Oh well, Joe hadn’t seemed to have any problems with the stove at her house, and that one was beyond crappy. She figured he’d already considered the drawbacks of the contest stove and come up with a menu that worked around them.
He walked by her, carrying a carton with the pans and knives. She hurried after him with her own bag of produce.
“Do you have to roast the beets?”
He shook his head. “A fourth of the meal has to be done entirely at the competition, and that’s the entrée for us, and the rest of the salad. But the beets are cooked in advance. Mainly it’s assembly—we’ve only got ninety minutes to put everything together. We roasted the beets yesterday.”
“Good thing we didn’t have any beet thieves last night.”
Joe’s jaw hardened. “We locked everything in the walk-in. Pain in the ass, but nobody can say I don’t learn from experience, darlin’.” He nodded toward the counter with a processor and blender sitting alongside the cutting board. “We’re supposed to do a little showmanship with this, let the people watch us cook. Darcy can put the salad together there. Panna cotta too.”
She nodded. “Darcy should be good at putting on a show.”
“She should at that.” He grinned. “Too bad she didn’t dye her hair blue again. That always gets a rise out of people.”
“I heard that.” Darcy narrowed her eyes, balancing her box of food. “Where’s the refrigerator?”
He nodded toward the miniature box at the side. “That’s it. Looks like it’s a wine cooler in its normal life.”
Darcy sighed. “Oh well, it’s just for a couple of hours. Thank god we don’t need a freezer.”
A sudden commotion at the door signaled the arrival of the other contestants. Lee Contreras from Brenner’s looked like a culinary Napoleon directing his troops, a pair of virtually silent teenagers who carried in equipment and some boxes marked prominently with the logo of the best local seafood purveyor. Clem arrived with her prep cook Margene and Chico Burnside. Chico was apparently serving as pack animal at the moment, carrying in her boxes of equipment and two massive coolers that looked to contain enough food to serve the French army. He nodded briefly at MG, then ignored everyone else in the room.
Clem threw a quick grin Joe’s way. “Hey, Chef. Ready to have your ass whipped?”
“Bring it on, Clemencia.” Joe grinned back until another noise made him turn back to the doorway.
To no one’s great surprise, Fairley wore another starched toque along with a chef’s jacket that was so white it almost hurt her eyes to look at it. He marched at the head of a line of men carrying his equipment and food cartons, sort of like a big game hunter followed by a line of safari porters. He himself carried only a leather knife case.
Beside her, MG heard Joe blow out a breath. He was probably grinding his teeth too, but fortunately she couldn’t hear that.
Fairley glanced in their direction. One corner of his mouth edged up in a half smile that was closer to a sneer. He dipped his head imperiously in Joe’s direction.
Joe’s expression remained impassive. His head didn’t move. “Game on, asshole,” he muttered.
The judges arrived at the same time as the contest officials, who cleared everyone out of the cooking area who wasn’t actually a cook. MG took a seat in the spectator section that was set up around the sides of the room.
She’d already called the hospital once, but they wouldn’t tell her much. Just that her aunt was still in intensive care and under observation. And she wasn’t allowed visitors. MG figured she might as well spend her time watching the cooking competition rather than sitting in the hospital waiting for news that might or might not come.
Joe and Darcy were directly in front of her, both with what she thought of as their game faces on. Darcy was working on the salad, while Joe chopped the ingredients for the quail stuffing. The grits would be reheated later, after the bacon had been fried and chopped.
In the adjoining kitchen, Clem and her assistant were industriously chopping something that looked like iceberg lettuce. Apparently, she’d decided to go downscale with gusto. As MG watched, Clem threw back her head, laughing.
She sighed. If only there was a way for both of them to win.
Lee Contreras’s prep chef was a gray-haired man who looked a little like a drill sergeant. Right then he was breaking down some shellfish, while Contreras ran the processor.
Across the room, Fairley stirred something in a saucepan on the stove, ignoring his prep cook’s frantic chopping. He looked like someone’s idea of how a chef should behave. Someone who’d never been in a real kitchen, of course.
“Eleven fifteen. One hour and fifteen minutes remaining.” The voice over the loudspeaker echoed through the room. Joe glanced up, then caught her eye. The corner of his mouth moved up in a lopsided smile before he returned to his work. Well, at least one of them had things under control.
Joe wondered if MG needed to check with the hospital, then told himself to cool it. She was there to cheer him on. Why would he want her thinking about anything else?
“You cooking anything there, Chef, or just chopping for the fun of it?”
At least Clem was enjoying herself thoroughly. “Cooking up a storm, ma’am, cooking up a storm.”
He was dimly aware of Lee Contreras giving him a quick grin and Fairley pretending that the rest of the room didn’t exist. As a strategy it struck him as faintly ridiculous, but it went along with Fairley’s style.
“How’s it coming?” he called to Darcy.
“Beets done. Doing the dressing,” she snapped. She seemed to have worked through her nerves and was back to her normal irritability, a good sign.
He turned to the refrigerator, pulling out the box of quail. He’d rechecked it five or six times already that morning, superstitiously afraid that somehow they’d disappeared. But the small mounds of meat lay just where he’d left them.
He pulled one of them out, then flopped it open on the cutting board, spooning on a dollop of stuffing and wrapping it tight. Then he reached for the next.
“Doing quail, Chef? Tricky things, aren’t they?” Fairley’s voice floated across the room.
Beside him, Darcy stiffened, but he shook his head. “Mind games,” he muttered.
“Right.”
“Only tricky if you don’t know what you’re doin’,” he called back, letting his inner good ol’ boy come to the fore.
“I’d have marinated it, myself. Right, Lee?” Fairley glanced in Contreras’s direction.
Lee gave him a look that would have turned most men to stone. “Not with quail,” he snapped. “Only amateurs marinate quail.”
Fairley’s ears turned red as he leaned over his cutting board. “To each his own,” he muttered.
Joe allowed himself a slight smile. So news about the burglary had spread, along with speculation about who was responsible. He’d have to remember to thank Contreras later on.
The next thirty minutes passed more quickly than he could have imagined. The quail was grilled while the bacon for the grits crisped on the stove. Darcy plated the salad and warmed the grits. The
panna cotta
emerged from the refrigerator to be transferred to glass bowls, the pomegranate seeds glowing scarlet against the white custard. At some point, he’d moved into his zone, no longer aware of the activity around him, concentrating on the perfect plating for his quail, the ideal splash of orange-flecked golden sauce, the flutter of green cilantro around the edge of the dish.
“Perfecto,” Darcy breathed.
He looked again. “Yeah. Doing good so far.” He wiped a tiny drop of sauce off the edge of the dish. Then allowed himself a quick glance at the audience. MG gave him a reassuring grin.
“Five minutes, chefs,” the loudspeaker droned.
Darcy lined up the plates of beet salad, red and gold beets interspersed with white disks of goat cheese, a sprinkle of chopped apple on top and a ladle of dressing over it all. “I’ll take this to the judges’ table,” she said.
He nodded, barely listening. The plates of quail lined up on their own tray, pristine and glorious. He checked the
panna cotta
. Ready to go.
Darcy returned and reached for the quail. Joe shook his head. “Get the
panna cotta
. I’ll take the quail over.”
Ahead of him, Clem was carrying a tray of fried chicken. He smelled cayenne and sweet spice—the stuff would probably be ambrosia. “Looking good, Chef,” he murmured.
Clem turned, glancing at his quail. Her lips edged up in a faint smile. “I should probably say something shitty about now, but I don’t feel like it. Nice looking quail, Chef. Real nice.” She paused, lowering the tray toward the table, then glanced back. “We’re pulling for you, you know. All of us. If it can’t be me, I want it to be you.”
His throat tightened. “Right back at you, darlin’. In spades.”
Lee Contreras unloaded his main dish at the judges’ table. Joe peered over his shoulder—looked like some variation on snapper Veracruz. His other dishes were already being carried toward the judges.
