Killer Critique by Alexander Campion Read Free Book Online Page B

too ‘tight.’ It would be much better if I ‘loosened’ it. You know, made it more liquid. He was trying it a second time to see if I’d taken his hint. If I’d left it the way it was, he might not have drowned in the damned stuff.”
    â€œDid you take it off the menu?”
    â€œOf course not. It’s all they order now. They love to look at the table and eat the dish he drowned in. Thank God it’s such an easy one to prep. It’s a Breton blue lobster tucked into oversized ravioles served in a sauce made from lobster fumet, to which I add tandoori spice, carrot, preserved lemon mousseline, wild sorrel, and a spring-onion reduction made with fresh coriander. We make the ravioles an hour or two before the service and freeze them. Then, for each order, we drop the frozen ravioles in boiling water, and they’re ready in four minutes. The sauce is kept warm under the lamps and just before it goes on the ravioles each portion is monté with a beurre noisette so it’s nice and rich and creamy. Fesnay’s idea was to use less butter and add a spoonful or two of pasta water. He was perfectly right. The dish is perfect now. What pisses me off is that they’re eating it for entirely the wrong reason.”
    At the row of stoves a chef was bent almost in half over a copper pot in a pantomime of intense concentration. His T-shirt, which had been immaculate a few minutes before, was transparent with perspiration and stuck tightly to his skin. His face was bathed in sweat, and large drops fell into the pot.
    â€œWhat’s he making?”
    â€œThat is going to be my signature dish. It’s a pigeon I get from the Midi that I pan roast in coffee butter and serve on a bed made with quinoa, Medjool dates, and Sicilian pistachios that have been spiced up with arabica coffee. It’s served with a sauce that’s a little tricky. That’s what he’s worried ab—”
    Béatrice shot out the door of the office, yelling, “Bordel de merde. Qu’est-ce que c’est que ce souk?”
    Capucine was sure the sin had been the sweat dripping into the sauce. Béatrice shouldered the cook aside roughly, jerked open the stainless-steel door of the oven, yanked the side towel off her shoulder, pulled out a baking tray, revealing an apparently perfectly cooked squab, and banged it noisily on the top of the stove.
    â€œMerde. Throw this out and start again!” she hissed at the trembling chef.
    She stalked back to the office, stiff with indignation.
    â€œThey get dans le jus —you know, into the weeds—over the sauce and forget about the poor little pigeon drying out and losing its soul in the oven. These small birds have to be done just right. A few seconds too early and they’re raw, a few seconds too late and they taste like papier-mâché. That one has talent, though,” she said, carefully folding her side towel and draping it over her left shoulder. “But he gets flustered too easily for haute cuisine. In his case he doesn’t just slide into the weeds. He plunges right into la merde. What were we talking about?”
    â€œSupreme irony.”
    â€œYes, that’s exactly what it was. Fesnay’s death was a tragedy in more ways than one. I’m sure you know that my name is not really Mesnagier and everything about my family and all that.”
    â€œOf course.”
    â€œWell, getting into the restaurant business has been an uphill battle. My father has always been dead set against it. As far as he’s concerned, the entire purpose of my life is to take over his business one day. You can’t imagine the scene when I announced I wasn’t going to business school but was off to the école hôtelière to learn to cook. He only let me go because he was sure I’d lose interest. Then he was disappointed when I was accepted for an internship at Troisgros, but he let me do it because he was sure the