Boiling Point

by Diane Muldrow; Barbara Pollak

  chapter 4

  The next day was cooking class.

  “Today’s our last class,” said Molly, when they met up with Shawn in her apartment building. “It’s graduation day!”

  “I wonder if Natasha will be in class?” asked Shawn.

  Amanda sighed. “It’s gonna be so weird if she is.”

  Natasha Ross was the most complicated person the girls knew. Last year she’d become the twins’ and Shawn’s first and only enemy. The girls still didn’t know why Natasha had told the principal that they’d cheated on an important science test. The lie turned into a rumor that shot through the school, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

  The girls had decided to keep their distance from Natasha. But Natasha was impossible to avoid.

  The girls ran into her everywhere, including cooking class. Mrs. Moore suspected that Natasha had an unhappy life. She encouraged the twins to forgive her and be as friendly as possible. So they were. Or at least they tried to be.

  But it wasn’t easy.

  Then, suddenly, Natasha was calling them, wanting to get together. The girls even went to a tea party at her house. And Natasha began to cook with them. The girls started to see another side of her—a shy, sweet side—and they began to trust her.

  That’s exactly when she ditched out of Dish, just as they were getting it off the ground. Suddenly, she was totally unreachable, and ignored them. At first the girls thought Natasha was just being difficult again, but then they found out what was really going on. It turned out that Natasha’s dad had promised to lend the girls some money to help get Dish started.

  Then he’d lost his job. He still wanted to give Natasha the money, but she felt guilty taking it. Too embarrassed to face her friends, she blew off helping them with a huge cooking job.

  And the girls hadn’t seen Natasha since.

  Soon Molly, Amanda, and Shawn reached Park Terrace Cookware—the store where their cooking classes were held. They walked through the store to a large, gleaming kitchen in the back. In the center of the room were two rows of long tables with wooden tops and chrome legs. The tables held several workstations. Each student had his or her own cutting board and supplies. Today there was also a rolling pin—plus flour, salt, shortening, and milk, already measured. And there was a utensil that the girls didn’t know what to do with.

  Amanda looked around. No Natasha. So far, so good. But Peichi was already there, talking nonstop to serious-looking David Stern. He couldn’t seem to get a word in, so he just kept nodding his head. Then Peichi saw the girls.

  “Hi!” Peichi ran over to the girls and greeted them. Her shiny black hair was up in a high ponytail, like the twins’ hair. “What do you think the rolling pins for? What do you think we’re going to make today? I wonder if Natasha’s gonna show up?”

  Just then, Carmen Piccolo, the instructor, walked in and began to chat with some of the students. She wore her long reddish-blond hair in a ponytail. As she put on her chefs apron, the girls hurried to their workstations.

  “Hello, class,” said Carmen.

  “Hi, Carmen!” chorused the class.

  “Today is our last class,” said Carmen. “You’ve all been so great. And as I promised in our first class, you’re all getting graduation gifts. Freddie will pass them out!”

  Just then, a young man with short dark hair and a goatee rushed in. Freddie Gonzalez was Carmen’s assistant. He was always good for a laugh.

  He began to hand out a chefs apron and an instant camera to each student. “How ya doin’ today, Connor?... Looking good, Omar, looking good!. . . What’s up, Peichi?”

  “Look!” said Peichi, holding up her apron. “It has my name embroidered on it! And they even spelled it right!”

  Everyone checked out their names on their aprons. Under their names, PARK TERRACE COOKWARE was embroidered in smaller letters.

  “Cool!” lots of kids were saying as they put on their aprons.

  “I’m a professional now,” said Omar, striking a pose. “Now all I need is a tall white chef’s hat.”

  “Actually, that’s called a toque blanche,” said David, as he pushed up his glasses.

  “I’m glad you like your aprons,” said Carmen. “Today is our pie workshop! We’re going to learn how to make piecrust!”

  “Piecrust?” protested some of the boys.

  “Yeah, piecrust, man!” said Freddie. “Come on, Connor, you know you love pie. You, too, Omar. Now you’ll be able to make a pie whenever you want, and it’ll taste better than your momma’s.”

  “You mean we’re not going to make a whole meal, like we usually do?” asked Peichi.

  “That’s right,” replied Carmen. “Piecrusts take time to make, especially when you’ve never made one before. Today we’re going to make chocolate cream pie. That has just one crust—the bottom crust. That’s enough for today.”

  “Mmmm, chocolate cream pie, said Amanda dreamily to herself. But most of the kids heard her, and laughed. Amanda blushed deep red and pretended to be fascinated with her rolling pin.

  “Each of you will make your own pastry dough,” Carmen went on. “We’ll use a few of these pastry shells for today’s pies, and the rest of you can take yours home. Let’s get started! To save time, Freddie has already measured out the ingredients for the crust.”

  As she always did, Carmen stood at the front of the class so she could demonstrate everything the students were supposed to do.

  “I’m going to tell you something my mom told me the first time we made a pie together,” announced Carmen. “‘Don’t be afraid of the dough!’ Remember—you’re the boss, not the pie dough.”

  The class chuckled.

  “If you remember that, you’ll have more fun,” Carmen went on. “Okay. First let’s mix the salt and flour together in your mixing bowl.” Everyone followed along. Then Carmen picked up the strange-looking round utensil that had a handle attached to strips of curved metal.

  “This is called a pastry cutter, or pastry blender,” she told the class. “Watch me use it to cut the shortening through the flour.”

  Carmen added the shortening. then pressed the pastry cutter down into the ingredients. The metal strips helped combine the ingredients. “Now you try,” she said. “Do it until your shortening looks like giant peas.”

  “This is hard,” complained Connor after a while. “My dough keeps sticking to the pastry cutter.” The class giggled, because every week, Connor said exactly what most of them were thinking.

  “This is nothin’,” cracked Omar. “You’re just lazy.” Connor and Omar were always goofing on each other.

  “You can scrape off the dough with a butter knife,” Carmen told Connor. “Freddie will bring you one.” She addressed the class again. “This takes patience,” said Carmen. “When you bake—especially pastry—you always need to be patient.”

  After that, the class followed Carmen as she sprinkled milk on the flour and mixed it lightly with a fork until all the flour was moistened and stuck together.

  Next Carmen gathered the dough together with her hands, and pressed it firmly into a ball.

  “Yo, watch it. This isn’t pizza dough,” warned Freddie, when some of the boys pretended to throw their balls of dough up in the air.

  The girls in the class rolled their eyes at one another. The boys were always acting up, and in almost every class they eventually had to be separated.

  “Now we’ll wrap the dough in wax paper and chill it,” said Carmen. “Just like you guys in the corner need to chill!” she joked.

  “Why do we need to chill the dough?” asked Peichi.

  “If you didn’t chill the dough, it would be too sticky to work with,” replied Carmen. “Which would force you to add more flour. Then the baked piecrust would be tough, not crumbly. This dough should chill for about two hours. But we don’t have that much time in class, so we’ll have to put it in the freezer and just get it as cold as we can, while we make the chocolate filling.”

  Ca
rmen broke the class into groups to make the filling. The students counted off in threes. Molly and Peichi ended up with Connor and Omar.

  “Oh, no! Not her!” Omar said. He was talking about Peichi, whose constant chatter drove him nuts.

  “You’re so lucky you’re with us,” boasted Peichi. “‘Cause we are gonna show you how to do it right.”

  “I’ve made pies before,” said Omar. “Lots of ’em.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Molly, not looking up from the recipe. She handed Omar a measuring cup. “Here. Measure a cup and a half of sugar.”

  “Okay,” Omar said.

  Molly cut up some squares of unsweetened chocolate, and Peichi separated some eggs, then gently beat the yolks with a fork. Omar stirred three cups of milk into a mixture of sugar, salt, flour, and cornstarch, added in the pieces of the chocolate, and cooked it over medium heat.

  Freddie came running over. “You have to stir it constantly!” he said. “Good job.”

  “Wow, this smells great already!” said Peichi. “It’s like chocolate pudding!”

  The mixture began to thicken as it boiled. Omar let it boil for one minute, took it off the heat, and slowly stirred half the mixture into the egg yolks.

  “Okay, now we pour this mixture back into the pan,” read Molly, “and boil it for another minute.”

  After the mixture boiled, Omar took the pan off the heat, and Connor blended in some butter and vanilla. “Wow, that’s rich,” he said. “Now we chill it in the fridge.”

  Just about everyone in the class thought that making piecrust was difficult, but fun. The kids learned to dampen their work surface and put down a large piece of waxed paper, then spread the chilled dough by hand on the paper. They topped the dough with another piece of waxed paper, and rolled out the dough with their rolling pins.

  “Yo, not too hard,” Freddie told Omar. “Now keep turning the whole thing. Excellent, my man! You’re almost home!”

  Once the kids had rolled out their dough to fit the pie pan—with enough to lap over the sides—they removed the waxed paper from the top of the dough and laid the dough down in the pan. It was time to remove the other piece of waxed paper by starting on one side, and carefully rolling it toward themselves.

  The fun part was to fit the dough into the pan. If it tore, the kids just patched it. Then they trimmed the dough with a knife all around the pan, turned it under, and crimped it with their fingers.

  Carmen and Freddie took one last walk around the class to help the students.

  “Your pastry shells really look great,” Carmen announced. “I’m impressed! Now we’re ready to bake them.”

  While the pies baked, the kids helped clean up. And they posed for pictures with their classmates.

  “I’m gonna miss everyone!” said Peichi. “Oh, this is so sad!”

  “You’ll forget how sad you are when we eat those pies,” said Omar.

  Eight minutes later, as the students began to take their pastry shells out of the oven, the class got noisy.

  “Wow! It’s nice and brown.”

  “This looks awesome!”

  “Man, I’m good at this!

  “Aww, mine’s bad.”

  “No, it isn’t. Just a little higher on one side.”

  Now it was time to pour the chilled chocolate filling into the shells.

  “To finish the pies, we’ll just add dollops of whipped cream,” said Carmen.

  “What are dollops?” asked Peichi.

  “Globs,” said Freddie. “Here’s a dollop on your nose!” He topped off Peichi’s nose with whipped cream.

  Later, at the big table with china dessert plates and a white linen tablecloth, the class agreed that they’d never tasted anything so good.

  “I can’t believe we made this!” exclaimed Peichi.

  Everyone traded e-mail addresses and laughed and ate.

  Soon it was time to leave.

  “We’ll miss you,” Molly said to Carmen and Freddie.

  “Ah! You’ll see me around the neighborhood,” said Freddie. “I just got a job at Luigi’s Restaurant.”

  “I loved having you girls in my class,” said Carmen. “Good luck with your cooking business!” The girls had told Carmen about Dish, and she thought it was a great idea.

  “Bye!” called Carmen as the students began to leave. “Don’t forget to sign up for my gingerbread-house workshop in December!”

  As they walked home, the girls talked about how much they had enjoyed their cooking classes.

  “The best thing we made was when we carved the peacocks out of melons,” Shawn said.

  “No way—those chocolate cream pies were definitely my favorite!” replied Amanda.

  “Yeah, we all know why that is!” Molly joked. Amanda’s sweet tooth was intense.

  “It’s so hot!” Peichi complained. “Let’s go somewhere with air conditioning. I know! Let’s go to the movies! We still have that money from our last cooking job. We could just sit in the theater for a couple of hours and chill. What do you guys think?”

  “Yeah, let’s do that!” Molly cried.

  “I can’t,” said Shawn, looking at her watch. “I have to get home and finish packing.”

  “Oh, okay,” Amanda said, trying not to sound disappointed. “Well, why don’t you call us after you finish packing? We can do something then.”

