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When we finally slid the things off - very carefully, I can tell you - Dimitri was characteristically pessimistic. Would it hold? He didn't think so. It was a lot of stew we were planning on pouring into this thing, and Dimitri was convinced it would crumble at the table mid-meal, boiling hot fish and lavalike velouté rushing onto the laps of the terrified guests. There would be terrible burns involved, he guessed, 'scarring . . . lawsuits . . . total disgrace'. Dimitri cheered himself up by suggesting that should the unthinkable happen, we were obliged, like Japanese naval officers, to take our own lives. 'Or like Vatel,' he submitted,'he ran himself on his sword over a late fish delivery. It's the least we could do.' In the end we agreed that should our Coliseum of Seafood Blanquette fall, we'd simply walk quietly out the door and into the bay to drown ourselves.

Party time came and we were ready - we hoped.

First there were hors d'oeuvres: microscopic canapes of smoked salmon, cucumber and caviar; Dimitri's chicken liver mousse with diced aspic; little barquettes of something or other; deviled eggs with fish roe; a lovely pâté en croûte with center garnishes of tongue, ham, pistachio and black truffles, and an accompanying sauce Cumberland I'd lifted right out of my CIA textbook. Our crown roast was no problem. It was the blanquette that filled our hearts with dread and terror.

But God protects fools and drunks, and we were certainly both foolish and drunk much of the time.

Things went brilliantly. Our coliseum's walls held!

The crown roast, decorated with little frilly panties on each gracefully outward-arching rib bone, looked and tasted sensational. We were given a standing ovation by the dazzled guests and grateful client.

When we next showed up at our old kitchens for our weekly gloat, our heads were too big to fit in P-town's doors. We were already planning on hunting bigger game. We had newer, more sophisticated, even richer victims in mind for our learn-as-we-go operation. In New York.

SECONDCOURSE

WHO COOKS?

WHO'S COOKING YOUR FOOD anyway? What strange beasts lurk behind the kitchen doors? You see the chef: he's the guy without the hat, with the clipboard under his arm, maybe his name stitched in Tuscan blue on his starched white chef's coat next to those cotton Chinese buttons. But who's actually cooking your food? Are they young, ambitious culinary school grads, putting in their time on the line until they get their shot at the Big Job? Probably not. If the chef is anything like me, the cooks are a dysfunctional, mercenary lot, fringe-dwellers motivated by money, the peculiar lifestyle of cooking and a grim pride. They're probably not even American.

Line cooking done well is a beautiful thing to watch. It's a high-speed collaboration resembling, at its best, ballet or modern dance. A properly organized, fully loaded line cook, one who works clean, and has 'moves' - meaning economy of movement, nice technique and, most important, speed - can perform his duties with Nijinsky-like grace. The job requires character - and endurance. A good line cook never shows up late, never calls in sick, and works through pain and injury.

What most people don't get about professional-level cooking is that it is not at all about the best recipe, the most innovative presentation, the most creative marriage of ingredients, flavors and textures; that, presumably, was all arranged long before you sat down to dinner. Line cooking - the real business of preparing the food you eat - is more about consistency, about mindless, unvarying repetition, the same series of tasks performed over and over and over again in exactly the same way. The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions.

A three-star Italian chef pal of mine was recently talking