The Monday Night Cooking School - By Erica Bauermeister Page 0,63

unbidden. “I mean, you never cooked.”

“No, not so much.” Ian could almost hear his mother smiling.

“Then why did you give it to me?”

“Well”—his mother paused, searching—“when I paint, it brings me joy. I wanted you to have that, too.”

“I’m not a painter, Mom.”

“Perhaps not, but you are a cook.”

“How did you know that?”

“Maybe it was your expression when you would taste what I made.” His mother’s laugh rang across the phone lines. “Don’t worry, you really did try to be polite about it.

“So,” she continued, “what are you going to cook for her?” “Who?”

“The woman.”

“How do you know there’s a woman?”

“Ian, I may be a visual woman, but I do have ears.” There was that smile again. “Besides, your sister told me. What are you going to cook?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Ian hesitated.

“But you have an idea…” his mother coaxed.

“Yes,” replied Ian, and suddenly he knew. “I was thinking beef bourguignon. Something rich and comforting. With a deep red wine to match it. She’s like that. And maybe a tiramisù for dessert, all those layers of cake and whipped cream and rum and coffee. And espresso, no sugar, for contrast.”

He stopped, embarrassed. He realized he sounded like someone he knew, and then realized he was talking to her.

IAN’S APARTMENT was small, the distinction between dining and kitchen table a psychological rather than physical one, and in any case only large enough for two. But Ian had bought a round white linen tablecloth and borrowed heavy silver candlesticks from his elderly neighbor downstairs who required only that Ian tell her every detail the next day, a payment Ian sincerely hoped he would be able to mortgage. He had debated for a long half hour at the florist shop over what he should buy until the exasperated store owner had simply opened the huge refrigerator full of roses and daisies and carnations and shoved him inside.

“Choose for yourself,” she said, and he had seen them at the back, resting quietly on a shelf above the white plastic buckets of red carnations and yellow daisies. Dusty dark purple tulips, their edges touched with black. They had cost almost as much as the bottle of Côtes du Rhône resting in the bottom of his shopping bag, but he didn’t care.

. . .

THE BEEF BOURGUIGNON was bubbling in the oven, the smells of meat and red wine, onions and bay leaf and thyme murmuring like travelers on a late-night train. The kitchen was damp from the heat of cooking; Ian opened the window above the sink and the scent of the basil and oregano plants on the window-sill awoke with the breeze. He stood in front of the window, the warm water and soap slipping between his fingers as he washed the pots and pans, setting them to drain in the wooden dish rack, feeling the cool air run over his damp skin. When the kitchen was clean, he pulled out miniature bottles of dark rum and Grand Marnier, then the ingredients he had found at the Italian store on the other side of town—thick white mascarpone, whipping cream, bars of bittersweet and milk and white chocolate, glossy black espresso beans, and a blue box of pale savoiardi cookies. He laid them carefully along the counter, adding a canister of sugar and four eggs, cool from the refrigerator.

Ian looked at the assembled group in front of him. “We’re making this for her,” he told the ingredients, “and I’ve never done this before, so a little help wouldn’t hurt.”

He started with a thing he knew. From the cabinet next to the sink he took a small stovetop espresso pot, bought the weekend after the linoleum date with Antonia. As with making rice, the espresso pot had started out as a source of frustration, but over the weeks as he had practiced, learning the tricks and desires of the small, simple machine, the preparation of his small cup of espresso had become a ritual part of his morning, as necessary as a shower, as familiar and calming as watering the pots on his windowsill. So it was with a sense of easy affection that he filled the base with water and then ground the espresso beans. When the sound in the grinder changed from the rattling of beans to the breathy whirring of the blades, he stopped the machine and carefully spooned the grounds into the center metal container of the espresso pot, using the base of his thumb to tamp down the soft brown mass, feeling