Chapter 14 #2
“Seriously? This is all they had for us?” Zach looked at the dish like it was a rotten tomato. “That’s a colander, not a mesh strainer.”
“Yep. This is the only thing like it.”
“These holes are so big. I don’t think I can strain all the lumps out.” He sighed and took the tool. “If you can mix the veggies together, I’ll try to get the gravy into something edible.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Excuse me?”
He looked at her for a moment. Comprehension must have hit a second later because his eyes opened wide. “Oh no. I promised myself if I ever ran my own kitchen, I wouldn’t treat anyone like Chef Louie does, and yet, his voice just came out of my mouth. Sorry.”
“I forgive you. We’re under a lot of stress.” And it was fine. Really. She had seen him be better, do better. This day must really be throwing him off his cooking game.
He nodded once. “Assembly time. Got those veggies ready?”
She pulled the bowl of mixed veggies toward them.
“Gah!”
She jumped at his voice. “What?”
“I forgot to slice the meat.” Zach tugged on a pair of black gloves.
She grabbed the two pieces of beef out of the fridge and slid a chunk onto his cutting board. “I’ll help.” After grabbing her own gloves and cutting board, she began working on the other piece. The crowd noise faded away as she concentrated on slicing the meat into small, even pieces.
Pain seared through her finger, and she sucked in a breath.
“What is it?” Zach asked.
“I cut my finger.” She removed her glove. Blood spurted from the tip of her index finger, dripping on the meat on her board. “Oh no!”
Zach’s lips pinched together. “Let me see.” He took her hand and gently probed the cut. “It’s not too deep.” He wrapped the finger with a small piece of paper towel and handed her another glove. “Restaurant trick for when there are no Band-Aids.”
She eased the glove over the makeshift bandage.
“We’ll have to throw this away.” Zach was already back at his cutting board. He pointed the tip of his knife at her board.
“I’ll take care of it.” Her stomach felt sick. So much time and materials wasted, just because she couldn’t handle a knife. She scraped the meat into the garbage and put the cutting board with the other dirty dishes. “Will we have enough left?”
“We’ll just have to hope for the best.” His curt tone cut more than the knife had.
The cramped space of the outdoor kitchen felt like a cage. Ava kept bumping into Zach, and he moved like an elephant. A sigh escaped Ava’s lips as Zach’s foot landed heavily on her toes again, the dull ache mirroring the hurt in her heart.
She’d liked it better when they were singing.
“We should have practiced this instead of making the malfatti last night.” He reached for another ball of dough. “You’re not giving each of those pies enough crimps. It should be exactly twenty for each one.” He pinched another couple times on each of her pasties.
She sighed and tried again. The dough stretched into a circular shape under her hands.
When it was as wide as a dinner plate, she dropped some of the filling into the middle.
Drawing up the edges, she crimped them, murmuring a count to herself.
There. Twenty crimps. The pie went next to its brothers on the baking tray.
After a lifetime, they had ten meat pies lined up like soldiers ready for battle.
Zach checked his phone. “Okay, we should have enough time to get these baked and ready to plate. While they’re in the oven, we can work on the apple chutney.”
She picked up the tray. The cut on her finger throbbed with the weight. Bracing herself for the blast of hot air, she opened the oven door. Except—“Zach, did you preheat the oven?”
“Yes, I turned it on when the round started.” He came over to stand beside her.
“It’s stone cold.” She put her hand on the door.
“I turned it on.” Zach gestured to the knob, which was pointing at the appropriate temp. “It worked yesterday. What happened between then and now?” His face grew stormy.
She turned the knob, but nothing happened. “It’s like it’s not getting any power.”
The back of the oven butted up against the tent wall. She followed the oven cord to where it plugged into a long orange extension cord. Check that. Where it should be plugged into the extension. Someone had kicked it or something, because it was hanging by only one prong.
She shoved the two ends together. “Try it now.”
“Got it.”
