Can't Stand the Heat - Louisa Edwards [55]
“Life-changing,” Adam told her, and he knew it was true. “That was the moment when it all came together for me. In my head, at least—it was a long hard road between those figs and getting the whole being-a-chef deal worked out on paper and in the real world—but it was like that afternoon, my brain took a quarter turn to the left and I knew. Food was it for me. And not only food, but local food. Food that tells you where you are, and lets you in on the secrets of the person who cooked it. I ate those figs, and I knew Alice Waters without ever meeting her. I knew myself.”
Something soft and sweet passed over Miranda’s face, and he thought she might be really getting it. “Sounds like a meal to remember.”
“It was, although I haven’t consciously thought of it in years.” He laughed. “Those figs are behind a good bit of my own cooking, though, one way or another. The marriage of salty and sweet is one I’m still particularly fond of, and I try to never forget the role texture plays in a dish.”
“Why didn’t you go to culinary school? It seems like a logical next step for a boy who decided he wanted to be a chef.”
“Not so fast. No more questions until I see another perfect egg out of you.”
“Oh, fine,” she muttered, and hurried through the preparations without really checking the water first. She added another rubber egg to the pile in Adam’s sink before turning out a good one. They both looked at the spreading yolk for a moment, then turned away.
“I’m getting kind of sick of the taste of plain egg,” she confessed.
“Right. We’ll try something different next.”
“But first, the answer to my question.”
“Slave driver.” Adam shook his head. “Fine. I didn’t go to culinary school because I didn’t think they could teach me anything I couldn’t learn better on the job. I’m not so sure that’s true, looking back, but I did learn a shitload on every line I ever worked, in every position from dishwasher to prep and right on up to two years ago.”
“When you worked at the original Appetite on the Upper East Side.”
She’d done her research.
“Yeah, I ran the kitchen for Devon Sparks while he was off opening a new hotspot in Miami and filming that TV show about being the greatest chef alive, or whatever.”
Adam paused, but Miranda didn’t take the bait. Most food writers leaped on any mention of Devon, hoping for stories of his famous temper and antics in the kitchen. Adam never minded obliging with a tale or two, and he had some whoppers, but for the most part the guy had been decent to him.
He sort of liked Miranda’s interview style, though, all free-flowing and easy. Although it was getting him to talk more than he would have otherwise, which probably ought to make him nervous.
“In hindsight, I could’ve saved myself some time, if not money, by doing the formal training thing. I bet I spent as much on books I read on my own as any incoming student at the Culinary Art Academy.”
“What books do you think influenced you the most?”
Adam was about to answer when he noticed the crafty gleam in Miranda’s eye. Twisting his mouth shut, he shook his head. “You’re a tricky one. But no dice. Maybe I should ask you a question or two instead.”
Immediately looking wary, Miranda said, “What kind of question?”
“We’ve talked plenty about how I know so much about kitchen stuff,” Adam said, injecting enough over-the-top pompousness into his tone to make her smile. “How about you tell me why you know so little about it? How did you and Jess eat?” After your parents died was the part of the question he didn’t vocalize.
For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Her face went kind of blank, but there was a shadow of something like grief in her eyes that made him sorry he’d brought it up. Not sorry enough to stop her when she started to answer, though; this had to be a key to her personality, and Adam wanted to know all about her.
“Jess was ten when our parents died; I was eighteen. I took night classes, got two jobs, and tried to keep Family Services from coming down on us. With all that, there wasn’t much time for the culinary arts. We ate a lot