Jimmy the Turtle (featuring Rosemary Chicken with Potatoes)

Jimmy the Turtle (featuring Rosemary Chicken with Potatoes)

My phone rings.

I’m begrudgingly scrolling through thumbnail pics of my food to see if they’re worth uploading to my website. It’s a dreary day outside, and I have sunk into the dead-brain funk of my slowest work season. This is an annual winter condition, exacerbated by the political horror show in America right now. Don’t fret; that’s my first and last mention of it. It’s too big to squelch and too big to take on here.

My phone rings again. The screen reads, “Pompano Beach, Florida,” and I know it’s spam because I live and cook in Portland, Oregon. I’m desperate for work, though, so “Hello.” I say, without much effort toward charm.

“Hey there! Am I speaking to the person in charge of A Wonderland Food?”

Here’s a tip. If you’re calling a company to sell them something, get the company’s name correct.

I sigh. “It’s A Wonderland OF Food. And yes, I’m in charge.”

“Hey, sorry about that!” He sounds like an asshole version of Keanu as Bill or Ted. “It looks to me like your Google and Yelp accounts are really lackluster. You aren’t handling them yourself, are you???”

My thumb, with a mind of its own, gleefully thrusts its thickest pad point into the red “end call” circle on my phone screen.

I feel like Miss Manners for spammers, but don’t insult me when you’re trying to sell me something, ok, Keanu? I’m better than that.

I’m better than that…I repeat the thought to myself, unconvincingly, because I am handling my company’s marketing, and it’s neither a job I’m qualified for nor one I’m successful at.

I stare at the grey soles of the once-white socks poking out from my overworn leggings and collapse vertebrae by vertebrae into a “vacuuming’s pointless” yoga stance I call Denial Pose or Downward Facing Day.

Finding work has always been a struggle.

Back in the early aughts, when I was a freelance chef in LA, I worked for big catering companies. I booked smaller jobs through private chef friends who couldn’t take on more regular clients, and that grew organically. Word of mouth is key in my biz.

When I moved back to New York, I joined the American Personal Chef Association. The APCA website linked prospective clients to local chefs in their area. Clients who clicked on my image were linked to the terrible handmade website I built for my company. This was 2007, so the glossy high-def food porn that dazzles web browsers now was a little lackluster.

But a few people found me and liked what they saw. The first contact went like this…

Customer Request: “I’m looking for someone to cook for my mother. She’s been living with me for the past year due to a heart scare and has to watch what she eats. Let me know if this is possible. Thanks, James.”

How sweet, I thought, a good son taking care of his little, ailing mother. Immediately, my imagination went wild, creating images of a tall, slim man hopping in and out of cabs in perfectly pressed linen suits and Italian shoes. I imagined he was a lawyer, but a good one, like a civil rights attorney who hadn’t had time to focus on marriage or kids due to his fight for justice and the love of his mother. I imagined a tiny grey-haired woman, still grinning optimistically as she soldiered on through life with a snazzy blue rollator and a restrictive diet.

I would fill their huge, sun-filled apartment with the smells of freshly baked bread, lean herb-crusted meats, and freshly caught fish. I would turn the vegetables they hated as children into gourmet treats they would crave from now on. I would inspire them with overflowing bowls of perfectly ripe fruit on every table. The more I thought about them, the more I realized I’d never imagined a client as perilously desperate for my care as they were. It was fate.

I emailed James a breakdown of how I worked with price points and menu options. He would order a week’s worth of food, and then I would arrive with all the groceries. I would cook in their home and then pack everything up in the fridge for them to reheat throughout the week. At the end of the day, he could expect a clean kitchen with an itemized invoice for my time plus the cost of food (with receipts).

James said that sounded great, and we set up my first day for later that week.

In Los Angeles, I cooked for actors, managers, and producers who needed no pre-job screening. I could look them up on IMDB.

New York was different. My job was like Internet dating. These people hadn’t been vetted, they were strangers. They hadn’t validated anything except their ability to purchase a computer and an internet package. Back in 2007, you couldn’t do the deep exploration into a person’s private, business, and social life that you can nowadays. I take a leap of faith with every job- that the people are real, that they will actually pay me, and that they won’t murder me when I’m alone with them in their homes.