  “Um, I really don’t think I can,” Shawn said, looking uncomfortable. “My dad and I are having a special dinner tonight. After tomorrow, I’m not going to see him for a whole month.”

  You’re not going to see us for a whole month, either, Amanda thought, but she didn’t say anything.

  “But let’s get together tomorrow afternoon instead. Are you guys free? We could go out to lunch or something,” Shawn continued.

  “That sounds great! We can go to Harry’s,” Peichi said with a big smile.

  But no one else looked very happy.

  chapter 5

  “Mmm—I’m gonna mith thith,” said Shawn thickly through a big bite of a double-chocolate brownie the day after class.

  The friends were having a farewell snack at Harry’s, their favorite hangout in Park Terrace. Harry’s was an old pharmacy that had been turned into a funky coffeehouse. The girls loved hanging out there. Most everyone else their age was still hanging out in fast-food places with bright lights, screaming kids, and greasy burgers or pizza. But they were eating veggie wraps and poppy-seed cake on round marble-topped tables, surrounded by writers, artists, and college students. It made them feel older.

  “What time is your flight?” asked Peichi. “Are you all packed? Are you taking a lot of stuff?”

  “My flight’s at seven,” replied Shawn. “Well, you guys, I should get going. I’m all packed, but I want to spend the rest of the day with my dad.”

  “Okay,” said all the girls at once. They quickly finished up their wraps and brownies, then walked Shawn back to the lobby of her apartment building.

  “Have a good time,” Molly told Shawn, remembering not to act sad.

  Shawn smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “Have a great month. I’ll send you lots of e-mails, and you’d better write me back!”

  “Don’t worry, we will,” Amanda assured Shawn. “Every day.”

  They waited in silence for the elevator to come. Amanda really wanted to give Shawn a good-bye hug, but Shawn looked pretty uncomfortable.

  The elevator door opened, and Shawn got in.

  “We’ll miss you!” said Peichi. “Bye!”

  “Bye, Shawn,” said the twins at the same time. They gave Shawn a little wave.

  “Bye, you guys! I’ll see you in a month.”

  Shawn waved until the door closed.

  “What are you two doing now?” asked Peichi, as the girls walked away from Shawn’s building.

  “Nothing much,” said Molly gloomily.

  “We both have to practice the piano this afternoon,” Amanda reminded Molly.

  “Hey, I have an idea!” exclaimed Peichi.
“Let’s all go to Chinatown, and surprise my grandparents at their store!”

  “You mean right now? On the subway?” asked Amanda. Peichi’s grandparents’ store was in Manhattan, across the river from Brooklyn.

  “Yeah! It doesn’t take long to get there,” replied Peichi.

  “We’re not allowed to ride the subway by ourselves,” said Amanda. “Are you?”

  “No,” admitted Peichi. “But if we all go together, I think it would be okay. Come on! Let’s do it. The subway’s just a block from here. We could be there in half an hour, maybe less!”

  “No, we can’t,” said Amanda firmly.

  “I’ll go!” Molly blurted out. “I feel like doing something different.”

  Amanda’s eyes widened. “What!” she cried, looking at Molly.

  “We’ll be with Peichi’s grandparents,” Molly told her. “It’s no big deal.”

  “Well, I’m not going,” said Amanda.

  “Okay,” said Molly. “But I am.”

  Amanda’s mouth dropped open. What was with them?

  “Well, here we are,” said Peichi, pointing at the subway entrance. “We’ll be back in a few hours! No one will even know we were there.”

  Suddenly Amanda felt all alone.

  “Sure you don’t want to come?” Molly asked her.

  Amanda shrugged. “Have fun,” she said. That was her answer.

  “Okay, then, bye,” said Molly.

  “Byeeee!” said Peichi brightly. “Oh, I hear the train!” And she and Molly turned and hurried, giggling, down the steps and out of sight.

  Amanda didn’t move for a while. She just stood and stared down the subway steps. Then she walked home with a lump in her throat.