Since working at our houses has been fairly disastrous, on Monday we asked the nice art teacher, Ms. Lu, if we could stay in at lunch and work in her room. She was totally cool with it, so we’ve been spending our lunchtime there every day this week. And we rock! We’ve cranked out a papier-mâché ice-cream cone. (An ancient food, ice cream, brought to this country by lots of different immigrant groups, because I guess everyone likes creamy frozen sweetness! Plus, it’s such a melting-pot example, since the ice-cream cone was supposedly invented at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Melting-pot food and history—a perfect combination.) Then we finished our bagel diorama and another one on the hot dog. They are so cute! We’re not finished, but we’re in great shape.
So I’m walking down my block, definitely singing a happy tune in my head, when I see Dad up ahead of me—by himself with Rocco on a leash. How lucky am I? This week Dad’s off on Thursday, making today even better. When I catch up to him, he gives me a one-armed hug.
“Hey, hon! School’s out already? Seems so early. Don’t they teach you guys anything?” My dad loves to tease, and somehow, he’s convinced that if he says something often enough, it will get funnier.
“Ha-ha, Dad. We’re there plenty of time, believe me. And, I’ll have you know, it was stupendous today—one of my teachers even said so.”
He stands up from picking up Rocco’s poop with a plastic bag, then tries to ruffle my hair. “Gross, Dad, keep away from me!”
Shaking his head, he starts up our stoop. “Hysterical much, Frankie? My hand was encased in plastic, goofy girl. So I guess you don’t want to go get stuff for dinner with me?”
I jump at the chance to go shopping with my dad. It’s so fun to watch him make his choices at the butcher shop, inspect the fruit and vegetables at the produce stand, sniff deeply and dramatically in the bakery to make the perfect bread selection, and then, if we still need something else, talk to all the old ladies at the supermarket as we pick up the rest. It’s kind of an adventure. And they all worship him. As my dad likes to say, the world loves a fireman.
“Definitely!” I run up behind him. He chuckles and leans inside to deposit Rocco, douse himself with hand sanitizer, and grab some shopping bags from the hooks in the hall. “Let’s hit it, Frankie!”
I dump my backpack inside and follow him back out the door.
We make our way down Court and Smith Streets, stopping every few feet to chat or check on one person or another. First it’s someone my dad went to high school with, then it’s a friend of my grandmother’s. A girl who used to babysit us who’s visiting from college, then a guy from my dad’s fire company. Every day is old home week when you’ve lived your whole life in Brooklyn.
At Esposito’s, the butcher shop, he’s waved to the front of the line—and since it’s Dad, nobody seems to mind. He points to some pork chops, which the plump man behind the counter wraps up for him right away, congratulating him on his choice and throwing in an extra one or two—for all those growing boys, he says. Pointing the wax-paper package at me, the butcher booms, “This your girl, Joe? She don’t look nothing like you—she’s beautiful!”
I blush and shove my hands in my pockets. So embarrassing. But everybody laughs—the guy has said the same thing every time we’ve come in since I can remember. I used to love it, but now I’m mortified.
“Looks just like her mama, Dom, just like her mama.” Dad smiles. He gives them a friendly salute. “Later, fellas.”
Now we head to the Korean vegetable stand, where he’ll probably get a bunch of bitter greens to cook up with garlic and some little potatoes.
I’ve been telling him about my day and about the exciting progress we’re making with our food project. Watching his confidence with tonight’s ingredients reminds me of something.
“Hey, Dad, do you know what you’re going to make for the Museum Night potluck? Granny’s gnocchi maybe? Or that seven fishes thing?”
Poking the dusty potatoes with one finger and balancing the good ones in his other hand, he doesn’t even look up. “Oh right, yeah. I haven’t even thought about it, bella. When is it again? Week after next?”
“No, Dad! It’s Monday. You know that already; I put it on the master calendar.”
Turning suddenly, Dad drops all the potatoes he’s juggling. “Monday? As in this coming Monday?”
