The School of Essential Ingredients (15 page)

It took Chloe a week to get up the courage, and the money, to make the pasta sauce—she wanted to buy a real red wine, deep and strong but gentle on the heart; Lillian had said that the sauce would follow the lead of the wine. Still, after all her thought, she had to ask Lillian to buy the wine for her, as she was too young to make the purchase herself.

“I have a better idea,” Lillian remarked. “Come with me.”

The two of them contemplated the restaurant wine rack. “You know,” Lillian commented with a rueful smile, “I could get in a lot of trouble doing this. Perhaps if I just give this to you we can deem it culinary encouragement.” She pulled a bottle from the rack, wiped the label, and presented it to Chloe.

“Please put this somewhere in the bottom of that backpack of yours, will you? I’d hate to lose my liquor license.”

At her apartment, Chloe unpacked the wine and the canned tomatoes, the meat and the bouillon cubes. The garlic had been dusty black with mold at the supermarket, so she had decided to try the produce stand. It was cold outside, and the produce stand was a half-mile toward the other side of town, but she felt full of energy at the thought of the meal she would prepare. Chloe left the apartment, wrapping a scarf around her neck and pulling it up to her nose, breathing in her own moisture, the cold tickling her eyelashes.

She reached the stand, stamping the blood back into her feet, and entered into the relative warmth of the fabric-sided enclosure. After the winter outside, it was a carnival of life, mounds of green peppers and red apples, neon oranges, spiky-edged artichokes and furry little kiwis. She found the garlic but couldn’t resist a round red tomato that looked as if it had just been pulled from the vire.

The shop owner approached her. “Can I help you?” he asked, a bit warily. There was a high school nearby; the fruit stand was a logical destination for a five-finger lunch.

Chloe, caught up in the red depths of the tomato, missed the admonishment in his voice and turned with a smile. “Where did you get such a beautiful tomato?”

The shop owner’s face relaxed. “I grew it myself, indoors,” he said. “I only bring in a few of them.”

“I’m making a special tomato sauce today,” Chloe explained, pride and embarrassment mixed in her voice. Then she saw his face. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t put this in the sauce.” She tried to figure out how to explain. “It’s just to help me remember why.”

The shop owner regarded her appraisingly. “It’s yours,” he said with a nod. “The garlic, you can pay for.”

When Chloe had come back into the apartment, she could smell meat cooking. Jake was standing at the stove, watching the frying pan.

“Hey, thanks for picking up groceries,” he exclaimed. “Burgers will be ready in a couple minutes.”

“I was going to make pasta . . .” Chloe stopped.

“Oh, that’ll take too much time.” He saw her looking at the open bottle in his hand. “Good wine, babe, thanks,” he commented, taking a drink. “Are you trying to butter me up for Valentine’s Day?”

Chloe shook her head. “I’ll be right back. I have to do something.”

“Well, hurry, the burgers are almost ready.”

Chloe went downstairs and around to the back of the apartment building. She stood with her back against the wall, breathing hard.

“Stupid girl,” she muttered to herself. “What did you think was going to happen?”

Then she lifted the lid of the huge blue rubbish bin and threw in the small paper bag she had been holding.

The next night at work, Chloe had broken two wineglasses and put a cutting knife in the pot sink full of water. When the dishwasher yanked his hand out and let loose a veritable paella of Spanish invective, Lillian pulled Chloe aside.

“
Now
you aren’t paying attention.”

Chloe looked at her, panicked. “Please don’t fire me.”

“I’m not firing you, Chloe. I’m paying attention to you. This is what that looks like. Can you do that for me tonight?”

Chloe nodded.

“And make sure you come to class on Monday.”

When Chloe arrived on Monday night, she saw the rest of the students waiting outside. A few moments later, Lillian ran up the walk toward them, several brown paper bags in her hands, her hair loose and flying behind her.

“Sorry I’m late,” she called out. “I had to get a few things together.”

She wound her way through the assembled group, greeting each person as she went past, and unlocked the kitchen, flicking on the lights with her thumb as she entered. The students took their seats, Chloe by chance ending up next to Antonia.

