“OH, LAUREN, there is no crab for you to do this week. Isn’t that good news?” Arnaud said, shaking my hand firmly as he did every morning upon my arrival.
It had taken me a few weeks to grasp the French custom of circulating and greeting every member of the kitchen staff personally with a “Bonjour” and a firm handshake. I initially felt awkward walking around the vast kitchen and saying “Bonjour” thirty times, but I ultimately appreciated how it helped build camaraderie and a sense that even the most inexperienced cook was an essential part of Team Senderens. And this occurred not once, but twice a day. My shift at Senderens ended only after I shook Jérôme’s hand good-bye and tossed off a round of “Au revoirs.”
“Great,” I said, relieved not to have to spend another week in perdition. The previous week, I had devoted thirty hours to shelling crab in the upstairs prep kitchen and I was ready for a change.
“He’s just kidding. There are fifty kilos upstairs,” said Jérôme, who was standing next to Arnaud and chopping thousands of dollars’ worth of pungent black truffles. The holiday season was now in full swing, and truffles were showered on dishes like confetti at midnight on Times Square. An earthy, primal scent invaded the kitchen every morning when the truffles were brought out from a special refrigerator kept under Jérôme’s lock and key.
“Yes, Chef,” I said, crestfallen but putting on a brave face.
“No, I’m joking. There’s no crab this week,” said Jérôme. Like Arnaud, he enjoyed poking fun, and particularly at me, the foreigner. The other women on staff weren’t treated this way.
“Oh, okay. Right,” I said, still not entirely sure who was kidding. It’s difficult to discern irony and get jokes in a foreign language, and I viewed myself as the most gullible person ever to walk into the Senderens kitchen because I assumed every word spoken to be the truth. In any case, I approached the meat station instead to assist them with their mise en place.
“Salut, Lauren. Can you dry these cabbage leaves?” asked Allesia, one of the other female cooks.
The cabbage leaves were blanched in a deep pan and then filled with a creamy, buttery mixture of minced cabbage, bacon, and onions and baked until it formed a dense cake. After I separated the leaves and wrung out the water, I layered them on paper towels and enclosed the sheet in plastic wrap so that Allesia’s mise en place would be primed for the following day.
The meat station had run out of its plastic wrap, so I went to the pastry kitchen for more. While I was waiting for Hliza, one of the pastry cooks, to finish using the plastic wrap, an unfamiliar guy approached me, pointed to a pot of custard, and asked, “Qu’est-ce que c’est?”
“I don’t know what it is. Are you American?” I said in French, detecting a foreign accent in his speech.
He nodded. “From Canada, actually.”
“Great. I’m from New York.” I was happy to have a new friend in the kitchen. After all, nothing brings two people together quicker than being outsiders with an imperfect grasp of the language in a foreign country.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by his arrival. The professional kitchen isn’t like other workplaces, where when someone leaves, he or she sends out a mass e-mail good-bye or gets a low-key party with cake. Here, people came and went in a steady stream, with new faces replacing old ones, no explanations or introductions given. But while any professional kitchen engenders a high turnover, there seemed to be a permanently revolving door at Senderens.
I later learned that the new cook’s name was Seth and that he had just moved to Paris to be the new commis for the fish station (replacing Nico, who was moving to the garde manger station). During his first two weeks, Seth struggled as I had: I noticed the vacant look that comes from searching for the ladles because no one gave you a proper kitchen tour or not knowing that the words for metal mixing bowl and ladle are cul-de-poule and louche because you hadn’t had occasion to learn them.
A few days later, Seth and I were cleaning the walk-in refrigerator after the lunch service, working in an assembly line to remove the overloaded crates of eggplant, lemons, peppers, and radishes so we could mop the floor. While I began filling up a bucket with soapy water, Stéphane, now finished with running the lunch service, stalked over to Seth. Frowning deeply and shaking his fist, he scolded Seth, “You can’t stand around doing nothing during service. You have to work.”
“But the plates were different with this group of chefs,” said Seth in broken, awkward French. I had spent all of the lunch service in the prep kitchen mincing lemon confit, but from their conversation, I gathered that Seth hadn’t done well helping Allesia at the meat station.
“Don’t make excuses. I work with both teams, and the plates aren’t that different. You’ve really got to step up the pace or else. This isn’t just any restaurant. We’ve got two Michelin stars here. You know, if you work hard here for a while and keep up with the pace, then you’ll be able to get a job at any restaurant in the world,” said Stéphane.
“Yes. It’s good for the résumé,” Seth said sheepishly. I continued to organize the vegetable crates at my feet while eavesdropping on their conversation. I sympathized with Seth—I knew he was trying, and being called out by one of the head chefs is humiliating.
