The Last Super Chef

by Chris Negron

  Chef Wormwood lifts Pepper’s box and holds it open for the Super Chef. He picks up the lobster, turns it over once to inspect it. With a frown he pops it back inside her box. The brioche gets the same treatment. Then the celery and apricots. Finally he meets Pepper’s eyes again. “I suppose we can let you keep the cabbage.”

  Pepper’s mouth drops open. Her gaze alternates from the head of cabbage in front of her, sad by itself now, to the Super Chef’s evil-looking smirk. He starts to pace down the line, toward Kiko.

  “I’m glad each of you came up with a great idea for a dish to make,” he says in a louder voice, talking to us all now. “But this challenge wouldn’t be worthy of The Last Super Chef if we just let you choose anything you wanted from our incredible pantry. Did you really think you were simply going to make your own dish and it was going to be as easy as that?”

  I guess I kind of did think that. Except I wasn’t feeling like it was going to be all that easy. In fact, I was already in pretty much full-strength panic mode. Now my heart goes from beating fast to downright thumping.

  When the Super Chef reaches Kiko’s station, he flips the lid on her box up in the same way as he did Pepper’s. “You won’t be able to keep your five ingredients. But you can have one.” He lifts a single finger and smiles, like he’s being generous. “And you won’t be making five dishes separately, either.” He takes a head of broccoli out of Kiko’s box and turns it over.

  “You’ll be cooking one dish. Together.”

  21

  After leaving Kiko with only a single slab of sliced pork belly, the Super Chef moves on to me. He heaves an impatient breath. “Now. Let’s have a look at your selections, shall we, Chef Pith?”

  Taylor opens my box and takes the filet out first. “That’s a rather fancy cut of meat. Not really what I expected to find.”

  He doesn’t waste time waiting for a response, instead continuing to pull ingredients from my box. The eggs, the asparagus, the parmesan, the milk. “Sort of an odd assortment. I can’t even guess at what you were planning to make.”

  Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me.

  Because I have no idea. Because my father is inches away from me for the first time I can remember, for what feels like the first time ever, and I kind of can’t breathe. Definitely can’t talk. What if I open my mouth and something weird comes out?

  He runs his perplexed eyes over my choices. “How about we let you keep the eggs?”

  I nod like it’s okay. Anything to get him to move on to the next chef.

  A few minutes later, as the chefs return to the stage, each of us is left to stare down at the pitiful remnants of our frantic shopping.

  Pepper has her head of cabbage.

  Kiko, her pork belly.

  I’ve got my eggs.

  They leave Joey with a box of spaghetti.

  Bo has one huge heirloom tomato.

  “Of course you’ll have as much of our mise en place to work with as you wish,” the Super Chef says from the stage, pointing at the artichokes, onions, shrimp, and clams. “And the basics at your stations.”

  He pauses, letting the situation sink in. Letting our desperation sink in. I can see the remnants of everyone’s ruined recipes weighing down their faces. It almost feels good not to have come up with a real plan back in the pantry. Like I have an advantage in a way, because the Super Chef couldn’t possibly ruin a plan that never existed in the first place.

  “Which brings us full circle, to our sensory deprivation booths,” Lucas Taylor says. The booths light up again, all four at once this time. “I said you’ll cook your meal together, but I didn’t tell you how.” He hesitates, seeming to enjoy our collective confusion. “You will cook in the same order you shopped in, the current order of the standings, and each of you will be allowed six minutes. The rest will be waiting in our booths, with no knowledge of the other chefs’ work. Every six minutes another of you will take your turn. You must continue the same dish the chefs before you started. Think of it like a relay race. Your dish is the baton.”

  The same order. It meant I would be last again. It meant whatever dish the others started, I would have to finish it. It meant if this whole thing turned out to be an epic failure, I’d be the last cook who touched it. I’d be the easiest one to blame.

  After a quick commercial break, Kiko remains at her station in the center of the first row, our ingredients collected up and waiting with her. A single, glistening stack of thinly cut pork belly beside a lone head of green-white cabbage. A cardboard box of store-bought spaghetti leaning against a spongy carton of organic eggs. Bo’s multicolored tomato, somehow looking the most vibrant and the most out of place at the same time.

