A recipe for the grave

I’d always been a bit of a foodie, and the once renowned French restaurant was the perfect place to hone my culinary skills. It had been on the decline for the last ten years, but with my expertise and a little bit of love, I was sure we could get it back up to the top. But I needed to come up with a brand new recipe that would wow the customers.<br><br>The sort of thing that would lead to glowing reviews and happy customers, who might even let us have a slice of their award winning pie. Of course, that would only happen once the restaurant was back up and running.<br><br>I spent all of the next evening in the kitchen, surrounded by books and notes, trying to come up with something new. All of the traditional dishes had been used a million times before, and I really wanted to come up with something that would stand out. As much as I loved my work, the task was beginning to feel pretty daunting and I was starting to struggle to stay awake. I was making a list of the ingredients we had available and how best to use them with my eyes half shut, when the door to my office opened and my sous chef walked in.<br><br>“The real reason that you’re struggling to come up with that perfect recipe, is that you don’t really know what people want,” he said. He was a tall, thin man who moved with the grace of a bird and was always dressed impeccably, which made the rest of us look shabby by comparison.<br><br>“Take a trip to the cemetery just outside of town, and bring one of those notebooks and a pen. Write down every name you find and the date they were buried. Don’t note anything else. Do this until you’ve got one hundred and eleven names,” he said.<br><br>I was pretty much willing to try anything at this point, so I took his advice. I once heard a story about a Michelin starred chef who threw a big party just for the staff to gather everyone’s input. Apparently it had really helped them improve the food. So I trusted my sous and set out in the early hours of the morning. I walked down the main road for a while, until the houses started to thin out and the only thing around me was wasteland.<br><br>Eventually, I found the cemetery. It was surrounded by tall trees and was almost invisible from the road. I’d been walking for almost an hour, and it was starting to get dark. The sky was cloudy, so I couldn’t see the moon and I didn’t have a phone to use as a light, so I decided to head back and try again in the mornig. I was about to walk away from the cemetery when I noticed something.<br><br>The graves were all dated from the mid eighteen hundreds to the early nineteen hundreds. There was no one buried here after that. I wondered whether someone had bought this place and started their own personal graveyard, or if a small village had once thrived and then been abandoned. I walked down one of the rows of graves and read a few of the names until I found one which had no discernible writing. It was eroded by time and had moss growing on it, and the words and dates were blank.<br><br>I pondered the name of the man or woman inside the grave. Whether they had a family, friends, a name, a job. Whether they had any children. I found myself mulling over this information for quite a while, until the air began to cool and the clouds started to clear. I saw the moon and my heart skipped a beat. I was now a few hours walk from home, and it was almost midnight. I decided to grab a few names now and then go home and go to sleep.<br><br>I sat in one of the corners of the graveyard and started taking down the names and dates and putting them in a list. It wasn’t until I’d taken down around thirty that I started to feel a little bit sick. There was nothing necessarily wrong with the food I’d eaten, but the strange feeling seemed to come from absolutely nowhere, and I had no idea what was causing it. I tried to push on a little whilst I felt that I still could, but the sick feeling was rising to the brim and I eventually had to stop taking down the names.<br><br>I got up and walked to a nearby bush to throw up. As I brought up my digested dinner, I couldn’t help but groan out in pain. The mucus from my stomach was coming from my mouth and nose like it had a vendetta against my body. I was coughing and wheezing as I stumbled and fell to the ground, and I couldn’t move from that spot. A few minutes later, I was curled up into a ball, shivering and shaking with spasms.<br><br>Night began to turn to day, and the sky was slowly starting to lighten. I couldn’t take this anymore. I slowly struggled to my feet and set out on the long walk back home, wincing in agony with every step. I stopped at the restaurant to tell my sous that I was feeling a bit unwell, and to ask him if he could handle it on his own for the day. He told me that he could, but that I had to finish my little task with the cemetery.<br><br>“You’ve got about eighty one people to go,” he said.<br><br>I didn’t argue with him. He was right. I needed to finish this. I set out on the walk again, this time bringing a bottle of water and a packet of crackers to keep me hydrated and satisfied. I was still feeling a bit sick, but I knew I couldn’t leave it too long. I met a few people on the way, but didn’t speak to them. I was delirious and felt a bit out of it, and most of my energy was spent on battling with the sickness that was filling my stomach.<br><br>I eventually reached the cemetery, and I was so weak that I could barely move. I eventually managed to crawl over to one of the graves and took a few more names down, but I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be able to finish. I took down fifteen more and then I was starting to feel really ill. The sickness was starting to come through, and I was pretty sure that I was going to throw up again.<br><br>I decided to take one more name and then leave. I chose a grave completely at random, and the name on the headstone was that of a young girl. Her age was in the early teens. It made me feel a little bit sick and brought a tear to my eyes, and I felt bad that I had taken the name of a child. I stood and turned to leave, but as I did I noticed something.<br><br>The grave I had chosen at random had a date that was much more modern than any of the other graves. It was dated from fifteen years ago. I was still a bit delirious, but the name and date stuck out like a sore thumb. I started to make my way back home, and the whole thing was going through my head.<br><br>When I reached the restaurant, I decided that it was best to go to the hospital. I knew that I was sick, and I had a feeling that I was going to be there for a pretty long while. I made the phone call for the ambulance and whilst I was waiting I went into my office and took out one of the books that my sous had used to get the staff to come up with some ideas for a new dish. On the front page, there were initials. I recognised them as the same initials as the headstone in the cemetery.<br><br>I started to wonder if the girl had any connection to the restaurant, or if my sous had chosen me to help him because of her. I didn’t have time to wonder any more though, as I heard the ambulance pull up and I knew it was time to go. I didn’t say anything to my sous. I just picked up my bag and left.<br><br>I spent three days in the hospital. The doctors said that I’d eaten something contaminated. They didn’t know what it was, but they were adamant that it must have been food, that there was no way it could have been anything else. They told me that if I was sure I hadn’t eaten anything, then I was lying to myself.<br><br>I knew I wasn’t lying though. I hadn’t eaten anything. As far as I was concerned, it was something at that graveyard. Something that didn’t want me there. The doctors were sceptical, but I didn’t care. I was just happy to be healthy again, and to be going back to work.<br><br>I spent six weeks in France, learning more and improving. When I returned I wrote a new recipe that the customers loved and the rest is history. On my return, I did have one more thing to deal with. When I was packing up my things and preparing to hand in my resignation, I caught a glimpse of the reverse of the piece of paper I’d written down the cemetery names on. I recognised the handwriting as being the same as that in the notebook.<br><br>It was a recipe. It included fifteen ingredients and some basic instructions, along with a time and temperature. I once heard that the key to a perfect dish is always the time and temperature, and that if your timing and temperature are correct you don’t need to worry too much about the ingredients. It was a recipe for a dish called “a grave meal”. The ingredients were poppy seeds, cress, rosemary and thyme, oregano, mint, sage, lemongrass, basil, bay leaves, dill, tarragon, parsley, salt, pepper and garlic.<br><br>The time and temperature were three hours at two twenty one degrees centigrade. And below the recipe, there were the names. All one hundred and eleven of them.