“Now”—Lillian placed the bags on the wooden counter and turned to the class—“I have something special planned for tonight. We’ve done several more complicated dinners recently. But one of the essential lessons in cooking is how extraordinary the simplest foods can be when they are prepared with care and the freshest ingredients. So tonight, while it is cold and blustery outside, we are going to experience some utterly uncomplicated bliss.”

There was a knock on the kitchen door. The students looked at it in surprise.

“Perfect timing.” Lillian went to open the door. Outside was a woman with bronzed, wrinkled skin and white, white hair. What she had gained in age, she appeared to have lost in height, reaching at most to Lillian’s shoulder.

“Class,” said Lillian, smiling, “this is my friend Abuelita. She is here to help us tonight.”

Abuelita entered the room and looked over the rows of students. “Thank you for having me,” she said, her voice warm and gravelly with age. “You must be a special class—Lillian has never asked me to help her teach before. Or perhaps she is just getting old and lazy.” And then she winked.

Antonia leaned over toward Chloe. “She reminds me of my
nonna
. Maybe she will tell us secrets about Lillian.” Chloe stared at Antonia—she had always viewed the young woman, with her effortless olive beauty and her accent that seemed to invite men to bed, as something to be observed in pristinely silent awe—but Antonia still gazed at her, mischief flickering in her eyes, and Chloe found herself grinning.

“Like why she never got married . . .” she suggested.

“Or where she lives,” Isabelle whispered, leaning forward conspiratorially.

“Enough chatter out there,” Lillian said, amused. “Chloe, you seem to have plenty of energy tonight; why don’t you come up and help us?”

Chloe started to shake her head, but Antonia gave her a supportive push on the back of her shoulder.

“Go on. You should do this.”

Chloe walked up to the counter and stood a bit apart from Lillian and Abuelita.

“Abuelita was my first cooking teacher, and she showed me how to make tortillas,” Lillian explained. “Now, if we were really authentic”—Lillian made a slight bow in Abuelita’s direction—“we would have made the
masa
ourselves. We would have soaked and cooked dried corn in water and powdered lime to make
nixtamal,
which we would then have ground into the
masa harina
—luckily for us, Abuelita has a wonderful store where you can buy the flour already made.”

“When I was a girl,” Abuelita commented, “it was my job to grind the corn. We had a big stone, with a dip in the middle, called a
metate
, and I would kneel in front of it and use a
mano
—like a rolling pin made of stone. It takes a long time to make enough for one tortilla, you know, and you need strong arms. And knees. It is much easier this way,” she said, picking up the bag of
masa harina
and pouring a yellow stream of corn flour into the bowl.

“Now add some water,” she said, handing Chloe the bowl.

“How much?” Chloe asked.

Abuelita’s eyes moved over Chloe, her sweatshirt baggy on her slim shoulders, her eyes dark with liner. She shrugged, a movement as light and casual as wind over grass.

“Do what makes sense.”

Chloe threw a despairing look at Antonia and Isabelle, who gestured encouragement, and then she took the bowl to the sink and turned on the tap, feeling the soft grains between her fingers turn cold and slick under the stream of water. She shut off the faucet, mixing the liquid into the flour with her hands. Still too dry. She added a bit more water, mixed again, added a little more, finally feeling the two elements become one.

“I get it,” she said, looking up at Abuelita.

“Good,” said Abuelita. “Now, take some dough and make a ball.” Her hands lifted a bit of the mixture and rolled it between her palms, her movements fluid and assured, as the students watched her. “Then you pat it,” she said, the ball passing between her palms, flattening within the motion of her hands. She paused for a moment, curling the tips of her fingers, then rotated the dough in a circular motion, pulling the edges out, creating an even, round shape, then returned to patting, rhythmically, quickly.

“It’s like watching a waterfall,” Carl commented appreciatively from the back row.

“They say,” noted Lillian, “that it takes thirty-two pats to make a tortilla.”

Abuelita chuckled, never slowing in her movements. “Such precision from a woman who doesn’t believe in recipes.”

“Not that
she
does, either,” retorted Lillian.

“When it’s important.” Abuelita put down the finished tortilla, then took some more dough from the bowl and handed it to Chloe. “Now you try.”

Chloe hesitantly rolled it between her palms. “It’s like Play-Doh,” she commented, “only softer.” She began flipping the ball from hand to hand, pushing the shape flat. After a time, she looked down at the dough in dismay, the edges splayed out and separated like ragged flower petals, the thickness irregular, lumpy. She rolled it up and started patting again, determinedly.

“This is not baseball,” said Abuelita after a time, but kindly. “Be calm.” She took Chloe’s hands in her own, stilling them. “Think of a dance with someone you love. You want to stay close to each other. You don’t need to think about anything else.”

Chloe began again, slowly. She felt the ball of dough shifting back and forth, back and forth. Gradually, she felt the shape opening up, spreading out like another hand, warm from her own, slipping across the slim space between her palms. She quickened her pace. The rhythm was soothing, the sound of her hands like raindrops falling down a gutter.

“I think that is good,” said Abuelita after a minute or so.

Chloe looked down to see the finished tortilla in her hand. “That was amazing,” she said to Abuelita. “Can everyone try?”

Abuelita handed her the bowl and Chloe walked along the rows of students. Each of them made a small ball and began patting, laughing at their mistakes, then gaining a rhythm, the sound of their hands turning into a muted, collective ovation.

“Now, there
are
tortilla presses,” Lillian said. From under the counter she took out a metal object, two round circles connected by a hinge. She opened and closed it to show where the dough would go, how it would flatten under the pressure of the upper lid. “But I think every day deserves applause.”

“And maybe a dance? Did you know this woman can dance?” Abuelita asked the class, eyes sparkling.

“Which leads us to salsa,” Lillian said briskly, lifting a brown paper bag onto the counter. “Antonia,” she said, cutting off the question Chloe could see forming on Antonia’s lips, “could you come up and help Abuelita cook the tortillas while Chloe and I chop?

“Here you go,” she said to Chloe, handing her a sharp knife.

“You want me to use this?” Chloe said in an undertone to Lillian. “You know me and knives.” Lillian simply nodded.

Over by the hot griddle, Abuelita was explaining the cooking process to Antonia. “About half a minute on each side. They should puff up into little balloons—if they don’t, you can press on them lightly with two fingers before you turn them.”

Lillian pulled an item from her bag and put it in Chloe’s hand. “Here,” she said, “start with this.”

The tomato was unlike anything Chloe had seen before, bulbous and swollen, more horizontal than vertical, with ridges running from top to bottom along its sides, straining in places, ready to burst. There was red, certainly, but of a painter’s palette of variations, deep garnet to almost orange, with streaks of green and yellow. Its comforting weight filled her hand, the ridges sliding between her fingers. She pressed softly, then stopped, feeling the skin begin to depress beneath her touch.

“This is called an heirloom tomato,” Lillian explained to the class. “Usually that’s something you only get in August and September, but we were lucky today.”

The air was beginning to fill with the sweet spiciness of roasting corn, the soft whispers of the tortillas flipping, then landing on the grill, the murmured conversation between Abuelita and Antonia, something about grandmothers, it sounded like. Chloe placed the tomato on the chopping block. She was surprised to find how much affection she had for its odd lumpiness. She tested the point of the knife, and the surface gave way quickly and cleanly, exposing the dense interior, juices dripping out onto the wooden board, along with a few seeds. Grasping the knife firmly, she drew it in a smooth, consistent stroke across the arc of the tomato, a slice falling neatly to one side.

“Good,” Lillian remarked, and Chloe continued, slice after slice, amazed at her ability to create six divisions across the single fruit in front of her, then take the slices and turn them into small, neat squares.

“Time for a break.” Abuelita brought Chloe a tortilla from the griddle. “Hold it in the flat of your hand,” she directed, “now rub the end of the stick of butter across it and sprinkle on some salt.” Chloe lifted the tortilla to her mouth, inhaling the round, warm smell of corn and melting butter, soft as a mother’s hand moving across the back of her almost sleeping child.

“Why would you ever want to eat anything else?” Chloe asked as she finished.

“Maybe salsa,” Lillian remarked, handing Chloe the cilantro, dripping with water.

When it Was mixed together, the salsa was a celebration of red and white and green, cool and fresh and alive. On a tortilla, with a bit of crumbled white
queso fresco,
it was both satisfying and invigorating, full of textures and adventures, like childhood held in your hand.