Vanilla Salt Read online

  Vanilla Salt

  ADA PARELLADA

  Translated by

  Julie Wark

  ALMA BOOKS

  ALMA BOOKS LTD

  London House

  243–253 Lower Mortlake Road

  Richmond

  Surrey TW9 2LL

  United Kingdom

  www.almabooks.com

  First published in Catalan by Editorial Planeta, S.A. in 2012

  Translated from the Catalan by Julie Wark

  This translation, based on a revised text, was published by Alma Books Limited in 2014

  Translation rights arranged by Sandra Bruna Agencia Literaria, SL

  All rights reserved

  © Ada Parellada, 2012

  Translation © Julie Wark, 2014

  The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Institut Ramon Llull

  Cover design: Jem Butcher

  Ada Parellada asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  ISBN: 978-1-84688-333-0

  EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-84688-342-2

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.

  Vanilla Salt

  CONTENTS

  1 Bitter

  2 Sour

  3 Salty

  4 Sweet

  5 Death

  6 Flame

  7 Life

  8 Uproar

  9 Tomato

  10 Potato Flowers

  11 Haricot Beans

  12 Peppers

  13 Vanilla Salt

  14 Chocolate

  15 Maize

  16 Turkey

  17 Pineapple

  18 Avocado

  19 Sunflower

  Glossary

  1

  BITTER

  Except for the incarnation and death of the Creator, the greatest event since the creation of the world is the discovery of the Indies.

  Historia general de las Indias

  FRANCISCO LÓPEZ DE GÓMARA

  Àlex could really do with some help in the kitchen. It’s now a week since the last bloody moron walked out on him. “You know what I say? Go and stick turnips up every one of your orifices, including the smallest one,” he bawled at the kitchen hand who, also enraged, flung down his apron on Table 3.

  Since Moha left six months ago, things have gone from bad to worse. Everyone’s broke, that’s true. Àlex, owner of the Antic Món restaurant, hardly speaks or listens to anyone, but even so, he can’t avoid the news that a lot of businesses are closing down. Crisis.

  Well, that’s not quite the case for everyone. Can Bret is just opposite Antic Món and they’ve got plenty of work. More than that, they’re flat out. On weekdays it’s full of workers from the industrial estates around the town of Bigues i Riells. Well, they’re not exactly workers in blue overalls but the so-called white-collar lot, who don’t have a cent of their own in their pockets. If they’re lunching with a supplier they’ll go for a Priorat red, one of the pricey ones. If they’re eating with clients and have to pay themselves, they order the house wine, saying, “It’s from a great boutique winery I’ve just discovered.” Slick bastards!

  Weekends are pure madness at Can Bret. Its customers even invade Antic Món’s car park! Àlex can’t stand it. When this happens, he usually rushes out of the kitchen like a raving lunatic, no matter what he’s doing at the time. If he’s filleting a sea bass, he flies out with the fish in his hand, brandishing the weapon at his neighbour’s customers. Sometimes, however, he gets tired of yelling at them and lets them park wherever they bloody like. Anyway, it’s ages since he’s needed all the spaces in his car park.

  Ever since Can Bret joined the calçotada craze – churning out charcoal-caked mountains of barbecued spring onions smothered in romesco sauce, which diners are then supposed to eat with their fingers – people have been coming in hordes. Those bastards are doing fine. Each of the owner’s daughters drives a brand-new Mini, and one of them is pink. Poor girls, they look so damn ridiculous, Àlex thinks as he peels apples and stares out the kitchen window. This is one of his main distractions when he’s cooking: slyly checking out the competition’s customers. He finds them all horrendous, just like he thinks that everything they have and do at Can Bret is utterly despicable.

  Now, Àlex is different. He really knows the trade. He’s pure. He’s honest. He never studied in any catering school but, for anyone who lives it intensely enough, life is as good as a PhD from Harvard. It’s extremely demanding, but if you see it through to the end you come out on top. The rest fall by the wayside. Àlex graduated with honours from the University of Life, but he’s a little rusty in Diplomacy. He’d be lucky to get five out of ten for that.