The announcer turned toward Lee. “Chef, tell us what your philosophy was today.”
Joe blinked.
What the hell?
Nobody mentioned he was going to have to come up with bullshit. His main philosophy when he cooked was getting the stuff to taste good.
“Crap,” Clem muttered. “Whose bright idea was that?”
Contreras gave the announcer a slightly grim smile and launched into a brief paean to Gulf seafood that sounded more or less made up on the fly. One of the perils of going first.
“Any ideas?” Darcy murmured.
Actually, no.
He blew out a breath. “I’ll think of something.”
The judges were tasting the snapper now, nodding and doing their best to have no expression at all. Joe recognized a food writer from Austin and an executive chef from a boutique hotel in Dallas. A couple of the others were foodies, a minor chef from the Food Network and a blogger from New York. The last two were chefs from out of state. Nobody he knew, fortunately. He figured there were about as many people out there who hated him as there were people who liked him. Relics of his misspent time in New Orleans.
Clem folded her arms across her chest. “I’m up next, then you.” She gestured toward the sheet posted next to the tables for the food.
“Should be an interesting contrast.” Joe gave her a dry smile.
“Should be at that. May the best man, etcetera, etcetera.”
“Make it best person.” He grinned again. “You look less like a man than anybody here, with the possible exception of Fairley.”
Clem snickered, covering her mouth. He heard a quick explosion of breath behind them and turned to see Fairley staring at him, his face pink with outrage.
“Hey, Todd,” Clem drawled. “Long time, no see. Not that that’s been a problem for me.”
Fairley turned pointedly toward the judges’ table, folding his arms across his chest. Clem snickered again.
Contreras was serving up his dessert now, which looked like some kind of
pot de crème
. It must have been good. The judges seemed to be struggling more than usual to stay expressionless.
“Ms. Rodriguez?” One of the assistants trotted to Clem’s side. “Are you ready to go?”
“Absolutely.” Clem gave him a broad smile, then winked at Joe. “See you later. After I collect my medals.”
“Go to it, darlin’.”
As Clem walked toward the judges’ table, Darcy stepped beside him, wiping her hands on her thighs. “So far, so good. Contreras did seafood just like we thought. What’s Clem doing?”
He shrugged. “Watch her and find out.”
“And what was your philosophy today, Chef?” The announcer sounded faintly patronizing as he bent low to move his microphone toward Clem. He was probably making the same mistake a lot of people made, assuming her short stature meant she was a shrinking violet.
“Kick-ass cuisine,” Clem replied suavely.
Darcy snorted while Joe bit the inside of his mouth to keep from guffawing.
The announcer leaned back slightly. “Kick… Um…I see. And what dishes have you prepared to demonstrate your, er, cuisine?”
Clem waved her hand airily as the appetizer was placed in front of the judges. “The Faro Tavern does bar food, ladies and gentlemen. The best bar food west of the Mississippi. For your appetizer, you’ll find fried green tomatoes with remoulade sauce. A classic throughout Texas and the South. Only our remoulade has a little Texas kick, courtesy of a sprinkle of
chile de arbol
. Enjoy.”
The judges took a few bites each. Several of them abandoned any attempt at staying expressionless. The blogger grinned at Clem and gave her a thumbs up.
Darcy sighed. “And we were right about Clem too. Best in her class.”
“Hang in there, darlin’,” Joe murmured. “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
“Chef LeBlanc?” The assistant looked a little harassed. “Are you ready to go?”
“Ready as I’ll every be.” He sighed. “Lead me to it.”
MG squeezed into the crowd of standees toward the front of the room. She’d left briefly to make another uninformative call to the hospital and lost her prime seat at ringside. Now Clem was talking about her dessert, a peach cobbler with cinnamon ice cream that the judges seemed to like a lot. As far as theatre went, Clem seemed to have the edge over the others. She was so tiny the judges had to lean forward to see her, but her voice was so robust, not to mention her vocabulary, that she had the crowd hooting its approval. Joe had a tough act to follow.