Recipe for a Charmed Life - Softcover

Linden, Rachel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593440218 ISBN 13: 9780593440216

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

“Heartfelt, heartwarming, joyful, and uplifting. You can't go wrong with a Rachel Linden book.”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

After a day of unrivaled disappointments, a promising young chef finds every bite of food suddenly tastes bitter. To save her career, she travels to the Pacific Northwest to reconnect with her estranged mom, and discovers a family legacy she never suspected in this delicious novel from the bestselling author of The Magic of Lemon Drop Pie.

American chef Georgia May Jackson has one goal—to run her own restaurant in Paris. After a grueling decade working in Parisian kitchens, she is on the cusp of success. But in one disastrous night, Georgia loses her sous-chef position, her French boyfriend, and her sense of taste! Renowned for her refined palate and daring use of bold flavors to create remarkable dishes, Georgia is devastated to discover her culinary gift has simply...vanished.

When she receives a surprising invitation from her estranged mother, Georgia flees to a small island near Seattle hoping the visit will help her regain her spark in the kitchen. As she tentatively reconnects with her mom, a free-spirited hippie eager to make up for her past mistakes, Georgia realizes there is something about the enigmatic island she just cannot piece together. Good luck charms start appearing in the oddest places. Her neighbor is a puzzlingly antagonistic (and annoyingly handsome) oyster farmer. And her mom keeps hinting at a mysterious family legacy.

With the clock ticking and time running out to win her dream job in Paris, Georgia begins to unravel some astonishing secrets that make her wonder if the true recipe for a charmed life might look—and taste—very different than she ever imagined.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rachel Linden is a novelist and international aid worker. Rachel lives with her family on an island in the Pacific Northwest, where she enjoys creating stories about hope, courage, and connection, with a hint of romance and a touch of whimsy.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Heaven smelled like melted butter, Georgia May Jackson was sure of it. And a bustling kitchen in Paris on a chilly early April evening was as close to heaven as she'd come in her thirty-three years. Glancing around at the hive of activity surrounding her in the kitchen of La Pomme d'Or, the Michelin-starred restaurant where she served as sous-chef, Georgia inhaled the satisfying aroma of garlic sizzling in melting butter and tried her best to ignore the two men observing her from the doorway. Their careful scrutiny made her queasy with nerves. So much was riding on tonight. She scrubbed her hands on her kitchen whites and tried hard to look cool, confident, and collected. She could do this, right? She'd been training for it her entire adult life.

"Come on, Georgia, you've got this," she murmured. "It's just like any other night." But that was a big fat lie. Tonight could change everything. If all went well, it could prove, once and for all, that she had the experience and skills to run her own kitchen in Paris. It had been her biggest dream since she was ten years old, and it was finally within her grasp. She simply had to prove she was ready . . .

Georgia darted a glance at the kitchen doorway where her mentor, famed Parisian chef Michel Laurent, was standing with Etienne Fontaine, the head chef of La Pomme d'Or. They were both watching her carefully, arms crossed in identical postures. Michel gave her a brief nod and a small, polite smile. Etienne, her boss for the past six years and her boyfriend for the past two, threw her a wink and a cheeky grin. She exhaled in relief. Etienne knew how important this assessment was for her. He wouldn't look so enthusiastic if it didn't seem promising.

In the blink of an eye, she caught a glimpse of herself as a young girl, avidly glued to a rerun of The French Chef on the old television set in the front room of her dad's dusty West Texas ranch. Ten-year-old Georgia had been all gawky elbows and bright curly ginger pigtails, filled with grand dreams and aspirations, filled with a longing to prove she was worth something. There in that faded living room, watching Julia Child, the iconic star of 1960s French cooking in America, she'd found her inspiration. Julia became her patron saint of the kitchen. Day after day, as she watched Julia craft a startlingly impressive flaming cheese soufflé or spatchcock a turkey, Georgia had imagined what it would be like to be the star of her own restaurant kitchen in Paris. She yearned to be like Julia, so cheerfully capable, in charge of her own future, filled to the brim with a zest for life. Even at that young age, she was determined to show her family and the world that she was good enough, that she could do big things. She was desperate to matter. In all the years since, she had never wavered from that desire. And now, if all went well tonight, her dream would finally come true.

Georgia drew a deep breath and tucked a loose ginger curl back into her chef's beret. No time to falter now; she had worked too long and hard for this moment. By habit, her fingers drifted to the tiny four-leaf clover charm she wore around her neck on a delicate gold chain. Made of green enamel, the charm was chipped and worn from years of rubbing. It was a cheap trinket, but the most precious thing she owned. She'd had it since she was five years old. Georgia rubbed it again now for luck, sending up a little prayer to Julia in heaven.

"Help me show them I can do this, Julia," she whispered. "Let all those years of hard work, all my sacrifices finally pay off."

It was time.

"Is everything ready?" Georgia called out in French. The kitchen staff nodded in unison.

"Oui, all is in order," Celine, one of the assistant chefs, responded crisply, not pausing as she deboned a fillet of sole.

"Bon." Georgia slowly circled the kitchen, observing each station. Every member of the kitchen staff was performing their duties with well-oiled precision, and the kitchen rang with the sound of sharp steel dicing vegetables and the hiss and bubble of delicious things cooking in pots and cast-iron pans.

It was just past six o'clock, not yet the dinner hour in Paris, but already the tables in the dining room were filling with tourists who typically ate earlier than Parisians. Tonight promised to be long and busy. Georgia gave a small nod of reassurance. So far everything was running smoothly.

"Pardon me, Georgia, could you taste this pistou?" Ismael, the newest prep cook, stood at her elbow, anxiously holding out a spoonful of bright green sauce. "Cyril says it is inedible." He looked distressed.

Georgia frowned and glanced over Cyril, a hulking, swarthy man standing at the long, gleaming gas range. A Frenchman from Lyon, he had been working in kitchens longer than she'd been alive. Although he was skilled in the kitchen, he was often cruel to the other staff, particularly the younger prep cooks. Georgia found his meanness intolerable and tried to make up for it by being extra encouraging to those he cut down.

"Inedible, hmm?" she said, reaching for the spoon. "Let me see."

She took the spoon and tasted a few drops of the pistou. For a brief moment she felt a flutter of apprehension. Would she be able to taste the ingredients this time? Recently her normally keen sense of taste had inexplicably and intermittently begun to fail her, a phenomenon that was mystifying and terrifying in equal measure.

She concentrated hard. Garlic. Basil. Pistachio. Comte cheese. She exhaled in relief. She could taste it all. It was bright and fresh, very flavorful, actually, though in truth missing . . . a little something.

"It's good," she assured Ismael, who was standing by her elbow like a puppy eager to please. "It just needs a little . . ." She tasted the pistou again, letting the ingredients speak to her. She could feel the nuttiness of the cheese at the hinge of her jaw, the raw garlic on the tip of her tongue, sharp and bright as steel hitting flint, that luxurious umami of the buttery roasted pistachios. What was it missing? She stilled herself and closed her eyes, allowing the clamor of the kitchen to die away until there were only the flavors in her mouth and the certainty that this dish was asking for something more . . .

Her eyes popped open. "Got it!"

She added two small pinches of fresh ground black pepper and a dash of lemon juice and tasted it again. Perfect.

Ismael watched her closely. "How do you do that?" he asked in wonder. "How do you know exactly what it needs?"

Georgia shrugged. "I don't know. I just feel it."

She had always cooked by instinct. Etienne joked that as a chef she was more like a mystic than a scientist, and it was true. She had graduated from culinary school in the States and endured twelve years of brutal practical apprenticeship in various kitchens of Paris. As a chef she used the techniques she'd acquired every day in the kitchen, but she relied most on her sixth sense about food, an intuition that had rarely led her astray. That is until recently . . . She pushed the thought away. For tonight, her luck seemed to be holding. Right now that was enough.

"Here, try this." She handed Ismael a tasting spoon dabbed with a few drops of the bright pistou.

He tasted it. "C'est délicieux." He nodded approvingly. It's delicious.

"Good. Tell Cyril it's ready to serve."

Ismael cast a nervous glance over to Cyril. "Could you tell him?" he asked meekly. "He won't believe me." The tips of his ears turned pink, and he looked down at his kitchen clogs, murmuring, "He called me garbage, only fit to take out the trash I cook."

"He said that?" Georgia asked indignantly. She put her hands on her hips and cast a quick glance over at Michel and Etienne. She didn't want to risk an ugly scene...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593440218
• ISBN 13: 9780593440216
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland