Purrmaids #7

by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen

  Shelly nodded. “Sweet and tangy is a fin-teresting combination,” she said.

  “It’s different,” Mr. Bengal agreed. “But that’s what makes it special.”

  “Do the leaves taste the same as the fruit?” Angel asked.

  “Taste one and find out,” Mr. Bengal replied.

  Angel took a bite of a beach banana leaf. “It’s salty,” she said. “It’s very different from the fruit.”

  Next, it was time to taste the sea mustard. Shelly looked at the little green pod. She shrugged and took a bite. Almost fin-stantly, her eyes grew wide. She spat the pod back into her paw. “This is super spicy!” she exclaimed.

  “That’s what I love!” Angel said, happily chewing. “Spicy food is fin-tastic!”

  “Now that you’ve tasted all the sea crops we have here, you can swim around the farm to get a second look,” Mr. Bengal said. “Pick anything you want.” He held out some bags that said COASTLINE FARM on them. “Take some food home to try with your families.”

  “What a generous offer!” Ms. Harbor purred.

  “What should we pick, Shelly?” Angel asked.

  “Do you know what you want to cook?” Coral asked.

  Shelly shrugged. “Not yet. Let’s gather a little bit of everything,” she said. “Even some mangoes. We can figure out the recipes later.”

  Angel and Coral nodded. “That’s a purr-fect plan,” Coral said.

  The girls swam off to pick the crops. Angel got two pawfuls of sea mustard. Coral collected some sea cauliflower and a few plump mangoes. Shelly gathered some beach bananas and leaves. She picked some of the flowers, too. Mom and Dad always decorated their most fancy creations with shells or corals. Tonight, we can decorate with flowers, Shelly thought.

  Ms. Harbor saw them with their crops. “What are you girls taking home?” she asked.

  “Everything!” Shelly said. “We’re going to come up with recipes for all of these.” Suddenly, she grinned. “I have a great idea!” she exclaimed. “Ms. Harbor, would you like to eat at the Lake Restaurant tonight? We’re cooking a special meal using the Coastline Farm crops.”

  Ms. Harbor smiled. “That would be paw-some,” she said. “I love eating at your family’s restaurant. Can I bring Mr. Bengal?”

  “Of course!” Shelly said. “Come to the restaurant at six o’clock.”

  “It’s a date.” Ms. Harbor laughed. “I’ll be sure to make a reservation right after school. I can’t wait to see what kittens in the kitchen can do!”

  Ms. Harbor swam off to say goodbye to Mr. Bengal. That’s when Coral tugged on Shelly’s paw. “Are you sure about inviting our teacher?” she asked. “What if we can’t make a whole dinner with these foods?”

  Shelly gulped. “I didn’t think about that,” she said. “Should I tell her not to come?”

  “No way!” Angel exclaimed. “You’re the best chef we know. You’ll be able to think of a whole menu. I believe in you.”

  “I believe in you, too,” Coral said. “I just got worried for a minute.” She shrugged. “You know I worry too much.”

  Shelly smiled. “Thank you both for believing in me,” she said. “I think we should spend less time worrying and more time cooking.”

  “First we have to get home,” Angel said.

  “Good thing it’s time to go!” Shelly exclaimed.

  The students of Eel-Twelve returned to the Cross Cove Current. Shelly swam ahead of her classmates.

  “Slow down!” Coral called. “You know I don’t swim that fast!”

  “Even I can’t keep up with you!” Angel said.

  Shelly stopped and looked over her shoulder. She said, “I’m sorry. I just want to get back quickly.” Butterfly fish fluttered in her stomach. I can’t wait to start cooking, she thought.

  “But we all have to stay together,” Coral said.

  “Coral is right,” Ms. Harbor purred. “I know you’re excited. But you can’t swim away from the class.” She winked. “You can swim next to me right at the front, though.”

  It took longer than Shelly wanted, but soon, sea school was up ahead. The purrmaids had just enough time to get back to Eel-Twelve and get their things before the final bell. Shelly placed the bags from the farm carefully inside her backpack. “Let’s go,” she said. “We have a lot to do.”

