Day of Roux: A Mike Dodge Mystery

The roux is the foundation -- of any great stew, bisque, chowder, the velveteen béchamel your visiting cousin calls the “gravy” he found just a mite too boojie for his tastes. It’s the distinction between a minestrone and a pasta e fagiole and certainly the basis of any jambalaya you don’t want called out as a gumbo.

**

“You’re shitting me, right?”

“I shit you not,” I pledged, sliding the cookie sheet into the oven. I guesstimated, as I had throughout my culinary career, and set the dial for 375. It was an old church oven – that’s to say a restaurant-grade commercial probably from when Sarah’s mom used to take her downtown for a grilled cheese-and-tomato at the Woolworth to buy her subservience during an afternoon of shoe hunting – and nobody was doing digital today unless I was forced to take a shortcut with the microwave. The mammoth stove – ample enough to accommodate two errant Swiss kids – had finally been repaired and recommissioned thanks to the right congregant finally shuffling off, and the Health Department had signed off on us feeding unsuspecting folks for the first time since Dr. Fauci was allowed back on mike.

“I normally use cornstarch – less potential for lumps, and if you get some gluten case show up, well, hey, win-win. But I haven’t made this for a while, so I’m not sure if it would burn quicker. I want the flour kinda cocoa brown, but not scorched. If you gotta be here, that can be your job – don’t let me forget to check. And get me the pancetta out of the fridge. I could use bacon, but I’d only need a few strips, and I didn’t want to mess with the meat counter. Pancetta won’t be as runaway greasy as the bacon, plus it’s already cubed. I’m gonna use some butter – well, margarine to fill out the fat if the pancetta doesn’t render down enough.”

“Is that really necessary, Mike? I mean, your recipe’s about a mile long already.”

“Ah, yeah, it’s necessary. That rich, smoky, sort nutty flavor comes from baking the flour.” It was going to take a few, and with an audience now, I’d hoped to find some busy work. But I’d pre-chopped the bell peppers and the Vidalia I’d picked over a regular white or yellow for a little mellow sweetness. The Imperial I’d put in the huge hot stockpot was now pretty well melted without having browned, and I dumped in the Duality with some black pepper to sweat and absorb some pancetta-y goodness. “Emeril and the Gang call it the Holy Trinity, but I just really fu--, I mean I truly hate the mouth feel of celery, so I just stick to the Duality. Sorry for the French, and for conferring holiness to aromatics.” Of course, he’d opened a can of shit mere minutes ago, but he’d transferred from Long Beach for the great tobogganing, so maybe that's how the Left Coast clergy does.

Reverend Dougie shrugged. “So this is like a mirepoix, except with peppers subbing in for the carrots.”

There must have been some Julia Child in the backseat pocket. “Ah, yeah. Same for an Italian soffrito. Portuguese dishes start with onion, garlic, and tomatoes, and I think I read the Germans use carrots, celery root, and leeks to flavor soups.”

“Wouldn’t garlic be in the Italian Trinity?”

This was the beta version of the male swordfight. “That would then be a Quadrology, and I think the fear is it would burn that early in the process. I’d argue fennel’s a more fundamental note in Italian cuisine than garlic, anyway. Here, I’m adding black pepper to get a moderate warmth along with the onion/pepper sweat and rendered pancetta. I’ll add a couple dashes of hot sauce during the simmer, but I assume you’ve had time to gauge the average age of your new congregation, which by the way doesn’t necessarily signal sociopolitical leanings. A lot of them simply don’t want to have to get used to a new pew or communion bread. I assume your more conservative Churches use the Styrofoam wafers and suspect the Unitarians and independents probably break out the multigrain, which can really throw the post-Boomer system into chaos.”

I looked up from my sweaty veg, but Dougie was still planted on the stool by the serving window through which had passed many a Meals Committee meat salad sandwich designed to help take mourning families’ minds and guts off loss and mortality. I had underestimated my nemesis.

While I waited for my flour to tan, I un-bagged the chicken stock, the two tubes of tomato paste I’d found hiding among the Hunt’s and Contadina, and the twin bottles of clam juice. Ditto the andouille, chicken thighs, and the medium shrimp (no need to scare the Protestants).

“See, there’s kind of what I mean,” Rev. Dougie piped genially. “Do you really need all this? I mean, what’s the worst that would happen if you left out a key ingredient or two?”

I choked it back as I peered in the oven window. We were a go, or close enough, and I added the mocha flour to commune with the Trinity and the fat. “You might be surprised. Let me give you an example. In fact, it was when I first learned to make jambalaya...”

**

For the guest, the roux is the invisible imponderable — the hidden foundation that emerges strong and unexpected only with the introduction of the underlying fats, the enticing aromatics, the spice notes and flavor hints, the savor and succulence of the essential proteins.

There’s a metaphor there, of course. There’s always a metaphor — on the feature and third-bench sports beats, the federal policy trail, I routinely had to sniff out the figurative truffle. To set context, seduce engagement, to whore up my ignorance of high school hoops or the mayhem that transpired under the Friday Night Lights.

