Soli Deo gloria
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Ratatouille. I don't know what decade Ratatouille is set in, so we're just going with the fact that Remy's using a typewriter. :)
There were many disadvantages to being a rat in the restaurant biz. Amongst other things like having to be specially approved by the city of Paris to even own a restaurant and being unable to reach the doorknob without a bit of gymnastics to open at seven in the morning, was not being able to talk to humans. Yes, the one thing Remy knew that was forbidden by rat laws he wanted to do the most. Oh, it was so frustrating! If only he could tell Colette to add a pinch of dried tarragon to the haddock instead of having to mime a spice or scamper across the entire spice cabinet to point out the right one. If only he could just say plainly to Linguini, 'Hey, I'll be out until eleven after work hanging out with my dad' instead of making him half anxious with worry as he stayed up half the night waiting for him to come home. Apparently all they heard when he spoke plain French was incessant squeaking. Brilliant.
Remy knew it was a human's world and he needed to keep a spot in it or be trampled. He worked in his spare time on his French penmanship, which was hard on two counts: number one, spare time?! An insane luxury when you're the owner and executive chef of an insanely in-demand French bistro. If he could even get it when working fourteen-hour days six days a week, it was mostly spent in either ethereal sleeping bliss, or hanging out with the clan. They still held him to family obligation of Sunday dinner (which, you know, he cooked. Even on his off-day, he cooked). Second, one could only write so well when your easiest writing utensil was a thread of lead whittled from the slimmest pencil. He practiced when he could but supplies were thin and his tiny paws weren't in his favor. It just wasn't a practical way to communicate with Linguini and Colette, even when they could read his tiny, tiny messages.
His inability to communicate, while frustrating, was inevitable, and thus he and his two human friends worked their way around it day-to-day. Who had time to roll their eyes over squeaking when they had a lunch rush with three fish en paipillotes, two deconstructed coq-au-vins, and three roasted spring parsnip soups with saffron oil and Brie tuiles to get out in less than fifteen minutes because they had to turn over five tables? No one did. Showing and squeaking was all he could do.
Still, it all culminated one day when Remy'd made a French butter sauce with parsley and saffron and Colette, under a misunderstanding, poured it over the pear-and-Grueyre risotto instead of over the pickled pigs-feet and honey-raddichio saute. There erupted such an argument in horror between these two. Linguini stood outside their tiny office nervously, peeking through a crack in the door but not daring to go in. They had a lunch rush and a line three abreast, ten deep down the lane, and he was the only waiter, and he couldn't make the food, and there was no more food for him to bring to the tables! He didn't dare stick a single toe inside that office, though. Colette's rapid French cursing and Remy's incessant squeaking and gestuclating would probably somehow end up killing him if he dared enter.
Remy and Colette, engaged in such loud argument, didn't notice Linguini's nervousness in the slightest; Remy walked unconsciously over the typewriter sitting atop the business desk; tripping over it, he hopped to and fro over its gently dimpling keys as he frustratedly waved his clenched and wiggling paws everywhere. Colette stood in front of him with folded arms that often fell from this arrangement to wave and clutch in the air at intervals.
Their tempers far exceeded Linguini's temperament; he couldn't enter that warzone.
For Remy's loud squeaking and Colette's fierce French, they suddenly stopped, breathing heavily. They stared at each other, their chests heaving, for some time, as if the first to blink or look away would suddenly be the wordless loser. Colette, however, dropped her eyes suddenly and noticed the piece of letter paper written up with a paragraph of unintelligible words. "What is this?" she said, coming around the desk to look at it from a reader's perspective. Remy looked from her interested eyes to the words. He slowly took a step back and pressed on the key that cause a space to appear. Watching his feet, he carefully stepped back and forth, performing a methodical if strange little dance routine over the steps. Colette squinted around him concentrated on his task to read the words he carefully typed in stilted but readable French.
"'Can you read what I am writing?'" she said slowly, enuciating each word as it appeared under his feet. "Yes, actually, it's quite readable." She sounded surprised.
