Fannie do? Fannie’s recipe was certainly competent, if a bit ham-handed, with a heavy, floury sauce. We had to look to Escoffier, Julia Child, Jasper White, and, finally, Gordon Ramsay to come up with a recipe that was sophisticated, rich, and capable of being served to a dozen guests in a demanding time frame. Fannie might have been a marketing genius, but her command of French cuisine was lacking.
This was also a dish for which my status as sous-chef and kitchen assistant was made painfully apparent. Erin, my test kitchen director and a longtime friend, was heading up the recipe development. Erin appears solid and practical, which is ideal for long, hot days spent in a Victorian kitchen, yet she is also blessed with the face of a classic beauty, the fiercely handsome qualities of a Hepburn married to the energetic bright-eyed humor of a Mickey Rooney, all framed by acres of long, curly black hair. She cons you with a sweet, gentle smile, but woe to the cook who disappoints, who falls short of the finish line. In her kitchen, excellence and energy are not suggestions; they are requirements. So, over a two-year period, we spent days and weeks at the stove getting to know each other’s culinary skills and personality quirks. The routine never changed. The day started with cranking up the massive cast-iron cookstove before dawn, a waffle breakfast, a review of the schedule (much like a football coach prepping his team for the big game), and then a headlong rush into a full day of boiling calf’s heads, poaching brains, roasting venison, or baking cakes. Visitors or my kids would look in occasionally, hoping for a slice of cake or spoonful of jelly, but they were most often offered a bite of fried brain ball, a chewy slice of rare goose breast, a small bowl of ripe-tasting turtle soup, or a slurp of calf’s-head stock. To make up for the lack of desirable tidbits, we soon decided to mix up a fresh batch of rum punch around midafternoon; this ameliorated the heat of the stove and made us more popular with adult kitchen visitors.
But it was clear from these cooking sessions that Erin was the boss. She had made her bones as a real sous-chef at Hamersley’s Bistro in Boston. Yes, I actually cooked all the recipes over the two years that we worked on this project, but she took the lead, and I was often left to mince the carrots, make the stock, or lard the venison. My inferior culinary skills became painfully apparent when the time came to dispatch live lobsters. She instructed me that the best way to kill a lobster was to hold it from the top at a 45-degree angle, the head touching the cutting surface. Then, using a large, very sharp knife, whack down hard and cut off its face.
Cut off its face? I immediately suspected a prank and suggested that she show me. She did, and it seemed to work, so I grabbed a lobster and brought the ten-inch chef’s knife hurtling down. Unfortunately for this, the world’s unluckiest lobster, my knife only got halfway through the face, which caused the poor beast to writhe in agony, the tail closing and opening convulsively, the claws reaching out instinctively for something to attack. This caused me to lose my grip, drop the lobster, and start all over again.
Sweating, nervous, and a bit in shock, I finally did the dirty deed and left the lobster on the cutting board in its own death juices, the legs rowing back and forth, the tail still flapping in postmortem spasms. For the next one, I reverted to my tried and true method, severing the spinal cord behind the head with a sharp thrust of the knife. (I still think that I was had. Erin experienced her own moment of lobster fear late one night while testing the recipe alone. The tails had been reserved and refrigerated while she was making the stock. She removed the tails, salted them, and then, incredibly, the meat started to pulsate, almost dancing in the shell. There is something very odd about lobster.)
ALTHOUGH FANNIE WAS TRYING TO CREATE
This was also a dish for which my status as sous-chef and kitchen assistant was made painfully apparent. Erin, my test kitchen director and a longtime friend, was heading up the recipe development. Erin appears solid and practical, which is ideal for long, hot days spent in a Victorian kitchen, yet she is also blessed with the face of a classic beauty, the fiercely handsome qualities of a Hepburn married to the energetic bright-eyed humor of a Mickey Rooney, all framed by acres of long, curly black hair. She cons you with a sweet, gentle smile, but woe to the cook who disappoints, who falls short of the finish line. In her kitchen, excellence and energy are not suggestions; they are requirements. So, over a two-year period, we spent days and weeks at the stove getting to know each other’s culinary skills and personality quirks. The routine never changed. The day started with cranking up the massive cast-iron cookstove before dawn, a waffle breakfast, a review of the schedule (much like a football coach prepping his team for the big game), and then a headlong rush into a full day of boiling calf’s heads, poaching brains, roasting venison, or baking cakes. Visitors or my kids would look in occasionally, hoping for a slice of cake or spoonful of jelly, but they were most often offered a bite of fried brain ball, a chewy slice of rare goose breast, a small bowl of ripe-tasting turtle soup, or a slurp of calf’s-head stock. To make up for the lack of desirable tidbits, we soon decided to mix up a fresh batch of rum punch around midafternoon; this ameliorated the heat of the stove and made us more popular with adult kitchen visitors.
But it was clear from these cooking sessions that Erin was the boss. She had made her bones as a real sous-chef at Hamersley’s Bistro in Boston. Yes, I actually cooked all the recipes over the two years that we worked on this project, but she took the lead, and I was often left to mince the carrots, make the stock, or lard the venison. My inferior culinary skills became painfully apparent when the time came to dispatch live lobsters. She instructed me that the best way to kill a lobster was to hold it from the top at a 45-degree angle, the head touching the cutting surface. Then, using a large, very sharp knife, whack down hard and cut off its face.
Cut off its face? I immediately suspected a prank and suggested that she show me. She did, and it seemed to work, so I grabbed a lobster and brought the ten-inch chef’s knife hurtling down. Unfortunately for this, the world’s unluckiest lobster, my knife only got halfway through the face, which caused the poor beast to writhe in agony, the tail closing and opening convulsively, the claws reaching out instinctively for something to attack. This caused me to lose my grip, drop the lobster, and start all over again.
Sweating, nervous, and a bit in shock, I finally did the dirty deed and left the lobster on the cutting board in its own death juices, the legs rowing back and forth, the tail still flapping in postmortem spasms. For the next one, I reverted to my tried and true method, severing the spinal cord behind the head with a sharp thrust of the knife. (I still think that I was had. Erin experienced her own moment of lobster fear late one night while testing the recipe alone. The tails had been reserved and refrigerated while she was making the stock. She removed the tails, salted them, and then, incredibly, the meat started to pulsate, almost dancing in the shell. There is something very odd about lobster.)
ALTHOUGH FANNIE WAS TRYING TO CREATE
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