Cooking the Books Read Online Free PDF Page A

anyway.
    After its consumption Daniel went out to pursue his lost papers and I watched Dollhouse series 2, about which I am still ambivalent, before putting myself and Horatio to bed for an early start. I had prepared my bag: good apron, spare socks in case the freezer failed and I got soaked (this had happened before), one good knife and my favourite Venetian-glass rolling pin. If I was going to make pastry, it would be good pastry.
    I fell asleep full of forebodings. I didn’t like being manipulated, even by fate. Manipulated to what end?
    Presumably fate knew . . .

But there was bread to bake the next morning, so I baked it. The Mouse Police performed their morning rituals—display hunting trophies, eat breakfast, scamper off for tuna scraps—and curled up to snooze the day away on their flour sacks. I took in an order of flour, made muffins, drank coffee, sifted sugar over my not-as-good-as-Jason’s muffins (strawberry) and awaited the carrier. I hadn’t worked in a kitchen for years, not since I started Earthly Delights and abandoned paid employment.
    Commercial kitchens are fraught places. Ordinary kitchens can get intense, especially when two people are trying to do things and they get in each other’s way. Domestic murders happen in kitchens, where there are a suitable array of objects both sharp and blunt with which to commit them. I had worked in places which were more like war zones than places of culinary refinement. I was, therefore, a little anxious when I hopped, as instructed, into the anonymous white van for the short trip to Docklands.
    All drivers of anonymous white vans have a hidden flaw. In some it is that they channel Ayrton Senna and one arrives at a destination—if one arrives—feeling like one has fallen from space without a parachute. Some smoke like chimneys. Some avoid washing and laundry, presumably for the mortification of the flesh. It is as though they know they are multifold, and need to stand out from the pack.
    This one whistled. Quite tunefully, I admit, though it was getting on my nerves by the time we arrived. ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ has never been my favourite song. Strange selection for a young man, who must have got his driver’s licence a scant six months ago. By mail.
    Docklands is huge. We trolled along the avenue of palm trees to a large building, painted in a cheerful grey colour. It looked like a wartime Nissen hut. There were probably reasons for this. Over the front door was emblazoned harbour studios with a logo which vaguely resembled a boat with sails, or possibly a seagull after collision with a helicopter. We zoomed around to the back entrance, where the kitchen was, and found ourselves in a grimy paved car park spotted with a few discouraged trees (palms) and a huge stain where someone had spilled something like red wine. Or blood, of course. My driver chuckled.
    ‘Beef burgundy, and didn’t she go mad!’ he explained.
    I expect she did. Beef burgundy takes ages to make and the ingredients are expensive. That must have been enough beef stew to feed a whole crew—utterly wasted. I felt sad.
    The driver waved me towards a kitchen door—you can tell by the smell, the rubbish bins, and the butts of those slipping out for a smoke between courses. Because smoking is disapproved of, no one provides receptacles for the butts. I suppose there is logic in there somewhere. But it makes all places of tobacco resort insanitary.
    The kitchen was large, full of people, steamy from various pots and noisy. As expected. Tommy sighted me and dived through the ruck.
    ‘There you are!’ she exclaimed, as though I had kept her waiting. ‘Pies today, pies, fillings are over there, staff toilets and lockers over there, coffee over there.’ As she was brandishing a large knife, I did not protest at my welcome. I stashed my basket, washed my hands, put on my apron and took possession of my pastry corner.
    You need a light hand—and a light heart, so the saying goes—to make