The Food of Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

thin man of few words, he made a circuit of the empty tables like a senior commander inspecting his troops. Occasionally he picked up a
    glass and held it to the light, or pushed a fork a few millimetres to the left. On these occasions he said nothing, but Franciscus
    instantly pounced on the offending object, handing it to a waiter to be replaced. Then Alain returned to his inner sanctum, the
    kitchen. The double doors swung shut; the noise and hubbub of
    the morning subsided. There were no last-minute preparations,
    for the simple reason that everything was prepared and ready. Like an army that knows it has manned a perfect defensive position, the staff of Templi waited in silence for the first customer to show himself at their door.
     
    By half-past two the kitchen was humming like a well-oiled machine, pushing out intricate assemblies of haute cuisine in great gusts of fire and steam. The cooks worked like demons, their fingers dancing
    gracefully over the ingredients in a blur of dicing and stripping and mixing. Despite the extreme pressure they were under, and the urgency with which they worked, there was no yelling or swearing, and with the exception of the head chef, who called out the orders as the waiters brought them in, they rarely spoke. Alain’s goal was consistent perfection, time after time, and no hint of chaos or
    temper was allowed to disturb the concentration of the dozens of craftsmen who toiled to realise his vision. Only once, when a commis cropped a saucepan, did the great man pause, turn to his head chef, and murmur something in his ear. No one heard what was said, but they all knew that the commis would be gone by the end of service.
    lo work at Templi was a privilege. Staff came from as far afield as Australia, France and America for the opportunity to learn from the master. It was not an honour that could be squandered on incompetents.

Alain
    Dufrais ran his kitchen the traditional way, with a brigade
    made up of five distinct levels. At its apex was himself, the chef de cuisine, with a head chef, Karl, as his deputy. Karl ran the service, which was to say that he called out individual orders to the next levels in the hierarchy - the sous chefs and the chefs de partie. While the sous chefsworked the pass, putting the food on to plates, saucing, garnishing and checking it, the chefs de partie were each responsible for a different part of the kitchen. The saucier was responsible for meat, the entre metier for vegetables, the garde manger for cold dishes, and the patissier for desserts. Underneath these were a
    number of specialist assistants or demi chefs. Then, finally, there were the lowest of the low - the commis, who did whatever they were told to do by whoever told them to do it. It was a hierarchy as rigid and as immutable as a medieval society, in which everyone knew their place and knew, too, that their continued existence in that place depended entirely on the patronage of the person directly above
    them.
     
    Bruno had recently been promoted to patissier. His corner of
    the kitchen was away from the rest - to protect the delicate
    threads of sugar and confections of raw egg from heat and busde but two or three times during service Alain Dufrais would come
    over to check that here, too, all was proceeding exactly as it
    should. Occasionally he dipped his finger into one of Bruno’s
    saucepans to taste what was in it - he had never been known to
    show pain, even when the liquid was boiling - and on several
    occasions over the past week this had been followed by a curt nod of approval. These accolades had been noted by the other chefs de partie, and there was not one of them who did not wish that it had been themselves the nods were directed at.
    Bruno himself had no time to consider whether he was doing
    well or not. By three, when the other chefs were winding down,
    he was still in a flurry of movement - caramelising, whipping,
    folding, creating airy extravagances of sugar and cream and