  “Wait a minute,” Angel said. There was still a mess on her desk. “I need to put everything away before I leave.”

  Shelly sighed. Angel was always running late! “Please hurry up.”

  “Almost done!” Angel answered.

  When Angel’s desk was clear, Shelly started to leave. But then Coral said, “Wait! I need my library book.” She put her bag down and swam to her desk. “It’s here somewhere.”

  Shelly clenched her paws. First Angel was wasting time, and now Coral! “You’re not going to have time to read today, Coral.”

  “I still want it,” Coral replied. “It’s a cookbook. It might come in handy later.”

  “A cookbook?” Shelly’s eyes grew wide. That could actually be a big help! “I’ll search with you,” she said.

  It took fur-ever to find the book, but Shelly finally did. “Here it is!” Shelly exclaimed, smiling. She looked at the cover. In a fin-stant, her smile disappeared. “This is a human cookbook,” she said. Humans and purrmaids had very different ways of cooking. They also used very different ingredients. “We can’t use this!” She groaned.

  Coral held her backpack open for the book. “It could give us fin-spiration,” she said.

  Shelly rolled her eyes. Looking for the cookbook had been a waste of time. “Are you two ready now?” she muttered. “I really need to get to work.”

  “You mean we really need to get to work,” Angel said. “We’re cooking together, right?”

  “Of course we are,” Coral purred. She wrapped an arm around Shelly’s waist. “But Shelly will be in charge. She’s a paw-some chef.”

  Shelly had to smile at that. “Come on, you two,” she said. “It’s time to get cooking!”

  As the girls swam into the restaurant, Shelly said, “Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!”

  Mom looked confused. “What are you girls doing here?” she asked. “Shouldn’t you be doing homework?”

  “We don’t have any homework tonight, Mrs. Lake,” Coral replied.

  “We’re here to make dinner for our teacher,” Angel added. “We brought food from Coastline Farm to cook with.”

  “We’ve never tried anything from there,” Dad said. “Show us what you have.”

  Shelly emptied the bags onto the kitchen counter.

  “I know those are mangoes,” Mom said, “but I’ve never seen the rest of these!”

  “We hadn’t, either!” Coral exclaimed.

  Shelly pointed to the different foods. “These are sea cauliflower, sea mustard, and beach bananas.”

  Mom scratched her head. “I’ve never cooked with those,” she said.

  “That’s why I have to think of new recipes,” Shelly said.

  “That’s a challenge,” Dad said.

  “Shelly is up for it!” Angel exclaimed. “She always knows just what to cook.”

  Shelly bit her lip. She felt the butterfly fish in her stomach again. Coral and Angel were both excited now. But Shelly was getting nervous. What if I can’t think of a good idea?

  “Before you girls get started,” Mom said, “you should have a snack. I made my famous Garden Urchin Roll.”

  Dad brought out a tray of sushi. The girls plopped pieces into their mouths. “This is so good,” Coral purred.

  “What’s in this again?” Angel asked.

  “Sea cucumber, sea lettuce, sea grapes, and sea urchin,” Dad answered, “wrapped in seaweed.” He grinned. “You can sea why they’re fin-credible!”

 
Shelly groaned. “That’s such a dad joke!”

  “Well,” Dad said, “I am your father.”

  When the girls had finished their snack, Shelly floated over to the foods from Coastline Farm. “I have an idea for a recipe,” she said. She gathered things from around the kitchen. “We need some chopped sea urchin and sliced sea cucumber. Maybe a sprinkle of sea grapes. And a few sheets of seaweed.” She swam to the sea mustard. “Let’s use this, too.”

  “What are you planning?” Coral asked.

  “A new sushi hand roll,” Shelly replied. She chopped a few sea mustard pods into little pieces. She arranged some sea mustard, sea cucumber, and sea urchin on the seaweed sheets. She wrapped each one into a cone. Then she sprinkled some sea grapes on top. She held two cones out to her friends. “Would you like to try a spicy sea mustard hand roll?”

  Coral and Angel bit into their sushi rolls. Angel smiled. “It’s good!” she said.

  But Coral was frowning.

  “Don’t you like it, Coral?” Shelly asked.

  “It’s great,” Coral said. “But isn’t this just a Garden Urchin Roll with some sea mustard? It doesn’t seem like a new recipe.”

  Now Shelly frowned. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “I didn’t even think about that.”

  “It’s all right!” Angel said. “We just need more fin-spiration.”

  “We could make a sushi roll with mangoes and shrimp,” Coral suggested.

  Shelly shook her head. “My parents already make a mango and shrimp sushi roll.”

  “Maybe we could prepare a seafood salad with sea cauliflower,” Angel said.

  “No,” Shelly said. “That won’t be very different, either. I want to try to make foods that purrmaids don’t eat all the time.”

  “Should we check Coral’s cookbook for ideas?” Angel asked.

  “That’s for making human food,” Shelly said. “We probably can’t use any ideas from there.” She stared at the Coastline Farm foods again. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”

  “What’s harder?” Dad asked, swimming up behind Shelly.

  Shelly sighed. “I wanted to think of brand-new recipes,” she said.

  “But all your ideas sound like things purrmaids already eat all the time?” Dad asked.

  Shelly frowned. “How did you know?”

  Dad pulled her into a hug and whispered, “Fathers are good at reading their daughters’ minds.” He kissed Shelly’s forehead. “You girls should know that most recipes are inspired by familiar foods,” he said. “There are two ways that chefs make foods seem really different from the same old meals. One way is to mix flavors in different ways.”

  “Like mixing something spicy with something really sweet?” Shelly asked.

  Dad nodded. “That actually sounds like it might taste fin-tastic,” he said.

  “What’s the other thing chefs do?” Coral asked.

  “We change the way something is cooked,” Dad said. “Here at the restaurant, we use our oven a lot. That makes food taste completely different from what purrmaids expect.”

  Suddenly, Shelly’s eyes grew wide. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before!” she purred. “The oven is our secret ingredient!”

  Cooking in Kittentail Cove was a little tricky. On land, humans used fire to heat and cook their food. But fire didn’t really work underwater! So cooking for most purrmaids involved chopping, seasoning, spicing, and mixing. But at the restaurant, the Lakes were able to do more—because they had an oven.

  Mom and Dad chose a special location for the restaurant. It was built over an opening in the ocean floor called a thermal vent. The water that came out of a thermal vent was very hot—sometimes hundreds of degrees! The Lakes built a long tunnel over the thermal vent that reached almost to the surface of the water. That way, the heated water didn’t hurt anyone. But the tunnel ran through the Lake Restaurant kitchen—and it made a wonderful oven for cooking.

  Shelly waved for her friends to come over to the large metal door on the far side of the kitchen. “I finally have my first really good idea,” she said. “We’ll use the oven to cook something special!”

  “I’ve never used an oven before,” Angel said.

  “I’ll show you how,” Shelly said.

  “With my help,” Dad said. He floated next to his daughter. “The oven is a wonderful machine, but it’s only safe if you follow the rules.”

  “Rules?” Coral asked. “What are they? I want to be sure we’re following all of them. Should we take notes?”

  Shelly and Angel looked at each other and shook their heads. Coral was always worried about following the rules.

  Dad patted Coral’s shoulder. “No need for notes. You girls just need a grown-up to keep an eye on you.”

  Coral let out a deep breath and nodded.

  Shelly kissed Dad’s cheek and said, “We’ll tell you when we’re ready for help.” She opened a cabinet under the counter and looked inside. “We need the oven pans first.”

  “What are those?” Angel asked.

  Shelly took out some covered metal pans with long handles. “Anything we want to cook in the oven needs to go into one of these oven pans,” she explained. “We put the food inside and close the lid tightly. That way, when the hot water from the thermal vent flows up, it doesn’t take our meal along for the ride!”