James was the first client whose home I entered in New York. I was going to show up no matter what. That’s my job. But as I got ready to go, I realized how terrified I was. I took a deep breath and told myself I would be fine… and then I gave my parents the name and address of this guy just in case I was never heard from again.

James’s building was nice enough. It was your basic 10-story, pre-war, doorman building in the 70s off First Avenue.

“I’m Alison Tucker,” I said emphatically to the doorman (possibly the last person who would ever see me). “That’s ALISON TUCKER here to see James in apartment B-6.”

He touched his cap, bowed a bit, and smiled strangely as I shouted my name 12 inches from his face. Then he pointed to the rear of the building where I found James’ apartment. I set my grocery bags down and steadied myself by remembering I would soon be cooking. Beyond the money or the people or the stories, the fluidity that awakens in my mind/body/soul when I start to cook is the reason I am a chef.

I knocked on the door.

James was round. Like really round. His little dome balanced on his thick neck and stuck out of his stained and puckering polyester shirt like a turtle head. Where was the slim linen suit guy I’d imagined?

James was thrilled I showed up and all smiles. His kitchen was two steps away from the front door and only about four steps wide in any direction. He opened a few cabinets quickly to show me a saucepan and some old olive oil and then said he had to run.

“Oh yeah, my ma is in the back. She might come out and say hey, but you just do what you gotta do. Ok? I’m outa here. Oh wait, you need some money, right? How much we owe ya today?”

It was like talking to Tony Soprano. I guestimated how long it would take me to cook, and he handed me a check, badda-boom. The front door slammed behind him, and then there was silence. I had not been murdered. Excellent.

I slipped the check into my wallet, preheated the oven, and lifted the groceries onto the counter in the tiny airless kitchen. When I lifted my arms and stretched my fingers long, I could almost touch opposite walls. In front of the sink was a scuzzy plastic garbage pail that held a murky, half-filled paper bag that was guaranteed to fall apart if you tried to remove it from the can. I nudged it with the tip of my shoe into the farthest spot from the action I could find. The fridge hummed like a dog that needed to be walked as I set perishables onto the only unstained shelf inside it. I opened soot-sticky cabinets, painted dark red, and pulled out warped and burned pans. There was a kitchen window peeking halfway out behind the fridge, painted shut and covered in thick New York apartment kitchen sediment. Natural light was a distant memory. I touched as few things as possible and made mental notes of the equipment I would bring with me the next time. Pots, pans, cutting boards, trash bags. My own things bring me a feeling of familiarity and safety that I miss in other people’s kitchens.

If I were a different person I suppose I could have said I would not cook in a kitchen like this, but that’s not who I am. I take my work seriously and every kitchen/ client has a new challenge. It’s my job to make great food in spite of the hurdles. Soon, I was searing, chopping, sautéing and once again present in my body.

Sometime in the middle of my prep, the mother appeared in the doorframe between the kitchen and the rest of the apartment. She was a stalwart, husky woman in a designer pantsuit with jet black beauty parlor curls and large sunglasses.

Focused on deglazing the fond from the beef tenderloin with some red wine and mounting butter into the sauce, I shrieked when I saw her.

“Oh, Ma’am! I didn’t see you. I’m Alison, the chef. Nice to meet you.”

“Hmmm. I see you’ve started cooking.” Her voice was nasal and brimming with accusation.

I had been cooking for 2 hours by that point and the kitchen looked and smelled of it.

“I don’t know how you found us, but we’re doing just fine without you,” she said as if I’d ambushed her son in a dark alley and forced him to hire a private chef at knifepoint. “I’m going shopping and won’t be back until much later. Just pull the door shut when you leave.” And off she went without a goodbye or anything.

I cooked for four hours, packing the (not very heart-healthy- but you give people what they ask for) bolognese sauce, pan-seared beef tenderloin, rosemary chicken with potatoes, and creamy desserts into their odd-smelling refrigerator. I thought I’d better go to the bathroom before the long crosstown bus ride home.