Point is. The social contact begs a metaphor for its very predictable complexity. The melting pot, the kettle and the pot, the stew; the half-baked, overcooked, bean-spilling, fish-frying, pie-thumbing, cookie-crumbling gumbo of human foible and venality...

**

I didn’t like Ben from the get-go. Or it was simply that this was the first dinner invite we’d received since a sketchy consensus had ruled COVID officially licked and we’d played guinea pig for Moderna. Plus, suddenly we had six wheels, which is two more than a smooth ride and two-thirds too few to keep trucking amid the social congestion. But when I went in for the Obama bump and instead got the open palm of camaraderie and potential organ failure, I glanced toward an expectant Sarah and reluctantly accepted the beefy young dude’s grip of virulence. She gave me the same look Dustin Hoffman had given the Ebola monkey.

Wendy smiled apologetically, and offered me a knuckle canape. We bumped responsibly, and then nearly knocked skulls as a silver bracelet fell from her retreating wrist. I caught a flash of red as she beat me to the punch and grinned sheepishly as she shoved the jewelry into her jeans.

“Did Wendy have COVID?” I asked Reed carefully as he chased the Hanover stock and the diced Del Monte’s with a couple regulated shots of tabasco. The pandemic had broken right after some domestic rift neither Reed nor Jen cared to discuss, and our neighbors had gone radio silent (or more actually text silent) as the coronavirus burned on, I suspected out of more than merely the trending isolation.

“Thank God, no – healthy as a horse.” Reed nudged a platter of sliced andouille, thigh chunks, and cubed tasso ham (or its nearest Kroger equivalent) into the hot tub, and belated remembered to toss in a couple of bay leaves. Jen despised seafood (“the vermin of the sea”), and he’d mournfully omitted his usual clam juice (how do you juice a mollusk) and shrimp. “Why you ask?”

Reed Liebestraum had retired from the local daily just ahead of the virus, and both had seemed to age him like Clinton after Lewinsky. I suddenly tensed. Crickets were not thick that summer, but the chirrup of cicadas leaked in through the patio screen.

“Mm,” I finally replied.

Then Reed chuckled before glancing up guiltily. “I wonder if it might have been better if she had. I know, sounds horrible. See, she’d been working for a PR firm in Des Moines when things shut down, and the guy she’d been seeing, Josh, moved into her bubble. We weren’t talking at the time, but her sis--, well, I heard things hadn’t been going smoothly even before they went into confinement. Then the guy turned into a full-throttle nightmare, Sleeping With the Enemy stuff. Kept her under his finger, accused her of cheating online, monitored her Zoom meetings with her boss and coworkers. Then it turned physical, after the bastard almost wound up in the ER on their six-month ‘anniversary.’”

“Shit. COVID?”

“Food poisoning. Look, Jen asked me not to say anything, but it was hell, especially since Wendy refused to communicate with us. And then the guy just left, took off despite the epidemic. About three months ago, she met Ben, who’s about to get a nursing degree and EMS certification. He was an assistant manager at Red Lobster, and the pandemic and his mom winding up on a ventilator for three months made him look at a career shift. We’re grateful Wendy has somebody – Jen’s nervous Josh might come back around some day, and Ben seems like a great guy.

“Just between us, right? Speaking of which, since we’re a few thousand miles from Nawlins, I got some microwavable Ben’s to toss in later. I like the wild rice mix, though if you like things a little thicker, the brown’s good, too. Oh, crap, I forgot the bay leaves…”

**

Reed, as it turned out, was not the picture of equine health, and after shooting the shit until it was damned near dead, he excused himself for a nap while the women commandeered the kitchen for saladcraft. I crept past the magnificent Ben as he caught the third inning of a Cub-Cards matchup in the living room. I now knew where the landmines were, and I sought out some fresh air and illumination. I cautiously returned when the kitchen had cleared to look in on the jambalaya.

**

It was time for the shrimp. The transition from translucent gray to plump and juicy pink to mini-stress ball was a game of minutes, so they got benched ‘til near the end.

“I was immediately suspicious when I went in for the fist-bump, and Ben shook my hand. Reed had mentioned his mom surviving the ventilator. you’d kinda think that would have brought things home... Sarah shoved me into the guest bathroom – calm down, Reverend – and sanitized me immediately. But it turned out COVID wasn’t the major concern.

“Then there was Wendy’s bracelet. The thing fell off after she bumped me, and she jammed it in her jeans. But not before I spotted the medical alert emblem – you know, the crossy thing with the caduceus? Sarah’s aunt wore one with a yellow alert emblem ‘cause she was a fall risk – I didn’t know they came in different colors until then. There’s also purple for DNR patients, green for latex allergies, and the red Wendy was wearing, which is for general dug or food allergies. I asked her dad what she was allergic to, and he claimed nothing, that she was as healthy as a horse. If she was hiding an allergy, why? Her folks certainly would have known by now, and why be embarrassed about a stranger knowing? And wearing an emergency bracelet so big it just falls off your wrist seems to defeat the purpose of not getting offed by a peanut or shrimp.” I dumped the crustaceans in the pot for punctuation.

