Read Online The Chef's Choice by Kristin Hardy - Free Book Online Page A

always a good attribute in a chef.
    And an ability to multitask. Even as the wrapped shrimp were in the pan for their final sizzle, Roman pulled out a plate and prepped it with a bed of salad. He set the finished shrimp on the lettuce, drizzling them with chili sauce.
    â€œLooks good but let me show you something.” Damon picked up the shrimp pan and pulled out a second plate, this one flat and square. He didn’t bother with the salad, just drizzled a small circle of the transparent red chili pan sauce in the center of the plate and then positioned three shrimp on it with their tails together and pointing in the air like inverted commas. Using a spoon, he carefully dripped small dots of bright green cilantro oil around the plate, the colors vivid against the white porcelain.
    â€œKeep it simple,” he said as he worked. “Go for height, contrast. The sauce goes on the plate, not the food. You get more visual impact that way.”
    â€œYes, Chef.” Roman admired the shrimp. “That plate looks like something else.”
    â€œLooks are good, taste is better.” Damon reached out for a shrimp and swabbed it through the colored dots. He took one bite, considered. Squeezed on some lemon and took another. And another. “It’s good,” he said to Roman. “Add some lemon juice to the chili sauce, brighten it up. Plate it the way I showed you, finish it with some micro cilantro.”
    â€œWe don’t have any.”
    â€œHow about the green market?”
    â€œNot that I know of. You’ll have to get it—”
    â€œIf you say shipped in, you’re fired.”
    â€œYes, Chef,” Roman said.
    â€œAll right, forget about the microgreens. I’ll figure something out.”
    He turned back to his tenderloin tournedos, sealing them in plastic storage trays, then pulled Roman’s cutting board toward him. The sous chef stared, knife in hand.
    â€œWell, get to work,” Damon told him. “I’ll finish this. You’ve got another hour to refine the sauce and write it all down and come up with a name.”
    â€œA name?”
    â€œSure. It’s got to have a name if it’s going to be our appetizer special.”
    Roman grinned. “Yes, Chef.”

    Cady always felt calmer in her greenhouse. It wasn’t big as hothouses went, maybe twice the size of her living room, but it was her territory. There was a serenity in the ranks of greenery and the warm, humid air. Out here, shut away from the rest of the inn, she could put her hands in the earth and forget all about difficult guests, pesky clients, unreliable suppliers and other annoyances.
    Like Damon Hurst.
    She shook her head. She wasn’t going there. She was not going to think about that moment in the kitchen when he’d leaned in close, when she’d seen in his eyes that he was going to kiss her. She wasn’t going to wonder what it would have been like. She wasn’t going to wonder how it would have felt. Nope, not going there.
    You don’t know, you might like it.
    That was precisely the problem. She might, and that would spell disaster. A guy like Damon Hurst wasn’t interested in someone like her. She’d seen him on the magazine covers wrapped cozily together with this model, that actress, and one thing Cady could say for sure was that she was not his type. Maybe he was bored, maybe she was a challenge, maybe seduction was a knee-jerk reaction for him. Whatever it was, she’d been down this road before. She wasn’t about to be played.
    The problem was, when he got to looking at her and talking to her, she forgot all about that. All she could do was watch his mouth and wonder.
    â€œDon’t be an idiot,” she muttered and began transplanting petunia seedlings into the hanging basket that sat on the workbench before her. This was what she needed to be focusing on. She needed to be thinking about how she was going to design the perennial