“Do you understand me?” Stéphane snarled, and Seth nodded. Although the commanding chefs were amiable and joked with me, moments like these made me worry about my job performance. Since starting at Senderens, I woke up at least twice nightly, anxious about the next day, and I had developed a stress-related eye twitch, something I hadn’t had since my days working at the PR firm. Ridiculous, yes, but working (even unpaid) in a restaurant of Senderens’s level was flat-out humbling.
But I gained a little confidence a few days later while trimming red endive into heart-shaped slivers for the scallop dish. “You know, every day you get better,” said Erez, who was working next to me, cutting spinach into thin strips. Erez was one of my favorite people in the kitchen, calm and thoughtful but not overly serious, and an all-around nice guy.
“Thanks. It’s hard at first, thinking in a foreign language and not knowing the different words for kitchen tools or not fully understanding instructions,” I said.
“Of course. I see Seth and I know it’s hard for him, too.” Erez understood the lifestyle adjustments required when living abroad and being unable to express everything exactly the way you want. Three years before, he had followed his French girlfriend, whom he’d met in Israel, to Paris. Now he was fluent in French and married with a baby daughter, but he still didn’t feel totally at home in France.
“Did you light the candles for Hanukkah?” asked Erez. The eight-day holiday was already under way, and Erez knew I was Jewish from a prior conversation.
“No, I didn’t, and… I don’t know…” I was ashamed that I’d been too lazy to buy even an inexpensive menorah and unwilling to admit that I didn’t want to celebrate alone. Hanukkah was one of the few Jewish holidays that we celebrated together as a family, lighting the rows of blue candles and feasting on crispy, fried potato pancakes with sour cream and applesauce.
“Well, would you like to come to my house to celebrate?”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to impose.”
“It’s not imposing. Come over to my house on Friday. I’ll cook something for us all.”
His invitation touched me. I had a real friend in the kitchen and, now, outside the kitchen, too.
IT TOOK AN HOUR and a half on the RER, the regional train system, to reach Nogent-sur-Marne, the Parisian suburb where Erez and his family lived. It was the last night of Hanukkah and I didn’t arrive until way after sundown, but no one minded pushing back the ritual candlelighting by a few hours.
“How was the rest of your week?” asked Erez once we were inside the warm and cheerful apartment.
“Good. Pretty much the same as every week. I shelled lots of crab,” I said.
He shook his head and said to his wife, “Every day we boil kilos and kilos’ worth of crab and then we give them to Lauren to shell upstairs. It takes hours.” He turned back to me. “But at least you’ll get really good at it so if you work somewhere with crab on the menu, you’ll know what to do.”
“All the stagiaires do work like that?” asked Erez’s wife.
“They aren’t really in the main kitchen much,” Erez told her. At least Erez appreciated that shelling crabs was arduous. Simply put, menial prep work is the apprentice’s way of life at a two-star Michelin restaurant.
“So I’ve made a small something, more Israeli than French. Do you know of bourekas?” Erez asked me after he had said the prayers, the nine flickering candles illuminating a green-and-blue mosaic menorah.
I definitely remembered the flaky pastries I had savored so often in Tel Aviv. Sitting around Erez’s simple wooden coffee table, we ate the bourekas and several other dishes he had whipped up, including hummus, eggplant spread, and tomato-and-mozzarella salad, which made me nostalgic for my friends in Tel Aviv and the meals we had shared together.
“Have you seen this?” Erez asked, bringing over a prepackaged meal of veal blanquette with girolle mushrooms and rice from the refrigerator. He pointed to the picture of an old man in glasses. The one and only Alain Senderens. My boss, technically, whom I still hadn’t met.
Scrutinizing the box, I shook my head. Dominating the upper-right-hand corner was a large white logo for Carrefour, the supermarket conglomerate, while the box itself displayed inviting veal chunks in cream sauce with wild mushrooms on a plate next to a glass of wine. Regal and rather formal, this box was the Rolls-Royce of TV dinners. Although in France they would never have called this a TV dinner; eating in front of the television was a faux pas. This was a “Carrefour Selection meal,” marked with an expiration date only two weeks away.
“There are lots of different ones,” said Erez, pulling out more boxes from the refrigerator. I saw guinea hen with chanterelles, Mediterranean vegetable tart, penne with arrabbiata sauce.
“Oh, is that why the Carrefour people were having a function at the restaurant the other day?” I guessed that Erez had received these meals for free.
“They come in a lot. It’s good for Senderens. He gets a lot of money from it.”