  The apples are ready. He sautés them in a little butter with a sprinkling of sugar until they glow with the golden tones of the setting sun. He then puts them aside in a bowl and, as usual when he makes this dish, can’t resist having a taste. They’re divine, and their intense fragrance pervades the kitchen. The feeling is difficult to describe, but it takes him back to the family kitchen, when he was a little kid and the house rang with laughter.

  In a medium-sized casserole he browns the chicken thighs in olive oil and then adds the chopped onion and a clove of garlic. He turns the heat down and lets it all cook slowly. Now it’s time to add a generous dash of brandy and, as part of the recipe, have a tipple himself, because his communion with the chicken must be complete, body and soul. Perked up by the brandy, the chicken starts singing, at first with great gusto, then finishing with the sweet murmur of a little hymn to spring. After tipping in the brandy and draining his own glass Àlex sings too, his rendition of Lluís Llach: “Pull, pull together and we’ll all be free…”

  This is a strange ritual he often indulges in. Each dish has its own song and Lluís Llach is great for chicken with apples. Now he covers the chicken thighs with broth and keeps them simmering. “If we pull together, the tyrant will fall, and bad times will end in no time at all.”

  The phone rings. It would bloody have to be right now, when he’s happy cooking and singing ‘L’estaca’. Who the hell’s trying to bother him this time?

  Half an hour, half a bloody hour this woman’s had him on the phone. It’s the third time she’s called this week. Yes, yes, don’t worry, on Sunday he’ll cook macaroni for her grandson and, yes, he knows the boy’s only six and is allergic to every kind of food on the planet and, yes, of course he’ll put flowers on the table, and the cava will be properly chilled, just as a good sparkling wine should be… and two or three other requirements that have completely slipped his mind because he hasn’t made a note of any of them. If the customer knew that by the time he put down the phone he’d forgotten everything she said, she’d have a fit.

  All this crap really winds him up. His customers, in Antic Món, are supposed to come here to eat, not to sniff flowers. Flowers, smells… What he can smell now isn’t flowers, that’s for sure… It’s chicken! Fuckfuckfuck! The chicken’s burning!

  He runs into the kitchen but it’s too late. The chicken’s burnt to a cinder. The broth’s all gone and the casserole’s pitch black. Bloody woman!

  He sits at the kitchen table, staring at the wreck and the dark smoke rising from it. He pours himself a glass of brandy, right to the b
rim, and sips at it as he eats the cooked apples one by one.

  Tomorrow he’ll phone Òscar and will take on that friend of his as a kitchen hand. He’s got no choice. He needs help. He can’t do this all by himself. Well, if she’s no good he’ll boot her out on day one. He’s had a gutful of trying to help out losers.

  When Moha was here, everything worked better. Or at least it was easier. They even had a good laugh sometimes. His Moroccan kitchen hand turned up dirt-poor and holding out not just one hand but four. That was their joke, tirelessly repeated. It was always the same, because that kid really could do four things at once, and in a split second too: wash a saucepan, keep an eye on the fillet, stir the custard and turn out a pear tarte Tatin. He’d developed these skills because he frequently had to manage the stove, the dishwasher and a practically full restaurant all by himself, while Àlex, slumped over the kitchen table, slept off the effects of half a bottle of gin.

  Moha didn’t drink, of course. He was a fervent Muslim. He observed Ramadan and prayed a lot in that strange position, half stretched out on the floor, facing Mecca with his bum pointing at Àlex’s pernils de gla, the very best hams from the most pampered acorn-fed pedigree pigs.

  Àlex couldn’t handle that. When he saw him in that snail-like posture, he just had to kick his arse. It was a kind of therapy. After the well-aimed kick, his spiced loin of venison always turned out absolutely fantastic.

