Best Stew Ever

Josephine was feeling rather on edge. It was almost midnight. Please, please, not tonight, Josephine, she silently prayed. Then, ashamed of her weakness, she snapped her eyes open. Looking down at her busy hands, a veritable blur above the cutting board on the vast white table, she slowed her julienning to a deliberate, speculative chop. Wait… was this carrot soft? She put the cleaver aside and squeezed an orange sliver. Disgusting! She picked up the cutting board heaped with worthless bendy taproot, and hurled it at the rubbish bin in the far corner. Shards of rubbery xylem scattered across the white tiles.

Sarah, at the 12-burner stove, let out a weary cry: “Oh, Josephine! This can’t go on!” She very nearly stopped stirring the large simmering pot. But Sarah, while deathly tired, wasn’t suicidal. Josephine would stake her life on it. Josephine did not befriend the weak of heart. Josephine rejected the quitters and ne’er-do-wells. Josephine positively scorned those who supped unthinkingly from Big Food’s mass-produced nutritionless nose-bag! Pah! Let them eat cholesterol and choke on their own pinhole arteries! Josephine cultivated a more refined taste, sought to harvest her artichokes in a higher field. And Sarah—Sarah was the best: loyal as buckwheat, well-balanced and possessing a strong arm. They would see this through exactly as it was reciped.

“There will be no carrots in the stew!” Josephine imperiously announced.

“Josie, come on,” Sarah said, shaking her head, swapping hands to keep the ladle moving in its slow, heavy round. “It’s too much…”

Josephine was at the stove in a trice. She peered in the pot. Waved irritably at the steam. Then she looked up directly into Sarah’s gentle, lined, wise face: “No carrots! None! Zero! Zilch!”

“Okay, fine,” Sarah said.

Josephine rapped her knuckles on the side of the huge stainless steel pot, briefly feeling a pleasant glow of heat in her phalanges. “Hello? Sarah?”

“What?”

“Are there any carrots nobbling our stew? As we speak?”

“Well, if there are, they long ago deliquesced into the general—”

“Sarah! Please! You’re starting to sound like a naval hash-slinger.”

Sarah’s lined face suddenly lost years as she became a little dreamy in the steam. “Oh, if I had a hash brown for every purser who—”

“Sarah Cummings! Remember where you are!” Josephine stared through the steam at her best friend, and couldn’t help softening a little herself. Josephine was on a mission but she wasn’t a monster, she did care deeply for Sarah. They’d been friends since high school. In Year 9, Sarah had comforted Josephine after an embarrassing slipup in the long jump—and you don’t forget things like that and Josephine hadn’t. And even though Sarah had grown up prone to making dreadful decisions regarding men (employing the term loosely here), her fortitude, common sense, and loyalty were otherwise rock solid.

“Sarah,” Josephine said gently, “we have to get this right. A chance like this… ah, isn’t it what we dreamed of as silly school girls?”

“Well, you did, I suppose, and I want to help, I do. But, sheesh, Jo, to simmer a stew for six days… I mean… it’s too much.”

Oh dear. Josephine couldn’t help pursing her lips. This was a wrinkle she didn’t need, her best friend losing her marbles right at the crux. Six days? Where did Sarah get off in that head of hers? And on the seventh day, we should rest in peace?—ha ha ha!

“Jo, are you okay?” Sarah asked, slowing her stirring a little.

“I’m more than okay—Sarah, we can do this! Try to keep your head in the game, sweets.” Josephine snapped a tea towel, ran her finger along the edge of the vast white table as she walked the length of the magnificent commercial kitchen. Ah, she loved it here, she belonged here. When Daniel had offered her the use of the kitchen, while his very swank Daniel’s Grub was closed for a seating enlargement, Josephine had at first trembled, then grasped eagerly at the nettle.

Daniel’s Grub! Ha! Let the hoi polloi eat fig jam! For tonight we shall dine on ambrosia! Josephine had told Daniel—dear, sweet, staggeringly talented Daniel—that she would make him the “best stew ever.” It was a casual aside, an ironically silly phrase which, when she thought about it, matched the irony of the wickedly playful name of Daniel’s restaurant. Who could keep a straight face or an empty tummy when anywhere near Daniel’s Grub? But her remark, “best stew ever,” had been made during an intimate candle-lit for two, over a pristine bisque and a very lively red. So it had stuck fast, deepened, and finally became her be-all and end-all. She promised him that it would be the best ever, true dinks, cross my heart, hope to die, ha ha. They got along so well!

Stew was Josephine’s signature dish. She’d stake her life on it. And she finally had a pot to put it in. How could Daniel be anything other than forever after he tried her signature? Imagine working in Daniel’s Grub with a full complement of underlings! The larder was the limit! Lobster Tail Thermidor! Eye of Wagyu! Oh, be still her beating whisk!

Josephine reached the wall-sized freezer at the end of the room, its solid square doors shut up like serried vaults. She spurned it and spun around—she preferred to work fresh. Ah, down at the pot, behold, the redoubtable Sarah! With her left hand, she worked the ladle steadily round; with her right, she used a large slotted spoon to fish for carrot. Great stuff. What a rock.

“In medieval times,” Josephine said coming back, tracing a mazy line on the table edge, her voice echoing in the large bright kitchen, “the carrot was a much despised vegetable. It was thought to cause adultery. Guilty men were sometimes sentenced to be abominably plugged by them. Hardly seems human. We’ll be well rid of it, eh Sarah?”

