The Vaudeneu Country House Pudding
A legendary dish best served cold
“Stacey, stunned into action, began to cry. She was not prepared for this encounter. She had trained with Louis Vaudeneu at the finest Hotels on the Atlantic Coast. She had mastered 273 sweet dishes and could recite the ten viscous states of honey needed to perfect the legendary Vaudeneu Country House Pudding.” Source: The Seagull Cafe
Louis Vaudeneu always knew he wanted to be a chef.
As a young child, Louis would sneak into the family’s pantry and inhale the aroma of the various spices. Standing still, frozen in time, nostrils flared, Louis breathed in the scents. His mind would be transported back in time to the Spice Route, riding donkeys over the trail, precious cargo of perfumed flavors rolling in the pouches.
Louis would closely watch Nanna cook.
He admired the way her hands cast a spell over the food. Fingers flourishing spices out of thin air, gently raining down on stews and pastries. How Nanna managed a wooden spoon, maneuvering the instrument from side to side with a delicate touch, fluffing and folding, twirling and whisking, enchanted Louis.
“Add a little something.” Nanna would say. “Sprinkle dreams, Louis. Make-believe the world is full of mystery.”
“And never forget the sugar!”
“Yes, Louis! There can never be too much sweetness!”
Louis would tug at Nanna’s apron, demanding to know the ingredients, determined to learn her secrets.
By the age of six, Louis had mastered the Croquembouche. A staggering tower of cream-filled profiteroles held together with caramel. His tiny hands worked precisely with the sticky caramel and the soft rolls, sculpting the tower until it stood four Louis’ high.
He dreamt of flavor combinations untried by any kitchen.
His Garam Masala left cuisine veterans gasping in disbelief. The sheer audacity of blends made a mockery of contemporary dishes. He was light-years ahead of the opposition.
It was 1985 when Vaudeneu unveiled his first Country House Pudding.
It was a tribute to Nanna who passed the previous year. She was a young seventy-six. In her honor, Louis developed the desert, said to be the 7th wonder of the culinary world.
Shaped like an emu’s egg, it was layered with the finest chocolate imported from Belgium, and Switzerland, and lashings of Ecuadorian cacao, Arriba Nacional. It was layered with champagne jelly and garnished with 24ct edible gold leaf. An Otago cherry, grown to perfection over a year and plucked from pristine, fertile soil that only one man could tread upon, peaked from the very top of the pudding.
Vaudeneu would recreate the pudding masterpiece twice more before fatally dying of asphyxiation, manslaughtered by the Otago cherry. Louis disavowed his renowned creation as he lay squirming and twitching, gasping for air at the foot of the gastronomical egg.
“Nanna would never have wished for such extravagance,” he once told Stacey, his pâtissier of seven years. “She would never be so self-indulgent.”
He promised the world his third Vaudeneu Country House Pudding would be his last. And so it was.
Stacey left the House of Vaudeneu soon after, disillusioned with an industry that refused to acknowledge her role in the creation of the pudding. She had been historically side-stepped, reduced to no more than a cameo sunk in the glutinous cavity of whipped creams and gold-leaf garnishing.
At the Seagull Cafe, where three Swedes, operational managers for a power station run on chicken droppings, ate a quiet lunch, Stacey was rediscovered by The Host.
Her life would never be the same again.
Read more about Stacey and the Host here - Part One
Part 3 coming soon…
BONUS NONSENSE
Uncle Frank T Bird said it shouldn’t be done. Scribbling. Or writing. He may have said doodling. I’m not great with memory. Not after heavy doses of morphine and Sevredol. Sounds like a dodgy Russian border town.
What did Uncle Frank the Seagull say?
“Drugs. Don’t do them, kid”.
No. That doesn’t sound like Frank. Written laws. Proverbial knowledge. Transcript the lecture. Maybe he was atomizing over a pint.
“Don’t write, Kid.”
Was that it? Was that the advice? I need to listen to my elders or my peers or any old drunk in a pub lonely with alcohol abuse.
“Write like me, Kid.”
It’s slipping away. He dogjammed a loaf onto my breadsticks and now my sentences run incoherently. No way I’ll be able to grow a subscriber base building non sequiters like this. Like these? Thinking hard.
“Don’t write on drums, Kid.”
Uncle Sam was a drummer writ large. Powerful hands. Bushy eyebrows. Tank topped filled to the brim. He washed twice a week and stained every carpet he trod upon.
“Don’t,” whispered Uncle Frank in my ear, “ever.”
I never did. Not once. I freeflowed my thoughts in a penniless direction hoping the intellectual base of my pyramid scheme would love this shit. They prefer politico agendas and I’m not savvy in a political sphere. Or a rhododendron. Bush flower. Telegraphed assets to the ill-communicado Queens of the desert.
“Don’t write on drugs.”
That was the lesson. That was the point. Never stated what drugs. What concoction? What essence I need to consume to lose the ability to write? I forestalled and cornered and gloated like a Monstera Cheese Plant sucking the light from every crevice.
“Why Frankie, Unkie, Birdie T? Why you no like the drugged?”
Make it make sense his eyes pleaded. Was it clear the man wanted nothing more than to squat and shoot? Uncle Frank stooped low, eyeball to eyeball. He’s a tall fucker, waistcoated in a Victorian sense, comfort-closeted to conceal the pain.
“Look, sunshine, we don’t know each other and now you are irritating my bowels.”
I understood his complexion. Satin-white. Lost sun. A vroom vroom off-coastal roads and through asphalt jungles. Sweat had formed on brow and the man was inches from losing his shit.
“Bequeath me a gift for language, Uncle!”
“Fuck off!”
I lost footing. Belly lost fooding. Legs collapsed on sticky floor. Frank was leaving the building taking his Rosetta stone of knowledge with him. Could I plead insanity and reclaim the land or the high ground or the lowest point I had sunk? I needed more Frank. More Bird. More Uncle.
Combat comatose requires back-peddling and ninety-degree uncertainty.
“Make it make sense, Kid!”
So demanding. I’m high on painkillers and recovering from radiation burns. My skin is on fire and my brain squelches through a molasses swamp of open-shut oysters sucking air from my lungs. Clamps shut. Clamps open. I couldn’t find an exit point.
I have my rhythm. I can make it stop at any point!
I didn’t, though. Kept on whittering to an unforeseeable conclusion.
“Enough, Kid. You’re done. Go home.”
Thanks
This one’s for you.Writers to follow? Frank’s my muse.
for the weird advice, for the movies and for the tunes. And when he gets around to writing, don’t ever miss the sensationalAnd then there’s
. Love his whacked-out perspective.Until next week.
You should be a food writer, Salsa, you bastard. Love you, Brother 😎
I miss Loudt!!