Cooking for Picasso (2 page)

A
SALTY SOUTHWESTERN WIND CAME
rushing across the Mediterranean Sea with heraldic ceremony, driving a white-capped tide against the rocks and jostling the fishing boats in the harbor of Juan-les-Pins before sweeping into the backyard of the Café Paradis, where Ondine was busy peeling her vegetables.

She'd escaped outdoors with her work on this sunny April morning because the café's kitchen was already a cauldron. A tiny backyard patio was gracefully shaded by a majestic Aleppo pine tree, and Ondine sat on a low stone wall that rimmed the tree. Wielding a confident knife, she diligently pared and sorted Provence's springtime treasures—baby carrots, peas and artichokes so tender they could be served raw, topped by thinly sliced lemons sweet enough to eat with their rinds on.

She was working briskly and a delicate sheen of sweat made her sensitive to that sudden change in the wind as it rustled significantly through the pine tree's branches. Because Ondine had been raised to believe in nature's auspicious signs and warnings, she put down her knife, closed her eyes and lifted her head to greet the breeze as it skimmed across her face with an invigorating whiff of the sea.

She seldom got a quiet moment alone like this to think her own thoughts. So when a hazy premonition of a more exciting future somewhere far away began to shape itself in her mind, she struggled to capture it, as if reaching to grasp a firefly before the light disappeared.

“Ondine!” her mother shouted from the café's kitchen. “Where
is
she? On-
dine
!”

Ondine flinched as she heard her name reverberating against the huddle of pale stone buildings. She glanced up, and saw her mother's head framed by the window like a portrait of a formidable empress. Even though it was too late for breakfast and too early for the lunch service, there was never a lull in cooking chores to do in order to meet the café's high standards.

Everyone who worked in the Café Paradis knew his role, right down to the striped cat who patrolled for any mouse foolhardy enough to come near the kitchen, and the bulldog who stood guard against tramps skulking about for an easy handout or an unlocked window. As for Ondine, who was seventeen now, her job was to do whatever her mother told her.

Madame Belange peered out the kitchen window and finally spied her daughter. “What do you think you're doing, lounging there in the garden like a pasha?”

“I'm just finishing up,
Maman
!” Ondine called, rising hastily and hoisting her vegetable basket on her hip as she hurried to the kitchen. By now the fortuitous wind had gone off on its inscrutable way without her. In its place came the usual busy odors of kitchen oil and truck fuel and wood-burning from the farmers' fields. Still, there was definitely a whiff of something special in the air today—her parents had been acting oddly all morning, murmuring to each other in hushed tones.

As she drew closer to the open kitchen window, Ondine's discerning nose picked up the first scents of the day's luncheon menu: onion-and-black-olive
tartes
called
pissaladière;
a pork stew of red wine and myrtle; and, for the fish—could it be…?

She burst inside and went straight to the old black stove seething in its corner with the collected heat of decades of well-cooked meals. The fragrance wafting from a big kettle was unmistakable now.

“Bouillabaisse!”
she exclaimed, wondering why her mother had chosen this special dish—which required a half-dozen kinds of fish—instead of making a simpler and less expensive fish soup called
bourride
. Ondine lifted the pot's lid and inhaled rapturously. Celery, onion, garlic, tomato, fennel, pepper, parsley, thyme, bay and the distinctive orange rind used in the South of France; and something else especially rare and precious, which turned the broth to the color of gold.

“Did you use Père Jacques' saffron today?” Ondine asked, impressed.

Her busy mother glanced up and actually paused for a moment. “Yes,” Madame Belange said, reaching for a tiny glass vial which she held up to the light and examined reverently. “I'm afraid it's the last of it, all except this one strand which I could not bear to lose.” Mother and daughter exchanged a look of awe as they gazed at the red thread of saffron, which imparted a mysterious taste that the old monk Père Jacques described as
a kiss between fresh-mown hay and chestnut honey
.

Père Jacques had given this homegrown saffron to Ondine when she graduated from a convent boarding school in the hills above Nice. The meditative old monk who ran the abbey's kitchen was one of those rare elders that appreciated Ondine's curiosity instead of being irritated by it. Knowing that her family ran a café, he'd allowed her to escape the usual convent chores to assist him in his calm, contemplative gardens, learning his ancient secrets of cuisine.

There is nothing on earth like French saffron,
he'd said proudly, showing her his field of mauve-colored crocuses which he patiently tended until two rare days in October when they bloomed. Then, all the monks pitched in to pluck the delicate red pistils—only three per flower—which, when carefully dried, became those prized red threads that Père Jacques put into glass vials. Ondine and her mother doled out these strands of saffron to make them last, using them only for special occasions, like Christmas custards and
macarons
.

“What's going on today?” Ondine asked, intrigued.

“We have an important new customer for lunch,” her mother answered distractedly.

Ondine dipped a spoon to taste the
bouillabaisse
. “Mmm. Wonderful! But, it could use more pepper,” she suggested.

Madame Belange shook her head and said crisply, “No, it's fine as it is. I'd rather err on the side of caution today.”