**

It happened sometime between the romaine and the refills. Reed had rallied pretty well after his rest, but I insisted he belly up to the dining room table while I fetched the “stew.”

Most of my worst anxieties had vanished after we’d launched in. Despite his haphazard COVID protocol, Ben shared his future in-laws’ (and our) sociopolitical worldview, so there was none of the mine-sweeping or escalation that had infected family tables since the fall of 2016. The new “fall” shows looked promising after a summer of heightened “reality,” even if they didn’t land ‘til spring, and, my, the climate was behaving oddly these days. Wendy was still working remotely, Jen was donning mask and gloves to man a local pantry, and Reed modestly declared a personal best for his jambalaya, despite “key omissions.”

It was well into mid-term campaign projections when I noticed the sixth wheel had dropped out of the conversation. Ben seemed bloated only a bowl into the meal, and he scratched furiously at his forearm as the blood seemed to drain from his face and pool in his lips.

“Buddy, you okay?” I asked.

Ben grinned reassuringly, then hurled with a wheezing ferocity, effectively ending the discourse. His chair slid from under him, and as Jen scrambled for her iPhone, Wendy bolted for the living room, and I guessed, her purse.

**

“But the boyfriend almost did. Died.”

I nodded appreciatively to my audience of one. “Close enough. But I didn’t know that at the time. A medical alert bracelet isn’t like a ring or a letter jacket or whatever the kids are doing these days. So why was she wearing Ben’s bracelet? Because no one was supposed to know about it. About his allergy.”

“Cindy stole it? So she could kill him with a shrimp?”

“Wendy,” I sighed. “And it wasn’t a shrimp, though right track. The point is, Wendy knew her mom hated shellfish, so there wasn’t any threat from the jambalaya, unless Dad went rogue. And she knew Ben didn’t have a seafood allergy, unless hustling tables at Red Lobster was his personal skydiving.”

“But you said…”

I overrode him. “Look, with the COVID, nobody in the family had actually met Josh before he and Wendy went into quarantine, and Josh took off shortly before quarantine lifted. But Wendy talked to her sister about Josh’s abuse the longer she was trapped with him, and my guess is she finally broke down and told Reed. Being obsessively possessive, why would Josh suddenly just release Wendy? How about because Dad offered him a payday he couldn’t refuse? Which Reed later admitted he did, by email, via Western Union. Then Wendy moved on to Ben, until that didn’t work out. But true love or some such shit always conquers all, and you know what happened.”

“Man. I got a sister like that, kept going back to the same fucker over and over even after he beat her blue and put her in the hospital. Got his one night…”

I hastened on. “Well, Wendy probably was concerned Reed might give Josh his, or at least ask Josh for his own back. And she was probably a little embarrassed to tell her folks the monster she’d sequestered with was a new man, or maybe she’d realized he wasn’t totally new, so she made him a new man, or re-appropriated one. The guy she’d passed over, or who’d passed over her. Wendy wouldn’t say whether it was his idea or hers to meet the parents. I hate to think it was hers.”

**

My buddy Curtis from the Millington PD showed up as the EMTs removed a snarling Ben/Josh to St. Mark’s for observation. Curtis knew Reed from his stint covering the Cop Shop and me from a long history of caffeine and calamity, so we found some more shit to shoot as he conducted a one-man search of the Liebestraum kitchen. Not so much as a covet crawdad or pollo di mare a la Starkist or a can of sardines or any traces of Jen’s despised marine vermin. The epi pen had almost instantly loosened Josh’s throat and tongue, though I suspected Wendy already regretted it. There was no ‘ weapon’ to be found.

“Jesus, somebody at the plant probably had a tuna salad from Subway for lunch and didn’t wash up proper,” Curtis concluded, collecting the Tupperware Jen had prepared first as evidence and now as the detective’s late supper. “Post-COVID workforce.”

**

He stared at me for a moment as I dumped cup after cup of Ben’s wild rice into the rich brown mire, his yellowed teeth widening into an ostracizing and yet conspiratorial grin. I finally shook my head and grinned back. I wouldn’t have included the postscript had Reverend Dougie not scuttled off to find the church homeless fund and maybe some socks and snacks for my new friend.

“I worked for a farm newspaper, and I’ve always been a biology geek,” I began. “COVID gave me an opportunity to catch up on the industry and my science. So one day, I saw a piece by an entomologist at the University. He’s a big supporter of adding insects to the diet, for the environment, to help solve world hunger, help poor families get the protein they need. He makes a pretty good case, but there are a few hitches. Ever heard of tropomyosin? It’s a protein in shrimp, crabs, lobster, and it can trigger seafood allergies. But it’s also found in insects, which are arthropods like shrimp and lobster. If an insect like a cicada or something happened to get in and drown in the jambalaya, or maybe two or three cicadas, they might trigger an allergic reaction. Happy accident, right?”

Dougie returned with some gently used goodies as my new buddy stopped cackling. “I’m fixing dinner for our Outreach Committee, but I think you’d be welcome to join.”

He glanced at the stockpot, wobbled to his ill-shod feet, accepted the double-handful of provisions from the right proper Doug, and nodded with a wary grin at me. “Yeah, gonna pass.”