Too Many Cooks: A Tale of Food, Sex and Cooking School

By D. A. Lam and Clint Hutzulak

When burned out TV producer Adam Zi loses his job after corporate media downsizing, he decides to change his life by going back to school--cooking school.

Faster than you can make instant ramen, Adam lands waist deep in a thick stew of competitive corporate dropouts, disgruntled blue-collar workers and oddball drifters with delusions

• Language: English
• Publisher: Orange Tree
• Release date: Jan 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781999257606

D. A. Lam

D. A. Lam is a former television producer, a writer and a graduate of a well-regarded French culinary school.

Book preview

Too Many Cooks

Table of Contents

Epigraph

Credits

Author's Note

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Epilogue

Too Many Cooks: 

A Tale of Food, Sex and Cooking School

D. A. Lam

A novel

Orange Tree

Orange-Tree-Logo-colour

© 2020 D. A. Lam. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author, or in the case of photocopying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, [e-mail].

Cover and book design by Clint Hutzulak, Rayola Creative

Cover photo: Fu Lushou

Published in Canada by Orange Tree

For more information on the book and author please visit www.too-many-cooks.com

First Edition Printing January 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9992576-1-3 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-9992576-0-6 (ebook)

Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication data is available.

God sends meat but the Devil sends cooks.

– Works, John Taylor

I’ve Got You Under My Skin, lyrics and music by Cole Porter. Copyright owned by Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

I’ve Got The World On A String, lyrics by Ted Koehler, music composed by Harold Arlen. Copyright owned by EMI Mills Music, Inc. and Fred Ahlert Music Corporation/Ted Koehler Music.

Rock The Casbah, lyrics and music by The Clash. Copyright owned by Sony Music Entertainment (UK) Limited.

New York, New York, lyrics by Fred Ebb, music composed by John Kander. Copyright owned by Universal Music Group.

Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, lyrics by Leo Robin, music composed by Jule Styne. Copyright owned by Music Sales Corporation.

Like A Virgin, lyrics and music by Thomas Kelly and William Steinberg. Copyright owned by WEA International.

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better, lyrics and music by Irving Berlin. Copyright owned by the Estate of Irving Berlin.

The story The Stone Mind is from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, edited by Paul Reps, published by Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, VT, 1961.

The Hulk, the Leader, the Silver Surfer, Galactus, and the Human Torch are characters featured in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Archie, Veronica, and Mr. Weatherbee are characters featured in Archie Comics.

The following are registered trademarks: Aeron, Aspirin, Audi, Azimut, Band-⁠Aid, Beefeater, Betty Crocker, Blue Book, C&C, Chef Boyardee, Campari, Club Med, Cooks Illustrated, Crisco, Denny’s, Ericson, Fire Magic Echelon Diamond, Ginzu, GQ, Hallmark, Henckels, Iron Chef, Jeopardy!, Jell-O, Jimmy Choo, Johnny Walker, Kraft Dinner, Kasumi, Kramer, La Cornue, Louboutin, Lego, Lipitor, Louisville Slugger, M&M’s, Mazola, McDonald’s, Michelin, Minute Rice, Monopoly, Mossberg 590, Mr. Coffee, Mylar, National Geographic, Panavision, Pears, Pernod, Power Bars, Rachiele, Skittles, Snickers, Styrofoam, Thermador, Trident, Victorinox, Vulcan, Wesson, Woodstone, Zagat, and Zig-Zag.

This book is a work of fiction inspired by real people, real events and a real cooking school. It reflects the author’s recollections of experiences from once upon a time. Apart from historical figures, names and characteristics have been changed, events have been compressed, and dialogue has been recreated.

For all who cook.

Make the taste buds sit up and beg for more.

1

There it was. The future. A world inhabited by giant white bees, punching and grunting with great sweaty effort, hunched over doughy larval shapes. Some paddled the thick contents of shiny copper pots with heavy wooden spoons. Others sharpened chef's knives that glinted like a Samurai’s katana reflecting the late morning sun. Roasting pans layered with charred bones and chunks of carrots, celery and onion clattered in and out of ovens. Bricks of butter stacked in thirty-liter pots melted into a golden transparent liquid over flames whispering from coal black gas elements. Blenders whirred, transforming muscular beefsteak tomatoes into creamy pink froth. The stovepipe hats rose and fell as the bees tended to their duties.

The stovepipe hat. I tried to picture myself wearing one. The stovepipe was the head covering of choice but sprinkled throughout the class were snappy, white fast food hats with the occasional Chef Boyardee chapeau making an appearance. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could find one of those.

The registrar of the school was a handsome, full-bodied woman in her fifties, well-proportioned assets tailored to advantage in an expensive dark navy suit. Lillian Metcalf gestured at the smiling faces on the wall as we climbed the stairs. Framed class photographs of white bees in chef’s garb were aesthetically displayed, tall people in back, short ones in front, those of lesser stature compressed in the middle by the larger of girth serving as bookends.

Our graduates, said Lillian in crisp British tones, every consonant enunciated like fresh carrots snapping in two. Her manner was cordial but business-like, a tight perfunctory smile on her face. She was proud of her family.

Some have opened their own restaurants. Many are traveling successful apprenticeship paths with world-renowned chefs. Others have established themselves as very famous chefs in their own right. We provide a comprehensive introduction to cooking but mastery, as in any art form, is up to the individual student.

She hovered before one photo, lightly tracing her finger over the image of a virile-looking man with skin the color of nutmeg. Even covered by the ubiquitous white chef’s coat he was muscular and powerful, looking into the camera with an easy sensual smile, a confidence suggesting his abilities extended beyond culinary prowess.

Carlos, for example, is a very fine example of the caliber of student we produce at the school, said Lillian. She studied Carlos, lost for a few moments in a private reverie. An open hand nestled above an abundant bosom, her fingers entwined in the single strand of pearls around her neck. She took a deep breath of nostalgia and exhaled, releasing her hold on the past. The pearls dropped into place and she carried on with the tour.

At the top of the stairs a double doorway opened into a large industrial space resembling Santa’s workshop after an extreme makeover. Everything had the hard-edged gleam of stainless steel, the polish of white enamel surfaces and the indestructibility of faux-marble laminate. The hive buzzed louder causing my eardrums to vibrate.

The kitchen labs are where our students undergo vigorous training in all aspects of the culinary arts, said Lillian. The bees ground walnuts and chopped red peppers and whisked yolks in a blizzard of kitchen noises. My tinnitus flared. The Delacroix School for the French Culinary Arts offers an intensive twenty-week session that provides an invaluable foundation in the traditions of classical French cuisine.

Lillian turned to make eye contact. "It is for the student who is seriously pursuing a career in the food and hospitality industry." She paused, allowing me to absorb not only the industrious panorama but to realize the level of commitment required. Amateurs were discouraged early in the application process.

As we stepped into the center of activity, one student captured a mucous-laden sneeze in his hand, surreptitiously wiped it on his apron and resumed kneading bread dough. Lillian ignored the breach of hygiene and held a steady course for the lone figure in white who was sans covered head. A lean, fastidious man in his thirties with light salt and pepper hair styled, spritzed and blow-dried in place patrolled the floor, scanning, sniffing, prodding and probing food parts. He sported a full Musketeer-style mustache, a luxurious crescent moon, neatly trimmed and precisely combed. All that was missing was a saber, a cape and a balcony to leap from.

Chef Émile, this is a prospective student, Adam…Zye, is it? Lillian was well-practiced in her cocktail party hostess introduction. She made me sound more interesting than I felt.

Zi. Rhymes with sea.

I beg your pardon, said Lillian. She noted the correction on the manila folder in her hand with a meticulous scratch of her pen. "The school is very fortunate to have Chef Émile Frescati on staff. Chef Émile has been trained in the European tradition. Chef, Mr. Zi is interested in entering the professional program."

"Monsieur Zi," said the chef, beaming a smile full of charm.

"Bonjour, monsieur. Etes-vous Français?" I retrieved my best high school French from a bog of hazy long-term memory.

"Vous-parlez Français? Formidable! Non, je suis Suisse." From Switzerland. He straightened up as if he’d just heard the opening bars of his national anthem.

Ahhhh, I nodded, stalling the conversation in a cul de sac. My meager pouch of small talk was empty. The chef continued smiling.

Well, I’ll leave you bilinguals for the moment, said Lillian. Chef Émile will show you the kitchen. If you have any further questions don’t hesitate to drop by my office on your way out. She delivered her ambassador’s smile and turned, exhibiting a hypnotizing rhythm in the sway of her hips. The chef gave her the once-over, a leer in the best European tradition. The chef was a connoisseur. I’d seen that look before.

To put myself through college, one summer I’d worked as a waiter in the coffee shop car on a passenger train. Overseeing the kitchen was a short-order cook named Walter who had never gone to cooking school and barely had any formal education at all. Slightly built with thinning hair, Walter wore glasses that magnified his off-center eyes to the size of black poker chips. He was considered a ladies’ man of sorts, the envy of his peer group. Not an obvious example of the alpha male, rumor had it Walter packed some heft, endowed with a kielbasa that more than compensated for his lack of musculature, hair or height. There was no way of confirming his box scores but according to those who knew such things, Walter had a batting average rivaling the best pre-steroid hitters.

Every man has a favorite part of the female anatomy and Walter was obsessed with a woman’s bottom line the way some men are fixated by the D cup, a well-turned calf or dimples in the lower back. Walter’s all-consuming fetish was a woman’s caboose and bigger was unquestionably better. Between frying frozen pucks of Salisbury steak and slapping together layers of processed turkey, limp strips of pre-cooked bacon and droopy lettuce leaves against slices of toasted white bread for clubhouse sandwiches, Walter would stick his head out the galley and gaze at the specific object of his desire as its owner ambled past the doorway and down the corridor. Whenever he saw a shape that captured his fancy, the loose fabric of his chef’s pants filled with tumescence and grew taut as his divining rod pointed in the direction of nirvana.

Walter had the ability to emit industrial-strength pheromones and a woman whose antennae were purring at the right frequency would feel bathed in a mysterious force that compelled her to stop in mid-step and hunt for the source of attention. She would spin in a tight about face, acknowledge her admirer with a knowing smile and retrace her steps to the galley, locking eye contact as powerful as neodymium magnets with Walter who grinned back, part Casanova, part crocodile. In less time than it took to pop open a can of beer and pour it into a chilled glass, Walter would be chatting her up with the ease of spreading butter cream over red velvet cupcakes.

One day during a post lunch-traffic lull, the train rolling through flatlands and the clickety-clack of steel wheels passing over rail joints soothing him into a reflective state, Walter asked, You like ‘em big Adam? You like ‘em big?

We had dissimilar tastes in the female form but I respected his point of view, a perspective that accommodated a larger depth of field than mine. When I told him I preferred a more slimmed down version he attempted to steer me toward a curvier and not so narrow path.

Son, you don’t know what you’re missing, he said about to deliver a sexual manifesto that could be printed on the front of a T-shirt. The bigger the cushion, the better the pushin’!

The chef flicked me a look, echoing Walter’s query. We barely knew each other and already he was trying to bond. I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. In my current state of singularity, anything was possible. The TV news business had wreaked havoc on any semblance of a love life. Lately the sex was solo, predictable, cheap and safe. The chef surveyed Lillian until she fell out of range and then he re-focused his attention, the public relations ball now firmly in his court.

A typical school day was divided into two main sections. Students first attended a lecture where they learned essential cooking principles and techniques, the language and vocabulary of the French culinary tradition, the tricks of the trade, the insider secrets, and the fast track tips to cooking success. The rest of the day, easily five to six hours, students practiced what was preached. Working in teams, they prepared menus based on the lecture, a multi-course trinity of appetizer, entrée and dessert. It was just like working in a real restaurant, said the chef, only there were no customers. And, since it was impossible to learn to cook without learning how to taste, students themselves were the guinea pigs at mealtime, enjoying or rejecting the fruits of their labor.

Because one had to adapt quickly to constantly shifting conditions in the kitchen, the culinary overseers frequently changed teams without warning. Like blind dates and pre-arranged marriages, these random orchestrations of strangers had the potential for joy or disaster and often required you to make the best of things from the worst of partners. A harmonious kitchen meant one had to ignore any off-the-clock idiosyncrasies of the person next to you. What he or she did in their spare time, however distasteful, was none of your business in the kitchen. Closet serial killer, guilt-ridden kleptomaniac, abusive alcoholic, door-to-door religious proselytizer, midnight rambling Peeping Tom, compulsive laundry room lingerie collector, fully passable cross- dresser, chronically unreliable deadbeat dad or Boy Scout Leader S&M freak, major and minor transgressions were irrelevant as along as the customer’s order was cooked to perfection and impeccably presented. You had to be a team player.

As we roamed from station to station, the chef made frequent stops to examine the consistency of a soup or appraise the texture of a sauce created by the team installed at each location. He ran his fingers over a pile of stubby potato sticks, thick rectangular rods splayed on a wooden cutting board. Turning to the student responsible, Chef Émile grasped one stick between his thumb and forefinger. A young woman with an errant strand of hair creeping from under her stovepipe looked apprehensive.

What is this, mademoiselle?

It’s supposed to be jooly-anne, Chef. She braced for the critique.

You are not making a Louisville Slugger, said the chef. He swatted a home run with an exaggerated swing of his arm. "Julienne, mademoiselle, is much, much finer. Give me a potato."

The woman rolled an ordinary-looking russet onto the board and handed Chef Émile her eight-inch chef’s knife.

"Comme ça."

The chef pinned the potato to the cutting board with firm, sure pressure, shearing off four sides to create a block. With clean, compact strokes of the knife, he reduced the potato to perfectly even matchsticks in a matter of seconds. It was impressive, like seeing the fastest gun in the West draw, hit all the bottles lined up on the corral fence and whip the gun back into his holster before you knew what happened. The chef placed the knife on the cutting board.

It needs a steel, he said. A dull knife is a dangerous knife.

The combination of reprimand and explanation floated and settled. The young woman was in shock from bearing witness. She cradled one tiny potato matchstick in an open hand and stared, awestruck at its miniaturization.

So what do you do, monsieur? Our walkabout continued, the chef scanning stovetops as we talked.

"I was in television. A news producer. Un réalisateur."

"And you leave? Pourquoi?"

Bad for my health.

Mmhmmm. The chef nodded, multitasking as a good listener while assessing a copper pot full of an oily reddish-brown liquid bubbling away like the contents of a witch’s cauldron. Who did this? said the chef. A veneer of amusement concealed his irritation.

That’s me, Chef. The guilty party, flustered and possessing the demeanor of someone always picked last and eliminated first in dodge ball, blotted sweat off his brow with a terry kitchen towel. He was a kid, barely out of high school.

This sauce has split, said the chef.

Can I save it? The kid’s eyes welled with tears but he fought for composure.

No, said the chef. He stirred the offensive gunk to underline his point. It has gone to sauce heaven. Onlookers seized the schadenfreude moment to luxuriate in a fellow classmate’s misery. The chef would have none of it.

Today it is your turn to laugh, said the chef. Tomorrow it will be someone else’s. Get back to work. The group smugness vaporized. Chef Émile turned from the crestfallen student who dumped the pot in the sink and scrubbed it out, step one in the laborious task of starting over.

"Vous-êtes Japonais, monsieur?"

"Chinois."

So you know how to cook, yes?

"Oui. Cuisine chinoise, certainement."

My mother had taught her children how to use a wok when we were old enough to decode which knobs turned on which stove elements. While other parents’ children were learning how to assemble peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, her offspring were well on the way to mastering stir fry, could stuff, seal and steam several varieties of Chinese dumplings and had developed the essential skill of cooking rice in a pot without burning it. This was real rice scooped and weighed from a big canvas sack in Chinatown grocery stores, not the instant kind poured out of little cardboard boxes, heresy in any Chinese kitchen. Time spent on these lessons was a shrewd and calculated investment on my mother’s part. When we were old enough, my mother returned to work with the understanding we were perfectly capable of preparing meals on our own and not to expect dinner on the table on the nights she worked a late shift. Her logic was unassailable. Cooking was an essential life skill like reading and writing, performing simple math in your head, and driving stick.

The chef’s eagle eyes X-rayed each simmering pot, blurping and blorping on the stove. You would have no problem with the French style, monsieur, said the chef, lowering a flame. "There are adjustments you make in the attitude towards French cooking but it is very interesting. I find the Chinese, they have the touch."

The chef’s comment mystified me. Perhaps it was some kind of cooking koan to be contemplated until a state of enlightenment was attained.

Will you have lunch, monsieur? You can join these fine chefs in the making. His manner was overly enthusiastic, pressing hard to close the sale, the sarcasm reeled in at the last moment as he observed the team in front of us.

One student pulled a juiceless baked chicken from a smoking oven. The skin of the bird was charred and crinkled, the legs withered, the wings desiccated. Another student slid a lop-sided apple tarte onto a wire rack. The tarte was underdone, its filling oozing from the soggy pastry shell like pus from a festering wound. In spite of the grade D results, I was tempted. Hunger pangs announced their arrival with low rumblings in my stomach. What discouraged me from accepting the chef’s invitation was the sight of a third undergraduate juggling two hot baguettes fresh from the convection oven, flipping them end over end like a bad circus act. It was the same student I’d seen wiping an adhesive sneeze on his apron before re-plowing his hands into the dough. I wasn’t sure if baking at 400 degrees for half an hour obliterated viruses and I didn’t want to find out. I declined with as much grace as I could muster. The chef didn’t take it personally. He remained cheerily optimistic.

Come back and visit us again, he said. There is always a place in the world for someone who can cook!

2

I’d come to the cooking school by way of the chopping block. When the corporate axe fell it slashed 250 jobs from the employment roster. All of us in the newsroom saw it coming, a slow motion crisis in the making like melting polar ice caps, the collapse of sub-prime mortgages and prescription pills flushed down the toilet contaminating the water supply. Even if we can see the inevitable coming, however, we are rarely prepared to deal with it. The day I had to clean out my desk and hand in my ID card was traumatic. In twenty minutes I’d gone from being a member in the club to persona non grata.

Getting fired is labor force Darwinism, a sign that your particular species is on the ropes and about to fall face down on the canvas to be counted out. The lesson: It’s time to move on. Do something else with your life. That’s a tough thing to do after thrashing around in the gutter for as long as I had, more than ten years in the business. I’d developed a low opinion of the media. For the most part, people in TV are a craven sycophantic mob, bottom feeders in a grim feculent pond with no marketable skills other than the ability to leech off other people’s lives. I kept telling myself I’d have quit sooner or later but the steady paycheck was hard to walk away from. In the end, Fate intervened on my behalf, grabbed me by the ankles and threw me under the bus. Having one’s complacency run over is not a pleasant experience.

The truth was I had media fatigue, burned out from years of hunting and gathering the day’s events to compress them into digestible bite size pieces for the 24-hour news cycle. ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, PBS, local, regional, national, global, every quarter hour, half hour, on the hour, round the clock, day-in-day-out information overload, feed the beast, capture eyeballs, boost the ratings, my head was a vat of alphabet sludge, a cluttered attic of rattle and hum, a box car of monkey mind thoughts.

But there is no yin without the yang and I discovered an upside to being out of work. I qualified for unemployment benefits. It bought me an oasis of time in which to find an answer to the really big question I faced: What do I do next?

I had a sailboat, a C&C 30 bought for next to nothing during a bankruptcy auction. Inspired to put out to sea after producing a feature on the America’s Cup, the full-court press of work kept me from regular outings. I fantasized the day would come when I’d set sail for some foreign destination so I kept coughing up the moorage fees. What they say about sailboats is true. They’re a hole in the water you throw money into. In spite of that, selling her was something I didn’t want to think about. Hanging a For Sale sign on the gunwale represented sloth and failure. In two years of ownership I hadn’t even named her. To clear my head I went down to the marina, climbed on board, eased her out of her slip and headed for open water.

My sailing skills were modest, coastal navigation, rusty but serviceable. As long as I had sight of the shore, confidence at the wheel held steady. Out on the water she seemed fine. The helm was sluggish and she creaked in protest on hard tacks but I was glad to still have her. On the water, surrounded by blue and psychologically tethered to a thin strip of land in the distance, I found a place to reflect on the state of my being.

At first, not having to work was very pleasant. I slept late. I sat in post-modern corner coffee shops nursing tall lattes while flipping through popular magazines. I went to movie matinees and had my choice of prime seating. Pick-up games of tennis singles in the park improved my forehand. All the rhythms and colors of life I had missed while clocking in and out of the TV station appeared fresh and original and I devoured them. After a while, though, I started feeling unsettled. The work-free days felt formless and while I expected unimpeded downtime would give me space to figure out my next move, the increasing volume of static in my head and the chattering of the monkey mind overpowered any ability to sort through future options.

Zen Buddhists say you can silence this racket through meditation, sitting zazen, concentrating on the breathing, in and out, in and out, in and out. By paying attention to the here and now, staying engaged in the present tense, one could empty the mind. My understanding of Zen was limited to splashing in puddles of Buddhism with popular books and recordings on the subject. Beyond that, what I knew about such a vast topic was no bigger than a stick of gum. The gears of my Buddhist transmission box slipped and ground with each shifting thought.

A certificate for a weekend Zen retreat had been a birthday present and when I saw the expiry date looming I redeemed it. The setting was lovely and comfortable, a monastery with all modern conveniences located on a vineyard from which the attending monks and seasonal migrant workers produced a remarkable cabernet sauvignon. Bottles of The Drunk Monk featured a line drawing of a brother of the order holding an open umbrella and improbably balancing on a tight rope strung across a ravine. Goes well with all things, read the label. The vintage was available for sale in the gift shop and attendees of the retreat were encouraged to purchase by the case at a special discount. The wine I could handle. The sitting meditation part of my spiritual exploration was hard on the knees. Even a half-lotus position hurt. I guess that’s supposed to be part of the experience, the numbness, the hobbling around afterwards. For good reason it hadn’t been mentioned in the promotional material. But in the relative comfort of folding wooden chairs arranged inside a thick bamboo grove as tall as a three-story house, the abbot of the monastery provided me with a remarkable glimpse of clarity.

The abbot told the story of Hogen, a Chinese Zen teacher who lived by himself in a small hut in the forest. One day four traveling monks appeared and asked if they could build a fire in his yard to keep warm. While they gathered wood, the monks started arguing about subjectivity and objectivity, a classic conundrum for monks trying to get their act together. Overhearing the discussion, Hogen joined them and said, There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?

From the Buddhist viewpoint, said one monk, eager to impress, everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind.

Your head must feel very heavy, indeed, said Hogen, if you are carrying around a stone like that.

The concept of the stone mind struck me as profoundly elegant. All our troubles are just rocks in the head. This spoonful of Zen wasn’t going to instantly cure what ailed me, I knew that, but this insight buoyed my heavy mood. Another tenet of Buddhism is nothing lasts forever. A week after the abbot’s lecture I found myself accumulating more rocks than ever.

A certain state of depression accompanies the loss of a job and I found myself slogging through a pool of knee-high doldrums. The growing distance from the TV business did nothing to lighten the weight of the rocks or silence the noise in my head. If anything, the racket intensified. It wasn’t so much that I missed the work. I missed having some place to go to and people to interact with. I was stuck in some muddy place that no