Kitchen Chaos (13 page)

We sit there for a minute. Nobody said anything.

The lights flicker, and then the class ends. This is so not going the way I wanted.

All the way to the cooking studio, my mother lectures me about peppers. Who knew that in some countries peppers go by “capsicum,” their Latin name? I didn't, but my mother did, along with about a million other random facts about the vegetable—and, by the way, it's actually a
fruit
, if you want to get technical (and, of course, my mother does . . . always). She's telling me all of this because the pepper is today's main ingredient at cooking class, and she wants to make sure I
understand that she knows as much about them as Chef Antonio does, probably even more.

While she's going on about all of the different pepper varieties (red! yellow! purple! brown! sweet! tart! spicy!), I search for a radio station that's playing something other than a commercial. We could take the subway to class, but outside of Manhattan, the trains sometimes run slow on the weekends, and my mother hates to wait. She also hates pop music, so I skip over the stations most normal seventh graders would choose and find one that plays country, because that's the only kind of music we can both (sort of) stand to listen to. I think my mother tolerates country songs because they're so melodramatic. A lot of Chinese songs are too—the old-fashioned ones and the popular ones. In parks all over China—and even here in New York City—you'll see people of all ages wailing into the microphone about lost love and other tragedies, just like country-and-western singers do. My mother
may not be big on showing her emotions, but she sure has a thing for songs (and soap operas) that are gushing with them.

“It was the Portuguese who brought the chili pepper to Asia,” my mother says as she backs carefully into a parking spot near the cooking studio. She shuts off the engine, and the radio goes quiet too, just as the singer was begging his fiancée not to leave. Do people actually pour their hearts out to each other like that in real life? Katie had a boyfriend last year in San Francisco, and I can't imagine him begging her not to move to New York. He didn't have much to say about anything, as far as I could tell, but he did play basketball, get good grades, and have cool hair, which was good enough for Katie, I guess.

“Cayenne peppers are very popular in Szechuan dishes,” my mother whispers to me as we rush into the studio. She refuses to be late, and we're not, but most of the class has already arrived: Frankie and her mom, the always-beaming Newlyweds, and Liza,
who looks bummed out, despite the fact that Frankie and Mrs. Caputo are clearly trying to make her laugh and have a good time without her mom here. I sneak a glance at the little table in the corner and am disappointed to see that Javier isn't there. My mother is still rattling off facts about peppers under her breath to me—apparently, pepper the spice does not come from pepper the vegetable—and I can't help wishing that Liza and I could magically trade places, at least for the next two hours.

Over at the prep table Chef Antonio is busy pouring ingredients into bowls and arranging everything by recipe. He turns around when he hears us arriving. “Lillian, MeiYin,
buenos días
!” he bellows across the room. It's strange to hear him call my mother by her first name, and even stranger that she doesn't correct him. She always introduces herself as Dr. Wong because of her Ph.D. and calls everyone else Mr. or Mrs. So-and-So. But Chef Antonio likes to keep things informal, and since he's the instructor, I guess
my mother has decided it's not her place to correct him. Still, it clearly makes her uncomfortable that everyone in the class (except Liza and Frankie) has been calling her MeiYin like it's no big deal. I probably should feel bad for her, but instead, it makes me smile (secretly) every time.

Errol strolls in, looking so relaxed and good-natured that I'm jealous. Chef ushers us over to a pair of empty stools and takes his place at the head of the table. “Good afternoon,
amigos
, and welcome to the second session of American Cooking 101. Today we will get to know one of my very favorite fruits—or, I should say, fruit families.” He opens his arms as if he could wrap them around the entire class. “Like us, they come in many different varieties, each with its own unique and exciting flavor.” Chef Antonio reaches under the table, where there must be a hidden shelf, and pulls out a big metal bowl filled with peppers of all different shapes, colors, and sizes. “
Señoras y señores
,” he says, taking a round, shiny
green pepper in one hand and an orange one in the other, “the
bello
bell pepper.” He hands one pepper to Liza on his right and the other to Errol on his left and tells them to take a good look and pass them around. He takes a red pepper from the bowl. It's thinner and pointier than the others and curls up slightly at the end. “The cheeky chili pepper,” he says, passing it to Liza. The next one is plump, short, and green. “The heavenly jalapeño.”

Chef Antonio goes on like this—the “succulent sweet pepper,” the “
bonita
banana pepper”—until the bowl is empty. Ms. Bissessar, my English teacher, would definitely give him an A for alliteration. While we're looking at the peppers, Chef tells us about how, like corn, they're native to the Americas and were spread to other countries by the Europeans after they “discovered” them in the New World. The way he pronounces
conquistadores
sounds like poetry. He explains that some South Asian cultures believe peppers can protect against evil and even bring good
luck. As he's talking, my mother nods along like it's her job to confirm that he has his facts straight. Whenever Chef Antonio mentions something that she's already told me—which is often, since she rattled on nonstop during the entire ride to class—my mother nudges me with her elbow, just in case I've forgotten in the past twenty minutes about her vast pepper knowledge.

