BOOK Cooking up a kitchen tale
Local chef ’s new novel ‘The Recipe’ dishes out a poignant coming of age story
CHARLES Carroll knows how a pan sizzles when it has just the right amount of heat. He knows the importance of a razor-sharp knife, the secret to a perfect omelet, the versatile magic of a mirepoix.
But most of all, he knows the love and discipline of creating a mouthwatering meal from raw ingredients. And Carroll, the executive chef at River Oaks Country Club, has decided to share that passion by writing a novel.
Yes, a novel. Carroll, an award-winning chef and speaker, has written two books about leadership, business and being a successful chef. With “The Recipe,” new this month, he wanted to do something different.
“I wanted to write a book that you would see at the airport and you’d grab it, and you’d sit on the plane and have tears in your eyes,” he said.
“The Recipe” is the story of a 14-year-old kid named Owen, who has been getting into fights and trouble in the months since his dad, a coach at the high school, died suddenly at 50 of a heart attack. Frustrated with the world one night, Owen throws a
“Great cooking is about more than the food.” Chef John Kellaway in ‘The Recipe’
rock through a warehouse window. He gets caught and has to pay for the damages by working weekends for John Kellaway, the chef who owns the popular Mapletown Diner in Owen’s small New England town.
Chef, as Owen comes to know him, is crisp, solemn and a little hard to read. But it turns out he has more than cooking lessons to offer. As he teaches Owen to dice carrots into perfect cubes and sear a steak to perfection, the chef is also teaching him how to live — and how to be a man.
He teaches Owen how to peel garlic, poach an egg, season a sauce. He also teaches him to have patience, to take his time and to really taste what he prepares.
“Great cooking,” Chef tells Owen, “is about more than the food.”
The Mapletown Diner is fictional, but it’s based on a real restaurant. As a kid, Carroll remembers spinning the row of barstools at the Mapletown Dinette, which his dad owned in Carroll’s hometown of St. Johnsbury, Vt.
“I used to sit on bags of flour and watch my dad bake in the mornings,” he said, and along the way, he — like Owen — learned lessons in cooking and in life.
On top of that, his family owned a country inn in Waterford, Vt.
“I was cooking breakfast when I was in the third grade for the guests,” he said. “I was always in the kitchen.”
To write “The Recipe,” Carroll teamed up with John David Mann, who has co-written business and leadership best-sellers with several authors. When they started working together, Carroll handed over eight chapters he’d written and Mann got to work, fashioning them into a narrative with Carroll’s assistance. To be able to describe the “tsssss” of a hot skillet and the texture of a perfectly poached egg, Mann actually had to cook the food.
“He’d call me,” Carroll recalled: “Hey, Charles, I’ve got these eggs, I’ve got them in a pan, and I just don’t understand … What do you mean, ‘pull the egg in’?”
“The Recipe,” with all its onion-chopping and sauce-stirring, might make readers hungry. That’s why Carroll includes the recipes for more than 15 dishes Chef and Owen cooked together, from prime rib to a grilled Brie and truffle crab sandwich.
The story is fiction, said Carroll, 53, but it takes inspiration from real life: “The book is not about me, but it is full of things I know or have been a part of or have seen.”
Like Owen, he learned how to cook as a boy. Like Chef Kellaway, he has gold medals from the Culinary Olympics and has been commended by presidents for his public service; in 2011, he traveled to Afghanistan to serve a gourmet meal to U.S. troops stationed there.
Ultimately, Carroll said, he used bits of his life — people, moments, memories and recipes — to write a parable that applies to everyone, whether they can cook a gourmet meal or barely know how to scramble eggs. “The beautiful part about this book, for me, is I poured it out from the heart.”