Remy looked up and furrowed what would've been his eyebrows (a facial expression he'd adopted from hanging out with humans). Then, tongue between his teeth, quickly pounced on key after key, now using his front paws and his back feet. His words collected on the paper quicker than they had; Colette read along: "'Hazel Financier with Rosemary-Honey Sauce and Blood Orange Whipped Italian Ricotta. 140 grams of finely ground hazelnuts, toasted to a light brown. 6 egg whites, left to room temperature for a period of 30 minutes. . .' Remy, this is a recipe. One of yours?"
Remy looked up, nodded earnestly.
The dawning look passed away from Colette's face. A mutual understanding that oft passed between Remy and Linguini now was shared between these two chefs.
They'd found a solution to their problem.
While this was a good idea, neither had time to work on it, until disaster struck again: one day Remy was out discussing rat ethics with his dad; this left Colette running the kitchen by herself, save a couple of training interns. Linguini brought in a special request: "Hey, Colette. This customer wants that pigeon dish Little Chef makes sometimes. I wrote down what he says was in it. Who wants to eat pigeon? But I guess he makes it taste good. Can—can you make it?" Linguini wondered.
Colette furrowed her eyebrows over the notepad Linguini had brought her. "'Pigeon, sweet peppers, white wine vinegar, maybe a gastrique?' Yes, I remember this dish. He only makes it occasionally, though." She sighed, her elbows digging into the wooden counter. Her hands ruffled her short hair in frustration. "Oh, what did he put it in it?! The squab is dressed with olive oil and fennel and braised in a poaching liquid. Do you remember if it was rosemary or thyme in the poaching liquid?"
Linguini gulped, unprepared for offering any kind of aid in the realm of cooking. "Is the squab . . . the pigeon?"
"Yes, squab is the same word for pigeon! Do you think anyone would want to eat pigeon otherwise?!" Colette banged her hand against the counter with a long, fast line of French words cursing that stupid rat. "This never happened with Gusteau! Even after his death, we had his exact recipes to draw from!"
"Dad was good at that," Linguini said lamely.
"Yes, he was! It was a mark of his knowledge of food, that he could write out how he made it in a teachable manner! Ugh!" Colette sighed and studied the notepad again. "I shall try to recreate this, but I'm afraid it will only be a poor substitute." She handed the notepad back to Linguini. "Let me know the moment the Little Chef comes in. This shall never happen again. He's going to write down every dish that's ever been eaten in this restaurant!"
Linguini didn't know if she was being very practical or threatening. Still, he nodded, and made to leave the heated kitchen; first, though, he stopped short and kissed her cheek, making her stand shock still and blush a little. "You've got this," Linguini said calmly.
Colette returned to her work somehow calmer and more frazzled than she had been before.
Remy walked in after the dinner shift to find Colette painstakingly working away at her fifth attempt at the squab. "Little Chef, there you are. There." She finished swiping the vinegar gastrique to create a ring around the poached squab. "Is this like what you made before?"
Remy swiped a paw against the sauce and tasted it. He rolled the taste around his mouth for a moment before waving his hand in the air in a shifting scale sign.
Colette sighed, a little impatient. "This is the fifth time I've made it. I know it's missing some element. Something sour, something bitter, or was it spicy?"
Remy looked around her mise en place and noticing a distinct ingredient missing. He scampered up the little ladder from the counter to the spice rack and held up the little salt shaker full of red peppercorns.
Colette gasped as she held the shaker in her hand. "Yes, yes, I remember know. It's missing that crunchy taste of spice and brightness. Coarse, not fine, right?"
Remy nodded eagerly, glad she remembered.
"And in the poaching liquid, not in the gastrique?"
Another nod.
Colette sighed and walked with plodding feet over to the office. Remy hurried after her. She hung up her apron on the coat rack in there and said, wearily sitting in the swivel chair at the desk, "Little Chef, this can continue no longer. You need to write down all your recipes. I cannot remember everything I see you do. And what about what you're doing to a dish while my back is turned? I'm busy signing for a bakery order and you've added seven spices to the beef marinade. The only way, from a logical standpoint, that La Ratatouille can have any consistency, is for you to write down all your recipes. That is what Gusteau did, and look! He wrote a cookbook!"