“I bet. It’s so funny to think that he makes frozen dinners, though.” Carrefour is the largest retailer in Europe and the second largest retailer in the world, selling everything from food to DVDs to clothing to furniture. Millions of people probably now recognized Senderens not for his herculean achievements in haute cuisine, but for his face in the freezer aisle.
“Yeah, but money is money,” said Erez.
“YOU’RE IN PARIS for a year?” I asked Seth as we shivered in the covered arcade during our brief break following lunch.
“Yeah. It’s a good experience so far at Senderens, but I’d also like to work at a three-star restaurant. Do you think it’s that different?” he asked Erez, who had joined us. I, too, had been wondering what differentiated a two-star restaurant from a three-star one. Certainly the price and prestige would be greater, but given how intense the Senderens kitchen was, I couldn’t imagine it being much more serious elsewhere.
“At a three-star place, they are only doing sixty plates per service, so they have more time to focus on each plate.”
“So it’s less pressure?” asked Seth.
“Not less pressure, but a different kind of pressure. Those plates have to be absolutely perfect, with twenty different components on each plate. Here, we’re doing ninety, a hundred covers, and it’s more rushed, so there isn’t quite the same attention to details.”
Funnily enough, though, in its former life Senderens was a three-star restaurant. Before it became Senderens, 9, place de la Madeleine housed the restaurant Lucas Carton, a hallowed temple of haute French gastronomy, which Alain Senderens took over from its previous owners in 1985. Back in the 1970s, Alain Senderens was credited with introducing a “nouvelle cuisine” that swept away the heavy butter-and cream-laden dishes of the past. Lucas Carton snared three Michelin stars—the pinnacle of gastronomic success.
After running its kitchen for twenty-eight years, he finally bought the restaurant in 2005 and made the shocking decision to return his stars to Michelin, claiming he no longer wanted to appeal to their standards by charging exorbitant prices while obsessing over details like how napkins were folded or the exact words waiters had to use to greet guests. So he closed Lucas Carton and launched Senderens, a “bistro de luxe,” with less fussy food, prices that were 40 percent lower, some new personnel, and a simpler decor (the belle époque dining room gave way to questionable space age, color-changing mood lighting along with a shaglike carpet covering the upstairs floor). Senderens fared just fine without the stars—profits apparently skyrocketed. And Michelin awarded him two stars anyway, which he decided to keep.
Now balding and wearing unfashionable bottle-thick glasses, Senderens would roam the restaurant’s hallways, but I never saw him cooking in the kitchen, and we hadn’t ever been introduced. He breezed through about once every two weeks, checking on paperwork in the office and speaking only to Jérôme, while we cooks looked on with equal parts fear and admiration.
In many respects, converting Lucas Carton to a bistro was clever, and not only for Senderens’s bank account. Despite being called a “bistro,” Senderens is not a place for a quick bite, nor is it cheap. Appetizers run up to $50, while entrées hit $60. Add dessert and wine, and you’re looking at about $200 per person. It is not the type of restaurant you patronize on a whim or on a regular basis (unless you’re a titan of industry or a celebrity), but it’s a popular choice to celebrate a special event or a Christmas bonus. And it is the new face of haute cuisine.
While molecular gastronomy may intimidate the diner who doesn’t know what to expect, the haute cuisine of decades past prepared the diner for pomp and circumstance, heavy food, and an empty wallet. Vestiges of haute cuisine can still be found in France, but old-guard restaurants like Taillevent and Tour d’Argent have lost their cachet (and Michelin stars) in recent years. Senderens, meanwhile, was keeping up with the times and showing me the importance of continually adapting a cuisine. To be a successful restaurant, I was learning, you had to give the people what they wanted and you had to figure out what the people wanted before they even knew it themselves. And Alain Senderens had figured this out not once, but twice.
AS THE DRAB gray dusks of a Parisian winter turned into black nights, I kept busy and warm by cooking up a storm for myself after I got home from work. Even though my Parisian kitchen was small—minuscule, really—it didn’t stop me from whipping up creamy squash soup, seared steaks with homemade béarnaise sauce, quiche Lorraine, and mixed herb omelets, washed down with glasses of crisp wine and decadent pastries from the corner bakery. But in late December, people suddenly surrounded me. Max, a good friend from New York, was apprenticing for a month at Fromagerie Trotté, a tiny cheese shop in the Marais (apparently, getting a PhD in French literature wasn’t enough to keep him busy), and my parents popped over for a short Christmas visit. I worked during the day while they roamed the city’s slush-covered boulevards, enjoying Paris’s wealth of museums, monuments, and cafés. We dined together at restaurants I couldn’t afford or had been too intimidated to try on my own.
“Should we eat at Senderens?” Mom asked when we were debating Christmas Eve dinner.
“Of course we will,” said my father.
“I’m not sure. It’s okay for you guys to come, but I’m afraid to ask for any special treatment. I think the restaurant will invite me to eat there when I’m done with my stage, so I don’t want to make things awkward now by asking,” I said.
“I’m sure it won’t be awkward,” said my mom. “You remember how nice Wylie was to us at wd~50? And Daniel at Carmella? He drove us to that other restaurant forty-five minutes away, for goodness’ sake, and treated us twice.”
“Mom, you don’t understand. This place isn’t like the others.”
“Fine, we don’t have to go. I thought you’d want us to see where you’re working.”
“I do, but… well, maybe you can go without me on a different night.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not eating dinner in Paris without you. Anyway, I’m fine with not going. I don’t need fancy food; I’m a simple southern girl at heart. Maybe your father can have lunch there after I go back to New York. He can even use an alias so no one will know you’re related,” she said.
In truth, I find holiday meals at a restaurant depressing, as if the diners don’t have an inviting home or friends. I’m sure the Christmas meal at Senderens would knock my parents’ socks off—at several hundred dollars, it should— but to me, the holidays are about comforting foods hinting at luxury, not luxury foods hinting at comfort. I wanted to prepare a meal for my parents to show them firsthand how I was growing as a cook. I’d pull the stops out on Christmas Day, but since I’d be working until seven on Christmas Eve, I decided to serve an easy buffet of smoked salmon, salad, and cured meats. When Max confessed he was planning to spend Christmas Eve alone at his Parisian residence hall, I immediately invited him, and he promised to bring cheeses from his shop. On the Saturday before Christmas, I took my parents and we stood on line for twenty minutes along with many chic Parisians to place an order for a bûche de Noël, the traditional chocolate Yule log for Christmas Eve, at the legendary pastry shop Pierre Hermé.
For Christmas Day, I planned a traditional French festive meal for my parents, but with a few surprises. Having enjoyed pickled chanterelle mushrooms served with aperitifs, I wanted to replicate that, although I’d be winging it without a recipe. When I told Arnaud I would be spending Christmas Eve with my family, he promised to give me a log of Senderens’s foie gras, and I decided that green beans in vinaigrette would be the perfect counterpart to its rich, buttery goodness. I wanted something classic and hearty for the entrée, and without missing a beat, I chose beef Bourguignon. And for dessert, I opted for simple vanilla pots de crème—a fancy term for baked custard—with a warm salted caramel sauce, which I pictured runny and hot before it cooled slowly into a chewy confection, the custard only an excuse to eat the caramel.
As I composed the menu in my head, and then later on paper, I was confident that it would work. And on Christmas Day, rich aromas from the burgundy-and-port-flavored beef stew and simmering caramel enveloped my little apartment. We feasted, and at midnight all three of us declared, “Fini,” happy and full.
What you serve when you entertain others should be easy to make, but with a hint of the luxurious and unexpected. Ideally, much of it should be prepared ahead of time, because what fun is entertaining if you’re in the kitchen the whole time your guests are over? The following recipes are what I prepared for my family. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them as much as they did, whether it’s a special occasion or not.
This is the type of simple hors d’oeuvre that’s different yet elegant and can be prepared hours in advance. It works best as a small bite along with cocktails, perhaps accompanied by French breakfast radishes and salted almonds.
SERVES 4 TO 6 AS AN ACCOMPANIMENT TO DRINKS
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ pound oyster mushrooms, trimmed of the large central core, individual mushrooms cut in half if exceptionally large
Large pinch of kosher salt
Small pinch of freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Melt the butter and olive oil in a large skillet over high heat. When the butter starts to foam, add the mushrooms and cook until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Make sure not to overcrowd the pan or to stir too frequently. Add the salt and pepper and stir. Remove from the heat and add the sherry vinegar, making sure to coat all of the mushrooms. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and let cool completely, uncovered, in the refrigerator. Serve slightly cold or at room temperature.
Foie gras and green beans make an exceptional pair; the crisp freshness of the green beans and the acid from the vinaigrette help cut the richness of the foie gras. Foie gras doesn’t come cheap, but this is a holiday dish. The green beans on their own or topped with cherry tomatoes or even slices of cured ham would make for a nice, less decadent starter.
SERVES 4
1 pound haricots verts (French-style green beans)
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
Pinch each of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 ounces cooked foie gras (look for foie gras that is labeled “torchon” or “mi-cuit”)
Trim off the tops and tails of the haricots verts. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the beans and cook over high heat until they are done but slightly crunchy, about 5 minutes. Drain into a colander and run under cold water until beans are cool to halt the cooking process. Spread them out on a paper towel to dry.
In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard and vinegar along with a pinch each of salt and pepper. Slowly whisk in the olive oil until fully combined. One hour before serving, toss the beans with the dressing and let sit at room temperature.
Slice the foie gras into thin slivers. Divide the beans evenly among four plates and top with the foie gras.
Beef Bourguignon is arguably the most French of French dishes, a stew so timeless because it is so perfect. I like a sauce that’s rich with a strong beefy taste, so I usually add a little Bovril, which is a meat extract paste. Unfortunately you can’t get Bovril in America anymore, but a strong beef demiglace will work. Letting the stew refrigerate overnight really helps the flavors develop; just reheat it in the stove the next day.
SERVES 4
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
2½ pounds boneless beef chuck, cut into 1½-inch cubes and trimmed of fat
2 tablespoons brandy
½ pound white pearl onions, peeled
½ pound small button mushrooms (you may halve or quarter them if they are large)
2½ tablespoons flour
2½ tablespoons meat extract paste (like Bovril) or beef demiglace
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1½ cups Burgundy or other red wine
¼ cup dry sherry
¾ cup port
1
cups beef stock
teaspoon pepper
Kosher salt, as desired
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a Dutch oven or other oven-safe, heavy-bottomed pot, melt the butter over medium-high heat on the stovetop. Brown the beef cubes, making sure not to crowd the pan. If necessary, do this in two to three batches. Remove the beef and set aside.
In a small saucepan, heat the brandy over medium-high heat until you see a vapor rising. Light a match (ideally a long one) and carefully tip the lighted end into the pan so that a large flame ignites. Let cook until the flame eventually dies, then pour the liquid over the beef.
Return the Dutch oven to the stovetop. There should be about 2 tablespoons’ worth of butter/fat remaining. Heat the pan to medium-high, then add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until they turn golden brown. Add the mushrooms and continue cooking for another 3 minutes.
In a small bowl, combine the flour, meat extract paste, and tomato paste until blended. Add to the Dutch oven and stir. Add the wine, sherry, port, and beef stock, and bring to a boil. Add the reserved beef cubes with their juice, the pepper, and the bay leaf, and stir until coated.
Cover the Dutch oven and bake in the oven, stirring occasionally, for at least 2½ hours, or until the beef is fork-tender. Let cool, then refrigerate overnight.
The next day: Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Remove the pot from the refrigerator and scrape off any congealed fat that may have risen to the top. Place the pot in the oven and cook for an additional 45 minutes or so, or until piping hot and thick. Add salt to taste (about ½ teaspoon), and serve with crusty bread.
Salted caramel is hands down my favorite flavor when it comes to dessert. If there’s salted caramel anything on a menu, I’ll order it. I’d eat this sauce straight out of the pot with a spoon, but when I have guests, I serve it with baked vanilla custard.
SERVES 6, OR 4 IF YOU USE LARGER RAMEKINS
2 cups half-and-half (or 1 cup cream and 1 cup whole milk)
1 vanilla bean, sliced in half and seeds scraped out
5 large egg yolks
½ cup sugar
Pinch of kosher salt
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon lemon juice
¼ cup water
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
3 tablespoons heavy cream or whole milk
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Bring the half-and-half and the vanilla bean and seeds to a boil, then remove from the heat and set aside, covered, for 15 minutes. Discard the vanilla bean.
Place the egg yolks, sugar, and salt in a bowl, and whisk until pale yellow, about 2 minutes. Slowly whisk in the cream mixture until fully combined, then strain using a fine-meshed sieve. Pour the strained custard base into 6 ramekins or other small baking dishes, leaving about a ½-inch space from the rim.
Place ramekins in a baking dish, then add enough hot or boiling water to the baking dish to come halfway up the sides of ramekins. Cover the baking dish tightly with foil and bake until the custard is set but slightly jiggly in the center, about 20 to 25 minutes.
Transfer individual ramekins to a rack to cool completely, uncovered, about 1 hour. Chill in the refrigerator, covered, until cold, at least 3 hours. About half an hour before serving, prepare the caramel sauce. In a heavy-bottomed pot, combine the sugar, lemon juice, water, and salt, and bring to a boil. Continue cooking at a boil until the sugar is a dark amber color, about 6 minutes, but do not stir the mixture. (You can swirl the pot occasionally once the mixture turns dark amber.) Remove from the heat and add the butter and cream, stirring until thoroughly combined and the butter has melted (the mixture will bubble and steam vigorously). Let cool slightly.
Pour a few tablespoons of the warm caramel sauce into the ramekins so that the sauce covers the custard. Serve immediately.