From Scratch (24 page)

WHEN ALL ELSE
fails, cook. That’s the motto I followed anytime life turned upside down.
None of this making lemonade outta lemons nonsense. The acid will rot your teeth,
as my father likes to say.

Yet I turned my back on all that, fought against it, and I don’t even know why anymore. Right now there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here in my father’s outdated kitchen with only my thoughts and the promise of fresh ravioli on the horizon. Maybe that’s what happens when you run so far from the place you belong you end up lost. Maybe that’s what happens when you lose everything, period. I thought I had it all decided—my relationship with Drew, my career, my life in Chicago—but that’s all disappeared. My father’s right. Maybe I had to lose who I am before I can find who I am. Now it’s up to me to do that.

I measure a trio of paprikas—hot, smoked, and sweet—into my palm and dump it onto the ground pork and other spices. As I combine the ingredients, an image of Nick playing with the Randy Hollis Band, my father’s old acoustic guitar under his arm, crystallizes in my mind again. How when he sang, his voice sounded almost haunting, unguarded. The image fades, replaced with another, the day Nick received his acceptance letter to medical school. I remember how after he shared the news, he looked me in the eye and said that dreams died every day, especially silly, childish ones like writing songs for a living. That was part of growing up—accepting the future for what it was and not what you wanted it to be. Besides, becoming a surgeon was what he’d been working toward since he was a kid.

Except sometimes a dream rises like a phoenix from the ashes and rebirths itself as reality, changing course and altering a person’s history forever. A sense of pride rushes through me for all Nick has accomplished. I only wish he would have achieved those dreams
with
me, not
because
of me, because I was a coward.

I set aside the homemade chorizo to allow the flavors to meld. I wash the gunk from under my fingernails and watch as birds sweep between the trees in the front yard, their wings rustling the leaves. The sky is a vivid reddish pink. Across the street, a little girl in a baggy swimsuit plays in an inflatable pool, while an elderly couple supervises from Adirondack chairs.

There’s something special about seeing the world from inside this kitchen. How it seems to make things move slower, make worries lighter. Even when I tried to pretend otherwise, I still gravitated toward its familiarity. I think back to the morning with the cinnamon griddle cakes and the knowing look on Annabelle’s face. I wonder if she suspected it was only a matter of time before I was back here permanently.

The floorboards creak above my head. Who knows what kind of trouble my father is causing now. He refuses to stay in bed like Dr. Preston instructed. He claims remaining sedentary forces him to twitch. I think I should order that therapeutic massager chair as soon as possible. Maybe it’ll help him relax and adjust to his new normal.

I wipe down my work area and gather the ingredients for the pasta dough. After forming the flour into a mound, I create a large well in the center, then crack some eggs into the hole and add olive oil, salt, and water, beating it all together with a fork. It takes several minutes to incorporate the egg mixture into the flour, but the result is a tacky dough the color of clarified butter.

My shoulders throb as I knead. It’s a good ache, one I haven’t felt in years, but somehow it’s like my body remembers. I thought slipping into my old routine would feel strange, but the burning in my muscles and the delicious smells invading the kitchen fill me from my toes to the tips of my ears.

It’s more than that, too.

The raw physicality of rolling out paper-thin sheets of dough, the cadence of dropping small dollops of the chorizo filling along each, the precision of sealing and cutting out the ravioli, anchors me here.

I plate up a steaming portion and top it with a corn and basil sauce thickening on the stove. When I take a bite of ravioli, the sweet kernels burst on my tongue, melding with the spiciness of the meat and the rich egg pasta, cooked perfectly al dente
.
I take another bite and close my eyes because
darn it’s delicious,
sighing as my body collapses against the counter. It’s warm and creamy and tastes just like home. Like where I’m supposed to be.

It’s all so ridiculously obvious I laugh. I understand now what Nick meant about pretending and what my father said about finding myself. This is what I want. This is all I’ve ever wanted—to discover and create and experiment, with new recipes and new ingredients. How did I ever think I could fight against something that’s as unconscious to me as breathing?

A single, sharpening thought rises within me:
I want to win.

I’m a bit rusty at the whole baking thing, but the process of crafting something from the palms of my own hands is second nature. The deconstructed strudel may have started out as a way to spite my father, but that doesn’t change that it’s a champion recipe. That it’s
my
recipe.

The thought flashes again:
I want to win.

No, I
will
win the Upper Crust.

My way and on my own terms.

TWENTY-SIX

THE RITZ CARLTON
ballroom is a circus.

I’ve participated in various amateur culinary competitions over the years, but none have compared to this. The Upper Crust committee has spared no expense for the event. Individual kitchens have been set up along the perimeter, each stocked with a freestanding gas range and convection oven, minirefrigerator, and ingredient storage bins. Wooden tables, configured in a U shape, act as prep and work areas for each kitchen. In the center of the room, the judges’ table is perched on a raised platform. Seven chairs line one side, a cast-bronze nameplate in front of each. Floral arrangements are scattered throughout the ballroom, and there’s even a news crew staked outside the entrance, interviewing people as they pass through the doors.

“How’s Old Man Jack handling being cooped up at home all day?” Annabelle asks me as she leans against one of the prep tables and pops a peach slice into her mouth. She’s eaten almost a whole peach already. If she keeps it up, there won’t be enough for the deconstructed strudel.

“He’s going stir-crazy. Laziness isn’t in his DNA, or so he likes to remind me every chance he gets. Dr. Preston has him on house arrest for another week,” I say, measuring the ingredients for the phyllo dough into a glass bowl. “Will you preheat the oven to three fifty for me?”

She nods, setting the temperature as instructed. “Think he’ll break out anyway to come to the awards ceremony?”

“That’s a given.”

Annabelle snickers.

“What are you laughing about?”

“Nothing,” she says. “I’m picturing Old Man Jack sneaking out of his bedroom window like we used to do.”

“Yeah, except with my luck, he’d take a tumble off the roof and shatter every bone in his body. Then I’d have to deal with that, too.”

“At least he’d be bedridden and wouldn’t be able to slip off somewhere,” she says, then switches gears with her usual abruptness. “When are you adopting a cat?”

“Excuse me?” I say as I incorporate the ingredients together until the dough is soft and sticky.

“You know. Because of ‘the unmentionable.’ ” Annabelle’s been referring to Nick dismissing me at the House of Blues as “the unmentionable.” “How long until you become one of those bitter old ladies with twenty cats instead of children?”

“Hey,” I say, flinging cider vinegar at her nose. “There’s still hope for me, and I like cats.”

“Not with the way you’ve been moping around.”

“I haven’t been moping.”

“Liar. Though you could have saved yourself the grief if you would’ve read the liner notes or listened to me all those times I tried to tell you.”

“I know, I know,” I say. “He really quit medicine? Just like that?”

Annabelle nods. “After the incident at the football tournament, Nick went to his parents’ house and told them he was done with all of it. That same day, Nick picked up his guitar and started writing songs again. I think he used it as a form of therapy, but mostly I think it made him feel closer to you.”

“I sincerely doubt that,” I say, remembering the way Nick referred to us, what we shared, as a mistake.

Annabelle shrugs. “Believe what you want.”

A Junior League volunteer races over and whispers something in her ear. Annabelle sighs and looks at me. “One of the other competitors told Paulette Bunny that whipped cream reduces wrinkles. Apparently she got some up her nose and is now experiencing shortness of breath.” She rolls her eyes. “I need to handle this. I’ll check in on you later.”

“Have fun—” She’s gone before I can finish. I dump the mixing bowl over on the floured prep table and form the phyllo dough into a mound.

There are forty of us participating in this year’s Upper Crust competition, each working furiously. Well, everyone except for the guy in the kitchen beside me. He’s wearing an actual chef’s jacket with his name embroidered above the breast pocket. Steve Ayers, it reads in blue thread. He’s garnered the attention of half of the Junior League volunteers, including Bernice Rimes, who is carrying on like a girl with a playground crush, batting her eyelashes and rambling on with those goldfish lips of hers. The guy, Steve, is offering the ladies bites of chocolate and regaling them with stories of his culinary successes. He’s acting as though he’s a celebrity chef rather than a competitor. Maybe he should be more concerned with baking his chocolate stout cake than with entertaining if he intends on finishing in the allotted time.

Bernice must catch me staring at her because she barrels over to me, a pinched expression on her face. Her overly processed yellow hair doesn’t budge with the movements. Even the curls, which should sway, stay put. It reminds me of the two-dollar cranberry sauce that plops out of the can still shaped like the can, with the ridges and everything.

“I heard Nick rejected you,” she says, her southern accent dragging out the words. “You know,
everyone’s
talking about it.”

“Is that so?” I say, kneading the dough.

“Sure is,” she says. Bernice is waiting to get a rise out of me. “Is it true you burst into tears?”

“That’s the rumor going around?” I say as I lift the dough and dust more flour underneath.

“Oh no. The rumor is
much
worse. I was being polite.”

Of course she was.
“I’ve been too busy worrying about my sick father to cry over something like that.” Truth be told, I did cry to Wes and Annabelle about what happened with Nick, but I’m not about to admit that to Bernice or give her the satisfaction. “Now can you go back to your pathetic attempts at flirting with Steve over there so I can do something productive?”

She gapes at me. I fight the urge to squeeze her cheeks together to make her goldfish lips pucker even more. With a scowl, Bernice turns on her heel and stalks away. Finally, some peace and quiet.

My back aches as I continue to knead the phyllo dough. I sprinkle more flour on the prep table, then press the dough with the heel of my hand, fold it over, and rotate it twenty-five degrees. Ordinarily I’d let the hook attachment on the stand mixer knead the dough for me to save time, but the competition guidelines state that all items in the recipe must be made on site and without the aid of special cooking equipment unless otherwise authorized. Since I’m supposed to be creating my mother’s summer peach cobbler, which only requires a rubber spatula and two large bowls, I couldn’t exactly ask Sullivan Grace for permission to bring in a stand mixer without drawing attention to myself.

After another few minutes of kneading, I shape the dough into a ball, brush it with vegetable oil, wrap it in plastic wrap, and leave it on the table to rest. While the phyllo dough proofs, I prepare the sweet cheese and peach mixture, adding in pomegranate seeds at the last minute.

“Your entry is looking divine, sugar. Like something you might find at one of those discount grocery stores,” says the older woman in the station next to me. Her tone is sweet and warm, but her upturned nose and disapproving features betray her.

She’s been cutting butter into flour with a fork for the past ten minutes, throwing away at least as many batches. Good thing she brought plenty of extra ingredients. I want to tell her that the butter isn’t cold enough because she left it on the table instead of in the minirefrigerator, and the mixture should resemble split peas not cheese puffs, but I don’t think my father would approve of me fraternizing with the enemy.

I arrange my face into a smile, and channeling Sullivan Grace, say in a phony voice, “Well, bless your heart, aren’t you so nice? I wouldn’t want you to feel intimidated, so here’s a helpful hint. Maybe consider cheating next time. Bad pies in a box are just as effective and significantly less effort than you’re exerting. That’s a little tidbit for you to noodle on.”

The woman mutters something under her breath and returns to destroying her piecrust. She should’ve taken my advice.

I unwrap the dough and separate it into chunks. It should rest more, but rolling out the dough into layers is going to consume a large portion of my time and patience. I grab a French rolling pin and get moving, flattening and stretching until the sheets are the thickness of card stock. Before long, all the dough is used up. Several of the sheets have rips in them, but those can be hidden. I only need one perfect layer for the top. I start assembling, placing the sweet cheese and peach mixture on the bottom of a baking dish and then topping with the phyllo dough, generously buttering between each sheet.

As I’m coating the final layer with butter, Annabelle rushes up to me. “Better get that in the oven pronto. Sullivan Grace is on her way over. One peek at that,” she says, waving at my deconstructed strudel, “and she’ll feed you to the Dumpster rats out back.”

“I’m hurrying. I’m hurrying,” I say, picking up the dish and sliding it onto the middle rack. I kick the oven door shut behind me, but I lose my balance in the process and collide with the prep table. Flour billows in my face. I sneeze.

“Lillie, dear, why are you wiggling your nose like that?” Sullivan Grace taps one of her low-heeled shoes on the carpet.

I brush off my apron. “Why, is that considered unattractive?”

“Yes. Very,” she says, smoothing her already smooth navy couture dress. The rose-gold bangles adorning her forearm wink under the ballroom lights. “Now, what is the status of the cobbler?”

“Everything’s in order,” I say with a thumbs-up, because I know it will irritate her, even if she doesn’t show it. Sullivan Grace’s always so composed, but it’s like my father said, someone has to keep her on her toes.

Annabelle snorts.

“Good, good,” Sullivan Grace says. Then she stands there, staring at me expectantly. I stare dumbly back. Finally with a flick of her wrist, she says, “Well, stop dillydallying, dear. You don’t have all day.”

“I’m not,” I say, but then I remember she thinks I’m submitting my mother’s peach cobbler for judging, which takes significantly less time to prep and bake than the strudel. I wouldn’t need to start making it until an hour before the competition ends. So I have no real choice but to play along. “I was about to—”

“Uh, Lillie?” Annabelle interrupts.

I look at her. There’s a crease between her brows. “Yeah?”

“The oven is smoking.”