  The rest of us wait in line along the far side of the arena. One by one, we’re led into our assigned booths. The blindfolds are tied tight, but not too tight. Finally, we’re asked to pull on the bulky headphones.

  As big as they are, they’re still not perfect at noise canceling. I hear distant murmurs from the crowd and, for a second, I even think I make out the Super Chef’s muffled voice, amplified by the arena’s microphones. But then I sense the door clicking shut behind me. Not only is everything completely dark, but now there’s no sound at all, and I know for sure there won’t be.

  At least not for the next twenty-four minutes.

  I have twenty-four minutes to wait. Twenty-four minutes to think. I have twenty-four minutes, if I can make my brain do it, to plan.

  What will the other chefs be working on when my time is up? Maybe a pasta dish with a seafood sauce? Or some kind of twisted cioppino?

  Every time I think of a possibility, the dish I come up with is based on something I’ve made for Paige and Mom, and all of a sudden my heart is sick and empty, I miss them so bad.

  The pattern repeats, dish after possible dish circling my head like they’re on a conveyor belt, and in what feels a lot more like four minutes than twenty-four, I sense the booth door being thrust open behind me. A tap on my shoulder. Fingers untying my blindfold. It can’t be my turn yet. I haven’t even . . .

  The world returns to focus before I can finish my thought. I blink about ten times to help my eyes adjust to the stark light. The rest of the arena flashes into view. Bo’s at the station in the front row where Kiko started, frantically stirring something in a flat pan. Joey, Pepper, and Kiko are at the far end of the row, shouting at him.

  I pull my headphones off. Sound erupts all around me. My hands instinctively shoot up to my ears to muffle it.

  “Let’s go, Chef.” Graca encourages me to approach him with a wave of his hand. I try to will my feet to move, but they don’t want to go. No, they want to run, to not stop until I hit the snowy streets of North Sloan and race into our apartment, dive under the blankets with Mom and Paige. Safe from crowds and pressure, from aching hands and the rumbling nerves in my gut.

  “Ready?” Graca asks when I find myself standing next to him anyway. My feet must’ve moved on their own. Together we gaze down the row at Bo, working wildly, the rest of the Super Five shouting at him.

  It feels like complete chaos. I’ve never cooked in these conditions before. Not even close.

  No, I’m totally not ready for this, but maybe my numb stupidity bubbles to the surface and takes control of my body. Because, for some reason, I nod yes.

  22

  “In a second, they’ll call for Bonifacio to stop working,” Graca says close to my ear, nodding at Bo, who’s moving faster than I’ve ever seen him go, up and down on his stool to reach for ingredients and put them to use.

  On the opposite end of the row from where we stand, the already-finished chefs are still shouting instructions.

  “Don’t let the shrimp burn!”

  “The pasta should be al dente!”

  “The clams are done! They’re dooone!”

  The Super Chef never said anything about the other contestants shouting like that. But what else would’ve happened? There wasn’t time to lock them back into
the booths. And maybe this was part of the test, handling all that input when usually we cook on our own. Maybe it has something to do with the theme we’re going to have to guess.

  The theme! All of a sudden I realize I haven’t been thinking about it at all. I glance toward the stage. Taylor and Wormwood are standing there, enjoying the turmoil playing out at the center station, like the insanity going on in front of them is exactly what they’d hoped would happen tonight.

  Early options for the theme run through my mind. Flexibility? Staying calm under pressure? Ability to not completely lose your mind?

  Okay, maybe none of those are the theme, but they’re all things I’m about to have to do.

  Chef Graca blows his shrill whistle, and I snap my hand over the ear closest to him.

  “Your time’s up, Mr. Agosto!” Chef Wormwood shouts. “Hands in the air!”

  Bo’s panicked eyes dart up. He thrusts his hands skyward. The wooden spoon he was using to stir drops to the floor with a clatter. He glances at me, hands still raised, and the hot panic in his expression quickly turns my blood cold. Why? Because, I think, he must know what they’re making. He’s probably just realized there isn’t enough time for me to finish it.

