The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [111]
“Thanks,” I said.
Matt walked by me on his way to the bathroom. I pulled him into the hallway for a moment.
“Can you believe this?” I hissed.
“What?” he said. I nodded in the direction of Morgan, who was gesturing as he talked to Jordan.
“Ah, forget him,” Matt said. “Seriously, I think you can do better than him. Appetite for Destruction?”
I looked back. Jordan was giving wan nods every now and then. She’d hardly uttered a word all night, least of all to Thaddeus. She turned to gaze around the room and caught my eye for a moment. We exchanged hapless looks.
“So much for SOS,” I muttered.
“It’s taking on a whole new meaning,” Matt said.
Karol came to the kitchen to give me a hand.
“What do you need me to do with this stuff?” she asked. I instructed her to put scoops of the butternut squash puree on the bottom of each plate; on top of each one I arranged a few nice-looking chunks of braised beef cheeks, and then ladled some of the pomegranate reduction sauce on top, followed by a sprinkle of chopped parsley and fresh pomegranate seeds as garnish.
“This looks amazing,” Karol said.
I had to admit—it did look pretty impressive. The butternut squash was a rich, sunset orange color, and the pomegranate reduction, thickened with a touch of cream, painted the plate with splashes of deep magenta. We brought the plates to the table and rinsed out the white wine from everyone’s glasses. Morgan gave a brief introduction about the red wine he’d paired the course with, a bold and fruity something or other, from someplace or another.
“Wow, this is really good,” Kara said, digging in.
“I’ve never had beef cheeks before,” Lauren noted. “They’re really good.”
“I think you just have to braise them forever, with wine. Everything tastes good if you cook it like that,” I said.
“Yeah, but you made it really good,” Jordan said. The compliments brightened my mood a little. I pecked around at my plate, too antsy to eat much, and worried about plating the next course. I had run out of plates to serve everything on, so I’d need to wash the first set of plates, which were stacked in a splattered, messy heap in the sink. How did places like Whisk and Ladle serve all those diners? I couldn’t wrap my head around how much work a supper club involved.
When the meat course was finished, or at least half finished, since most of the guests were beyond full by now, Karol helped me wash and dry a set of ten plates. The final course before dessert was something I’d devised called “East-West Eggplant.” Each plate had one Japanese eggplant half placed down the center, which had been sliced lengthwise, seared on the cut surface, and roasted until soft inside. On one side of the plate, or on the “West,” I’d piped a streak of classic, Italian basil pesto. For the other side, “East,” I’d made a Chinese sesame seed paste and soy sauce-based sauce, with a bit of sugar and rice vinegar for pungency. The diners were meant to cut the roasted eggplant and dip it in either sauce as they pleased. From past experience, I had seen how basil could be a potent, effective aphrodisiac. I was now desperate for its charms. We carried the plates to the table.
“What are we looking at here?” François asked. I explained the concept of the dish to the group, and everyone nodded appreciatively.
“Cathy’s mind, on eggplant,” Matt pronounced.
“I love this pesto,” Morgan commented. Good, I thought.
“Wow, but that ‘East’ sauce is incredible,” Kara said.
“Yeah, I want to know how to make something like this,” Lauren added.
If I’d had the patience to plate the dish with more care, I might have piped neat, elegant squiggles of each sauce to the left and right of each eggplant half. But as it was, I’d simply squeezed angry glops of the stuff on either side, so that the pesto resembled a pile of mangled seaweed, and the Asian sauce was a medium-brown, thick sludge. Anyway, that’s how I saw it in my miserable state of mind.
Once everyone was done picking at their dishes, we all took them to the sink and