Aiden looked at the petite girl in front of him.
Woman, he corrected himself.
He’d really put his foot in his mouth just then. But the way the three women were chatting in the bar when he’d walked in, he thought for sure it was a friend of theirs.
Instead, this tiny wisp of a woman was his interviewee. He’d looked her resume over once again before he came out. She didn’t have any official schooling. Though he did want that and looked for it, he’d let it pass on a line cook position before. But what she lacked in schooling she more than made up for in experience.
In the world of food, experience could trump education any day.
He remembered going to Moretti’s as a kid. Fresh bread, pasta, Italian pastries, sausages. All those smells coming back to him now. He’d always been hyperaware of scent and taste. It was probably what made him so good at what he did. His mother always jokingly referred to him as the Food Whisperer, as he could pick out any spice in any food at any given time.
“How much do you know about Fierce?” Aiden asked, as they made their way back to the kitchen. No one was around just yet other than the preparers. They had another thirty minutes or so before the line cooks came in for the day and started to get things ready.
“I looked up as much as I could about the restaurant. I was more focused on that, but I know there’s a bar up front, a brewery around the corner, and pub fare as well as a special menu in the restaurant each week.”
He nodded his head. That was more than the last two interviewees from yesterday knew. All they wanted was to work here, to have that tick on their resume, not even knowing or caring how Fierce was run. He wanted staff invested enough to care for something more than a paycheck or a boost to their ego working under him.
“That’s a good start. I’m going to go out on a limb and say your specialty is Italian fare since you’ve worked—pretty much grew up—at Moretti’s.”
“It is. But I can and do make anything that is needed,” she said.
“What are you most comfortable with?” he asked.
“I’m comfortable with anything. I’m most familiar with Italian and could probably do it in my sleep. But comfort and familiarity are two different things.”
Good answer, but he didn’t say that. He looked at his watch and decided rather than spend time chatting, he wanted to see her work. He often had potential employees cook something for him if they made it far enough in the interview. His choice, but this time he’d leave it up to her. He wasn’t sure he’d ever done that before and didn’t know why he was now.
“What’s your favorite dish?”
“To eat or make?” she asked.
“To eat,” he said. He was curious how her palate ran.
“I’d have to say my grandmother’s chunky tomato garlic sauce over basil pasta.”
“Does she have more than one sauce recipe?” It was the way she’d said “chunky tomato garlic” rather than just saying “my grandmother’s sauce.”
“Of course,” she said, smiling.
And when Nic smiled back brighter just then he felt something flutter in his stomach. He pushed it away as hunger. He’d always been a sucker for Italian food. The six months he’d spent traveling around Italy wasn’t nearly as much as he would have liked, but he’d been on a mission to learn vast amounts of culinary knowledge, and that meant not staying in one region longer than another.
“Have you made it before? On your own?” he asked her.
“Only since I was fourteen,” she said. He liked that she held his stare. He didn’t even need to tell her like he had so many of his other employees. And how or why he was comparing her to his other employees this soon was a mystery to him. She was different though, so he was going to treat this interview differently too.
“Make it for me,” he said simply.
“What?” she asked, her smile dropping.
“We can sit here and talk food all day long, but I don’t know what you’re capable of unless you show me. So make me your favorite dish. Your grandmother’s chunky tomato sauce over basil pasta.”
“Garlic sauce,” she corrected him. “Lots of garlic.”
He nodded and walked around his kitchen grabbing what he figured she’d need and placing it all on a counter off to the corner. “Anything I missed?” he asked.
She looked over the tomatoes, garlic, flour, eggs, basil, and assorted basic spices on the counter. “Mushrooms, capers, and Chianti.”
He grabbed the rest and placed it there, then pulled up a stool and sat down. “What are you waiting for?”
She just stared at him. Maybe she was all talk and no action. This was the best way to weed out the talent from the talkers. Though honestly, she hadn’t done a lot of talking yet either.
“A pot and a pan,” she said. “I like to have everything I need out and ready to go. Pot filled with water and set on the stove. Pan for sauce right next to it.”
He got up and filled a pot with steaming hot water and set it on a burner, then brought two pans over for her to choose from. He placed the one she pointed to next to the pot and sat back down.
“Food processor and pasta roller,” she said, looking around the kitchen, speaking out loud more than to him. He wanted to be insulted, but was rather pleased she was more focused on the task at hand.
“You just want me to get a workout today, don’t you?” he said, grinning.
If he hadn’t been paying so much attention to her looks—and her smile—he would have grabbed those things too. But he was distracted by the dark waves of hair that she was pulling back out of the way when he told her he wanted her to cook. Her small round face nicely on display with no distractions. Little to no makeup and nice olive-colored skin. Watching her small hands unbutton the cuffs on her shirt and roll the sleeves up out the way, then tuck her shirt in instead of where it was lying nice and flat against her stomach.