The next hour passed in a tense silence as they chopped apples, walnuts, and dates for an apple chutney.
As Zach gave the mixture a quick cook on the stove, she took the opportunity to write down a few things for her article.
Her readers would eat up the details of the sights and especially smells of the day.
From Enrique Perez’s direction, she caught the distinct smell of hot peppers.
Her eyes watered even from this distance.
How could he stand to be working directly with them? A question to ask him later.
She now knew that the chef next to them was Alicia from Alicia’s Kitchen.
The short blonde was standing around, chatting with her partner and a few festival goers.
Her bright pink apron, adorned with delicate white embroidered hearts, swung gently as she moved.
Alicia held a clean spoon and seemed to be using it to illustrate the story she was telling.
“Chef Alicia, what are you making?” Hopefully she wasn’t interrupting, but she needed to get a few quotes for her article. “It smells amazing.” Underneath the spicy peppers permeating the tent, she could smell the piquant scent of olives and chicken wafting over from Alicia’s station.
Alicia turned a bright smile toward her.
“It’s a family recipe. Every generation makes it a little bit different in order to claim it as our own.
I call it Sweetheart Chicken because I fixed this dish for my first date with the man who would become my husband.
” Alicia pointed toward the dish with the spoon in her hand.
“Next thing I knew, he was my sweetheart. Now I make it for our anniversary every year.”
“Aw, that’s the cutest story. I love that. Thank you for sharing it with me.” She wrote furiously. “Do you mind if I quote you?”
“Go right ahead. I love telling that story. Just don’t ask me for the recipe.” Alicia gave her a wink before turning back to her partner.
Ava began sketching out the essence of her article. She glanced at her phone. Only a few more minutes before the last push of the contest.
When the timer for the oven beeped, she took a deep breath. It wasn’t enough to loosen the band around her chest.
Zach drew the pasties out of the oven. His groan told the tale. He thumped the pan next to her. An acrid scent rose from the baked goods.
“Over half of these leaked.” He grunted.
The gravy from the leaky meat pies had soaked into their neighbors, the shallower pools of it looking charred and smoky.
“Can we save any of them?”
“I’m going to try.” He pointed a spatula at the bowl of chutney. “We have exactly three minutes to get those into bowls and plated with these.”
A stack of ramekins waited for her to fill with the sweet side dish. She spooned mounds of the warm apple dish into each one. The spicy hint of cinnamon and cloves rose up around her.
At thirty seconds, the crowd began counting down. She chanced a quick look around. The teams near them also looked frantic, their hands moving in a blur. Only one team stood still, already having finished.
“Ava, focus.” Zach’s bark made her heart leap.
At the five-second mark, she placed the last ramekin of chutney on the last plate. In her rush, she spilled some out the top. Too late now.
“Hands up, contestants.” Seb Jonathon’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “We’ll be coming around to judge your dishes in a moment.”
She tried to catch Zach’s eye, but he engaged in conversation with some bystanders. She walked up next to him and waited for him to acknowledge her.
“Good job, chef,” the bystander, a woman Ava didn’t recognize, said.
“Oh, I’m not a chef,” she said. “Zach here is the one with training. I just follow orders.”
“Sometimes,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.” He tipped his head at her. A quick nod. “We made it through.” The woman wandered off. Probably picked up on the vibe.
Why was he being so weird? Sure, they’d had a rough time, but that didn’t excuse his behavior.
“Good job, Zach.” Maybe if she reached out she could figure out what was going on. “I can’t believe we pulled that off.”
He gave her his full attention then, his gaze hard into hers for a moment. “Yep. We sure did.”
Where was the tender man from last night? “Have I done something wrong?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but just then the judges made it to their table.
Ava groped for Zach’s hand as Paul Hawkeye, Anne Green, and local judge Martha Kelley bent over their bites of the dish, but he took a step away.
It didn’t matter how they did in this contest because somehow she’d already lost something far more precious. And she didn’t even know why.