The Foie Gras Tin and Other Delights: A Memoir of High Service and Higher Egos
The Foie Gras Tin and Other Delights: A Memoir of High Service and Higher Egos At fourteen, I proved myself equal to a full day’s work at Heffernan’s, a general store on a lonely stretch of Highway 7 between Peterborough and Norwood. There, I wrote out receipts for local farmers and first grappled with the discipline of the pen. My initial attempts at cursive were so illegible that I began using a ruler to steady my hand. This obsessive habit developed into a formal penmanship. It is a hand that has earned me consistent compliments from schoolteachers and has served me for decades. I have used it to render daily specials on restaurant chalkboards with practiced, idiosyncratic clarity. Between pumping gas and clerking, I found my way to the kitchen at the back of the store. This was my first brush with the messy alchemy of baking. Like most aspiring cooks of my generation, I was a devotee of Julia Child. Her televised rigour gave my amateur efforts a certain pedagogical purpose. I remem...