  I race forward as Bo, reluctantly, backs up to join Joey, Pepper, and Kiko. I take stock of the situation. Pasta’s boiling in a giant pot on the stove. The pan Bo was stirring has cleaned, whole shrimp and diced pork belly frying together. Pepper’s cabbage is shredded on a cutting board but still raw. In a second pan, clams are simmering in olive oil with artichokes and onions. Nobody’s touched my eggs.

  “It’s a clam sauce,” Pepper shouts. “With artichokes! I make it at home all the time. Put it over the spaghetti.”

  “No!” Joey yells. “It’s a carbonara. Shrimp and bacon.”

  “Sorry, Curtis” is all Bo calls out to me. It’s somehow even less helpful than the other scattershot comments.

  My eyes search the station, finding one bowl I missed. Sort of a dark, reddish sauce sitting by itself. I pull it toward me, find a clean spoon and taste. It’s like ketchup, I guess, but not exactly. Similar, though, definitely some kind of tomato base. Somehow . . . familiar, too.

  This weird sauce must’ve started with Bo’s tomato, the remnants of which I see lying on a cutting board a few feet away. More than that. On second taste, I pick up Worcestershire and soy. Maybe a little sugar.

  Why do I feel like I’ve used this sauce before?

  I can’t waste time. I push the bowl back, grab my eggs. Use the wooden spoon to give both pans a stir so nothing already going burns. I have to use these eggs; we’re supposed to include all the ingredients. And I have to make one dish, even if it seems like the others have ignored this rule. By my eye, there are at least two dishes in front of me, maybe three.

  Kiko’s been oddly quiet, and I wonder why. Maybe she knows something that can help.

  I find her standing behind the other three, eyes laser-focused on the bag of flour sitting untouched on the station. She redirects her gaze to my face, making sure our eyes meet, then moves hers to the eggs. I follow them. Next she looks at the strange sauce. Did she make it? Now the mayo. Finally Kiko meets my eyes again. Her mouth moves, but if she actually says the word, I don’t hear it. Doesn’t matter, though, because I read her lips, and I can tell what they say.

  I can tell what they say, and I know where I’ve tasted that sauce before.

  I can tell what they say, and it’s flat-out brilliant.

  “Okonomiyaki.”

  I use a clean fork to spin one of the strands of spaghetti out of the pot, blow on it, and sample it. It’s starting to go from al dente to overcooked. Not a huge deal for what I’m going to use it for, but I should stop the bleeding, so I grab a strainer and pour it out. Then I drain the drippings from the pan of shrimp and bacon—pork belly, actually. Finally the clams and onions and artichokes. I line everything up next to the bowl of sauce and the shredded cabbage.

  All the ingredients we were supposed to use, in one way or another, are in front of me now. The mise en place from the other day, plus the pork belly. Bo’s tomato is in the mystery sauce, Pepper’s cabbage is shredded and waiting and Joey’s pasta is cooked. Perfect.

  I allow myself one second to stop, take a breath, and recalibrate.

  Okonomiyaki is a popular kind of Japanese pancake. Not sweet like the breakfast pancakes Paige likes in the morning, swimming in syrup and filled with blueberries, but a savory one. Savory as in more like you eat it for dinner than breakfast.

  They’re Japanese, so it makes sense these pancakes always have seafood in them. Some kinds, like octopus and squid, I don’t have here and can’t use. But most of the time okonomiyaki has shrimp in it too, and definitely pork belly. I can make the clams work. And spaghetti might be a little bit weird, but some versions do use Japanese noodles.

  After all, okonomi means “as you like it” if I remember right from that time last year when I got so excited to try this dish after seeing it on the NHK cooking show I sometimes watch before school. I did hours of research, watched a ton of videos on YouTube.

  When I felt ready, I made Mom get the different seafoods, or at least substitutes when we ran across one out of our price range. And on a snowed-in Saturday, I cooked my version of okonomiyaki for the first time. Mom and Paige sent all kinds of “yuck” faces my way as they chewed and forced themselves to swallow. They both pretty much hated it.

  But I kind of loved it.

  All yaki means in Japanese, basically, is “cooked.” So this would be okonomiyaki “cooked” the way “Curtis” likes it—definitely, at least, the way Curtis has to like it, because I’ve got no other choice.

  I get to work slicing everything into smaller pieces so I can mix them into my batter. As I chop, I wonder how Kiko knew I would understand how to make okonomiyaki. She couldn’t have known I’d tried it before. No, she just trusted me, and suddenly I wonder if that’s the theme. Could “trust” be one of the Super Chef’s five qualities of a great chef?

  Joey starts screaming at me. “What are you doing? Keep the shrimp whole, doofus!”

  I have only seconds, so I tune him out, concentrate on my knife work. Once everything is ready, I grab a big bowl and measure out my flour. Add a little baking soda. Some water. I’m working so fast my dry ingredients are flying out of the bowl. I know there should be dashi, but I can’t worry about what’s missing, only what’s here.

  I whisk until all the lumps are gone. It’s starting to look more like pancake batter now. I sprinkle a little salt in, give it another turn. I should have that special mountain yam that makes it gooey, the one it took Mom so long to find in the Korean grocery back home, but I don’t.

  I start adding my ingredients to the batter.

  The shrimp. Normally, they should be raw, not cooked, but I can’t help that. The shredded cabbage. Some of the pork belly. The clams and onions, again they’d be better raw, and actually should be green onions, not Vidalias, but what can I do?

  A pit opens up in my stomach. I was so sure this was the right thing to do when Kiko suggested it, but now I keep making excuses for substituting ingredients. Maybe this is going to suck. If this were normal Super Chef, I’d be sure they were about to send me home, but I can’t even hope for that. “Each of you is here for the long haul,” Wormwood had warned us. “I hope you’re all prepared for that.”

  I’m pretty positive the only thing I was prepared for was dressing myself every day. Even that’s questionable at this point, I think as I look down at my untied left sneaker, wondering when that happened, understanding I can’t pause long enough to do anything about it anyway.

  That’s right—keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. Next, the artichokes—which honestly shouldn’t come within five miles of an okonomiyaki, but I’ve got to use them. Every time I tell myself that, the pit in my gut widens.

  I crack two eggs over the whole thing, then stir it all together as quickly as I can. At least half my time must
be gone. I hear screaming from all sides, but I ignore it.

  The chunky batter starts to sizzle immediately when I form it into a round shape in the center of my pan—basically a big pancake, but not too big, this has to cook quick. I deal more of the pork belly onto the top, then use a brush to coat the surface with a bit more of the batter. It starts to really speak to me, searing and sputtering and crackling. If you learn how to listen close enough, food tells you how it’s doing, when it’s going to be done, and how good it’s going to taste, long before you ever lift a fork of it to your mouth.

  I might need about two minutes on each side, maybe less. I check the clock. This is going to be about as close as it can get.

  While one side cooks I get another pan going, really hot, and ball up some of the spaghetti into a round shape about the same size as my pancake. I start frying the noodles so they’ll stick together. It should be yakisoba, but “as you like it,” right?

  Or maybe more “as you pray to the heavens this will somehow work . . . it.”

  The next few minutes fly by in a blur. Flipping the pancake so the other side will cook. Stacking it on top of the pan-fried noodles on a clean white plate. Spooning Kiko’s okonomiyaki sauce on top and spreading it thin. Swirling a spiral of mayonnaise over the whole thing. Graca’s whistle blowing. Wormwood shouting, “Hands up!”

  Everything done just in time, my hands shoot high toward the people in the balcony with all their crazy cheering. Like I’ve just been nabbed in a bank robbery, except I think my crime today has been committed against the cooking gods, or maybe the entire country of Japan. My breath comes in labored spurts.

  I look down at the pancake in front of me. It barely holds together. Mayo drips onto the plate. The whole thing slouches a little, and I start to worry that I didn’t cook it long enough.

  Ugh. It’s my dish, the same one I keep going between dreading the reaction to and being sort of proud of. Now I’m not feeling either of those. I just have one, lone, final thought as I watch steam drift off the top of this ugly thing on my plate.