Kitchen Chaos (16 page)

I climb down from the counter and set the box on what my mom calls the “breakfast bar,” which is really just a slab of wood that sticks out from a low wall behind the sink. Below it are three stools where you can sit and see right into the kitchen and chat with whoever is cooking. I used to love to climb up
onto one of the stools and watch my mom peeling vegetables or mixing up pie dough. Sometimes she'd give me something simple to do, like snapping the stems off string beans or sprinkling flour onto a sheet of wax paper. Other times I was happy just to watch her work and tell her about going to the playground with Sonya or building an igloo with Frankie or whatever else I'd done that day. Now we use the breakfast bar mostly for piling up catalogs that no one ever gets around to reading and the scribbles and finger paintings Cole brings home practically every day that my mom can never bring herself to throw away.

“I can't stop staring at this picture,” Frankie says as I take the fondue pot and its accessories out of the box. “Everyone just looks so ‘groovy,' don't you think?” The women in the photo all have those big '70s hairdos that poof out at the top and flip up at the ends. Several of the men have mustaches and long sideburns. They're all smiling and showing a lot of
teeth, except for one couple who are feeding each other strawberries dipped in chocolate. I try to imagine my grandparents at a party like the one on the box, but it's hard. For one thing, one set of grandparents is black, and since everyone in the picture is white, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have been invited.

The doorbell rings, and I buzz Lillian in while Frankie tears herself away from the groovy picture to get the fondue going on the stove. Before you actually add any cheese, you start with something called a “roux,” which Chef showed us how to make by melting butter over low heat and then stirring in flour until it's thick and smooth. Lillian and I cut up small cubes of the cheese she bought, plunk them into the simmering roux, and watch them melt.

“Hey,” Lillian says, “what about the wine?” In class we'd added white wine to our fondue, which Chef Antonio assured our mothers was okay because the alcohol burns off from the heat. Still, Lillian's mother didn't like the idea of cooking with wine around us “kids,”
and she insisted on leaving it out of their version. I think her plan sort of backfired, though, because Lillian went around tasting everyone else's fondue to see what she was missing.

Frankie and I exchange a look.
Is she serious?
I'm about to ask, when Lillian suddenly bursts out laughing. “Gotcha!”

All three of us crack up—even Frankie. Maybe, just maybe, her ice queen act with Lillian is starting to melt a little, like the hunks of cheese in our fondue.

We turn off the stove and pour our wineless concoction into my grandmother's fondue pot. Since we can't figure out how to light the heater, we decide to skip it and make it our goal to finish off the fondue before it cools and hardens. There's not enough room on the breakfast bar for a proper fondue experience, so we place the pot in the middle of the dining room table, shoving aside our notebooks and the beginnings of our dioramas. Frankie brings over a tray of apples and pears that she's cut into cubes, and I
quickly slice the baguette that Lillian bought and toss the pieces into a bowl. We each take one of the skewers, spear a hunk of fruit or bread, and try to look sophisticated as we dip it into the fondue and then into our mouths.

Yum.

We've just finished doing our best impressions of the groovy people on the box and started painting and gluing our diorama pieces in place when the front door swings open and my mom and Cole come in. Frankie, Lillian, and I look at one another. Is it really six o'clock? Not only have we barely begun our work, but we've left a massive mess of melted cheese, apple cores, bread crumbs, and papier-mâché all over the kitchen and dining room. My mom smiles at Frankie and Lillian, but she doesn't look pleased.

“I see you girls are feeling creative,” she says, picking a fondue skewer wrapped in a gloppy strip of newspaper off the floor. When her nostrils begin to flare, just a little, all three of us start packing
everything up and whisking plates and bowls to the sink as quickly as we can. Only we're not fast enough to stop my brother from grabbing a fistful of bread and dunking practically his whole arm into what's left of the fondue. Good thing we didn't use the heater, or Cole would have been covered with blisters in addition to cheese.

“I should probably go,” says Lillian, after we've managed to tame the mess somewhat. She shoves her notebooks into her backpack and carefully tucks the bag of miniature food for our project into her jacket pocket. “Thanks for letting us use your fondue set, Ms. Reynolds,” she calls after my mom, who's dragging Cole to the bathroom while trying to keep him from touching anything with his cheesy hand.

“Wait up,” Frankie says as Lillian heads for the door.

Lillian looks at me, but all I can do is shrug. She turns to Frankie. “Me?”

“Sure,” Frankie says. “I'll, um, walk out with you.”

I don't know what Frankie's up to, but when she
turns to wave good-bye, I mouth the words
Be nice
and give her my best “I mean business” look.

Who me?
Frankie mouths back, and raises her eyebrow at me, as usual. “Bye, Ms. Reynolds. Stay cheesy Cole!”

I clean up the rest of the mess so that by the time Cole's in his pj's and Mom's in her sweats, everything is back to normal. I find a space for the fondue set in a lower cabinet, though, so it'll be easier to get to the next time we're feeling groovy.

I loathe being late, but we usually are, no matter how many notices I post on the Caputo family calendar. It's supposed to be the master organizer—one glance and my parents know where each of us has to be at all times. Of course, that only works when they actually look at it or pay enough attention to it to remember what it says. And since that only happens about 20 percent of the time, we end up running late the other 80.

The only reason my mom and I had been making it to the cooking classes on time was that I lied to her about when they started. Unfortunately, she chatted with Liza's mom on the way out last week and is now in possession of the correct information. Communication between moms never bodes well. Plus, Liza and her mom were making us look good by straggling in behind us, thanks to Cole, but now that they're bringing him to hang out with the most glam grandma I've ever seen, even they have started beating us to class.

We barrel in, and my mom starts telling her wacky stories of this morning's misadventures: Nicky sticking a fork into the toaster (he's totally fine!); meeting our neighbor, old Mr. Vallo, and his equally ancient dog; The Goons “borrowing” her debit card. Does she always have to be so . . . so . . . her?

We take our seats, with not as much dignity as I would like, and the class can officially start. I tell myself not to have hopes for today, since Mom has
pretty much destroyed everything we've done in class so far and, as The Goons keep reminding me, she has not improved
at all
. I mean, not even the tiniest bit. Today's theme is pasta, so you might think she's got this one sewn up. Think again. I decide that low expectations are the best defense.

Chef Antonio beams at us. “Bueno, bueno, amigos, we can start!” He has large, graceful hands that he likes to rub together when he's excited—which seems to be most of the time.

“Today we launch into pasta, or ‘noodles,' some people say,” He looks over at Cole, giggling with Angelica the Baby Tamer. Javier is there too, and I can tell he's only half listening to his iPod and half to his dad. Not that he'd admit it, of course, which I totally get.

“Most of you may know that pasta originated in China, not Italy. A few years ago a four-thousand-year-old bowl of pasta was discovered buried near China's Yellow River. Probably not too tasty now, but
pretty amazing,
qué?
This pasta was made from millet, but it shows that chefs everywhere owe
muchas gracias
to the Chinese, once again. For who could live without pasta today? And since pasta can be dried, it is something you could probably eat forever!”

Chef grins at Lillian's mom, who gives him a thin-lipped smile—of approval, I think, but it's hard to tell with her.

“We know that pasta made its way across the world with no help from Marco Polo, in spite of the myth. It migrated through traders to North Africa, then Arab traders brought it to Sicily. The Italians made it their own by adding durum wheat for binding and by creating pasta in every shape imaginable. It spread through Europe from there, and everybody found a use for it.”

Chef Antonio holds up a poster showing at least one hundred different shapes of pasta—twists, tubes, loops, even stars—and I check to make sure Lillian is videotaping. (She is—if there's one positive thing I
can say about her, Lillian is definitely proving herself to be reliable.)

“There are literally thousands of shapes, thousands!
Dios mío!
And the Europeans brought many of them here to America. But pasta took a while to catch on. Your Thomas Jefferson had some kind of cheese macaroni in France and then served it at the White House, but nobody liked it. Then, when all the Italians came later and planted the proper kind of wheat, well, Americans have not stopped eating it since!”

He looks around, like we should all be as thrilled with this news as he is. And I am—I mean, pasta. My entire family would probably starve without it.

Chef points us to the workstations he's set up. “It was very challenging to narrow down what we could make today. I wanted you to see the universe of possibilities! But it had to be done, so I made some tough, but tasty, choices!”

We head over to the prep area, to survey what we will be making. I see a mound of what looks like
mashed potatoes and chopped onion, a sheet of fresh pasta dough, more pasta of a different color, eggs, and little rice-shaped pasta.

Chef sweeps his arm grandly over the whole room. “Surprise! No Italian pasta. Too easy, too expected! Instead, we make potato pierogi from Poland, we make orzo from Greece, and we make longevity noodles from pasta's mother country, China. When you eat them, they should bring you a long life. And what could be
mejor
than that?”

Lillian's mom makes a little noise, like a chirp, and I can see that she is most definitely pleased. Well, well, who knew?

Liza's mom, who seems more relaxed here than I've seen her in a long time, puts her hand on her hip. “Well, I can tell you that my former Jewish mother-in-law would be disappointed. Her noodle kugel is just about the best thing I ever put in my mouth.” Um, what's going on here? She sounds like she's complaining, but she has a sly smile on her face.
Liza seems pleased that her mom is joining in, but a little confused at the same time. We lock eyes for a moment, and mine tell her:
It's all good, whatever it is, it's all good.

There's a chorus of other pasta demands from everybody else. Chef ducks his head, laughing. “
Amigos, amigos,
we could spend weeks on noodles alone, and if you want to—
bueno
—let's make another class! But for now, how do you say: Don't kill the messenger? I did the best I could!”

Liza's mom is still smiling, and Chef Antonio doesn't take his eyes off her. She smooths the white chef's apron we all wear and says, “Well, I have a mind to just bring Nana's kugel in next time, and you, sir, will never think about noodles the same way again.”

Everybody chuckles, and I notice Henry giving Liza a playful punch in the arm. She starts telling him about her nana's cooking, like she's known him all her life. How does she do that? They keep chatting while we all turn to our workstations.

Mom and I start on the pierogi first. We're supposed to roll out the dough, then cut shapes with a drinking glass, and then plop a spoonful of what turns out to be mashed potato, cheese, and onion into the middle. We have to fold the circle closed and then crimp the edges a bit. Sounds fun, right?

A boiling vat of water waits on the stove for these babies when we finish. My mom looks at the materials and grimaces at me. “Well, Franks, let's jump in. Wish we were just opening a box of pasta and dumping it into the water.”

Yeah, right, like she does so well at that.

We do okay rolling out the dough—apparently, there's sour cream in it to make it creamier and stickier. I turn the glass upside down and churn out a bunch of circles—so far so good. But when we get to the stuffing-them stage, things get a little uglier. Sometimes we plop in too much mashed potato stuff, other times not enough, and our little guys don't want to stay shut. We try dropping one in the water, and it
pops open right away, so that the pasta floats on the surface like a dead moth and the potato nugget sinks to the bottom.