Remy agreed, and so a new schedule unfolded for the bistro: Remy would spend the first hour of his shift each day typing fiercely away at his recipe notes. Papers stacked as he pounced determinedly across the keys. By the time Colette came in to start prepping, she'd find four or five new additions to the accumulating folder. The stack grew steadily, as Remy, rubbing his hands together with the excitement of this new creative project in the human world, started to enjoy himself immensely. He didn't stop once he'd written up all the recipes Colette hadn't memorized to reference. He typed up the recipes of the dishes that they sold regularly at the restaurant, ranging from tantalizing appetizers to tiny crabapple clafoutis.
"Huh. I've never seen this one before." Colette held out one of the papers to Remy. She folded her arms and sat back on the desk. "Is it new?"
Remy nodded.
Colette took this in stride, shrugging, and added it to the paper stack.
"Whoa. That's a lot of recipes," Linguini said, half in admiration, half in awe, walking towards the desk. His clumsy feet knocked against the desk, almost sending Remy over the edge. Remy recovered his balance with only a slight look of annoyance to Linguini.
"Yes, and we need to find a better way of organizing them," Colette said sternly, jumping down to pick up the swathes of paper that flitted through the air onto the wooden floor.
"Yeah, like a book or something," Linguini said, bending down to help her pick them up.
Colette looked at him, and Linguini, looking into her eyes, realized the gravity and suggestion of his words. "A book?" Colette said softly.
In unison, they stared at Remy with questions in their faces.
A book? Like a cookbook? Are they serious? A cookbook like Gusteau's, but written by me? A rat? Come on, there's gotta be some kind of cut-off limit to what people in Paris or France or the entire world will take. Sure, they'll eat food made by a rat, but why would they ever buy a book written by a rat? Come on, it's not like I can even write really well, either. I state facts. That's about it. I mean, maybe, if I could write as well as I can cook. But I can't, because words don't help me speak like food does. Food does the speaking for me, in my life and in the human world.
But maybe words about food might work . . . might being the operative word here. . .
Remy shrugged, waved his hands. Why not?
This idea was presented to two different parties. First, Linguini and Colette brought up the idea to Anton Ego. They three, with Remy, sat at one of the little white-clothed tables in La Ratatouille. All had a glass of a fine wine (Remy with a tiny shot glass filled with just a touch of dark red) and the clock just struck nine PM the moment after Linguini had spread the case before Ego.
Silence prevailed. Colette looked worriedly at Linguini, who looked nervous. Remy sat still with the biggest eyes in the world.
"Well . . . ?" Linguini said, waving his hands around for a moment.
Ego touched the typed-up recipes with his fingertips. His other hand swirled around the remaining wine in his glass. "It's a fascinating idea. Unusual, but no more unusual than a talented rat making a five-star dish," he said, with an especial encouraging nod to Remy. "It's a fine idea, with great promise. With only one obstacle in the way."
"Is that obstacle the fact that Little Chef is, you know. . ." Linguini gestured to Remy, not quite able to get out the words.
"He's a rat. And he's a chef. That is what he is," Colette said firmly.
"It's not his being a rat that I foresee being an obstacle. That's a selling point, actually. He's a creative mind that obviously knows what he's doing. No, that's not it. It's the stigma of Gusteau's."
"Stigma?" Colette and Linguini said together.
"Yes. He worked at a restaurant that was reduced to three stars, unfortunately, later shut down due to a failed health inspection. If you release this book, the media will bring all that up again besides the promotion of this book. Are you prepared for that?" Ego looked straight at Remy.
Remy realized that this meant a lot of humans would get to see him next to his food. It would be a lot of attention, a lot of talking, and a lot of humans. Would that be okay?
But to write a cookbook, like Gusteau! To go down as a great maker of extolled French cuisine! Who wouldn't want that? And that's what mattered—the food.
Remy nodded.
"So it shall be." Ego put up his glass. "A toast, to Remy, our newest writer!" Colette and Linguini toasted him, and Ego nodded his glass to Remy. "If you need any help with it, bring all your questions to me. I know a thing or two about writing about food."
A mentor gained, the next step was to inform his dad. Over which he said,
"A cookbook? Good grief, Remy, how human are you going to be?"
"Dad, I own a restaurant for Pete's sake! I-I don't even know why this surprises you at all!"
"Oh no, now Dad knows you know how to read," Emile murmured from a corner of the little rat part of the restaurant, around a mouthful of half a cheese platter.
