Excerpt of Turkey Flambe by Nancy Fairbanks

Lighting a Culinary Fire

Well, this is it, I thought as I picked up the silver pitcher with its slender spout and flammable cognac contents. I glanced around the large penthouse room that housed my publisher's facility for dining and receptions, a lovely room with white half-circle columns against the walls; ornate white woodwork surrounding light-green, moiré-silk covered walls; and French doors that led to a two-sided balcony overlooking the streets of Lower Manhattan.

The crowd was starting to quiet down for the big event—all the cookbook authors, culinary writers for newspapers and gourmet magazines, food critics, reporters, photographers, Pettigrew and Sons, Inc., authors and editors, and representatives from book wholesalers and sellers, who had passed through the receiving line and been introduced to me by Gaius Petronius (Petey) Haverford, Managing Editor and nephew of the publisher—what a name for a flirtatious young man with spiky, yellow hair! My editor, Roland DuPlessis, fatter than ever and decked out in an evening jacket with green velvet lapels and matching jeweled waistcoat, was beaming at me and letting the moment lengthen to increase the suspense. Flambéing my popular turkey recipe had been his foolish idea. Paul Fallon, the Vice President of the newspaper syndicate that published my columns, was in attendance with his live-in lover Francis Striff, an industrial chemist and colleague of Jason's. My agent Loretta Blum, face surrounded by a big corona of frizzy black hair, squat figure bedecked in a flashy and probably expensive gown, had stood beside me in the receiving line loudly whispering information about everyone who was about to shake my hand, while scarfing down canapés and champagne and trying to steal some of the Pettigrew authors away from their own agents. Even my friend Luz was here, deep in conversation with Roberto Santibanez, a handsome Mexican from Guanajuarto. He owned restaurants and specialty food shops in the U.S. and wrote Mexican cookbooks for Pettigrew.

The only people who weren't here were my husband Jason, who had had a terrible chemistry emergency back home—Luz had been surprisingly nice about taking his place at the last moment—and the publisher and owner of Pettigrew and Sons, Inc., Claudius Pettigrew. He was expected to attend, but he had yet to arrive. Petey had assured me that his uncle had probably forgotten because he was reading some wonderful book he'd already read several thousand times. It was just one of those things that happened.

I, however, thought that Mr. Pettigrew, whom I had yet to meet, didn't like my book, or believed it was going to be a failure because Roland had nitpicked so long over the recipes that Eating out in the Big Easy was now about a city that had been all but destroyed by a hurricane. That likelihood was certainly making me nervous, that and having to flambé my lovely, golden turkeys, three of which were gleaming sumptuously on china platters along the buffet table. Roland nodded pompously, as if he were the Queen at some steeplechase in which she had a horse running. At the signal, my fingers tightened on the handle of the pitcher as I stepped closer to the center and largest turkey.

It had a wide, shallow cup stuck into the top on a long spike that probably reached all the way into the dressing, that delicious mixture of spices, herbs, fruit, ground meat, and bread crumbs and that was as tasty, in its way, as any dessert. After filling the cup to the brim with cognac, I flipped a small lever that opened little holes, lit the cognac with the fancy lighter Roland had provided, and stepped back. I have to admit that I had produced a lovely sight. The cognac flamed, rivulets of fire ran down the sides of my turkey, and the crowd let out an admiring "Ah-h-h-h!" I had created a turkey volcano. Applause broke out, cameras flashed, and I bowed, as Roland had instructed me, after he won yet another argument.

Then I stepped to the smaller turkey on the left, taking the lighter with me and picking up a pitcher that held a thickened cognac that would cling to the turkey skin rather than drip. I was to make crisscross patterns on this one and then set them aflame on top, much the harder task. I painstakingly drizzled the first line from the left center, over the top and onto the right center, unhappy because the liquid didn't seem to be sticky enough. Before I began the first crosshatch from right to left, there was a whooshing sound, and someone in the crowd said, "Look at that!" Cameras flashed. I glanced to the side to find that the center turkey was flaming a bit higher than it should and little fires were alight where the cognac had dripped into the wide platter.

