Tarte Tatin: More of La Belle Vie on Rue Tatin. Susan Loomis

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СКАЧАТЬ signed up. What should I do? I tossed and turned over it, then one morning when I opened up my emails I found a message from Marion, who now handled the organization of the school as well as the lunches. ‘They can’t come,’ she wrote. ‘One of them is ill so none of them are coming.’ I was relieved to hear it wasn’t a life-threatening illness, but at any other time this would have been disastrous. In the circumstances, though, and as sorry as I was that they were kept from coming, I heaved a sigh of relief. Someone was watching over me.

      By this point I was getting impatient to move into the kitchen. My appetite was whetted for more space, functionality, ease. I needed to increase my productivity, too, as I had deadlines looming. How could I speed the process along?

      I offered to help, suggested we hire someone to help, said I didn’t mind if all the details weren’t finished. Michael resisted and calmly went about his work. One day I walked into the kitchen to find him on his knees, calmly, carefully polishing the twenty-two brass drawer-handles we’d gone to great lengths to order. I stood there watching, realizing this was, in part, keeping me from moving into the kitchen. I asked him why he was polishing them. ‘Because they’re too shiny, they’ll look too new and the rest of the kitchen is burnished and comfortable looking,’ he said.

      I left him to his polishing, and went and cried. I was convinced, then, that I would never move into the kitchen; the cooking school would never happen; Michael would always have one more detail to attend to, calmly, as if nothing but time stretched out before him.

      Michael finished the series of drawer-handles, and we never said another word about them until many years later, when we could laugh about it. I had learnt, through the process of creating the kitchen, that Michael becomes so intensely involved in projects that he forgets real life is going on around him. I had seen his sense of aesthetics and perfection dictate that all drawer-handles be burnished in exactly the same way. He is right about them in one way – it’s a tiny detail that makes a difference. But the alternative would have been all right, too. After all, life is a series of compromises, isn’t it?

      Michael finally pronounced the kitchen ready. I was so excited, and so nervous too. Michael had given two years of his life to creating this beautiful kitchen; we’d made many compromises, we’d argued about it, we’d changed it many times on its way to completion. When it was finished it had to work, and I had to love it. The pressure was enormous. It’s interesting how one’s basic self is challenged by something so insignificant as a kitchen remodel. I feared having to change my cooking habits, having to put things in drawers instead of on shelves or on the walls, yet I had agreed upon a ‘tidier’, more elegant kitchen. The idea of change made me very anxious, as I’ve based a lifetime of cooking and a career on my swift, sure movements in kitchens where everything is out and accessible. Then I stopped myself. I vowed to loosen up.

      I put off the actual move until the American woman I’d hired joined us. She was going to be helping me test recipes and I wanted her to know from the start where everything was stored.

      After she’d settled in we got to work hauling boxes and filling drawers and shelves, in a process that took two days. Unbelievably, there wasn’t enough storage for every single thing, and it was then I realized how much kitchen equipment I had. If this kitchen couldn’t accommodate it all, no kitchen ever would. It was a good excuse to weed out things I didn’t use.

      With most things in place, I prepared to cook our first meal in the kitchen, which we would all eat at the central island. It was exciting, wonderful, completely disconcerting. I grated raw beets and tossed them with a vinaigrette, then made a simple, herb-rich potage with leeks, carrots and potatoes, garnished with minced parsley and garlic from the garden. It took me twice as long as usual because I couldn’t put my hands on anything quickly, but how luxurious it felt to work in a place where I could stretch out my arms and not touch the wall, where the sink was handy and there was ample counter space, where the wood floor was easy on my legs and back, and where I didn’t have to use any of the economy of motion I’d mastered in my other kitchen. Here, everyone in the neighbourhood could come and cook and we’d all have our own spot.

      I served the salad on my side of the island as Michael, Joe, Fiona and Paige, the American woman, sat and watched from the other side. It was wonderful to be so easily together in such a huge space with a gorgeous stove to cook on. Michael and I looked at each other. It had been a long and difficult process for both of us to get to this point. We’d left our country with, on my part, a dream to live in France and raise our children, write books, even open up a cooking school, and on Michael’s part a willingness to put his career aside for the time it took to make it happen.

      We’d had several kitchens in our life together, most of them either designed and built by Michael or remodelled by him, but this was our first that was intended for teaching, and included every detail that we could possibly have thought of to make that efficient, comfortable, pleasant. The struggle to get this kitchen built was still fresh in our minds, but we both knew that it would fade and that we were in for some wonderful times and delicious meals. I, who love the kitchen more than any spot on earth, knew I was in for some exhilarating moments, which, I hoped, I would be able to share not just with my family and friends, but with people eager to learn the secrets of French cooking. Here we were, unbelievably, all of us together, in the heart of our beautiful new kitchen.

      I had decided to give myself about six months in the new kitchen before teaching any classes, because I figured it would take me that long to become accustomed to working in it. I couldn’t risk any fumbles for the classes – I had to be smooth, at ease and professional. So I established the dates for two classes the following spring, and I sent out another mailing to publicize them. I also investigated getting a website, but I found the venture beyond my budget. Besides, I was sceptical about websites. Internet access in France was problematic, and every single thing took so much time that I didn’t have the patience for it: sitting and staring into a screen has never been my forté. I supposed that most people were like me, and that websites were a ‘must have’ because of their novelty, not their real usefulness.

      My ideas were changed by two wonderful lunch guests who came, ate, and fell in love – with the house, with the food, with what we were trying to do, and with baby Fiona. Both high-level professionals, they were alight with ideas on how to market the school, and both were adamant that it, and I, needed a website. I told them my opinions. They disagreed, vehemently.

      Glo, one of the women, fixed me with a gaze as stern as that of an owl and said, ‘Susan, I’m here to tell you that if you don’t have “.com” after your name in the States you are nothing.’ I flinched, told her thank you, and said I still didn’t think I needed a website.

      She badgered me about it for a while, then let the subject drop for the remainder of our lunch together. On her return to the United States she started sending me emails. ‘Susan, you need a website, you’ve got to have one, you are no one without one,’ she would write, along with her cheery messages filled with news and jokes. She was a great person and I appreciated her enthusiasm and concern, but I couldn’t have cared less. I didn’t have the wherewithal to develop a website, and I didn’t think I needed one. If that made me a nobody, so be it. Then one day I opened my email messages to find the following from Glo. ‘Susan, since you are so stubborn, I’m doing a website for you. My friend Geoff will design the site. He charges $4000 and he says he’ll trade you for cooking classes. I will too. We don’t care if you don’t want it, we’re doin’ it.’

      I was flabbergasted. I read on. She explained how it would go, how she would help design it and write the copy. She would pass everything to me for approval before it went ‘live’. Glo had pinned me to the floor. I capitulated, succumbing to the force of her energy.

      I ended up spending a month working on the website with Glo and Geoff, answering a million questions, writing and rewriting, choosing photographs and graphic styles. It was exciting, СКАЧАТЬ