  “That makes sense,” Coral said. “These foods were grown on land, but we don’t want to send them back up!”

  “Exactly!” Shelly exclaimed.

  “What do you want us to do first?” Angel asked.

  “I like the idea of mixing something spicy with something sweet,” Shelly replied. “Let’s cook sea mustard and mangoes with shrimp. We can fry everything in fish oil so it’s crispy.”

  “That sounds like a fin-tastic main dish,” Angel said. “Can I have the first bite?”

  Shelly rolled her eyes. “Maybe, Angel,” she joked. She pointed to the beach bananas. “These are so sweet and tangy,” she said. “We could make a pie with a kelp crust.”

  “That would be a paw-some dessert,” Coral said.

  “What about the sea cauliflower?” Angel asked. “Or the beach banana leaves? Do you have an idea for those?”

  Shelly scratched her head. “I think we could roast the sea cauliflower and beach banana leaves,” she said. “We can mix it with chopped sea urchins and serve it over sea lettuce. It will be a new type of seafood salad.”

  “That’s a purr-fect appetizer!” Coral exclaimed.

  “You came up with a whole menu, Shelly,” Angel said.

  Shelly smiled. “I only came up with the ideas for the menu,” she purred. “If we want to have food, we’d better get to work!”

  Shelly passed Angel the beach bananas. “You can chop these into small pieces,” she said. She pushed the mangoes toward Coral. “Peel these and slice them, please,” she said. “Be careful around the pits! I’m going to make the pie crust.” She lined a pie pan with a piece of seaweed and placed it inside an oven pan. “This is ready for baking.”

  “I’m done chopping,” Angel said.

  “And I’m done slicing,” Coral said.

  “Angel, bring me a bowl of shrimp from over there,” Shelly said, pointing. “Coral, bring me your mango slices and those sea mustard pods.”

  Angel and Coral grabbed the supplies. Shelly showed them how to put everything in an oven pan. “One piece of mango, one mustard pod, one piece of shrimp,” she said. “Then repeat!”

  The purrmaids worked quickly. They used all the shrimp. Coral asked, “Should we save some of the shrimp for something else?”

  Shelly shook her head. “We have a saying here at the restaurant: When you cook a meal with shrimp, don’t you even try to skimp!”

  Coral giggled. “I guess purrmaids do like
to eat shrimp.”

  Shelly added some fish oil to the pan and sealed it up. “This is ready for the oven.”

  “What’s next?” Angel asked.

  “We can roast the vegetables together in one pan,” Shelly said. The girls filled the largest oven pan with all the sea cauliflower and beach banana leaves.

  “We should make a saying for this dish, too,” Coral said. “How about this? When you cook a meal of veggies, fill the pan up to the…edgies.”

  The girls giggled. “That’s not as catchy as Shelly’s saying,” Angel joked.

  Shelly sprinkled a little fish oil on the vegetables. Then Angel put the lid on the pan.

  “Now we need to make the pie filling,” Coral said.

  “We saved the best for last!” Angel purred.

  “This one is easy,” Shelly said. She grabbed the smallest oven pan. “We’ll roast the beach bananas by themselves so they’re nice and soft.”

  The girls put all the chopped beach bananas into the pan, and Shelly sealed it. Then she did a flip in the water as she shouted for her dad. “We’re ready for the oven now!”

  Dad inspected the oven pans. “You girls did a great job with these,” he purred. He carefully placed them inside the oven. “Do you know how long you want to cook each dish?”

  Shelly looked at the clock again. It was four-thirty. “The pie filling should cook quickly,” she said. “I think just twenty minutes. The shrimp dish will take a little longer.”

  “Like half an hour?” Angel asked.

  Shelly nodded. “The roasted vegetables need about forty-five minutes.”

  “So they come out at five-fifteen,” Coral said.

  “That leaves just enough time to get everything ready before Ms. Harbor and Mr. Bengal arrive,” Shelly said.

  “That’s a lot to keep track of,” Dad said. “You should set a timer.”