head, he mimes inprehension. Then, for the third time in all her life, my mother wept.
First, she wept for shame because shed spoiled a dish. , she wept for joy, to <q>..</q>see her son mould the dough. And now she weeps for absence.
But still she sends the grinding boy off for a lobster, for she must and will prepare her autumn ritual, if only as a wake for hope or as the funeral baked meats. And, taking matters into my own hands, I use the quickest method, the dumb waiter, above stairs to make a personal inquiry of this duc as to where his staff might be.
The duc, relaxing before dinner, popping a cork or two, is ed up in a velvet quilted smoking jacket much like the coats they put on very well-bred dogs, warming his slippered (Morocco) feet before the blazing fire and singing songs to himself in his native language. And I never saw a fatter man; hed have given my mother a stone or two and not felt the loss. Round as the "o" in "rotund". If hes taken aback by the apparition of this young chef out of the panelling, hes too much of a gent to show it by a jump or start, asks, what he do for me? nice as you like and, in my best ary French, my petit poi de fran?aise, I stammer out:
"The valet de chambre who apanied you (garhose many years past of your last visit --"
"Ah! Jean-Jacques!" he readily curs. "Le pauvre," he adds.
He squints lugubriously down his museau.
"Une crise de foie. Hélas, il est mort."
I blanche like an endive. He, being a perfect gentleman, offers me a restorative snifter of his bubbly, brought as it has been all the way from his own cellars, he dont trust Sirs ied tastes, and I feel it put hairs on my chest as it goes eructating down. Primed by another bottle, in which the duc joih that easy democratic affability which is the mark of all true aristocrats, I give him an at of what I take to be the circumstany ception, how his defunct valet wooed and won my mother in the course of the cooking of a lobster soufflé.
"I well remember that soufflé," says the duc. "Best I ever eat. Sent my pliments to the chef by way of the cierge, only added the advice of a truly exigeant gourmet to go easy on the ne, ime."
So that was the truth of it! The spiteful housekeeper relaying only half the message!
I thee the toug story, how, every Grouse Shoot after, my mother puts up a lobster soufflé in (I believe) remembrance of Jean-Jacques, and we share another bottle of bubbly in memory of the departed until the duc, exhibiting all the emotion of a tender sensibility, says through a manly tear:
"Tell you what, me lad, while your maman is once again fixing me up this famous lobster soufflé, I shall myself, as a tribute to my ex-valet, slip down --"
"Oh, sir!" I stammer. "You are too good!"
Forthwith I speed to the kit to find my mother just beginning the béchamel. Presently, as the butter melts like the heart of the duc melted when I told him her tale, the kit door steals open and in tippytoes Himself. Never a couple better matched for size, I must say. The kit battalion all turn their heads away, out of respect for this romantient, but I myself, the architect of it, ot forbear to peep.
He creeps up behind her, his index finger pressed to his lips to signify caution and silence, aends his arm, and, slowly, slowly, slowly, with infinite delicad tact, he lets his hand advehwart her flank. It might have been a fly alighting on her bum. She flicks a haunch, like a mare in the field, unmoved, shakes in the flour. The duc himself quivers a bit. An expression as of a baby in a sweetie shop traverses his somewhat Bourbonesque features. He is attempting to peer over her shoulder to see what she is up to with her batterie de cuisi his embonpois in the way.
Perhaps it is to shift her over a bit, or else a geribute to her large charms, but now, with immense if gigantic grace, he gooses her.
My mother fetches out a sigh, big enough to blow away the beaten egg-whites but, great artist that she is, her hand rembles, not once, as she folds in the yolks. And when the ducal hands stray higher -- not a mite of agitation stirs the spoon.
For it is, you uand, the time for seasoning. And in goes just suffit his time. Not a grain more. Huzzah! This soufflé will be -- I flourish the circle I have made with my thumb and forefinger, I simulate a kiss.
The egg-whites topple into the panada; the movements of her spoon are quid light as those of a bird caught in a trap. She upturns all into the soufflé dish.
He tweaks.
And then she cries: "To hell with it!" Departing from the script, my mother wields her wooden spoon like a club, brings it, smack! down onto the ducs head with siderable force. He drops on to the flags with a low moan.
"Take that," she bids his prone form. Then she smartly shuts the soufflé in the oven.
"How could you!" I cry.
"Would you have him spoil my soufflé? Wasnt it toud go, last time?"
The grinding boy and I get the duc up on the marble slab, slap his face, dab his temples with the oven cloth dipped in chilled chablis, at long last his eyelids flicker, he es to.
"Quelle femme," he murmurs.
My mother, croug over the raopwat hand, pays him no heed.
"She feared youd spoil the soufflé," I explain, overe with embarrassment.
"What dedication!"
The man seems awestruck. He stares at my mother as if he will never get enough of gazing at her. Bounding off the marble slab as sprightly as a man his size may, he hurls himself across the kit, falls on his k her feet.
"I beg you, I implore you --"
But my mother has eyes only for the oven.
"Here you are!" Throwing open the door, she brings forth the veritable queen of all the souffles, that spreads its argeligs over the e as it leaps upwards from the dish in which the force of gravity alone fi. All present (some forty-seven in number -- the kit brigade with the addition of me, plus the duc) applaud and cheer.
The housekeeper is mad as fire when my moes off in the closed barouche to the ducs very al and French kit but she forts herself with the notion that now she persuade Sir and Madam to find her a spanking new chef such as Soyer or Carême to twirl their moustaches in her dire and gateau Saint-Honoré her on her birthday and indulge her in not infrequent babas au rhum. But -- I am the only child of my mothers kit and now I enter into my iance; besides, how the housekeeper plain? Am I not the you (Yorkshire born) French chef in all the land?
For am I not the ducs stepson?
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