Gloria sighs, looks down at her hands for a moment, and looks back up. “You’re right, and I’m sorry,” she says. “I got carried away. It’s just …” She purses her lips and clenches her hands. “You know how I feel about this place and this job. We’re getting some good, solid ideas down, but none of that’ll matter if we serve shite puddings. If you fall at the last hurdle, it doesn’t matter if you jumped clean the rest of the round, right?”
Susan responds with a baffled look.
“Sorry. I thought that all rich girls were into horses. I was trying to speak the language,” Gloria explains.
“I’m allergic to horses,” Susan grumbles. Begrudgingly, she agrees with what Gloria’s saying, even if she doesn’t agree with how it was communicated. “So what’re we going to do now? We relaunch in three weeks; that’s not enough time to get someone new in post at all, let alone get them testing ideas and recipes.”
Gloria sighs again, and the two of them contemplate this dilemma in silence. Then Gloria brightens a little and says, “You can bake.”
“Excuse me?”
“No, really—didn’t you train in Paris or something?”
“During my gap year. That was ages ago.”
“But you haven’t forgotten it. You learned all the techniques, and you’ve kept up with it—I’ve had some of the things you’ve brought in.”
“I’m just a home baker, Gloria. It’s something I do for fun.”
“Do you know of anyone else who can step in at short notice?” Gloria asks. “I mean, I’ll ask around, but I don’t know of anyone off the top of my head.” She leans forward, eyes snapping, gesticulating. “Look, we can put out the call and start recruiting, but in the meantime, you’ve got a few weeks to work on some things and iron out the kinks so at least we’ll have something when we launch, right? Better than ordering in from somewhere.”
Susan groans. She has a needy sister and a business to run—when is she going to have time to do this? And what if the things she makes aren’t good enough? What if they’re the boring, crappy desserts everyone walks away sneering about? The restaurant might fail entirely because of her inability to make a decent babka.
But she can’t see any other solution. Not in the short term, at least. So, she nods. “All right. As you said, we’ll start recruiting, and I’ll start coming up with ideas. But Gloria, if anything like this happens again, you’re done here. I mean that. I won’t have a bully running this kitchen.”
Gloria slowly nods. “Fair enough. Can I get back to work now? Rey and I have an idea we’re working out.”
Susan nods, collects Julia’s phone, and follows Gloria out into the kitchen. The music is still playing, though at a slightly lower volume, and Rey is showing one of the dishwashers how to make the spice mix for his paella.
“You think some cayenne might be good in there?” the dishwasher suggests.
“Not in this one,” says Rey. “Too overpowering. But maybe we’ll work on another version, yeah?” He looks up as Gloria rejoins him, and she gives him a quick nod before getting back to separating eggs. Rey visibly relaxes.
Susan heads back up to the dining room, where Julia is demonstrating to the contractor the exact height at which she wants the new lamps to hang. Susan joins them, handing the phone to Julia, and says to the contractor, “Tell me about this rot.”
Chapter Twelve
Radio F-U
Susan is doing battle with sea buckthorn.
She wants to make this work: everyone’s going mad for the stuff because apparently it’s a superfood. And it’s local—harvested from wild plants right in East Lothian—so it fits their new goal to source at least three-quarters of their ingredients from within fifty miles of the restaurant. Even the flour is coming from a farm just outside Drem, only twenty miles away. And she, Rey, and the head waiter spent part of this morning at Mr. Eion’s, a coffee roaster in Stockbridge, sampling blends concocted just for Elliot’s, choosing which one would be served in French presses and delicate espresso cups at the end of the meal. They’d sipped and quizzed Mr. Eion himself (a warm and enthusiastic man with the full hipster glasses-moustache-beard combination) on bean origins, roasting times, and Fair Trade status before declaring blend number three the runaway winner.
And sea buckthorn. Susan got it into her head to turn some of its juice into jellies to serve alongside a rich pound cake flavored with thyme, but she’s having trouble getting the consistency right. One batch of jelly refused to set, and another set so hard you’d need a hatchet to get through it. She wonders if there’s something in the chemistry of the juice that’s interfering. Baking is a delicate chemical science; the littlest thing can throw a whole recipe off. Or maybe it’s her. Maybe jelly is her Waterloo.
There’s a bag of coral-colored buckthorn berries in the refrigerator, which she considers turning into a sort of jam. Perhaps she can do a nutty tart crust to go with it—a spin on a linzer torte. Or maybe she’s overthinking this and needs to get away from the buckthorn for a while. After all, there are other recipes that need her attention.
She’s been at this for a week now. Holed up in the pastry kitchen, making ice creams and tarts and meringues. Experimenting with flavors, tweaking classic recipes, and getting a handle on the incredible array of gadgets at her disposal. Because Dan and the pastry chef were given free rein to buy whatever toy they wanted, both kitchens are loaded with the latest thing, whether it’s useful or not. Gloria isn’t quite sure yet what to do with the sous-vide machine, but another gadget that cold-pickles just about anything is proving to be a source of inspiration. For her part, Susan was a bit horrified by the bread machine in the pastry kitchen, but intrigued by the candy-floss maker. Her attempts to make chocolate-flavored floss haven’t worked because the cocoa burns too easily, but she’s having better luck with peanut flavor and trying to think of what could go with it.
She whisks some agar into the sea buckthorn juice, pours the liquid into a lined pan, and pops it into her refrigerator to set (hopefully). It shares a shelf with four bowls, each containing a different flavor of sourdough bread, slowly rising. The sourdough mother now lives on a pantry shelf, happily bubbling away after its feed the previous afternoon.
Susan turns her attention to strawberries. They’re easier. Who doesn’t like a strawberry? And they’re excellent right now: a cold, damp spell in May delayed the season, but the more recent, prolonged good weather means they’re exploding all over, rich and sweet. She’s trying them out on a cloudy pavlova flavored with pink peppercorns, mixing the strawberries with mint and lemony sumac. Getting the flavor balance just right is tricky, but she’s nearly there, and once she has it, she can sign off on at least one dessert.
Then on to the next: she has dinner and lunch menus to fill with delectable, seasonal delights. There need to be at least four desserts for each meal—five, if she can manage it, plus breads and anything else that needs baking. Gloria will need crusts for quiches and pies; puff pastry for various dishes. She and Susan have been putting their heads together on the menu, and now Susan is experimenting with flavored pastry crusts—there’s a vibrant orange carrot pastry relaxing in the refrigerator just above the jelly and bread dough. Susan worries about what color it’ll be when baked—it won’t stay that bright and might very well turn an unappealing brown. They may have to consider a carrot nest instead, if they want to keep that visual appeal.