The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister Page A

the swinging doors into the dining room. She often came by Tom’s station on her next pass through.
    “Add a little nutmeg to the white sauce,” she would comment in a voice too low for anyone else to hear.
    She called it guerrilla cooking. Tom knew that when he wasn’t there she simply added the ingredients herself, but he liked that when he was there, she told him. He thought about her at night, wondering what she would do to a pancake, a pizza, the small surprises she would add to the lives of the people who sat at her tables.
    She would eat anything. The nights they worked the closing shift, dancing on the trash in the bin until there was enough room to add the last boxes and cans, they would finish and look about them at the scrubbed-down kitchen. Then they would grab the pans, the oils, the food Charlie had stashed at the back of the walk-in, and start cooking for real. Salsa packed with onions and cilantro, fresh white fish with garlic and soy and tangerine juice. Many of the ingredients she brought herself—the patrons of the restaurant would no more recognize tofu than their own backsides, she was fond of saying. That Tom had never seen tofu before either didn’t concern Charlie.
    “You’re different,” she would say. “Have a bite, and learn.”
    They would eat in the kitchen, shunning the dining room with its paper napkins and plastic-coated red-and-white-checked tablecloths. While they ate, she would recite the old English poetry she refused to study anymore. Tom would tell her about the law courses he was taking, and she would listen, playing with the intricacies of the cases the way she would ingredients in a dish.
    “What if . . . ?” she was always asking, and Tom would realize that her ideas, if applied to the legal system, would be as elegant and disturbing as fish roe and seaweed in a hamburger joint.
    The first time he had kissed her—it had taken six weeks—was over hamburgers, two inches thick, juices running. He had leaned over and licked the grease off her arm without thinking. As he brought his face up to hers, he wondered how it was that the distance between arm and mouth could take such a sweet infinity to travel.
     
    The oil covered the bottom of the pan, smooth and thick, the smallest of bubbles rising toward the surface.
    “Now, we’re going to take one of these,” Lillian said to the class, holding up a flat square shape, covered in foil. “Does anyone know what it is?”
    “Dadi,” Antonia said in a delighted tone.
    “They are more interesting than salt,” Lillian said, “a little like a bouillon cube, but this type is a bit different.” She opened the foil-wrapped package and placed the square, golden-brown shape in Tom’s hand.
    It was soft, almost greasy, unlike the hard bouillon cubes that had flavored the soups of Tom’s childhood; this one crushed easily, leaving oil clinging to the ridges of his fingertips as he dropped the bits into the pan. Lillian stirred with a wooden spoon and the oil changed in texture, like liquid sand.
    “Time for the onions,” Lillian directed. Tom picked up the slippery pieces and dropped them in carefully. The smell rose toward his face; he started to pull back, then leaned in and breathed—bread and vineyards, warm in the sun.
    Lillian put the wooden spoon in his hand and motioned toward the pan. He watched the moving pieces as they started to turn from white to clear, their hard shapes melting. Tom stirred, waiting for direction from Lillian as the onions began to drink in the liquid around them, almost disappearing into the color of the oil. Lillian leaned forward and added the garlic, but still she said nothing. Finally, as the garlic softened, but before the edges began to curl, Tom reached forward and took the pan off the burner.
    “Perfect,” she said quietly. The class let out a small collective sigh.
    “Now we’ll add the meat. You can try different varieties,” she said, facing out toward the class, “depending on