“Um, yeah. Monday. Same date it’s been for the last month or so.” I crack myself up. Doesn’t anyone listen to me? I cannot take my eyes off some purple peppers and think that Chef Antonio would really like to see these.
Despite years of practice, I’m not prepared for what comes next. Dad squints his hazel eyes, like he’s in pain.
“Francesca, I am so sorry.” Uh-oh. Full name, serious tone, this is not going to end well.
“Uh, what’s wrong?” I stall.
“Hon, next week I have that training trip. I told you guys, I’ll be gone for a few days. Remember?”
You know that expression about blood running cold, or turning to ice, or whatever it is? That happens to me right now. All the liquid in my body freezes, and I cannot move my limbs. Somehow, I manage to squeak something in spite of my clenched jaw.
“But, Dad, you cannot be serious. You promised. I put it on the calendar!”
“Frankie, I guess I forgot to look at the calendar. I’m so sorry, baby. It only works if we remember to check that thing, and anyway, this is beyond my control. It’s required training. We have to stay up-to-date with new technology, you know that. It’s my job.”
When have I heard that one before? Oh yeah, all my life.
“But the calendar . . . the potluck . . .,” I begin to whine.
“We’ll figure out something, Francesca. I promise. It will be okay. Maybe, thanks to your cooking class, Mom will be able to pull something together!” He grins to himself before picking the potatoes back up and sauntering to nice Mr. Pak, the grocer, to ring him up. I’m still frozen in the aisle, unable to do more than sputter.
My mom? My mom will have to make a traditional Italian dish for everyone at school to share? Everyone? At school? To actually eat? If both my grandmothers weren’t out of town right now—one in Florida, the other in Italy—I would ask one of them to do it. They had to pick now to be away? My mom bringing something she made to a school event. This so cannot be happening.
My good day is now just a memory. My nightmare has begun.
CHAPTER 27
Lillian
It’s hard to believe that today is our last cooking class. It’s pathetic, I know, but American Cooking 101 has been the closest thing I’ve had to a social life since we moved to Brooklyn. What’s going to happen next week, after the Immigration Museum project is over? My “Frankie project” has actually started showing signs of success—she hasn’t been openly mean to me in a couple of weeks, and lately she’s been acting almost friendly. Once our social studies assignment is complete, will she go back to treating me like an annoying nobody? Will Liza still be my friend, or will she decide it’s too much trouble trying to stick up for me around Frankie when we don’t have to work together anymore?
So many questions are jostling around in my head, but there’s no time to think about them too much right now because my mother and I are running late for class. Well, not late, but definitely not as punctual as she likes to be. Today’s theme is bread, probably the one food other than cheese that my mother has no interest in or use for. (I, of course, can’t get enough of it.) There’s plenty of bread in China, but it’s usually more like Wonder Bread than the homemade kind you get from bakeries in America and other countries. My mother has definitely never baked bread—or probably even wanted to—so she was in no hurry to leave for the cooking studio today.
When we finally get to class, it looks like Chef Antonio is delaying his introduction to finish some prep work. Normally, this would have frustrated my mother, but today I’m the one who’s annoyed. I thought my mother was beginning to appreciate these cooking classes, maybe even enjoy
them a little, but the fact that she’s literally dragging her feet this afternoon makes me wonder if there was ever any point to this whole experiment.
“Ah, bueno, bueno!” bellows Chef Antonio as we grab our aprons and take the two empty seats at the end of the table. “I am just getting everything perfecto for our last—and most challenging—class.” He stops to wink at my mother. “I know how much our MeiYin enjoys a challenge.”
My mother’s lips turn up into a half smile, and I can tell that she’s embarrassed. She definitely enjoys a challenge when she can be pretty sure she’s going to win. Noodles or peppers? No problem. Beans? Bring ’em on. But bread? Bread is uncharted territory, and when it comes to food, my mother is used to knowing her way.
Chef tells us that the history of bread goes back thousands and thousands of years—at least ten thousand. But archaeologists have found evidence of flour dating back thirty thousand years, so people may have baked bread then, too. He says bread of some kind might be the only food that can be found in every single cuisine in the world—yes, even Chinese. One of the earliest types of bread was flat bread, like pita, tortillas, chapatis, and loads of other kinds that are still popular in many cultures. Eventually, people figured out that yeast made dough rise, which meant fluffier bread, and that’s when loaf breads started becoming popular.
Baking loaf breads takes time, because you have to let the dough sit for it to rise. Today we’re making baguettes, those long French breads that call out to you when you pass by a bakery window. Chef Antonio says baguettes are tricky because you have to let the dough rise in stages, but a fresh baguette is el mejor—the very best—and he can never teach a bread class without including them.
The first thing we do is combine water, yeast, and flour, and my mother actually lets me handle the mixing. We have to wait twenty minutes for the flour to soak up the water, so we start on our second recipe: popovers. Chef says popovers are the American version of the British Yorkshire pudding. I’ve never had either one, so I have no idea how they’re supposed to turn out. From the skeptical look on her face, I can tell my mother doesn’t know either—it’s a look that says, if something is unfamiliar, it must be inferior.
It turns out making popovers is easy—or at least mixing the batter is. All you do is blend butter, flour, salt, eggs, and milk and pour the mixture into an already-hot muffin or popover pan. Then you stick it in the oven for forty minutes. Chef Antonio told us if we’ve never had popovers, we’re going to be surprised—but absolutely no peeking!
While the popovers are baking, we all go back to the baguettes. Just salt the dough a little, and it’s time for kneading. When my cousin Chloe and I were little, we were obsessed with Play-Doh. We loved to form it into balls and then roll it out with our little plastic rolling pins. Or we’d twirl it between our palms to make long tubes that we’d stuff into a special Play-Doh press. When you squeezed the handle, your funny-looking tubes would magically be transformed into perfectly even ropes of hearts or stars.
The dough for our baguettes is even more fun to knead than Play-Doh, and it doesn’t have that Play-Doh-y smell. I’m really getting into it. My mother, on the other hand, can’t quite get the hang of it. There’s a rhythm to kneading, and Mama doesn’t have that patience. I look around—the class is about even with people who like to knead and people who don’t. The Newlyweds are enjoying it, and Henry is too. Errol seems completely perplexed and has moved to a total observer position. Liza and her mom are laughing while kneading their dough, which is definitely taking shape. Chef Antonio has rushed over to Frankie and her mom, which means something has gone terribly wrong.
As for Mama, her dough is lumpy and cracking, and she has a look on her face to match. My mother is zero fun when she’s grumpy, so I instinctively put down my own dough and pick up hers. I sprinkle a fresh layer of flour on her board and then begin to knead her dough.
“Like this, Mama,” I say, and I show her how I lean into the dough with the heels of my hands.
When the lumps and cracks are gone, I look up at her. My mother is gazing at me in a way I don’t recognize. I’m not sure what she’s thinking, but I decide not to worry about it. “Now you try.”
After a moment of hesitation my mother shrugs and presses her hands into her dough. Not bad. I get back to work on my own, and soon we’re kneading in sync, our almost-identical hands making the same movements at exactly the same time. My mother raises her eyebrows and looks me in the eye. “Interesting” is all she says. I decide to take it as a compliment.
It’s time to let our dough rise, but our popovers aren’t ready to be taken out of the oven yet. So Chef gets us started on our last recipe: naan, a flat bread that’s popular in many Middle Eastern and South Asian countries. He tells us that naan is normally made in the oven, but we’re going to make a stove-top version instead that’s faster and, he promises, just as tasty.
In a bowl we mix together flour, sugar, and baking soda, then add plain yogurt. I am excited that there’s kneading involved in this recipe too, and I notice that my mother watches me get my dough going before starting on her own.
A loud buzzer sounds, and everyone stops what they’re doing and looks up at Chef Antonio. “It’s time!” he announces, and we all abandon our naan dough to race over and gather around the big oven. Even Javier joins the crowd, peeking over his father’s shoulder as Chef carefully slides the five pans onto the cooling rack with his big oven-mitted hands.
