Prime Cut - Couverture rigide

Davidson, Diane Mott

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 156895588X ISBN 13 : 9781568955889

Editeur : Wheeler Pub Inc, 1999

A propos du livre

Extrait

Like a fudge souffle, life can collapse. You think you have it all together--fine melted chocolate, clouds of egg white, hints of sugar and  vanilla--and then bam.  There's a reason things fall apart, my  husband would say. But of course Tom would say that. He's a cop.

On the home front, things were not good. My kitchen was trashed, my  catering business faced nasty competition, and my fourteen-year-old son  Arch desperately missed our former boarder, twenty-year-old Julian Teller.  For his part, Tom was embroiled in a feud with a new assistant district  attorney who would plea-bargain Hermann Göring down to disturbing the  peace. These days, I felt increasingly frantic--for work, for cooking  space, for perspective.

Given such a litany of problems, life had brightened somewhat when my old  cooking teacher, Chef André Hibbard, had offered me a one-day gig  helping to cater a fashion shoot. My clients--the ones I still had--would  have scoffed. Catering to models? You must be desperate.

Maybe I was. Desperate, that is. And maybe my clients would have been  right to ridicule me, I reflected, as I pulled my van into the dirt lot at  the edge of Sandbottom Creek. Across the water stood the Merciful  Migrations cabin, where the first week of the photo shoot would take  place. My clients would have cried: Where are you going to hide your  butter and cheese? I didn't know.

The cloudless, stone-washed-denim sky overhead and remote-but-picturesque  cabin seemed to echo: You're darn right, you don't know. I ignored  a shudder of self-doubt, jumped out of my van, and breathed in air crisp  with the high country's mid-August hint of fall. It was only ten a.m.   Usually I didn't arrive two hours before a lunch, especially when the food  already had been prepared. But show me a remote historic home and  I'll show you a dysfunctional cooking area. Plus, I was worried  about my old friend André. This was his first off-site catered meal  since he'd retired four years ago, and he was a basket case.

I opened the van's side door and heaved up the box containing the Savory  Florentine Cheesecakes I'd made for the buffet. I expertly slammed the  door with my foot, crossed the rushing water, and carefully climbed the  stone steps to the cabin. On the deck, I took another deep breath,  rebalanced my load, then pushed through the massive wooden door.

Workers bustled about a brightly lit, log-lined, high-beamed great room.  I rested my box on a bench and stood for a few minutes, ignored by the  swirl of activity. Frowning, I found it challenging to comprehend my  surroundings. Two workers called to each other about where to move the  scrim, which I finally deduced was a mounted swath of fabric designed to  diffuse the photographer's light. The two men moved on to clamping movable  eight-foot-square wood screens--flats, I soon learned--into place. The  flats formed a three-sided frame for "the set." Meanwhile, other folks  rushed to and fro laden with hair dryers, notebooks, makeup trays,  tripods, and camera equipment. Hoisting my box, I tried to figure out  where André might be.

As I moved along, the models were easy to spot. Muscular young men and  impossibly slender women, all with arrestingly sculpted faces, leaned  against the log walls or slumped in the few stripped-bark bentwood chairs.  The models' expressions were frozen in first-day-of-school apprehension.  And no wonder: They were about to undergo the cattle call for the famed  Prince & Grogan Christmas catalog. Prince & Grogan was an upscale  Denver department store. Auditioning to model Santa-print pajamas for  their ads had to be anxiety-creating.

I plowed a crooked path to what I hoped was the kitchen entrance. As I  feared, the dark, cramped cooking space featured plywood glued along the  one wall not covered by cupboards. Above the plywood, a dusty lamp hung to  illuminate the battered sink. Next to the sink, buckled linoleum counters  abutted a gas oven that didn't look much newer than a covered wagon's camp  stove. In the center of the uneven wood floor, short, paunchy,  white-haired André Hibbard surveyed the room with open  dissatisfaction. As usual, my old friend and mentor, who had made a rare  compromise when he'd immigrated, anglicizing his name from Hébert to  Hibbard,  sported a pristine white chef's jacket that hugged his potbelly.  His black pants were knife-creased; his black shoes were shiny and  spotless. When he saw me, his rosebud mouth puckered into a frown.

"Thank goodness." His plum-colored cheeks shook; the silvery curls  lining his neck trembled. "Are these people pigs, that I have to  work in this trough? I may need money, but I have  standards!"

I put down my box, gave him a quick hug, and sniffed a trace of his spicy  cologne. "André! You're never happy. But I'm here, and I brought the  nonmeat entrée you requested. Main-dish cheesecakes made with  Gruyre and spinach."