Frowning, I did the crosshatch and started left to right two inches from the first line. Pop! Whoosh! My hand shook, and my third line wavered a bit. How embarrassing! I finished and swiveled my eyes. Turkey number one was burning halfway to the ceiling. I know that happens sometimes, because of too high an alcohol content in the brandy, but it shouldn't be happening now: I'd tested this bottle. As I started line number four with a firm grip on the pitcher, behind me I could hear whispering, then a little shriek.

"Spectacular, isn't it?" said Roland.

Then, "Looks to me like someone needs to get a fire extinguisher." That was Luz, and everyone heard her. I could tell because her comment set off an argument while cameras flashed and Roland bellowed, "Nonsense. This is high cuisine at its most memorable."

"Right," my friend agreed. "It's almost as high as the ceiling. Carolyn, you better back away!"

I had managed to finish two more lines by not looking to my right. Someone grabbed my drizzling arm as a little fireball flew sideways and landed on my second turkey, which, of course, went up in crisscrossing lines of flame. I was so close to the new conflagration and so frightened that I dropped the pitcher and allowed myself to be dragged to safety while ladies screamed, reporters scribbled, the tablecloth caught fire, Roland attempted, unsuccessfully, to put out various parts of the fire with a candlesnuffer, and finally Petey Haverford raced forward waving a long pronged fork, which he plunged into the side of the middle turkey. He then held it aloft like a rotund torch. "Someone get a fire extinguisher," he shouted, and headed for the French doors.

"Why hasn't the sprinkler system gone off?" asked Roland, finally sounding worried. He looked up at the coffered ceiling as if he could command a shower to fall and douse the second turkey, which was sending off small fireballs of its own while the spilled cognac from the pitcher I'd dropped burned merrily up and down the buffet table. "Way to go, Carolyn," Luz whispered into my ear. "How did you manage that?"

Of course, I had no idea. I'd flambéed things before, not willingly because I don't like fire; I don't even have a gas range, which is unheard of for a woman who writes about gourmet cooking. But nothing untoward had happened during my previous ventures into setting fire to food.

"Petronius Haverford, what do you think you're doing?" called the commanding voice of Mrs. Christopher, the white-haired, stately lady who had been the executive assistant to the publisher for forty years and who pretty much ran everything and everybody at Pettigrew's, according to Loretta, my agent. She had warned me not to get on the wrong side of Mrs. Christopher, who was called Terri by Mr. Pettigrew and, presumably, her late husband, but absolutely no one else.

However, Mrs. Christopher didn't manage to stop Petey, who had thrown open the French doors and rushed out with his flaming turkey held high. I could see the burn marks along the ceiling that marked his passage, and Roland followed him with the second turkey. "Roland, come back here," Mrs. Christopher ordered.

"Well, those two are in deep shit," said Luz.

"Maybe the turkeys will be burn out quickly," I replied, wishing Jason were here. He'd know whether that was likely.

Roland's turkey evidently triggered the sprinkler system, but not before he got out the open door. Luz had been edging me toward the doors on the wall perpendicular to the one that had provided escape to Petey, Roland, and the two turkeys. My lovely silver velvet dress, which Loretta had personally picked out for me at her Uncle Bernie's wholesale establishment, now hung off me, damp, unsightly, and uncomfortable.

Everyone else was trying to get away from the fires and the water, pushing and shoving, reporters calling in stories on cell phones, photographers snapping last pictures of the growing conflagration, ladies weeping, men cursing. It was a disaster. No one would ever buy my book after this debacle, and there was the publisher's chef trying to carry away the third turkey, which was not on fire. I yanked my arm away from Luz's grip and headed back. "Stop that, Franz," I ordered and wrested the turkey away from him.

He wouldn't let go. "Vill burst into flames," he predicted. "Must be get rid of it."

"Absolutely not," I said, and stamped on his toe, which made him relinquish the last bird. "Someone has tampered with my turkeys, and this one is evidence."

"For God's sake, Carolyn," hissed Luz, "let's get out of here before the damn draperies catch fire and trap us and the worthless sprinkler system ruins my dress."

The sprinkler heads certainly weren't covering the room. Everything to which the turkeys had set fire was still burning, but Luz's dress, lucky her, hadn't been caught by the water like mine, so I allowed myself to be tugged out to the balcony that fronted the side street, but I didn't give up the turkey, and it weighed twenty pounds. At Thanksgiving Jason always carries the turkeys for me. So where was he when I really needed him?