Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (book club reads .txt) 📕

had learned a new recipe from watching Jim cook a dish he was running as a special. He had worked at some of the nicer restaurants in the area and I always looked at him as a Chef—capital “C.” One night he was preparing a simple chicken stir-fry when he leaned over to me and said, “Watch this. This here is the secret.”

He grabbed a spoon and stuck it in a jar of apricot preserves, removed a dollop and snapped it into the sauté pan. He shook the pan and tossed the vegetables in the air with a bit of showmanship. Then he poured a splash of white wine in the pan and it burst into flames.

I thought that was pretty damn cool. And it tasted fantastic.

Armed with the amazing technique of adding sugar and booze to a pan of vegetables and some chicken I felt confident that I could impress the Morgan family. I set up shop in the kitchen while Cindy and her mom went to the living room to read. The rest of the family wasn’t home yet. I was plowing through my prep when I heard Mr. Morgan come home and Cindy’s mom mention that I was in the kitchen cooking them a fancy dinner. I tensed up.

I had all of the vegetables washed and the rice cooked when I pulled out the only chef knife they had from its wood block holder. I ran my thumb over the eight-inch knife’s blade and winced. I couldn’t tell the sharp end from the back of the knife. I walked into the living room to find most of the family reading and her brother, John Jr., watching ESPN.

“Uh, do you have a steel?” I asked.

“A steel?” Mrs. Morgan replied.

“Yeah, you know, a round metal tool used to sharpen knives.”

“Oh. No. We don’t have a knife sharpener. Never needed one.”

“Great,” I thought to myself.

I went back to the kitchen determined to make do and started slicing and julienning the vegetables. I worked my way through the red bell peppers and moved on to the carrots. As I neared the end of a large carrot I took a hard downward rock that the dull knife required and was all of a sudden struck by intense pain in my left hand. I immediately dropped the knife and clinched my hand into a fist and jammed it into my waist. My nausea intensified when I looked down to see a chunk of my index finger, nail still attached, lying there next to the carrots.

I tried to compose myself, but my forehead was beaded with sweat and my hand pulsed like my heart had relocated there. I knew I had to walk through the living room, past the entire Morgan family, to get to the bathroom. I scooted past everyone quickly and closed the door behind me. I flipped on the cold water with my good hand, opened my fist, and the sink turned red.

“I am so screwed.”

I riffled through the medicine cabinet and under the sink. No Band-Aids.

I mummified my finger in toilet paper, sat down on the toilet, and raised my arm above my head. I had to get the bleeding to stop.

“Grant, are you okay?” It was Cindy checking on me. I must have been in there for a while.

“Um . . . yeah, yeah. Fine. I nicked myself with the knife, just running some water over it and getting the bleeding to stop. Um . . . yeah. Do you have any Band-Aids? And I think I’ll need some gauze, too.”

She brought me some supplies, and I wrapped my wound as best I could. I glanced at Mr. Morgan as I walked back toward the kitchen. He peered over the newspaper at me. When our eyes met he darted back behind the paper, but I could still see the top of his head—shaking back and forth.

“I’m thinking about going to culinary school. What do you guys think?”

I had officially decided to make good on my dream to go to the Culinary Institute of America and now needed to see how my parents would feel about it. My mom and dad looked at each other, unsettled, before my dad spoke. “Well, I don’t know. Are you sure you don’t want to study drafting or architecture? You enjoy that and you do it very well.”

My mom interjected, “We will support you in whatever you decide. We’ve set aside some money for school, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“But you see how hard your mom and I work,” my dad countered. “It’s not easy and you don’t make a ton of money for the amount of time you spend on it. And it’s hard to have a good family life, too.” Clearly my dad was pushing for me to do something else.

“That’s okay,” I blurted out, “I don’t want a family.”

My mom, taken aback, reminded me that I was her only hope for grandchildren. My father laughed quietly, as if he knew something I didn’t. Ultimately we decided that I should at least do some research about the school before committing to anything. But I had already made up my mind.

CHAPTER 4

The fall after graduation most of my friends went away to college. Cindy left for Michigan State to study pre-law; my longtime friend Jim Stier joined the Air Force after all. I didn’t go anywhere. I was still working at my parents’ restaurant, growing more restless each day while awaiting acceptance to the Culinary Institute of America.

The letter finally came, and in February 1993, I packed my things and moved to Hyde Park, New York, with my friend Don Golder. Don was four years older than me and had been cooking for a long time. When Don got wind that I was applying to the CIA we decided to try for the same entry date so we could move out there together.

I expected the CIA to feel like the other colleges I had visited.