  Moha laughed too, because every kick would be repaid in eight days, he said, and he worked on his revenge all week. His imagination was boundless. One day he got a friend of his to phone, pretending to be the secretary from the Moroccan embassy. She informed Àlex that a government minister would be coming to have lunch at the restaurant. All the staff would have to wear traditional Moroccan dress in order to receive him: a white djellaba, pointed-toe slippers and a red skullcap. Moha’s friend went so far as to say that he needn’t worry about the attire, because everything was being sent from the embassy and he’d have it all very soon. The telephone conversation ended with: “We hope you will comply with the wishes of His Excellency the Minister.” The next day the finery arrived, and Àlex got all decked out in ceremonial dress to await the big shot. Moha’s friend rang at the restaurant door and, when Àlex went to open it, her camera didn’t stop flashing. The photos are still on all the social-media sites. Àlex nearly pissed himself laughing. He thought it was hilarious, but Moha had to pay. And he certainly paid! He had to cook dishes with sausages and other pork-based delicacies for two weeks.

  Moha was worth his weight in gold. They’d made a great team.

  “Boss, my dad’s sick. I’ve got to go to Fez to look after him and take care of the goats.”

  “Tell me another one, you bloody liar! You’ve never seen a goat in your life! And your dad lives right here. I see him every morning in the bar, breaking the Ramadan fast with a glass of cheap brandy,” Àlex said fondly.

  “OK, you caught me out again. You’re right, boss. My dad doesn’t live in Fez and he hasn’t got any goats and he’s healthy enough to chase all the skirts in Bigues i Riells. But, yeah, I’m going to Morocco. I’m getting married and my fiancée wants to go and live there. I’m going to work in a luxury hotel they’ve just opened in Fez. I got through the selection process,” Moha said, avoiding his boss’s eyes. Basically, he felt bad about leaving Àlex in the lurch.

  “Fuck the selection, Moha. In Fez they’ll pay you a pittance, and here you’ve managed to get a decent wage and status. You’re important to this restaurant.”

  This was the first time Àlex ever had a serious conversation with his kitchen hand.

  “Yeah, but my fiancée—”

  “You’re already henpecked, but you’re old enough to make your own mistakes. Come back when you’re ready. I’ll be here waiting for you. Good luck.”

  As a joke, Àlex gave him a bottle of Aromes de Montserrat, a nice little herbal liqueur supposedly invented by the Benedictine monks. But he also presented him with the best cookbook of his collection, Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste. In order to avoid any excessive sentimentality and to spare himself any emotions that might arise from the situation, he couldn’t help adding: “I’m giving you this book so you’ll learn to read and stop being such an ignorant bloody scarecrow.”

  Since Moha left, Àlex hasn’t found anyone who’s shown the least bit of interest. And of course it’s always ended in a fight. A cook must be rigorous. OK, some idiot might overlook a bone in a gilt-head bream. That he can live with, but there’s no way he’ll tolerate gluey risotto.

  That was what caused the row with the last lad to leave, a week ago now. With an outsize knife in his hand and jabbing the tip of the blade in the direction of the risotto, Àlex, his face red with rage, screamed at his kitchen hand.

  “Give me the phone number of your first-year teacher at the cooking school. I want to ask him about the blow job you gave him. It must have been bloody good if he passed you. You cretin! Have you actually looked at this shit you’re trying to pass off as risotto?”

  Àlex believed that the odd spat like this was part and parcel of moments of stress in the kitchen, but of course his assistants didn’t see it quite the same way. He’s had three in the last two months and as soon as he had them slightly trained they pissed off.

  Things are even worse in the dining room. This is a strange world for Àlex. He can’t imagine how anyone could possibly enjoy that kind of work. Of course, the turnover for dining-room staff is very high, as even the newspapers point out, and a restaurateur just has to get used to the fact.

  This kind of news report soothes Àlex, cushions him. That’s why he doesn’t get too worked up when his waiters only last two weeks.

  On their first day, waiters are punctual and seem keen to work, but that doesn’t last long. The first time they have to stay the whole afternoon serving a food critic who wants to drain a whole bottle of whisky, they start getting huffy, and they stay huffy until one day they tell him they’re leaving. They’re even less enchanted when they have to escort the critic in question to his car, bearing not only his weight but also his rambling account of the latest bickering over Michelin stars.

