Free The Last Good Paradise by Tatjana Soli

meringue over a plain vanilla custard. The first time he tasted Chloe’s baked zucchini—topped only with extra virgin olive oil, fleur de sel , pepper, lemon juice, and Parmigiano-Reggiano—he felt the force of religious conversion. The transubstantiation of simple ingredients into divine, gourmet manna convinced him that there was more to life than he had previously guessed. He went home, walked into the pantry, and threw out his mother’s green can of Kraft Parmesan Cheese.
    Chloe was much ahead of her time in the ’70s, searching out local farms and backyard enthusiasts to purchase produce directly, a precursor to the ubiquitous farmers’ markets of today. Richard went with her and learned to buy only fresh brown eggs; to hunt out heirloom varieties of lettuce such as Red Deer Tongue, Bronze Mignonette, and Black-seeded Simpson; to smell tomatoes and cantaloupes for their sugar level. He never looked back, and long after he had lost touch with Claude, Richard and Chloe continued to exchange recipes and food gossip. She was the proudest person at his graduation from culinary school. Unfortunately, she was also the person responsible for his meat aversion.
    Chloe, like all dedicated gourmands, insisted on close contact with her food at its source. It was one thing to get vegetables at the farmers’ markets, or even search out eggs and milk at nearby farms; it was an entirely different thing to go to an old-fashioned butcher. Richard, middle-class, sheltered teenager, had never thought of beef, chicken, and pork past the fact that they came in neat little sanitized packages of Styrofoam and cellophane. At the worst, there was the absorbent pad underneath that would be pinkish when you lifted up the meat, giving off a sour whiff of mortality, but that could be quickly buried away in the garbage. Chloe had wanted special parts not available at S-mart, and so she researched and found a local butcher operation.
    As they walked through the door—Chloe in her bulky, lumberjack hiking boots that she wore bare-legged with shorts decades before it became fashionable—Richard broke out in a sweat. The chilled air had a heavy mineral smell of blood. Oblivious, Chloe went to the case and began to talk with the owner about offal, oxtails, baby lamb, and the possibility of French cuts such as roti , cotelettes , jambon , jarret . She was excited as they were ushered to the back, a warehouse filled with wooden tables and a sawdust floor. The walk-in meat locker had the expected upside-down carcasses of cows and pigs, but also the grayish body of a dog-sized baby lamb. Richard looked at its head, saw the curled-back lips revealing teeth the size of corn kernels. He felt dizzy and concentrated on not upchucking in front of the skinny man with the mitt-sized hands. Butcher’s hands.
    Suddenly he hated Chloe for her casual cruelty, her toned, pale legs that disappeared into the netherworld of her faded denim shorts. A pig carcass had been hauled in and set down on the table. A bone saw lay next to it, with a disembodied swine’s head, which, to Richard’s horror, Chloe had ordered to make fromage de tête . He ran out of the place, bawling like a little kid. They drove home in silence, Chloe chewing on her lower lip, her paper-wrapped plunder hidden in a liquor box in the trunk.
    At Culinary Institute, talented but plodding Richard almost immediately fell into the orbit of Javi of the mercurial temper, whose dishes vacillated between sublime and inedible. Javi had satyric dark good looks, and didn’t wash often enough, but women lined up. Teenagers, middle-aged housewives, wealthy tightened socialites, all were after him. When Richard confided to Javi his dad hadn’t been thrilled to find out his only son wanted to be a cook, Javi laughed.
    “Your pop’s a philistine. Cook, my ass! We are food artists!”
    Richard knew, however preposterous it sounded, it was also true—nothing could describe that first zucchini experience