Barbara O'Neal The Lost Recipe for Happiness (

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.“Yes.”The food came, steaming hot, served on heavy white porcelain plates the server set down with no attention whatsoever to presentation.The parsley on Elena’s was at the top—as it should have been—Julian’s at the bottom.She couldn’t be silent.It would have been like letting someone leave the restroom with toilet paper stuck to her shoe.“Miss?”The girl turned.“Did I forget something?”“No, it looks beautiful—but can I ask you a question?”“Yeah, I guess.”“Are you new to this job?”“Yeah.Only three weeks.” She winced.“Does it show? They’re pretty shorthanded and I didn’t get trained that good.”Elena gently touched the girl’s wrist.In her smoothest, least threatening voice, she said, “The food here is beautiful.The setting is spectacular.You can make a lot of money if you pay attention to little details.”She blinked, fearful as a rabbit.“Yeah? Like what?”“Tuck your shirt in better.Stand up straight.Serve the food as if the diner is in for a giant treat.”She bit her lip, confused.“Okay.”“Parsley at the top, right?”“Oh!” She smiled.“Right.I forgot.Anything else?”“Grapefruit juice and milk.”“Be right back.”Julian picked up his fork.“You say exactly what’s on your mind, don’t you?”“Did I embarrass you?”“Not at all.It was compassionate.”“Good.” She picked up her fork, admired the omelet, and took a bite.“Mmm.Very nice.You were saying?”He took a moment to turn his plate slightly, chose a spot, cut a small triangle and sampled it, then a cube of potato, then another small bite of omelet.Paying attention.“I was about to say, those three things came together.The Aspen restaurant.The bowl of green chile in Espanola, and your zucchini blossom appetizer.”“And?”He lifted a brow.“I would like you to come to Aspen and be my executive chef.”TWOSTANDING UP TO THE HEATBlue Turtle Chef Says Life as a Female in the Kitchen Is Not Easy, but Worth ItBY JACQUELINE GREERWade into the kitchen at local favorite the Blue Turtle, overlooking English Bay, and the air is as laden with testosterone as it is spices.Men—of all ages and races and nationalities—fill the narrow aisles between stoves and ovens.There are boys who’ve yet to grow a beard cutting chickens and peeling onions on the prep line; a sturdy man of sixty with a potbelly and the uneven gait of bad feet who shouts out orders in Spanish.The executive chef himself, Dmitri Nadirov, is a smolderingly handsome Russian of the Mick Jagger school of beauty.Men everywhere.And then there is sous chef Elena Alvarez, a study in contrasts.A woman in a man’s world.A blue-eyed blonde who shouts orders to the saucier in an archaic Spanish, her slight frame and faint limp belying the power in her arms that can haul heavy iron skillets.She orders the line cooks to get more potatoes under way, answers a question from a waiter, fields a challenge from another line cook, all the while shaking a pan filled with aromatic meat and thoughtfully answering this reporter’s questions.Alvarez is cagey about her background, though she admits to growing up in El Paso and Espanola, which is not far from Santa Fe, where she began to cook after a car accident that broke her back when she was seventeen.Also not a subject she wished to discuss.Trained in the emerging Santa Fe style as a young woman, Alvarez was chosen from a field of thousands to study in Paris under star chef Alexander Moreau.She spent four years in Europe, three in Paris and one in London, before coming back to the U.S.to work in top-end kitchens in New York City and San Francisco….THREEDespite her hope that Julian was going to offer her a job, Elena felt a splash of surprise.“Executive.”“Yes.” He ate.Waited patiently.Took a sip of coffee.“I’d kill to have my own kitchen.Of course.” It was Elena’s turn to measure him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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