Chef says we can do anything with peppers—and that includes paprika, which is a kind of dried pepper—because they have so many flavors. Lots of immigrants brought their own pepper practices to America when they came (I make a note of that for our project), and he's chosen a few of his favorites for us to try today. . . .

When it's finally time to start cooking, Liza scoots her stool over to join Frankie and her mom, and I can't help feeling a little jealous. My own mother is holding up the line at the prep table, examining every pepper for the tiniest flaw and probably wishing
she'd brought a magnifying glass. I look away from my mother's inspection and watch as Chef Antonio puts his arm around Liza (she must be thrilled!) and steers her over to the empty spot next to Errol. I guess Henry couldn't make it this week either. Liza looks back at Frankie and her mom and then turns and smiles at Errol. The two of them shake hands and laugh, even though they already met last week. Liza's good at talking to people she doesn't really know. If we do end up becoming real friends, someday I'll have to ask her how she does it.

Our first recipe is stuffed peppers. Apparently, stuffed peppers turn up all over the globe—from Spain to India to Scandinavia to Mexico—but we're making a meat-filled Middle Eastern version and a Greek vegetarian version called
yemista
. As usual, my mother is acting like a kitchen czar and assigning me tasks like fetching, measuring, and pouring ingredients, while she does all of the fun stuff—the slicing, the mixing, the stuffing—herself. When Chef
comes over to praise our results, my mother doesn't miss the opportunity to mention that she thinks his recipe would taste better with a bit more cardamom and less turmeric.

We put them in the oven and turn to our next dish.

This time we're making pepper jelly, which comes from the American South. I sneak a look over at Liza, since her mom is southern, to see how she's doing. Errol must be pretty entertaining, because she doesn't even seem to notice. Or, at least, if she is still bummed out, she's hiding it well. I guess these savory jellies Chef is talking about are typical all over the South and were originally made to preserve fruits and vegetables for year-round eating. He says people eat it with pickled okra or spread it on shrimp or even fried chicken livers (
That's
why they made pepper jelly—to disguise all the gross stuff they had to eat!).

I'm not sure what I'll think of the taste, but the jelly is really fun to make. We start by “sweating” sweet and jalapeño peppers—which means cooking
them until the skins peel off—then crushing red and black peppercorns, bringing it all to a boil, letting the liquid “reduce” and thicken, and then adding something called “pectin” to help it jelly-ize. Some of the steps have to be done at the same time, so my mother has no choice but to let me help. In the few moments when she can't push my hand away and do it herself, there's something really exciting about putting all the ingredients together, transforming them into something different, and then seeing them come out in an entirely new form at the end.

Last up is pepper steak, which Chef Antonio describes as a “Chinese American” dish. Right away my mother rolls her eyes and sighs loudly, letting anyone in a three-block radius know how she feels about Chinese American food. Even when Chef explains that the beef version common in America was originally made with pork in the Chinese province of Fujian—where we actually have relatives—she doesn't seem satisfied, and she shows her annoyance
by chopping onions and ginger loudly and ordering me around like even more of a dictator than usual. Our pepper steak is delicious (as is everything we made—even the pepper jelly), but my mother puts down her fork after just one bite and insists that there's nothing Chinese about it. I look over at Liza and Errol, who are eating off the same plate and cracking up like old friends, and wonder what kind of miracle it would take to prevent my mother from coming to class next Saturday.

“
Hello
, what is that?” Frankie asks, pointing at the thermos I've just taken out of my lunch bag. “Did you actually bring your lunch? It's a first—we've got to tell Guinness!” She reaches into her backpack and pulls out her phone. “Do you think they text?”

“Ha-ha,” I say sarcastically, but I'm smiling for real. It's tuna melt day on the lunch line, and I couldn't be happier that instead of waiting for a cafeteria lady to plop one of those greasy, oozing squares onto
my tray, I'm about to dig in to my homemade pepper steak. Believe it or not, Errol let me take home all of our leftovers on Saturday. He said that Henry was so disappointed about having to miss class that Errol promised him they'd cook all of the recipes themselves this week. It's so cool—they were college roommates and just left their jobs (I think Henry was a lawyer and Errol was some kind of money guy) to open the restaurant they've been dreaming about since they were kids. When I told Errol I wasn't in the mood to share anything with Mom after she made me come to class solo, he just shook his head at me and laughed. Then he tipped my chin up, looked me right in the eye, and said, “Young lady, I think you need to cut your mama a break.”

I've been replaying what Errol said over and over in my head all week and trying to follow his advice. I know my mom is stressed out about her deadline for the magazine's big issue, and I'm making an effort to be understanding—even though it's not my fault the
publisher changed her mind at the last minute. And our class was scheduled first! Okay, so far I probably haven't cut my mom as big of a break as Errol thinks I should, but I've been helping out with Cole more than usual, and I did let Mom have all of the leftover pepper jelly, which we made extra spicy just for her.

Frankie watches me eat my stir-fry a little jealously, even though she has her own lunch right in front of her (it looks like garlic broccoli and chicken Parmesan, a Caputo staple and really tasty). On Saturday she and her mom had a bit more “trouble” with the recipes than the rest of us did, and I'm fairly sure there was nothing to even sample, much less anything to take home.