Remy and Django looked at Emile, their expressions deadpan and flat. Emil looked properly sheepish and popped another grape into his mouth, still always 'horking it down'.
Django just raised his paw and let it fall with a sigh. "Are you sure you want to do this? You're putting yourself out to face a lot of ridicule."
"I know the risks and troubles ahead, Dad. But I want to do this. This is a big shot and I can't throw it away."
Django nodded, like he knew all the words in the world he could said to his son wouldn't change his mind. "You've got stubbornness, just like your old man." He rubbed his paw against Remy's head, which he took.
Thus began a new food endeavor that flew into full swing. Remy spent hours upon this book, jumping from one item to the next. He invented recipes, tested recipes, burnt recipes, practiced recipes, adjusted recipes, rewrote recipes, arranged recipes, breathed recipes. Part of it was hard work, but the other part was solely just fun. He loved cooking. He'd all these new recipes buzzing around his brain as he tried flavor combinations he'd never thought possible before but so worked. It'd be eleven at night and he'd be happy dancing over the success of a passion fruit and preserved lemon coulis.
"People are going to be making my food at home! My food! Just like they made Gusteau's!" he gushed at Emile.
"Cool. Can I have another pastry?" Emile said.
"This isn't just a pastry, Emile! This is a croissant filled with parsley goat cheese and walnut meats! What do you think of it?"
Emile patted his belly. "I think it tastes good. A little dry, though."
Despite his crudeness, Emile was honest, and honest meant helpful, in this particular case. Remy typed up this critique as Emile licked his fingers clean.
Colette helped edit and arrange the paper pile; she'd adopted a new favorite pen. Its ink was blood red, and killed Remy's darlings with a particularly macabre air.
Linguini, never a writer or a cook, helped in what ways he could, which included but were not limited to trying out the results of the new recipes and offering criticism when wanted ("But there's nothing wrong with it, Little Chef!" "Find something, Alfredo; it must be perfected!" said Colette. "Um, it's, uh, too crunchy?")
This cookbook was written during work hours; it took months to write while tending to the usual bistro items that needed daily attention. Sometimes all they could do was offer a few minutes a day; sometimes Remy was so tired he fell asleep on top of the keys and Colette would have to carefully wake him up past eleven at night before she locked up the place.
Colette and Remy finally stayed the course and worked until past three AM on night. Remy sleepily pulled off the last page and placed it in her hand before stepping over to his steaming mug of French press coffee to inhale its fumes.
She put it on top of the precarious stack. "There. That's the last." Colette yawned before settling her head into the crook of her folded arms on the desk and smiled. "Congratulations, Little Chef. You've just finished writing a cookbook."
Remy, despite being so sleepy, grinned broadly. He looked excitedly to Linguini to see his expression:
The man was sitting limply and lankly in the sofa chair, snoozing and snoring and drooling.
Well, considering the time of night, that wasn't an unacceptable response.
For all of being proud of it, Remy was horrified when Ego, upon spending three weeks reading and reviewing the manuscript, including the prologue chapter about the writer, gave him the script full of red marks.
"That's even more than what I gave him. Why? He's done a fine job!" Colette said in a rare moment of Remy's defense.
"It's too fine. Remy, you've written these recipes for a highly skilled restaurant chef such as yourself. If you believe in Gusteau's quote, 'Anyone can cook', you must write recipes that anyone can cook."
Remy realized the sensibility of this statement, and took it like as advice. He and Colette, now with more determination (on her side it was to get back at Ego for being so critical), rewrote the recipes to be made with a lesser set of skills but would still turn out a quality dish.
Ego smiled. "You've proven yourself mature. You've taken criticism and improved on your own work. I will happily back this up."
The fight to get the cookbook published began. Publishers, once reading the prologue, looked over the manuscript with some horror at Ego, who represented Remy. It was discouraging to have Colette answer the phone at the bistro with excitement and then sadly hand the phone to Remy so Ego could tell him the latest failure of the day.
Finally, the four gathered in the bistro's office. Ego paced in front of the desk as Colette sat at the desk on the edge of her seat and Linguini thumped his fingers nervously against the sofa chair's armrests. Remy kept pace with Ego across the surface of the desk, wondering what he would say next.
"I've come to the only correct conclusion concerning this matter:" Ego put his hands together and said to Remy, "I am going to publish your book personally."
