"Any ideas?"
Her knife stops. She places it down with surgical precision, blade angled away, handle flush with the counter edge. Turns to face me. Wipes her hands on a towel that's folded into a perfect rectangle.
"I have a concept. A deconstructed root vegetable terrine with smoked beet gel, fermented black garlic foam, and a crispy sunchoke tuile. Each component highlights a different technique. Each layer tells a story."
"That sounds like food that's trying to give a TED talk."
Her nostrils flare. "What's your concept, then?"
"Fire-roasted bone marrow with charred onion jam and a crust of Korathian fire salts."
"That's not vegan."
"That's the point. We combine. Your plants, my fire. Your finesse, my muscle."
"Your arrogance, you mean."
"Call it what you want. People don't eat concepts, Solene. They eat food that makes them close their eyes and groan."
The color rises in her neck. She snatches the knife back up and resumes cubing the celeriac at twice the previous speed. Cubes fly into the bowl like tiny pale dice.
I open my rucksack. Pull out three heavy glass jars. The first contains smoked bone char. The second holds rendered tallow, golden and thick. The third...
The third glows faintly orange through the glass. Volatile Korathian fire salts. The same variety I sent her as an apology gift weeks ago. Ground from the dried stamens of a flower thatonly blooms inside active volcanoes. Rare. Expensive. Capable of transforming any dish into something transcendent.
Also capable of igniting on contact with hot metal.
I move the jar on my wobbling table. Solene's gaze tracks it. Her eye twitches again.
"You are not lighting anything on fire in my kitchen."
"It's the town hall kitchen now. Neutral ground."
"There is no neutral ground. There is my method and there is chaos, and you are chaos incarnate."
"Chaos has its uses." I uncork the jar. The smell hits immediately. Smoky. Mineral. A deep, rolling heat that blooms at the back of the sinuses and doesn't let go. Solene's hand drifts to her nose. Her fingers hover. She breathes in.
Her pupils dilate. Just a fraction.
She remembers. The cellar. The dark. What that smell means.
"We need heat," I say. "Real heat. Not your induction burners and precision sous vide baths. This spice needs open flame or it stays dormant."
"You are not building a fire in here."
I choose the largest sauté pan from her rack. Heavy copper. Beautiful piece. I crank the gas burner to maximum. Blue flame roars up around the copper base.
"Boris."
The pan starts to smoke. Perfect.
"Boris, do not..."
I tip the jar. A generous handful of fire spice cascades into the screaming hot copper. Orange crystals hit metal and the world goes white.
A column of flame erupts from the pan like a geyser. Straight up. Four feet. Six. Eight. It slams into the ceiling tiles and mushrooms outward, licking across the plaster in a spiral of orange and gold. The overhead sprinkler head glows cherryred. Smoke detectors shriek. The laminated diagram on the wall curls at the edges.
Solene's perfect cubes of celeriac scatter across the floor as she lunges for the fire extinguisher.