“Sure, until you decide that carrot is the essential missing ingredient.”

Josephine laughed and snapped her tea-towel. “When did you get so feisty?”

“On about the fourth of fifth day with no sleep.”

Josephine’s smile departed, leaving a frown. “I don’t know if that’s meant to be a joke, but it’s not funny and it’s wearing very thin.”

“Sorry.”

Josephine reached the stove and looked in the pot. “Oh, wonderful. It’s really coming along.” She inhaled deeply. “My goodness, what a symphony!” She looked into Sarah’s pink puffy face. “Let’s do one final check.”

“Okay.”

Josephine cleared her throat. “Mussel?”

“Yes.”

“Brown sugar?”

“Yes.”

“Bone broth?”

“Yes.”

“Brisket?”

“Yes.”

“Brisket?”

“… navel end.”

“Heart?”

“Two.”

“Kidney?”

“One.”

“Tongue?”

“Three.”

“Seed of lovage?”

“… a quart.”

“Beautiful… beautiful…” Josephine became a little dreamy, staring into the thick, slow turning best stew ever. Dumplings and indistinguishable gluggy fillips breasted the surface, bobbled, and sank. She could almost see Daniel salivating. Why not? He loved his food, while maintaining a remarkably lithe figure. Dressed well, too, for a kitchen artist, expensive fitted slacks and a swish satiny shirt. The bullfighter of bouffé. Josephine had first spotted him across a sparsely peopled farmers’ market. Here he wore a rugged check shirt and carried a hearty country thermos. Pure chic at heart, he was also perfectly at home in a dell. Josephine could only stare. Five-star cuisine, she realised, was more than the sum of its calories. He was chatting amicably to a grizzled farmer manning a vegetable stall. The incorrigible foodie was holding a fat bunch of carrots by the neck, waving them about. “No, friend, these are no good,” he was saying. “No good at all. Look…” He selected a medium carrot and donked it on the table. Donk, donk, donk. The nub made a dull plap and the phloem bent like plasticine. “A carrot needs to be crisp! It should snap, not bend.”

Oh, yes, Josephine whispered, rapt withal. It should, it should.

“But I know a trick,” Daniel had said with a wink at the flummoxed farmer.

Above the pot, Josephine snapped her eyes open. She looked suspiciously into Sarah’s red face. She sniffed the steam. “Sarah, did you get all the carrot out?”

“Yes.” She pulled a glass bowl over. “See?”

Josephine turned away—it was full of the most abysmal orangey slop. “Yes, good.” She looked distractedly around the large gleaming kitchen. “Well… I’ll stir the stew for a bit. You must be due for a break.”

“Wha—? Really?”

“Yes, yes, shoo, go on.”

Sarah backed away, flexing her shoulders, rotating her arms.

Josephine used both hands to drag the ladle slowly round. “Goodness! Oh, and Sarah? Could you take all that lot outside?” She jutted her chin at the orange shards scattered around the rubbish bin. “And check the larder, the vegie drawers, wherever—take all the carrots, every last one, and throw them in the dumpster outside. Okay?”

While Sarah trudged in and out, Josephine turned off all four burners under the big pot. She then got a silver tray, a fine bone bowl, and a spoon. And ladled out some staggeringly rich hot stew.

Sarah barged up like a backfiring steam engine. “Is it… ready?”

“Perfect.”

Josephine lifted up the tray with its quiver of steam. She backed carefully through the swing doors into the restaurant, and turned with a shy, “Voilà!”

She frowned, took a step toward the neatly set table for two. It was sad to see the candles had burned out. The pristine bisque was just a salty rime on the bottom, the lively red a dark plaqued stain on white cloth. And Daniel was slumped in his chair—barely conscious!

“Daniel!” Josephine cried, crashing the tray down, not caring if the stew spilled (none spilled, not a drop, but it didn’t matter either way). “Daniel!”

She raced around to feel for his carotid. “Daniel! Say something!” On the tips of two fingers, she felt the faintest, weakest donk… donk… donk… “Daniel!” She tried to spoon him some stew, but it dribbled everywhere but in. “Daniel!” She reached again for his carotid. She felt a devastatingly soft do… do… then nothing.

No! Please God, no! Not tonight, Josephine! Ghastly vicious hellish mockery!

She let out a tortured shriek: “Saraaahhh!” She crashed back through the swing doors. Oh, Christ, she’d been such a fool, a dupe! Never, never trust a man who takes his thermos out in public! Daniel had laughingly placed his thermos on the farmer’s table, unscrewed the top, and—steam billowing out—dipped his carrot in it. Oh God, look away! It wasn’t hot in his thermos, it was very, very cold. Liquid nitrogen cold. And with a (in retrospect) horrid grin, he’d brought the carrot down on the tabletop with a shattering crack!

Josephine let out a torn groan, tried to snap her eyes open, had to make do with slits. She staggered to the wall freezer, slammed shut the gaping vault door. She turned. Sarah. Oh, Sarah, Sarah… Josephine warned you, Sarah. Zero… Zilch… Dear, beautiful, stocky Sarah was laid out on the floor, a medium carrot plunged deep in her chest, a stilled flurry of ice crystals starting to melt and run like tears in the stiff green fronds.