  Restaurant workers nowadays don’t understand that this is a trade that requires you to listen, serve and forget about it the moment you get home. With such a high staff turnover, Àlex chooses not to remember the waiters’ names. He calls them all, male and female alike, by the same name: Gabriel. That was what his first waiter was called, the one who stayed for three years. That one really was good, as good as Moha, who was with him for eight years but, in the end, decided to go back to Morocco.

  Dammit, he feels so bloody lonely.

  A few days ago, Àlex’s friend Òscar, who has a very popular food blog, dropped in and asked him a favour. It was difficult to say no, especially because he’s such a good chap, though this world is full of good chaps and Àlex couldn’t give a shit about them. What he greatly appreciates about Òscar are their conversations and the classes – though Òscar calls them tutorials – where he learns how to manage a computer and about this crap they call social media.

  His friend is infinitely patient when coaching him about tweets, hash tags and TripAdvisor, but Àlex quickly loses interest, saying that he’s not only unfit for logic but also computer illiterate. Then he jumps up from his chair and starts cooking, his way of showing his gratitude for Òscar’s help.

  Òscar’s thirty-five, fifteen years younger than Àlex, and adores cooking with him.

  Today they’re going to do sautéed vegetables with king prawns and onion cream. Snow peas, carrot and asparagus, all julienned. A splash of oil in a very hot pan in which the vegetables are shaken with a few flicks of the wrist, so they fly up and fall back again, tinged with gold outside and fresh and crunchy inside. Next, king prawns, well cleaned and, most important, the intestinal tract removed. They need just a touch of heat and then you let the sea fragrances seep into the vegetables, after which you enhance the
flavours with a dash of soya sauce. Finally, the onion cream, made with juicy purple Figueres onions. The onions are browned, and then cooked in the juices of the vegetables and a touch of cream until all the flavours mingle and it is reduced to a satiny texture. It then has to be well puréed to become a light, aromatic sauce.

  They eat the sautéed vegetables and Àlex quaffs almost a whole bottle of Terra Alta wine. Òscar tells him how he makes Parmentier potatoes. He thinks they’d go very well with the vegetables.

  “This Parmentier nonsense might please a few farm animals,” Àlex snaps. “It might make great pig slop, but people with any decent level of gastronomic culture would never stoop so low as to eat potatoes. Potatoes are for barbarians, like those pigs, that rabble over there in Can Bret.”

  Àlex spurns all food coming from the Americas. It’s not that he’s exclusively into local medieval cuisine, because he uses products from other cultures and cutting-edge techniques. He believes that Catalan cuisine was rich enough in ingredients before Columbus came along, so he’s not going to serve imported food pillaged from a continent subjugated by firearms and rape and thus steeped in blood. Furthermore, in his stringent view, these items have no culinary merit. He doesn’t want to know about them.

  This stubborn determination has earned him considerable prestige among connoisseurs because of the problems it entails. It has also lost him a large number of customers. After all, Antic Món is in Bigues i Riells, a nondescript town of second homes, and these families don’t understand why he can’t do fried potatoes to go with little Johnny’s veal cutlets, even if he offers caramelized turnip instead.

  What use are Àlex’s prizes if he has no customers?

  The previous night, after having to wait on the single table of a pair of architects, he locked himself in his cubbyhole of an office and started to do the sums: income, overheads, suppliers, wages, social security and all the rest. He can no longer afford to pay an accountant, so he has to do the books himself. Truth to tell, he hasn’t got a clue. To begin with, he couldn’t give a damn about management and, to cap it all, there’s not a drop left in the gin bottle. By two in the morning a bass drum is pounding in his head. His mum always said “Don’t mix”, but he’s gone and mixed sums and gin, a lethal combination. His head is foggy, but the conclusion is crystal clear: his clientele is dwindling fast and the Antic Món’s coffers are getting emptier and emptier by the day.