With the Fire on High Page 6

  “Emoni.”

  I stop tucking away the ends of my head scarf. Chef said I could wear this instead of a hat as long as it keeps my hair out of my face and my pots. My curls were not fitting under that hat. “Yes, Chef Ayden?”

  “At what temperature is chicken considered time-temperature abused?”

  My eyebrows shoot up. I hadn’t paid attention to the temperature portion of the study guide. . . . Chicken is done when it’s done.

  “Emoni?”

  I close my eyes. “When you cut the chicken, you want the inside to show only the slightest hint of whitish-pink, since the chicken will keep—”

  He makes a note on his clipboard. “Emoni, what pieces of information need to be on the label of food you plan to store in the freezer?”

  “The expiration date. I mean, the date the food was prepared. And the time the food was prepared. The name of the food?”

  I look at the spot right over Chef’s shoulder; I can’t meet his eyes. He makes another note on his clipboard. “You’re not wrong. But you’re also not technically right. You have a sense of what works. You understand it in practice. But you still need to learn the technicalities. Cooking is a science; it’s more than just instinct.”

  Although I want to drop my head, I keep my chin up. This is exactly what I was afraid of, that this class would be more about what I could memorize than what I could do. Most of us signed up for this class to travel and cook, and we haven’t discussed either.

  Chef Ayden seems to be waiting for me to say something, but I just stare at him silently. He shakes his head. “Leslie, talk to me about storing food. Where is the safest place to store dry goods?”

  And when the attention swings to Pretty Leslie I finally drop my gaze, shame like the bacteria Chef Ayden asked about spreading under my skin.

  Catharsis

  ’Buela comes into the kitchen and turns on the radio. The sound of Marc Anthony wailing alongside an orchestra fills the kitchen. I would wrap my soul in a bow and sell it with the quickness to be able to cook for Marc Anthony. That man can sing. ’Buela pulls out the herbs that she gets directly from el campo in Puerto Rico and sets them on the counter. The sweet-smelling yerba buena, the Caribbean oregano. She hands me the knives before I ask for them, cleans the cutting board before I realize I need it rinsed.

  Some days, when my feelings are like this, like a full pot of water with the fire on high, I don’t know what to cook. Plans and ideas escape my mind and instead I let my heart and hands take control, guided by a voice on the inside that tells me what goes where.

  I push aside, or maybe I push forward, all the things I feel. Angry that I have to give Babygirl away every other weekend. That I have to dress her like a doll for her grandmother to love her. Conflicted about this damn elective that I convinced myself to take and that has now become my toughest class. Upset I have a greasy-ass job serving some cookie-cutter food where I get in trouble for the smallest mistakes. Confused about a father I love but also miss. Nervous that it’s senior year and I don’t know if college is in the plans for me. And I don’t know what is in the plans if not that.

  My hands move on their own, grabbing and slicing and mincing. And ’Buela and I are making music alongside the radio, the clanging of pans, the mortar against the pestle, our voices humming.

  When all the sounds stop, including the radio, it’s like I’m waking out of a fog. The stove is turned off. ’Buela wipes down the counter and folds the dishrag before turning to me. I lift the pot lids and see that I’ve made a fragrant yellow rice with cilantro. Somehow, black-eyed peas found their way into the rice, but I can tell from the smell that it works. The chicken looks juicy, and smothered in onions, it’s cooked perfectly without a thermometer. The green salad with a spinach base is crisp. Not a complicated meal, but one made for comfort.

  I plate ’Buela’s portion using one of the lessons I learned from the cul-arts textbook: the starch on the bottom and the protein on top, sauce spooned over both; a separate bowl for the salad.

  After the first bite, she closes her eyes, and when she opens them, she is in tears. She laughs when she wipes her eyes. “Look at me crying! Like this doesn’t happen every time, nena.”

  I don’t often ask questions about how people react to the food I cook. It makes my belly squeeze tight to know my dishes might have an effect I don’t mean them to have; like something inside me left my body and entered into the pots and pans without a permission slip. But today I need to know. “What did it make you feel, ’Buela?”

  She squeezes her napkin in her hand and doesn’t look at me as she moves her fork around the plate with the other. “It brought back a memory of being a little girl and staring out at the ocean. And wanting so badly to jump right in and swim far, far away, and being scared that if the water ever went above my neck it would swallow me whole and never spit me back out.”

  I nod and take a bite of my own food. No memories spring up, no new feelings. The only thing that happens is my taste buds respond to the tangy and salty notes.

  “Even that memory, of longing for what I was afraid of, warms me up. Like a candle being lit from the inside. You were given magic, nena.”

  I let go of a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I don’t know much about pathogens and storing sugar, but damn if I don’t know how to cook good food that makes people hungry for more, that makes people remember food is meant to feed more than an empty belly. It’s also meant to nourish your heart. And that’s one thing you won’t ever learn from no textbook.

  Pudding with a Pop

  What they don’t tell you about a culinary arts class is that it’s a lot of work. More than when you cook in your own kitchen. We meet three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And now that the introductory classes are done, each class is supposed to be broken down into a different category: demonstration day, when Chef Ayden teaches us a new skill and we practice it; recipe day, where Chef Ayden leads us through a new recipe; grading day, where we have to follow the recipe on our own and get graded. Technical quizzes happen at the top of every class as we prepare for the ServSafe test. But we’ve yet to make a recipe on our own.

  And so, for the last two weeks, second-to-last period every other day I walk into the kitchen, button up my white jacket, put my hair up in a pineapple, and tie on my head scarf, ready to get to my burners. But honestly, we spend more time cleaning than we ever spend cooking. We are always washing our knives, wiping down our cutting boards, clearing our stations, sanitizing our areas, putting things away from drying racks. It’s exhausting work and I know, like me, some of the other seniors were hoping for an elective that was going to be a little less intense. We’ve already had two people drop the class; both Sharif and a girl named Elena decided they’d rather have a study hall, so now our class is only a tiny group of ten.

  Although I dread the quizzes, which are on everything from serving food to preparing it, I like the bits and pieces we learn about running not only a kitchen but a restaurant. I would hate to make someone sick with my food, and that’s what I try to remember when I’m studying for quizzes. But I just want to get to the part I’m good at: cheffing it up.

  And today, for the first time, we are given a real recipe: making chocolate pudding from scratch. We stir cocoa and cornstarch and sugar together, then stir in milk. Chef guides us step by step and we all clean our stations as the pudding chills. As I’m putting away my ingredients, a little red bottle in the pantry calls my attention. I snatch it up and sprinkle some on my pudding. When Chef Ayden calls us up to test our dishes, I’m the first student to set my bowl in front of him. He grabs a clean plastic spoon and pulls my dish closer to him, leaning down to inspect it, turning the dish slowly in a circle. “Mmm. Nice chocolate color, smooth texture; you made sure the cream didn’t break, which is great. And I’m curious what this is on top.”

  He takes a tiny spoonful and pops it into his mouth, and the moment his mouth closes around the spoon his eyelids close, to
o. I wonder if my cooking woo-woo will work on him. “What is that?” he asks, his eyes still closed. I assume he means the spice on top and not whatever memory may have been loosened by my pudding. His eyes open and I realize the question was in fact for me.

  “I used a little smoked paprika,” I say. Heat creeps up my neck. I hadn’t even thought about what would happen if I used an ingredient that wasn’t in the original recipe.

  “You trying to show off, Emoni?” Chef Ayden asks me very, very seriously.

  “No, Chef. I wasn’t.”

  “The ancient Aztecs too would pair chocolate with chipotle and cayenne and other spices, although it is not so common now. Why’d you add it?”

  “I don’t know. I saw it in the pantry and felt the flavors would work well together.”

  He takes another spoonful. Chef told us from the beginning that since every student is evaluated, he would very rarely take more than one bite of any single dish. I’m surprised he does so now, but he closes his eyes again as if the darkness behind his lids will help him better taste the flavors. His eyes pop open.

  “This isn’t bad.” He drops his spoon. “Emoni, I think creativity is good. And this, this . . .” He gives a half laugh like he’s surprised he doesn’t know what to say. He clears his throat and it seems almost like a memory has him choked up. “This is delicious, but I want to make sure you follow the ingredients list. If you work under a chef and they give you clear directions, it’s disrespectful to try and modify their recipe without first consulting them. Whether or not you think the flavors will work.”

  He takes another spoonful of my dish. “Class! Everyone grab a spoon. Come eat Emoni’s chocolate pudding.” A couple of the boys begin snickering and I know they took his comment the dirty way. I don’t drop my head, but I’m blushing and it’s from a mix of both pride and embarrassment.

  When we leave Culinary Arts, Malachi runs after me.

  “Yo, Santi, you should have seen your face!” Malachi laughs.

  Although class ended several minutes ago, I’m still flushed. “I can’t believe he said that like he didn’t know y’all got nasty minds!”

  Malachi laughs again. “I don’t think Chef sees humans when he looks at us, only white jackets and chefs-in-training.” He lowers his voice. “And to be fair, it was really very good pudding.”

  I swat him on the arm. “Stop that. Oh my God, I can’t go back there.”

  He laughs again. “You’ll be fine.”

  “You have a nice laugh,” I say, and I must look as surprised as he does that the words left my mouth. “We’re still not friends. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Thank you. You have a nice laugh, too, even though I rarely hear it.”

  “Don’t say thank you. And don’t pay it back. That wasn’t a compliment. It was an observation.”

  Malachi shrugs and calls over his shoulder, “I won’t, Santi. And I haven’t laughed that much in a while. So thanks for that, too.”

  Living Large & Lavish

  On the bus ride home after school, Angelica is listing all the schools with graphic design programs she wants to apply to: NYU, Pratt, Savannah College of Art and Design. I listen quietly as she lists all the pros and cons of each program and the different professors she wants to work with at each school.

  “I just don’t know if I’ll get in. All of these programs are amazing. They only accept the best of the best.”

  I shake my head. “Gelly, are you crazy? You are an incredible artist. Why do you think the school always asks you to draw the sports posters and decorate for the school dances? Why do all the kids in our class ask you for help whenever they need something designed? You see the world like no one else. Those schools should kiss your feet for even applying.”

