Killer Pancake

Perhaps hell was not strong enough.

“Goldy, it does look great,” said Julian Teller, my assistant Wallowing in fat-free self-pity, I had been oblivious of his entrance. Julian marched briskly toward the counter, dipped a spatula into the shocking-pink dip, leaned his broad shoulders and blond, sides-shaven head downward, and sniffed. The “mmm- mmm” noise he made deep in his throat was unconvincingly ecstatic. Compact and muscled from a stint on his school swimming team, nineteen-year-old Julian did not look like someone with his heart set on becoming a vegetarian caterer. Yet he was. Luckily for Goldilocks’ Catering, he wasn’t one of those fanatics who give you a dirty look if you don’t put grated carrots and soy flour in everything. Julian loved cheese, butter, and eggs as much as any traditional chef.

I let out an agonized sigh.

“It’s going to be fabulous,” Julian reassured me with mischievous eyes and an enthusiastic lift of the dark eyebrows that he had not bleached to match the hair on his scalp. He’d recently had his bright hair trimmed in a bowl shape to replace his old mohawk-style haircut. Now, instead of resembling a Native American albino, he looked like an ad for Dutch Boy paints. Ready to fulfill his function as server today, Julian wore a neat white collarless shirt and baggy black pants. The shirt had been a gift from me. The bagginess of the pants might have been thought stylish by those who did not know Julian had haggled for them, as usual, at Aspen Meadow’s secondhand store.

“Goldy,” he declared, “the Mignon salespeople are going to love you.” He grinned. “And better yet, they’re going to love me. Correction: One of them is going to love me.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s saute the turkey.”

As mounds of ground turkey began to sizzle in wide frying pans, the scent of Thanksgiving filled my summery kitchen. I opened the first jar of hoisin sauce and took a greedy whiff. Like most people, I’d first encountered the dark, pungent stuff in a Chinese restaurant and fallen in love with it. Hoisin served a double purpose in the recipe I’d developed for the banquet appetizer: Its spicy taste and velvety texture would add richness without fat. I handed the jar to Julian, who energetically ladled it along with the contents of the other sauce jars and a mountain of cooked wild rice into a mixing bowl. I opened the oven and shook the large pan of roasting, golden pine nuts that was inside. At least this was food, I thought grimly.

“Hey, boss?” Julian’s blue eyes sparkled “If lowfat is what these folks want”—he gestured at the dips—“then give it to them! Claire says the diet stuff will be a huge hit. And it looks fabulous. Be happy. You’re going to make money! Go buy a vat of bittersweet chocolate! Buy ten pounds of macadamia nuts! Buy six kilos of—”

“Lie, lie, lie,” I replied. “You said these saleswomen subsist on a steady diet of caffeine, nicotine, and chocolate.” Which didn’t sound too bad, actually, if you took out the nicotine.

Julian shrugged dramatically and drained the turkey, then deftly stirred it into the hoisin and wild rice. Although he had been living with Arch and me for just over a year, I never tired of watching Julian cook. He was attentive without being fussy, and his ardor in food preparation was unmatched.

“Okay, okay,” he admitted as he stirred. Now the sharp smell of hoisin mingled appetizingly with the scent of sauteed turkey and buttery roasted pine nuts. “So say, today, the saleswomen slug down coffee with their chocolate torte, then step outside for a smoke. You still get paid, don’t you? Aren’t you always saying to me, what’s the bottom line here?”

“Chocolate torte? Chocolate torte?” I cried, gesturing in the direction of the desserts. “Who are you kidding? Ninety-nine percent fat-free chocolate-flavored air is more like it. I mean, what’s the point? I’m going to pack up the grilled vegetables. Want to start on the muffins?”

Julian’s high-top black sneakers squeaked across the vinyl as he energetically nipped past the counters and clattered in the cooler for the cranberries we’d chopped the night before. Unlike me, Julian was in a very good mood. And it wasn’t because he—again unlike me—enjoyed the challenge of preparing a lowfat menu. It was not even remotely likely that Julian’s good humor came from working with roughage and ricotta; he was hardly conversant with nonfat milk solids. As he folded the cranberries into the delectable Grand Marnier-flavored muffin batter, I recalled how he generally lavished dollops of creamy-anything on every dish he prepared. No, it wasn’t the food. This budding vegetarian cook, now ladling spoonfuls of cranberry-studded dough into muffin cups, would have been excited today if we’d been serving steak tartare. Julian was in love.

The current object of Julian’s affection, Claire Satterfield, Mignon sales associate extraordinaire, was due at our door any minute. Julian had assured me that Claire would have no trouble finding her way from Denver to our place off Main Street in Aspen Meadow. Claire was intelligent, Julian maintained, in unnecessary defense of this woman who was three years his senior and who had opted out of a university education to work for Mignon Cosmetics. I certainly hoped her intelligence extended to geography. Claire had arrived from Australia with her work visa only nine months before, and during that time she’d lived in downtown Denver. The mile-high city was probably not that different from Sydney, as large urban environments go. But once you get off the interstate and head for Aspen Meadow, the roads become curvy and complicated. So much so, in fact, that the best-selling map book of our area is entitled You Use’ta Couldn’t Get There from Here. Did they have mountains in Australia? I couldn’t remember.

There was a muffled banging on the front door.

“It’s me, it’s me! Hallo! I got here! Where am I, the Himalayas? Let me in, I gotta use the facilities!”

Julian heaved the muffin tins into the oven, flipped on the full wattage of his smile, and strode in the direction of the banging. Leaving him to play host, I closed the box of vegetables and turned back to the dieters’ delight. There is a reason why weight-loss cookbooks have you serve everything dripping with hot mustard, streaked with Tabasco sauce, or speckled with chopped peppers or red pepper flakes. They want to convince you you’re actually eating something. Forget your appetite, see if this doesn’t make fire come out of your ears! Of course no one can consume much of these spicy lowcal concoctions. Why willingly engage in electroshock therapy for the mouth?

In any event, I had my own Macho Jalapeno Theory of Lowfat. Men heartily dislike diet food, but will eagerly engage in I-can-eat-hotter-stuff-than-you contests. No wonder diet experts recommend spicy foodstuffs when women are trying to wean their menfolk from their beloved meat and potatoes. On the other hand, nobody cared about my philosophy, and I was defying my own jalapneo theory today by offering classic cuisine to the Mignon Cosmetics people. But the recipes they had supplied left much to be desired. So now I was having second thoughts. I groaned again.

I decided to stash two dozen individual peach cobblers and an equivalent number of chocolate-chip-dotted brownies into zippered bags underneath the corn rolls made with—-forgive me, Escoffier—nonfat sour cream. After giving me instructions about the banquet, Harriet Wells had had the guts—skinny, washboard-ab guts—to give me her lowfat muffin recipe. I had ignored it because it called for okra. The emergency supply of brownies and cobblers was an insurance policy, I reflected, in case someone came up to me today and demanded real, honest-to-goodness comfort food.

“This is Goldy!” a smiling Julian announced as he held the door open for Claire Satterfield to step haltingly into my kitchen.

For someone who had thumped so vigorously to herald her arrival, Claire, suddenly demure, sidestepped uncertainly toward the counter. Although I’d heard a great deal about her, I’d never actually met this wonder. So I was unprepared for what I saw. Claire Satterfield was surely the most gorgeous creature on the planet. Or at least, she was the loveliest female I had ever seen. About four inches taller than Julian, the girl was svelte yet shapely, in a way reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. Her black hair was arranged in long, shiny ringlets that brushed her tanned shoulders. Bangs framed a striking face that featured breathtaking cheekbones. With her dewy skin, irresistible face, and glossy hair, this vision resembled a landlocked mermaid. She gave me a frightened glance and mutely opened her mouth.

HOISIN TURKEY WITH

ROASTED PINE NUTS IN