Free Recipe for Disaster by Miriam Morrison Page A

enough to have eaten there – where the floors were
covered with sawdust, the chef wore a beret and rows of
enormous salamis hung from the ceiling. Sometimes the
only food on offer was a plat du jour , but of such sublime
quality people would queue halfway down the street to get
in.
    He moved to London with his French wife, Maria, and
set up Brie, which swiftly became one of the best restaurants
in town. He named it not after the cheese, but because it was
the old name for an ancient province of France, somewhere
east of Paris, where he had grown up. Although everything
he touched turned to manna he became famous for his oreiller de la belle Aurore – a dish containing pheasant,
woodcock, hare, pork, veal, foie gras, truffles and chicken
livers, named after Brillat-Savarin's mother, and shaped
like a sublime but terribly fattening pillow. Louis spent
eighteen hours a day in his kitchen, tasted everything, but
burned off more calories than an Olympic sprinter, and
shouted, cajoled and praised his staff until they became the
best team in town.
    Any commis who wanted to work there was put through
a grilling ordeal that started something like this.
    'I don't give a fig how old you are, what your middle
name is or how many cooking qualifications you have!'
Louis roared. 'Get in that kitchen and show me what you
can actually do!' It was the day-long trial in his kitchen that
counted, and whether you were still on your feet at the end
of it. Some enormously talented chefs weren't and were
shown the door, which they reached on their knees.
    The only job on offer was for a kitchen porter. Jake had
decided it was better to expire quickly in a good kitchen
than this slow death of the spirit in an awful one. He washed
up like a maniac, uncomplainingly, for three weeks, until
one day, in the afternoon shift break, Louis came in to the
staff room to find him asleep, using a cookbook as a pillow.
    'Sorry,' he mumbled, getting up, ready to leave the great
man in his domain, but Louis ignored him.
    'I am going to make the mousse of fishes. Seeing as you
are here you can help.'
    Jake went to get his washing-up apron.
    'No, no,' said Louis irritably, 'did I ask you to wash up?'
    'Well, no, Chef.'
    'So, show me what you can do with this,' and he passed
Jake a tray of fish and a filleting knife.
    It turned into a brilliant afternoon, even though Louis
shouted, scolded and shook his head in despair at least
every five minutes. When Jake proved more than
proficient at simple tasks, Louis gave him more complicated
things to do and even thanked him when they
were finished.
    'No, thank you, Chef – it was like being in a master class.'
Jake went off to wash up, leaving Louis looking after him
thoughtfully. He knew talent when he saw it and didn't
intend to waste it.
    Jake found he was being asked to do more cooking than
washing-up, sometimes with Louis's nephew and second in
command. Pierre was a huge and taciturn man of about
thirty, with a luxuriant red beard that made him look
piratical and which hid the fact that he was really quite shy.
Then, more and more often, it seemed, Jake was working
under the eagle eyes of the great man himself.
    One night, at the end of service, he was getting ready to
go home when Maria appeared. 'Come upstairs. I have
cooked far too much casserole and you must help us finish
it. You know how Louis hates waste.'
    Bemused, he followed her upstairs to their flat. Louis was
in his shirtsleeves, uncorking a bottle of red wine. 'First we
eat. Then we discuss which rabbit dish we put on the menu
next week.'
    During the meal Louis listened attentively to Jake's
suggestions and then disagreed with them all. But Jake
didn't mind – he was having a wonderful time. When, at the
end of the evening, he was hustled into the spare room on
the grounds that the tube wasn't safe at that time of night,
he didn't even try to argue. After a couple of weeks of this,
he gave up resisting and moved in completely. This never
stopped Louis