I don’t ever snoop when I cook in people’s homes. I see the front door, whatever rooms I walk through to get to the kitchen, and sometimes the bathroom. Friends have asked me what the rooms are like in some of the mansions I’ve cooked in, but I can’t say. I’m not interested in the client’s private things, and it’s not worth the risk of having a client feel I’ve overstepped my boundaries.

Their bathroom was just as unkempt as the kitchen, with moldy towels on the floor and a dark ring around the toilet bowl. By then, I had abandoned my judgment until I went to wash my hands, reached for what I thought was a squeeze of soap, and found a puddle of LUBE on my palm. There was a, dare I say, family-size pump bottle of Wet and Wild next to the soap on the sink.

“I don’t want you to ever go back there,” my friend Jerry said to me that night on the phone when I told the family lube tale.

I felt like the boat I was on had hit rocky waters.

“Jer, I can’t quit. I’m almost out of money, and I’ve got no other prospects.”

Sure, it was different than I expected, but they weren’t bad people. Just odd, filthy…and lubey.

James emailed a few days later and said his mother loved one of the items I had prepared. Just one. But that’s how new clients are. It takes some time to learn what they like and how they like it prepared. He ordered more food for that week but said that no one would be there until later in the day. The doorman let me in, I cooked and was not paid. James emailed and apologized. When it happened again the following week, James called me and said that he would get one of his guys to drive the money over to me. He said he would “nevah not pay” with a deep raspy tone that gave me chills.

I stood on the corner of 120^th Street and Amsterdam Avenue for 15 minutes walking back and forth like the hookers I used to see on Broadway in the good old days. Finally, a guy in a shiny black Chrysler showed up. The window lowered. “Are you Alison?” I nodded, out came a wad of cash in a sealed envelope, the window raised, and the car drove off. It felt so suspicious that I actually looked around for the cops even though I’d earned this money legally.

Later that night, with the help of many gin and tonics, I emailed James to tell him I didn’t think we were a good fit. I finished the gin, felt braver, and went back to the APCA website to see if there were any new clients I could wrangle.

This is my life. And it will be for as long as I’m a freelance chef and caterer.

So what was the one thing the mom liked? It was my rosemary chicken with potatoes. It’s the kind of classic comfort food that I love. Simple, inexpensive, and delicious.

Rosemary Chicken and Potatoes

Rosemary Chicken with Potatoes

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 4 tablespoons olive oil, separated into 3 tablespoons and 1 tablespoon

• 1 ½ pounds Yukon Gold potatoes

• 1 tablespoon butter

• 4 large bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

• 1 large red onion cut into ½ inch dice

• 8 garlic cloves, peeled but whole

• 1 28 ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes, drained and kept whole

• 1 1/2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary

• salt and pepper to season

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Cut potatoes into 1-inch cubes and toss them with 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Line a sheet pan with aluminum foil and drizzle some oil on the foil to help make it nonstick. Sprinkle potatoes aggressively with salt and pepper and then bake on the sheet pan for 20 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, pat the chicken thighs dry with a paper towel and then season them with salt and pepper.

4. Let a large skillet heat up first and then add the 1 tablespoon of olive oil with 1 tablespoon of butter. The butter will sizzle, melt, and foam. When the foam subsides, sear the chicken skin side down first for 3 minutes on medium high heat. Turn chicken over and sear for another 3 minutes.

5. Transfer the chicken onto a plate and add the onions and whole garlic cloves into the skillet. Salt the onions lightly and cook for 5 minutes over medium-low heat. Take the potatoes out of the oven and add them into the skillet with the onions and garlic and stir to combine the tastes. With your fingers, smush half the tomatoes over the potatoes. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon rosemary. Place the chicken thighs on top of the potatoes, and smush the remaining tomatoes over the chicken. Sprinkle the chicken with 1/2 tablespoon of rosemary and put the skillet in the oven uncovered for another 25 minutes or until the chicken reads 165 on a thermometer.

6. Remove the pan from the oven and place the chicken on a plate. Using a fork, gently smush the garlic cloves into the sauce that’s formed in the bottom of the pan.

7. Serve chicken on top of the potatoes.

And here I am on KATU’s Afternoon Live showing you how it’s done: