Cooking Club Chaos!

by Veera Hiranandani

  “Gee, thanks,” Mom replied.

  “But is that a whole style of cooking?” I said, spreading my arms out wide.

  “I think so,” Molly said. “Jewish grandmother style!”

  Mom got a way-far-away look in her eye. “Your great-grandma Gertrude taught the recipe to my mom, your grandma. Then my mom taught it to me. So I guess it is time I taught you, Phoebe,” she said, squeezing my shoulder.

  “So does that mean you’ll do it?” I asked.

  “Sign me up!” Mom said.

  At first a big happy feeling filled me right up, but then a second later I had my own worried feeling that pushed the happy feeling out. Could Mom actually teach people how to cook something, even if it was matzo ball soup? What was I getting myself into?

  By the next week, enough parents signed up for our cooking club and the plan was on its way. Here’s who was going to cook with us:

  Camille’s dad was going to teach us how to make chocolate mousse, which is one of the fluffiest, creamiest French desserts ever invented. I tasted it when I went with Camille to France for vacation, so I’m kind of an expert.

  Sage’s mom was going to make something Indian, probably samosas, which are salty potato-y fried things of yumminess.

  Grace Wong’s mom was going to teach us something Chinese. I kept whispering, “I love beef with broccoli,” when Grace was near me so she’d get the idea to ask her mom to make that.

  Miguel Ruiz’s dad was going to do Mexican enchiladas. Miguel told me enchiladas were a little like burritos and a little like fajitas but not like those things at all. So now I have no idea what they are.

  And my mom was going to make Jewish Grandmother Matzo Ball Soup, which hopefully would turn out okay.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We had to wait three weeks for the cooking class to start, which felt like forever. Lunches were the worst. I had to watch Sage eat the same stuff over and over and over until it made my head hurt. I decided to write a list about the only foods Sage liked. Then I felt a tiny bit better because at least I got to make a list about it:

  Hot dogs without anything on them

  Pasta without anything on it

  Pizza with just cheese on it

  Turkey sandwiches without anything on them except extra turkey

  Popcorn with butter on it

  Cheese sticks-the really bendy kind

  His mom’s homemade samosas

  That’s it. Well, he also loves desserts, but who doesn’t like desserts? Except he says he doesn’t like chocolate, but I don’t believe him, because not liking chocolate is basically impossible. And anyway, I knew that once Sage started cooking, everything would change.

  Finally, it was the first day of cooking class. We all sat at a table in the cafeteria. Mrs. B got us special, and possibly top secret, permission to use the school kitchen, which was pretty exciting because I had never actually been on the inside of the cafeteria kitchen. After everyone got there, Mrs. B introduced Mr. Durand, who was standing next to Camille.

  “Hello, everyone. Welcome to cooking club. Many thanks to Phoebe and Camille for giving us such a great idea and to Mr. Durand for coming today! Mr. Durand is a professional pastry chef and we are very lucky to have him here. He’s going to show us how to make chocolate mousse!”

  I smiled extra proudly and looked at Camille. I had made chocolate croissants in Mr. Durand’s old bakery in France when we went there on vacation, so I knew all about being a pastry chef. Camille was smiling too, but her cheeks were as red as apples. Camille had some crazy cheeks.

  We followed Mrs. B and Mr. Durand into the kitchen, which was huge. It had four ovens, three sinks, two big metal counters, and a refrigerator that was big enough to walk inside! Mr. Durand organized all the tools and ingredients on one of the big metal counters in the center of the kitchen and made us wash our hands. He said all chefs do that before they cook. Then we surrounded him with our very clean hands and stared at things he took out of bags. I saw cartons of cream. Then I saw lots of chocolate bars, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

  “Aren’t you excited, Sage?” I whispered. “Chocolate mousse is so delicious!”

  Sage just looked at the table with the ingredients and back at me. “I don’t really like chocolate, and anyway, I’ve never had mousse before, so I don’t know,” he said.

  “Well, you’re going to think it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted in your whole life,” I said.

  But he just shrugged.

  Then Mr. Durand passed around the chocolate bars and we got to break them up and put the pieces in a pot. I popped a piece in my mouth. On the wrapper it had said “bittersweet chocolate.” It was just that, a little bitter and a little sweet, but I still liked it.

  “I saw that, Phoebe.” Mr. Durand said, smiling.

  I swallowed my chocolate quickly so I didn’t have to give it back.

  Mr. Durand put the pot of little chocolatey pieces over another pot of boiling water. Camille and I took turns stirring.

  “It looks like chocolate soup!” I said when it got all smooth and melty.

  After that, Mr. Durand heated some cream in another pot and poured a bit of it into the eggs very slowly as Grace and Miguel took turns mixing.

  “If we don’t warm up the eggs slowly, we’ll have scrambled eggs in our mousse when we cook it all together,” he said, which sounded a bit gross.

  After that, Charlotte, Sage, and Will stirred the sugar and the eggs and all the hot cream into the hot chocolate soup and it stayed nice and smooth. Then everyone got a turn to whip the rest of the cream. We mixed everything together and spooned the mixture into little plastic cups.

  “That’s it!” said Mr. Durand. “Now we have to put it in the refrigerator to chill overnight.” Before anyone could say anything, I gasped.

  “What’s wrong, Phoebe?” asked Mrs. B, looking a little scared again.

  “We have to wait until tomorrow to eat it?”

  “I don’t think I can wait!” Will said.

  “Me neither,” said Grace Wong.

  “Non,” Mr. Durand said in his serious French-chef voice and shook his head.

  “You must let it chill.”

  I raised my hand slowly, trying to be extra polite.

  “Yes, Phoebe?” Mr. Durand said, looking up again.

  “But if I really, really wanted to taste it sooner, like maybe right now, would that be, um . . . bad?”

  “My dear Phoebe, some things are worth the wait,” Mr. Durand explained, and then he winked at me. There was nothing I could do but wink back, but I gave him a really sad wink with a frown.

  “Okay, okay,” Mr. Durand said. “Everyone can have a taste.”

  He passed around spoons and we all took a scoop from our cups.

  “Whoa!” Miguel Ruiz said after he ate some.

  “This might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life,” Will said.

  “Yummy, yum, yum!” Grace Wong exclaimed.

  Camille smiled and looked at her dad, her face very proud and a little embarrassed.

  “Mmmmmmm,” I said for an extra-long time as the spoonful of the thick, creamy, warm chocolate melted in my mouth. “Some things are not worth the wait!” Then I turned to Sage. “What do you think, Sage?”

  “It’s okay,” he said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. “But you know I don’t really like chocolate.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. So did everyone else.

  “I never actually believed that you didn’t like chocolate. I mean WHO DOESN’T LIKE CHOCOLATE?” I shouted at him.

  Sage looked at me with a not-so-happy face on. “Me, that’s who,” he said.

  “Phoebe,” Mrs. B said. “Everybody has their own taste. There’s no right or wrong.”

  I sat back in my seat and took a deep breath. “
I’m sorry, Sage. I didn’t mean to shout,” I told him and patted his back. He gave me a weak smile. I was sorry, but I just couldn’t understand not loving creamy, freshly made chocolate mousse. Convincing Sage to like new foods was going to be a lot harder than I thought.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next week, Grace Wong’s mom taught us how to make Chinese pork dumplings. It was kind of like making meatballs, except we wrapped the pork meatball up like a present with a wonton wrapper. Then we cooked them in a big round box that Mrs. Wong called a bamboo steamer. They tasted salty and gingery.

  “This is the best pork meatball present I ever got,” I said. Everybody liked them, except Will and you-know-who—Sage. This is what he did:

  First he smelled it because he likes to smell things before he eats them.

  Then he touched the dumpling to his lips.

  Then he smelled it again.

  Then I said, “Sage, it won’t bite.”

  He glared at me but took a little taste and made a face like he just ate a lemon, and put the dumpling down.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him, trying to be very calm and sweet so Mrs. B wouldn’t get mad at me for not understanding Sage’s different tastes.

  “I don’t know. It’s just weird to me. It tastes like soap.”

  “Your dumpling tastes like soap?” Camille said, looking very confused.

  “Soap?” I asked him. “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it tastes like hand lotion.”

  “Hand lotion?” I said, putting my hands on the sides of my face.

  “But the dumplings are delicious,” Camille said, “and I doubt that hand lotion is delicious.”

  “My mom has this ginger hand lotion and it smells just like these dumplings,” Sage said, pointing at the poor little dumpling sitting on his plate.

  Camille and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

  I think Sage might be a little crazy.

  For the third class, Sage’s mom, Ramita, came in. Ramita is from India. She cooks Indian food in Sage’s house, but they also eat a lot of Italian food, since Sage’s dad is Italian. I guess that’s why Sage likes pasta and pizza so much.

  I’ve known Ramita since I was a baby, and our moms are best friends. I’ve eaten a lot of her samosas, but I’ve never really watched her make them. It turns out, making samosas is a little like making pork dumplings. After we rolled out the dough, we mashed up cooked potatoes and peas and spices, which have beautiful names like turmeric and cumin.

  After we spooned all the potato stuff into the dough and wrapped it up, Ramita fried the samosas in a big pot of oil. Then we ate them with a green sauce called chutney. The samosas tasted the way they always taste, a little salty, a little spicy, and crispy delicious.

  Sage even had two, but it didn’t really count, because they were already on his favorite food list.

  The day before the fourth cooking class, I was hanging upside down on the monkey bars with Sage and Will, but I started getting a little dizzy so I went looking for Camille. She was making a fairy house out of rocks, sticks, and leaves on the other side of the playground. It’s a super-special talent of hers. She says the fairies come at night to sleep in the houses. That can’t be true, but it makes her happy, so I don’t say a word about it.

  “I really, really hope Sage likes what we make tomorrow,” I said. It was going to be our fourth cooking class the next day.

  “Me too. But what if he doesn’t?” Camille said, looking up from putting a chunk of moss on her fairy-house roof.

  “If he doesn’t, then . . . ,” I said, thinking, “then, I don’t know.”

  “Maybe he’ll never like trying new foods,” Camille said, looking up.

  I thought for a moment. “No,” I said. “He will. I think he’ll see it’ll be more fun if he does.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Camille said, and started decorating the front of her house with little pebbles. She suddenly looked up, her eyes all sparkly. “I know! We can write out a wish for the fairies!”

  “Huh?” Sometimes Camille got really into her fairy thing.

  “If we write a wish for them in the dirt, it might come true.”

  At this point I was willing to try anything. So we wrote a wish for the fairies in the dirt. We had to call Sage “S” in case Sage saw it.

  Our wish said, “DEAR FAIRIES, PLEASE HELP S LIKE MORE FOOD.”

  “There!” Camille said, wiping her hands on her skirt.

  Even if I don’t believe in fairies, it couldn’t hurt.

  For the fourth class, we made enchiladas with Miguel’s dad. We stirred around chicken with peppers and spices in a hot oiled pan and wrapped them up in cozy corn tortillas. Then we poured a spicy tomato sauce over the enchiladas, covered them in cheese, and put them in the oven.

  “It smells like a really good restaurant in here,” I said.

  “It does!” Camille said.

  Miguel puffed up his chest proudly. “They’re the best enchiladas in the country.”

  “I don’t know about that, Miguel,” his dad said, smiling. “But I’ll take it.”

  After they were done, everyone dug in. I looked over at Sage, who sat in front of his enchilada with one small bite taken out of it.

  “Why aren’t you eating it, Sage?” I asked him, trying not to sound too mad.

  “It’s too spicy,” he said.

  “Does it taste like hand lotion again?” Camille said as she licked a bit of sauce off her finger.

  “No,” Sage said and looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “Just normal spicy, not hand-lotion spicy.”

  “But you liked your mom’s samosas, and they were spicy,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve been eating them since I was a kid,” he said. “I’m used to those spices.”

  “You’re still a kid,” I said.

  “Then I’ve been eating them since I was a baby,” Sage said.

  “You didn’t have samosas when you were a little baby,” I said.

  “How do you know?” Sage replied.

  I looked at Camille and she looked at me and we just shrugged. Once again, our plan was not working. I don’t think the fairies read our wish.

  “Try tasting it again,” Camille told him. “My mom says you taste something the first time to get to know it and then taste it again to become friends with it.”

  So Sage took another bite. “Still spicy,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to be friends with the enchiladas,” he said sadly.

  I put my head on the table.

  “Why do you care so much, anyway?” Sage asked me.

  I lifted up my head.

  “I don’t. I’m just very full,” I told him, but I wondered why I did care so much. The truth was I just wanted him to love trying new foods as much as I did. There were so many exciting foods to try! Was Sage just going to miss out on all that and watch me and Camille have all the fun? I still had one more chance to make the plan work. It was going to be up to Mom and her matzo ball soup.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On the morning it was Mom’s day to make her soup, I started getting butterfly feelings in my belly. That’s what Mom and Dad call the jumpy feelings in your belly when you’re nervous. They said it doesn’t really mean you have butterflies in your belly, but I’m pretty sure I did this time. Maybe I swallowed one overnight.

  “Do you have all the ingredients for the soup?” I asked Mom while she drank her coffee.

  “I’m getting them later,” she said, a sleepy look on her face. Mom’s always sleepy until she finishes her coffee. I wanted her to finish it right away so she could get busy thinking about matzo ball soup.

  “Did you call Grandma and check the recipe?” I asked. “You don’t want to get it wrong.”

  “I know I’m not a master chef, but I’ve been ma
king this soup for twenty years, honey. I could make it in my sleep,” Mom said.

  “Sleep? Mom, you have to make it when you’re awake!” I said in a not-so-quiet voice.

  “Pheebs,” Molly said, laughing. “It’s just what people say when they can do something without thinking about it.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said, still wishing her sleepy face would disappear.

  “And anyway, Mom said she’s making the soup at home and just doing the matzo balls at school,” Dad explained as he finished his cereal.

  I started to get extra worried now.

  “But Mom, all the other parents made their entire recipes at school!” I told her.

  “It would take too long to make it all at school, Pheebs,” said Mom, taking another too-slow sip.

  “Why are you freaking out?” Molly said. She thought everyone was “freaking out” when they said anything about anything. I think she just liked to say that because it was teenage-y sounding.

  “I’m not freaking out. I just want it to be the best matzo ball soup ever made in the whole history of the world,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “You’ve had Mom’s matzo ball soup a million times,” Molly said. “You know it’s delicious.”

  That was true. It was warm and good smelling, like home in a bowl.

  “Thanks, Molly,” Mom said.

  “I think you might be getting carried away,” Dad said, and ruffled my hair as he got up to go to work.

  “No one’s carrying me anywhere, Dad,” I answered. Dad just looked at me funny.

  When Molly and I were both zipping up our backpacks in the hallway, Molly whispered to me, “Just make sure Mom doesn’t roll the matzo balls too much. I once made them with Grandma and she said that was the trick to keeping them fluffy.”

  “Got it!” I said and gave her a high five.