Secrets of Goth Mountain Read online

CHAPTER 4

  THE SIMPLES AND MR. DARK

  “Simple! Warm up the oven.”

  “Call me Doc,” said Fred Simple, grinning, as he turned on the gas. Joe, the tall gangly kid giving him orders, was twenty years old, tops, and his new boss at Authentic Cuisine, a restaurant only ten miles from Lathem. Finding a new restaurant so close to home had been a pleasant surprise. It was even more of a surprise to find one dedicated to the principle of providing truly authentic food. Joe, the assistant manager, hired Doc right away, trusting in Doc’s description of himself as an experienced restaurant cook. Ellen, the other cook, was busy with eggs and flapjacks, and didn’t even look up when Joe ushered portly Doc into the kitchen. She was maybe twenty-five, probably the oldest employee after himself, but still young enough to be Fred’s offspring.

  “Sure Doc, whatever. Here’s your first order.” Joe handed him a small slip of paper covered with scribbling.

  Doc smiled. He had expected to be helping Ellen with the usual breakfast fare, but the boss evidently already trusted him enough for this special assignment. Mary, the young waitress, must have been studying to be a medical doctor, the note she wrote was so garbled, but he had deciphered worse, including ancient Egyptian and Babylonian. Kids nowadays, he thought, were too weak in the basics and classics, and this whole restaurant was manned today by kids, except for himself. They needed him all right! The restaurant business was a cut-throat affair, but maybe with him they stood a chance. “A bit early for pizza, but I suppose you’ve got to cater to everyone at this stage in the game,” he remarked, but Joe had already ducked out of the kitchen.

  “Oh bloody hell,” Doc said, as he read the slip of paper again. “Right from the get-go, this one’s a Jim-dandy.” Shaking his head, he ducked out the back door.

  Twenty minutes later, Joe found his new employee in the yard behind the restaurant, dropping a lighted match into a yard-deep hole that he had evidently just dug, judging from the sizable fresh pile of dirt and the shovel that lay nearby. The plump little man was breathing hard, the strain of rapidly digging the hole being almost too much for his middle aged, pudgy little body to handle.

  After Doc dropped the match there was a minor explosion that sent red flames shooting out of the hole and well above ground level. “Simple? What the hell!” exclaimed Joe, above the roar of the flames.

  “A bit too much starter fluid maybe, but I’ve never tried to start charcoal in a pit before, so I figured it was better to go heavy on the juice. Lucky I had a full bag of charcoal and some fluid in my trunk. I also happen to have a ripe pineapple with me. Canned pineapple simply wouldn’t do, would it? Have you got a freshly butchered wild boar and some palm fronds?”

  Joe was having trouble speaking. “A what?”

  “A common domestic pig then, at least. I saw some corn-on-the-cob in the kitchen. I can use the corn husks to wrap the pig, along with some aluminum foil to hold the whole mess together. Lot of work for a Hawaiian pizza, but it will be as authentic as possible, under the circumstances.”

  ”Pizza? You’re doing all this for an eight dollar pizza?”

  “Of course. An authentic Hawaiian pizza. By the time we have the pig and pineapple set to go, the charcoal should be ready, though I’ll need to hike into the forest next for some dry wood to get coals that are just right. That should burn down and be ready for the pig in an hour or two. We’ll roast the pineapple too, although pineapples didn’t even originate in Hawaii, you know, or pizza either, as far as that goes. While those roast I can easily whip up some pizza dough for the crust. I assume you have some organic eggs, milk, and whole wheat flour? That would form the basis for a somewhat non-Hawaiian crust, but I would really like to add some taro for authenticity.”

  ”What the hell is taro?”

  “You know, taro, the staple food plant of Polynesia. Dried, ground up roots would be best, but I’d settle for some leaves mashed to poi, or some crushed taro chips. If we don’t have taro from Hawaii on hand than maybe we have some from India? Oh, and ground arrowroot would be a nice touch.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “Merely thorough. Lucky for you I have a PhD in ancient studies; this cooking method predates written history by thousands of years. The pizza should be ready to eat in roughly six to ten hours, depending largely on the size of the pig. Yep, the pig is the long-pole in this tent, that’s certain. That will make it a bit late for breakfast, but I assume anyone ordering a Hawaiian pizza would know that doing the job right takes a little extra time, or else why would they come to a restaurant that serves authentic food?

  “Alternatively, we could have of course send to Hawaii for pizza of any flavor, as that would make it a de-facto Hawaiian pizza, but that would be deceptive trickery rather than authentic cuisine, and I estimated that it would have taken several hours longer. Oh; I also found some tall grass growing out back that we can use for skirts. I propose that we hula dance as we serve it, to give it that extra special touch of authenticity. I haven’t done the hula in twenty years, but they say you never forget; it’s like riding a bike or sex.”

  “You’re fired.”

  It was Fred’s turn to be astonished. “What? What did you say?”

  “Just give me the apron and clear out. Now!”

  Fred shook his head in bewilderment as he drove towards town. Authentic Cuisine? How pathetic. It was just as well that he found out the truth early on his first day at the restaurant, and hadn’t compromised his own principles. At least he still had his pineapple. Too bad about the wasted charcoal and starter fluid though.