He returned with the rest of her tools to find the counter all lined up and organized. Even better. His type of cook.
“Ah, could you not watch how much of the ingredients I use in my sauce when I get to it? It’s kind of a secret family recipe.”
He smirked but understood. He’d give her credit for asking him that, when not many would dare. He saw the nervousness she was trying to hide, but was impressed that she thought of her family first and foremost. That went a long way with him. “Not a problem.”
For the next ten minutes he watched her blend the basil with olive oil in the food processor while she made a hole in the center of the flour on her cutting board. Egg and basil mixture went in the center; then she quickly and efficiently kneaded the dough into a light green color. There was definite strength behind her small stature. A great deal of confidence, too. She could be as quiet as she wanted if she was sharp in the kitchen.
She continued to work in silence while he observed, almost ignoring his presence, and he wasn’t insulted in the least over that. It drove him insane when he interviewed the candidates and they felt they had to walk him through every single step of their meal, as if he couldn’t see or didn’t know what they were doing before they even did it.
When she was done wrapping the dough in plastic wrap, she set it aside and turned the burner on under the water.
“Do I need to turn around right now?” he asked when she grabbed tomatoes and started to cut them into identical cubes.
“Uh? No, sorry. I get kind of lost in my own world when I’m cooking. I’m just dicing right now. In a minute though. I mean, you know the basic ingredients. I guess it’s probably silly that I asked you to do that. I’m sure you could replicate this once you taste it.”
He probably could, but he wouldn’t say that. “I don’t have a problem turning away. I understand it. I’ve got plenty of my own recipes that I’d like no one to know. One thing about working here, there are seasonings and spices for dishes that I don’t share with anyone. Not one staff member here will ever know. It’s just that one thing that keeps it from being copied.”
“So you get it,” she said.
More than he’d ever tell another person. “I think it’s common for chefs to want to hide away a secret recipe. It’s what makes them unique.”
She glanced up, as if something just popped into her head. “Every dish? You have a secret part to every single dish? How do you manage that without having your hands in every order?”
“Not every dish, but a majority of them. What I do is have the spice blends mixed and set aside, all labeled in advance. If you get the job, then you’ll see how it is. Staff know how much of the blend to use, but not what is in it. Same with sauces. They know how to make the sauce, but not the blend of seasonings that I put together.”
“Do you sell your seasonings? I haven’t seen them before.”
Interesting and something he’d always thought of doing. He was just trying to figure it out in his head before he talked to Cade about it.
“Not yet. It’s crossed my mind though.”
She’d nodded and gone back to her cooking, totally ignoring him once again. He found he was charmed that she was paying more attention to her work than him, but still aware he was there in the back of her mind.
When she was done with slicing her mushrooms, which were now sitting neatly next to the diced tomatoes, she pulled the pasta roller over, picked the dough up, and started to test its form. “I’d really like it to sit another ten minutes, but because of the time constraint…”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. He wasn’t too worried. She obviously knew what she was doing right now, there was no doubt. He didn’t even have to taste it, but found he was impatient to.
The rest of the meal was prepared in silence, not even an awkward one. He was always more comfortable working in the quiet, but found most of his employees loved to chat, not to mention yelling out orders and times. He knew that was how an efficient restaurant ran, but his best creations came at home in his own kitchen when no one was around.
He watched how she rapidly folded the thin sheet of basil pasta, then cut slices to make nice strands of fettuccine, picked them up and lightly coated them in flour so they didn’t stick together. When she started to throw the tomatoes and mushrooms into a pan with some olive oil, he politely excused himself to talk with some of the staff, then came back ten minutes later when he felt she’d added all her ingredients and was watching over everything now.
He was just sitting down when she said, “The pasta will be done in a minute.”
All he did was watch her clean up her station, impressing him even more. He was about to ask what she was looking for when she walked over quickly to the shelf with plates and bowls and found the same one he’d have chosen for plating.
She returned to drain the pasta, then poured it in with the sauce and tossed it around expertly, pulled it out with tongs, and twisted it just so on the plate. She finally grated fresh Parmesan cheese over it, wiped the edges clean, and set it in front of him.
The aroma was making his mouth water. It had nothing to do with watching her work. The quick easy movements, the smooth flow of her hands, and her dark brown eyes so serious and almost intoxicating as she worked. The way she inhaled the scent before she plated the meal, as if savoring a lover for the night.
What was wrong with him? He never thought of sex—or women for that matter—when at work. Yet this little slip of a woman had him focusing on her more than the food…or the job she was interviewing for. Cooking was always sensual to him, but he found not many shared that trait and it was best left for when he was entertaining outside of work.
He pushed thoughts of sex out of his head and rolled the pasta on his fork, took a bite, and sighed. Yeah, this might be better than anything he’d tasted in Italy.
“When can you start?”