  And I’m not just blowing smoke up Angelica’s ass. I mean, tush. Whether it’s designing an outfit, drawing a logo, or putting together a flyer, if you give that girl a colored pencil, she’ll give you back something that belongs in an art gallery.

  “I guess. The guidance counselor thinks I have a good shot, and my mentor at the museum says my portfolio is the shit, but I’m nervous. What about you? What schools has Fuentes thrown your way?”

  I stare out the bus window. “Fuentes knows any school I apply to will have to be in Philadelphia. She’s had me research La Salle, Temple, St. Joseph’s. She’s pushing for Drexel, which has a culinary arts program, but you know I’m not good at school, so a scholarship is out the question. I don’t even want to think about taking out loans. And how can I work full-time and go to school full-time and raise Babygirl full-time? I think in order of most important, school is at the bottom, right?”

  I tap my fingers against the windowpane and fight the urge to bite on my nails.

  Angelica is quiet for a long moment and I’m thankful she doesn’t rush to reassure me with unrealistic words. “But what if you get financial aid? You can’t just work at the Burger Joint full-time.”

  “It’s not a bad job. It pays me and I can maybe make manager one day.”

  But how can I give Angelica an answer when I don’t know myself? I stop staring out the window and force a smile. “Right now I’m going to keep working on your anniversary menu. How do you feel about lobster? Super romantic.”

  She shakes her head. “Okay, girl. I’ll drop the topic. But just know, I think you have more to offer the world than you give yourself credit for.”

  I look at Angelica and smile. “Same, sis. Borrow that same advice. If one of those schools will make you a stronger artist, fill out the application and shoot your shot. For you, the stars and beyond.”

  Impossibilities

  It’s Wednesday and we are working on a new recipe. I’m glad a week has passed and people have stopped asking to taste my pudding. I tuck the ends of my scarf in. Putting on my jacket and head wrap always makes me feel like I’m a ball player in my full uniform stepping onto the court.

  “Today you’re working with saffron. This isn’t a regular spice; it stains and it’s costly. A friend brought it back to me from Europe, so be precise with your knife work. Find a classmate; there’s not enough to go around to do this individually.” Chef Ayden claps his hands together.

  I look around the room as people pair up. At Malachi’s station, Pretty Leslie squeezes his arm and smiles up at him. He catches my gaze, gives me a player’s shrug like, I don’t know why the pretty girl keeps touching me, and looks back at Leslie.

  Chef Ayden notices I’m still alone. “Emoni, it seems we have an odd number in class today. Will you work by yourself, or do you want to join another team and make a threesome?” I shake my head. Chef Ayden keeps putting me in the most awkward situations with his comments. I can’t even be mad at the snickers.

  “I’m fine working on my own.”

  Chef Ayden wasn’t wrong. It does take almost the entire period, and we have only ten minutes left to plate our rice dishes and taste test.

  “Good job, class. The chorizo on your cutting board wasn’t the highest quality, but when it is, this paella is really something special, and a staple in most Andalusian homes.” He clears his throat. “I have an announcement to make.”

  We all look up. Dang, is he quitting already? It’s only been three weeks.

  Chef is still talking. “As you all know from the course description, we are set to travel to Sevilla, Spain, for spring break in late March.” My heart begins beating fast. For years, I’ve watched reruns of Anthony Bourdain shows where he tries food from all over the world. I’ve listened to chefs on Chopped talk about training in Paris and London. I’ve imagined myself traveling to far-flung places that have ingredients I didn’t know existed.

  “I didn’t want to bring it up until we had the budget confirmed. The administration has returned with the initial numbers and I now have a sense of what each student needs to raise. Each of you is accountable for eight hundred dollars by December fifteenth in order to attend the trip. We will, of course, plan fund-raisers to help reduce that
cost.”

  An ache shoots from my heart. Eight hundred dollars in what, a little over two and half months? I won’t work enough hours to make even half of that by the deadline. Sure, some kids will be able to afford that without a fund-raiser: Amanda, whose parents own a small accounting firm in Port Richmond. Talib, who stays over in Chestnut Hill with his lawyer father. I know for sure I, and probably Pretty Leslie who’s from the same hood, can’t just come up with eight hundred dollars, money that would be better going toward the light bill and groceries or new shoes for Babygirl.

  A week in Spain would change my life; it’d be huge, it’d be amazing . . . it’d be impossible. My stomach feels twisted in knots. I want to go so bad, but I grab that hope between my fingers and crush it like the strands of saffron, praying it doesn’t leave a smudge.

  Santi

  I’m one of the slowest students to clean my station, and when I leave the classroom Malachi’s leaning against the wall talking to Pretty Leslie. She giggles at something he says, but as if he feels me watching, his eyes swing my way. I raise an eyebrow and scoot past them.

  “Hey, Santi,” Malachi says.

  I don’t want to be rude, but I also don’t want to talk to Pretty Leslie, so I shake my head and keep going.

  “Santi, I want to ask you something.”

  I stop in the middle of the hallway and wait for him to catch up. He takes his sweet time walking over, Pretty Leslie on his heels.