Ondine felt a wave of sympathy for her mother, who, unlike Père Jacques, functioned as if on a knife's-edge, her nerves taut as she constantly battled against time, supplies and cost, with scarcely a
franc
or a moment to spare. But despite her request for help, Madame Belange kept nudging her daughter out of the way impatiently, as if it were obvious that this small, cramped kitchen didn't really have room for two grown women.

Raising a flour-dusted wrist to push aside a stray lock of hair, Madame Belange said, “
Vite, vite,
get to work!” But then she cried out warningly,
“Attention!”
as the back door was flung open by a local dairy boy who barreled in with a large crate of eggs, cheese and cream. Ondine ducked out of the way just in time.

While her mother paid the boy, Ondine unpacked his crate onto an enormous table in the center of the room. She'd been awake since dawn, first to make hot chocolate for the quick breakfast she shared with her parents, then to serve the morning customers their
brioche
and coffee. After that, she got the stocks simmering gently on the stove before she went outside to pare her vegetables; now it was time to assemble all the salads for the lunch service.

Yet apparently her mother had much more unusual plans for Ondine today.

“Just make one perfect salad, fit for our new
Patron,
” Madame Belange commanded. “And write down every ingredient we've used in today's lunch for our records.” With her hip she pushed a cupboard drawer shut. “This man will be a regular customer, so we don't want to give him the same lunches again and again. Make notes,
tout de suite
—and put that convent schooling of yours to some real use!”

Ondine reached up to a shelf for one of the blank notebooks they used for such occasions—bound in butter-soft maroon leather, they'd been a gift from a stationer who ate his lunch at the café three times a week. She turned to the first page, which had a printed box framed by an illustration of bunched grapes on a twirling vine. Inside the box was a line designated for filling in a
Nom
. She imagined that this new
Patron
must be some rich banker or lawyer.

She paused. “What's his name?” she asked curiously.

Her mother waved a ladle indifferently. “Who knows? He's got money, that's all that matters!”

So Ondine simply wrote a large
P
for
Patron.
Then she turned to the next page and wrote
2 April 1936
at the top before she recorded today's meal, checking on which ingredients were used and how they were cooked. Her mother kept such records only for distinguished customers, and special events like catered meals or wedding banquets. Later she would add comments about the
Patron
's personal preferences and how the recipe might be better tailored to him.

Madame Belange looked up from the stove and said resolutely, “All right now. Put away the notebook and let's pack up this meal!”

“Pack it?” Ondine echoed in surprise.

Her mother wore an especially sober expression. “This man has rented one of the villas at the top of the hill. Here's the address,” she said, digging in her pocket for a scrap of paper and handing it to her. “You will use your bicycle to bring him his lunch every weekday.”

“What am I, a donkey?” Ondine demanded indignantly. “Since when do we deliver lunch to people's houses? Who is this man, that he can't come to the café to eat his lunch like everybody else?”

Madame Belange said, “He's someone
très célèbre
from Paris. He speaks French, but I'm told he's a Spaniard. The nuns taught you Spanish at the convent, yes?”

“A little,” Ondine answered warily.

“Well, it might finally come in handy.” Her mother glanced around decisively. “Get me that nice striped pitcher for the wine.”

“But that's your favorite!” Ondine objected. Besides, the tall, hand-painted pink-and-blue pitcher had been promised to her for her wedding trousseau—if she ever made it to the altar. Her unsentimental mother shrugged. Ondine muttered, “I hope this fancy Spaniard appreciates it.”

She had to move swiftly now; the meal was coming together quickly. They packed the lunch into an insulated metal hamper, wrapping each dish tightly in red-and-white cloths. Then Ondine went into the basement to an oaken barrel of house wine, from which she siphoned off enough white wine to fill a bladder made of pigskin which she brought upstairs. Madame Belange ordered one of the waiters to carry the hamper outside and securely clip it to the metal basket on Ondine's bicycle.

“
Alors!
Listen carefully.” Her mother fixed her with a stern look. “You are to enter the
Patron
's house from the side door, which he will leave unlocked for you. Go straight into the kitchen. Heat up the food and lay it out for him. Then leave, right away. Do not wait for him to come downstairs to eat.”

Madame Belange pinched her daughter on the arm. “Do you hear me, Ondine?”

“Ouch!” Ondine protested. She'd been listening attentively and felt she didn't deserve that. But her exhausted mother sometimes just ran out of words, and punctuated the urgency of her commands with a quick slap if anyone in her kitchen asked too many questions. Madame Belange, in her own youth, had never witnessed mothers and daughters having the luxury of time to indulge in searching, philosophical chats. Children were like baby chicks whom one loved the way a mother hen did—you fed them, kept them warm, taught them how to fend for themselves, and pecked them with a nudge in the right direction whenever they wandered astray.

Madame Belange repeated, “Go in quietly, prepare the food, lay it out, and leave. Do not call out to him or make noise. Later, you'll go collect the dishes, without making a sound.”

Ondine had a terrible urge to burst out laughing at these absurd orders to skulk around like a thief. But her mother was so very serious that Ondine recognized the weight of her responsibility.

“I understand,
Maman,
” she said, although her curiosity was thoroughly piqued now.