He tsked while I checked the ancient oven's illegible thermostat.  "The oven is hot. Whose recipe is it?"

"Julian Teller's. Now training to become a vegetarian chef." I lifted the  cakes from the box and slid them into the oven to reheat. "Now, put me to  work."

I helped André pour out the tangy sauces that would accompany the  delicate spring rolls he'd stuffed with fat steamed shrimp, sprigs of  cilantro, and lemongrass. Then we stirred chopped pears into the red-wine  vinaigrette, counted cornbread biscuits, Parker House Rolls, and sourdough  baguettes, and discussed the layout of the buffet. Prince & Grogan was  the client of record. But the fashion photography studio, Ian's Images,  was running the show.

"Ian Hood does fashion photography for money," André announced as he  checked his menu, "and nature photography for fun. You know this?"

In André's scratched, overloaded, red cooking equipment box--one I  knew well from our days at his restaurant--I pushed aside his garlic press  and salamander, and  nabbed the old-fashioned scoop he used to make butter  balls. "I know his pictures of elk. You can't live in Aspen Meadow and  miss them."

André pursed his lips again and handed me the tub of chilled butter.  "The helpers are day-contractors working for Prince & Grogan."

The word contractor, unfortunately, instantly brought my trashed  kitchen to mind. Forget it for now--you have work to do. I scraped  the butter into dense, creamy balls. I wrapped the breads in foil while  André counted his platters. Because the cabin kitchen was not a  commercially-approved space, he had done the bulk of the food preparation  at his condo. While he gave me the background on the shoot, we used  disposable thermometers to do the obligatory off-site food-service tests  for temperature. Was the heated food hot enough? The chilled offerings  cold enough? Yes. Finally, we checked the colorful arrangements of fruit  and bowls of salad, and tucked the rolls into napkin-lined baskets.
When the cheesecakes emerged, golden brown and puffed, they filled the  small kitchen with a heavenly aroma. André checked their temperature  and asked me to take them out to the buffet. I stocked the first tray,  lifted it up to my shoulder, and nudged through the kitchen door. When I  entered the great room, a loudly barked order made me jump.

"Take off your shirt!"

I banged the tray onto the ruby-veined marble shelf that a note in  André's familiar sloping hand had labeled Buffet. The shelf,  cantilevered out of the massive log walls, creaked ominously. The tray of  cheesecakes slid sideways.

"Your shirt!"

I grabbed the first springform pan to keep it from tipping. This was not  what I was expecting. Because the noise outside the kitchen had abated,  I'd thought the room was empty and that the models' auditions had been  moved elsewhere. I was obviously wrong. But my immediate worry was the  cheesecakes, now threatening to toboggan downward. If they landed on the  floor, I would be assigned to cook a new main dish. This would not be  fun.

With great care, I slid the steaming concoctions safely onto the counter.  Arguing voices erupted from the far corner of the great room. I grabbed  the leaning breadbasket. The floor's oak planks reverberated as someone  stamped and hollered that the stylist was supposed to bring out the gold  chains right now! I swallowed and stared at the disarray on the  tray.

To make room on the counter, I skidded the cheesecakes down the marble.  The enticing scents of tangy melted Gruyre and Parmesan swirled with  hot scallions and cream cheese spiraled upward. The thick tortes'  golden-brown topping looked gorgeous, fit for the centerfold of  Gourmet.

Best to avoid thoughts of gorgeous, I reminded myself as I placed  a crystal bowl of endive and radicchio on the marble. Truth to tell, for  this booking I'd been a bit apprehensive in the appearance department.  Foodie magazines these days eagerly screamed a new trend: Today's  caterer should offer pretty servers in addition to beautiful food! Submit  head shots along with menus!

I pushed the butter balls onto the counter, keenly aware of my  unfashionably curly blond hair and plump thirty-three-year-old body  beneath a white shirt, loose black skirt, and white apron. I hadn't  submitted a photo.

Of course, neither had André, who was now fuming at a kitchen  intruder. I sighed and moved the plate of juicy honeydew melon and  luscious fat raspberries onto the counter. With one hand still gripping  the tray, I inhaled uncertainly, then parted the cloth folds of the  breadbasket. The tower of butter-flecked rolls, moist cornbread biscuits,  and sourdough-thyme baguettes had not toppled, thank goodness. Self-doubt  again reared its head. Will the fashion folks eat this?

"And while you're at it, take off your pants!" the same female  voice barked.