Wow. Popovers really do look like they’ve popped—or they’re about to, anyway. They’re like golden dough balloons bursting out of little muffin bottoms. Each group of two has a different color popover pan. Ours is red, the Chinese color for good fortune—I bet you can guess who chose it! I’m thrilled, and a little amazed, to discover that the entire red pan of popovers is perfectly glowing and puffy. My mother also looks surprised—and impressed. She takes in the perfection of our popovers, then looks up at me, and there’s something in her expression that I’ve seen before—only it’s usually the result of her culinary achievements, not mine. I think it might be pride.
The popovers in the green pan have gone flat. Or maybe they never even popped. It’s not hard to guess which pair the green pan belongs to. Frankie and her mom look as deflated as their popovers. Maybe they’ll have better luck with the baguettes.
Our popovers taste as good as they look—maybe even better. The crust around the “balloon” is crisp and light, while the bottom is moist and deliciously buttery. I can see why the British call their version “pudding.” We have to eat quickly because it’s time to flatten and fold our baguette dough and then put it back in an unheated oven to rise again. Chef Antonio says there won’t be enough time to wait for it, so he gives us each an identical mound of dough that has already risen to do the next steps. I look over at Frankie as she happily exchanges her bowl of dough for a new one. If her mom had any trouble following the recipe, Chef’s replacement could be their lucky break.
Before we form our baguettes, we have to grill our naan. Each group gets a special frying pan called a tava, which we start heating before anything goes in it. Then we divide our dough into balls and roll them out with a rolling pin. Naan doesn’t need to be a perfect circle, but I’m excited when mine turns out pretty symmetrical anyway. My mother rolls hers too thin, like a dumpling wrapper. I help her mold it back into a ball and then roll it out again, thicker this time. I’m used to helping Mama with some stuff in the kitchen, but I’m usually the one learning from her. It seems like now our roles are reversed. I wonder if this is as weird for her as it is for me.
We brush our naan with ghee—a special kind of butter—and lay it in the hot pan. As the dough heats up, it starts to bubble. The room is pretty quiet while everyone concentrates on the naan, not wanting to flip it too soon, but also hoping it doesn’t burn. I make eye contact with Liza, who’s three stoves away, and mouth the words, This is so cool!
Totally! she mouths back.
I help my mother turn o
ver our naan, and the bubbles sizzle as they hit the pan. When our naan puffs up like a pita, we flip it again, and in less than a minute it’s done. I tear off a piece and take a bite. Mmmm. It’s crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside, and just the right amount of salty. Even my mother, the bread-o-phobe, can’t stop at just one bite.
Chef Antonio says there’s just enough time to turn our dough into baguettes and bake them before class is over. He shows us how to divide our dough into three equal parts and shape each piece into a long rope that will become a baguette. Usually, Chef explains, the dough would need to rise again, but he used a special yeast so we can put them straight into the oven. In the time it takes me to make two ropes, my mother makes one, and I’m pretty sure we both notice that mine are smoother and more even than hers. Before they go in the oven, we use a sharp knife to make diagonal slits along the length of each baguette, and even though she never lets me touch her knives at home, this time Mama lets me do all of the cutting.
While our baguettes are baking, Chef Antonio calls us all back to the table. Normally, we spend the last half hour of class cleaning up, but today he tells us not to bother—he’ll do it after we go home. He pulls up an extra stool next to his and calls Javier over to join us.
“Mis amigos, sharing my knowledge about the origins of some American food with you has been such a pleasure. I hope you enjoyed our little Saturday cooking club as much as I have and maybe learned a few things about your favorite dishes as well!” He looks from Liza to Frankie to me. “And I want to say a special gracias to you three girls, for allowing me to be a part of this very nice mother-daughter activity you planned.” Chef puts his arm around Javier’s shoulders and tousles his curls until Javier pushes his hand away. “There’s nothing more important than time with family, and you girls have shown me that even big kids can survive spending a few hours a week with their parents. Muchas gracias for that. You inspired me to find something like this to do with mi hijo.”
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