"Like, as a publishing agency? You're going to start a publishing company?" Linguini wondered, almost disbelieving his ears.
"Yes, I shall."
"Can you afford to do that?" Colette began, but Ego put his hand up. "Don't worry about the cost. I'll make it twice over. I know genius when I see it, and I saw it when I read your cookbook, Remy. Together, we're going to take Paris by storm."
Remy took this turn of plans in excitement, and waited eagerly everyday for Ego's updates about meeting with printing companies, employing clerks to oversee details, getting photographers to take pictures of the food. It was so exciting.
A couple of weeks prior, right before Ego was going on a book tour that Remy couldn't go on (you can't just leave your restaurant when you're the head chef and have only one sous chef), the mentor brought in a cardboard box full to the brim of the beautiful cookbook. He drew one out; it showed a rat's silhouette in a chef's hat holding a wooden spoon, standing eagerly on a kitchen counter, ready to make anything. In beautiful calligraphy was the title—
"'Big Dishes from a Little Chef','" Ego said proudly.
Colette covered her mouth with her hands, shaking with laughter and tears. Linguini exclaimed in excitement and hugged and kissed her before almost squeezing the life out of poor Remy, who before that stood in amazement, looking at this book held out before him. I wrote that. I have a cookbook, just like Gusteau.
The day of its release Ego arrived just in time from a press release and TV show interview to a private dinner at La Ratatouille, by invitation only. Remy cooked recipes from his cookbook for everyone and scampered between the human side and the rat floor to greet everyone.
"Remy, my son, has written a cookbook!" Django pulled Remy's paw as high in the air as he could so everyone in the jumping, cheering crowd of rats could see the guest of honor. While the cheering slowly dissipated, Django said with no small amount of pride, "I'm proud of you, Remy."
"Thanks, Dad."
Remy ran down to supervise the order of the kitchen before walking through his little rat door into the main tiny dining room. Cheers rose as he came to the front of the table where Ego sat at the head, with Colette and Linguini at his right hand.
"Ah, the rat of the hour!" Ego stood up and held up his glass, to address the team that'd brought the book together. "Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce to you the someone who made all this possible: Remy!"
Another toast, this time: "To Remy, who's proven an old saying from an old genius correct, that indeed: anyone can cook!"
Remy glowed as he heard the applause and the cheering and clinking of glasses. Never, when he lived in the rafters of an old eccentric lady's country house, did he think that his curious love for food would ever result in a beloved bistro in Paris, and himself and his recipes immortalized in human history. It was an amazing thought.
He looked at Linguini and Colette, who gave him a thumb's up and a nod of approval, respectively. He might be the rat of the hour, but it was a team effort.
The next day headline's was, UNLIKELY AUTHOR WRITES COOKBOOK, BIG DISHES FROM A LITTLE CHEF, SALES NUMBER 180,000 ON FIRST DAY.
His cookbook shattered records, records set by Gusteau.
Lines lengthened at La Ratatouille. Remy signed thousands of his cookbooks with his little French penmanship. Amongst the usual amount of backlash of people gasping on the news about an unsanitary rat 'writing'?! a cookbook, demands for a second book were heard. Ego calmly took these requests of his client, and said "No comment" to anyone who asked if a sequel was planned (it was in the works, but no one had to know that).
Life for Remy was pretty hectic. Not bad for a country rat turned big city celebrity chef. Still, whenever he wanted to get away from the crowds, he'd sit on the rooftop of his restaurant and look at the moon or his beautiful city. Or sometimes he'd take a walk to a certain corner bookshop. He'd scramble up to the window and press his nose against the glass with the eagerness of a child at a candy store. There on a stand would be a #1 best-seller, Auguste Gusteau's Anyone Can Cook. And there, right next to it, also a #1 bestseller, was his own handiwork, Remy's Big Dishes from a Little Chef.
Even for a big city celebrity chef, it took his breath away to see his cookbook right next to Gusteau's.
"Right where it should be," Remy's little figment of Gusteau said.
"Who would've thought?" Remy said wonderingly.
"I might've." Remy looked at him. "Didn't I say 'Anyone can cook?'"
Remy gave him that. He'd proven that, and he'd proven one thing more: that anyone can write, too.
Thanks for reading!