"For sportswear?" a man squealed in dismay.

I turned and peered past the bentwood chairs and sleigh-bed frames the  workers had piled higgledy-piggledy in the dusty, sun-steeped space. By  the far bank of windows, a solitary, beautiful young man stood in front of  a trio of judges. The judges--two women and a man, all of whom I  knew--perched on a slatted bench. None of them looked happy.

Nearest was Hanna Klapper--dark-haired, wide-faced, fiftyish, recently  and unhappily divorced. Hanna was familiar to me from my stint as a  volunteer at Aspen Meadow's Homestead Museum. With her authoritarian voice  and exacting ways, Hanna had designed exhibits installed by trembling  docents, yours truly included. She had demanded that we put on surgical  gloves before moving woven baskets or antique Indian pots even two inches.  If we forgot, or, God forbid, dropped an item, she'd kick us out faster  than you could say Buffalo Bill's bloodstained holster. According  to André, Hanna had been appointed as the new artistic director at  Prince & Grogan. I was amazed to see that she had shed her  gingham-smock-and-sensible-shoes wardrobe for an elegant black silk shirt,  tie, and pants. Her mahogany-colored hair, formerly pulled into a severe  bun, was now shaped into a fashionably angled pageboy. This wasn't just a  new job. It was a metamorphosis.

Hanna opened and closed her fists as she chided the male model. The  gorgeous fellow, whose hair might have been a tad too black to be  real, argued back. I wondered how Hanna's exhibits on Cattle-Rustling  Meets Cowboy Cooking and Gunslingers: Their Gripes and Their  Girls had prepared her for ordering models to strip. In any event, I  certainly wouldn't want her judging my body.

The woman next to her on the bench was a bit younger. Leah Smythe,  small-boned and delicate-featured, wore her blond-streaked black hair in a  shaggy pixie cut. She had jumped up and was now holding out her hands in a  pleading gesture to the model. Andréehad confided to me that Leah was  the big cheese here today, the woman with the power: the casting director  for Ian's Images. Leah also owned the cabin. When Ian's Images was not  engaged in a shoot, Leah allowed Merciful Migrations to use the space for  elk-tracking, fund-raising, and salt-lick distribution.

The beautiful young man who wouldn't take off his shirt looked as if  he could use a lick of salt, especially on the side of a glass of  tequila. My heart went out to him.

The man seated next to Hanna and Leah, photographer Ian Hood, had a  handsome, fine-boned face, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and a trim beard.  Ian's photos of trotting elk, grazing elk, big-buck elk, and mom-and-baby  elk graced the libraries, grocery stores, post offices, banks, and schools  of Aspen Meadow and Blue Spruce. My best friend, Marla Korman--the other  ex-wife of my ex-husband--had sent Ian a dozen elk burgers when he'd  criticized her fund-raising abilities. He hadn't spoken to her since.

"Do you want this job or not?" Hanna brusquely asked the model. Seeming  to take no notice, Ian squinted through the lens of a camera.

No, as a matter of fact, my inner voice replied. I don't want  this job. No matter how much I tried to deny it, my heart was as blue  as the gas flame on André's old restaurant stovetop. Quit  fretting, I scolded myself as I counted out glasses and lined them  up.

I sneaked another peek at the male model still being appraised by Ian,  Hanna, and Leah. He was in his mid-twenties, indisputably from the&...

Présentation de l'éditeur

A caterer's nightmare...

Caterer Goldy Schulz is convinced things couldn't get worse. An unscrupulous rival is driving her out of business. An incompetent contractor has left her precious kitchen in shambles. And she has just agreed to cater a fashion shoot at a nineteenth-century mountain cabin with her mentor and old friend, French chef André Hibbard.

A dash of cold-blooded murder...

Together Goldy and André struggle in a hopelessly outdated kitchen to cater to a vacuous crowd of beautiful people whose personal dramas climax when a camera is pitched through a window...into the buffet. Then Goldy's contractor is found hanging in the house of one of her best friends. A second murder follows and Goldy must somehow solve a mystery and prepare for a society soirée that could make--or break--her career.

A recipe for disaster...

It's a mystery that involves the dead contractor's unwholesome past, a food saboteur, the theft of four historical cookbooks, and an overzealous D.A. who has suspended Goldy's detective husband, Tom, from the force. What Goldy discovers is the perfect recipe for murder. And she may be dessert!

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Wheeler Pub Inc
• Date d'édition: 1999
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 156895588X
• ISBN 13: 9781568955889
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 402
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible