4 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
4 teaspoons finely chopped fresh basil
2 garlic cloves, pressed
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
4 red-skinned new potatoes
8 baby carrots
1 ? pounds fresh (not frozen boneless Chilean sea bass fillets
8 slender asparagus spears
Preheat the oven to 425 . In a small bowl, beat the butter, basil, garlic, and lemon juice until well combined. Set aside. Parboil the potatoes and baby carrots for 5 minutes; drain. Divide the fillets into 4 equal portions.
Place the fillets in a buttered 9-by 13-inch pan (or an attractive gratin dish with the same volume). Arrange the vegetables over the fish in an appealing pattern. Top each fish portion with one-fourth of the butter-garlic mixture. Cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until the fish flakes easily with a fork. Serve immediately.
Makes 4 servings
?Yet?? I repeated.
?If you have not,? she continued airily, ?I wish you would consider sending it in for the funeral tomorrow, Goldy. We?re going to have quite a few people in from out of town. I?m told. I can?t get enough volunteers to make food, and I certainly can?t let people go home hungry.?
It was the least I could do for Father Olson, no matter what I thought of Lucille. I cupped my hand over the phone and asked Julian if he would mind schlepping the reception platters down to the church for the funeral. He nodded without looking at me. Julian seemed to be thinking that not keeping all that food was another way of tacitly admitting that our hopes for Tom Schulz were dimming. I put this thought out of my mind and assured Lucille my assistant would meet her at the church in an hour.
After hanging up, I asked Marla to pour a red wine vinaigrette over thick layered slices of navel orange and purple onion. Arch washed and packed heads of butter lettuce. Julian had taken a bag of Parkerhouse rolls from the freezer. We were ready.
With a Herculean attempt to appear happy and hopeful, I said, ?What would I do without my team??
?Go out for pizza,? muttered Julian darkly.
Julian insisted on driving the van with all the boxes for the night?s meal over to the conference center. Marla chauffeured me and my pile of exams in her Jaguar, with Arch in the back. She had told the boys she would take them out for pizza if they would explain the younger generation?s fascination with video games to her. I tucked a spiral notebook into my apron pocket and realized I did not have a single question prepared to ask the candidates.
?I?ll be by to pick you up at Hymnal House at ten o?clock,? Marla pronounced ominously once we?d arrived at the conference driveway. Julian was unloading and Arch was setting three tables for five in the old conference dining room. ?Don?t you dare go anywhere without me, Goldy, do you hear??
I leaned against the Jaguar. ?Since when do you tell me what to do?? I asked mildly.
?Since I helped you make lunch for the prayer group, and dinner for this pompous board, that?s when.?
?Ah-ha.? Then I added, ?I promise.?
On the deck of Hymnal House, the three candidates for ordination including Mitchell Hartley, and a dozen priests including Canon Montgomery, Doug Ramsey, and other men IA knew from previous meetings, were sipping white wine and trying to look as if they all weren?t terribly nervous. They hadn?t asked for hors d?oeuvre, and they weren?t getting any. But since the last thing I needed was for them to have a layer of alcohol on empty stomachs, I quickly preheated the ancient Hymnal House oven and popped the fish platters and rolls inside, then arranged the orange and onion on top of individual beds of butter lettuce.
Thirty minutes later, the platters emerged. The delicious aroma of basil and garlic that filled the air and the visual delight provided by the squares of fish, brilliant green asparagus, orange carrots, and pink new potatoes swimming in melted butter, gave the whole dinner a Christmasy sort of air, which is one of the things a caterer has to think of. When people don?t know each other before a catered function, or have some particularly onerous interpersonal task to perform after the meal, it?s usually a good idea to give them something to do at dinner, like opening a present of food. It helps to break the ice.
The conversation at dinner ? how the new bishop in another diocese was faring, how some recent mass conversions to Anglicanism in Africa were going to affect the church worldwide ? was light but somewhat forced. Canon Montgomery had said some volunteers from the Altar Guild were doing the dishes, and I was relieved when we could adjourn to the Hymnal House living room for Evening Prayer. This was followed by a brief, nonpoetic explanation of the meetings? mechanics fro Montgomery: The end of our meeting tonight would be signaled by the old bell on the deck. We would go to the funeral tomorrow, then meet all the rest of Tuesday. The board would make its decisions Wednesday morning. The nervous candidates gulped and strained to look confident.
Doug Ramsey and I were assigned to an old upstairs parlor. The room had been the subject of unfortunate redecorations, and now boasted a bright green shag rug and two donated yellow-painted wood-frame couches with screaming pink cushions. It wasn?t the best ambience to effect a reconciliation with Father Doug, to whom I hadn?t spoken since our disastrous tete-r-tete at church on Sunday. He marched into the room in front of me, snapped open the latches on his briefcase, and took out a sheaf of papers with typewritten questions. To make things worse, he was acting inexplicably miffed.
?Hey, Doug,? I said, ?don?t give me the ticked-off routine, okay? I did the dinner, didn?t I? Now let?s talk about how we?re going to examine this guy.?
?you didn?t contact those newspapers, did you? Tell them I was the bishop?s spy??
?Of course not.?
?Some woman reporter interrogated Montgomery. She wanted to know if he was jealous of Olson because Olson was an alleged miracle worker.?
Good old Frances. ?And did Montgomery agree with the allegations??
At that moment, Mitchell Hartley entered the room. He coughed.
Doug Ramsey ignored him. He continued to me in a confidential tone, ?There are many reasons why anyone would be jealous of the person in question, and not just for the monetary and … other reasons I mentioned to you on Sunday. He was attractive, he was smart. Why, I think he came through the ordination process in the quickest time on record, although I?d have to check that statistic ? ?
?Theodore Olson?? Mitchell Hartley?s face contorted into an ugly smirk. Four inches of waved red hair hovered over his forehead. ?Yes, your statistic is correct. He came through in three years.? His eyes glittered feverishly.
?Please sit down, Mitchell,? I said.
He obeyed, keeping his mad gaze disconcertingly on me.
Father Doug began by asking questions about the Archbishops of Canterbury, then moved on to what Tillich had said about this, what Augustine had said about that, and what were the liturgical requirements for the laying on of hands. Mitchell stumbled and bumbled and most of the time said he didn?t know. Doug was just getting revved up to do the Anglican Reformation when there was a rap on the door. It was Lucille Boatwright.
?Zelda and I finished the dishes,? she said, glaring at me. How dare you come up here to examine with the men when there is women?s work to be done in the kitchen? I said nothing; I was weary of Lucille Boatwright. She turned to Doug Ramsey. ?We simply must talk to you about the liturgy for the memorial service tomorrow.? It was not a request.
Doug lifted his chin: Duty called. He stood, tucked his sheaf of papers into his briefcase, snapped it shut, and marched out without another word. Guess it was up to me to finish with the candidate.
?Mitchell,? I said as I reached to a dusty table and found a stub of pencil and piece of paper. ?I found a photocopied page form one of your exams.? I wrote 92-492 on the paper.
He glanced at it and raised one red eyebrow. ?Where?d you find it??
