Rose, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough. She was fascinated by every store, every stop. Taking notes in a little notepad.
“Have you ever been to Los Angeles, California?” I asked her as she marveled at the row upon row of teas at India Sweets & Spices.
She threw me a withering glance. “God, Clara, will Ieverbe as cool as you?”
My dad called us back to the car before I could respond, letting Rose have the last word.
After we’d gone to every single grocery store in the county, we went back to the commissary. We had about an hour and a half before our first stop of the day—a bustling coffee shop in Silver Lake. “Okay, shorties. We’re going to actuallymakefood now. You ready?” my dad asked us. He was wielding a large butcher knife and wearing a KoBra apron.
Rose pulled out her notebook again. “Yes.” But she started taking these weird shallow breaths. Probably some, like, control exercise that Sheryl Sandberg or someone recommended in order to be bossier. Before I could make fun of her for it, my dad looked at me pointedly. I made a face. “I don’t neednotesfor this.”
I waited for Rose’s snippy retort, but she was staring down at her notebook, her mouth moving silently as she read. Well, well, well, Queen Carver actually felt unsure about this. I, however, felt fully confident. The quicker I figured all this out, thequicker I could get it over with and prove to my dad that I had learned my lesson and blah blah. Tulum was still very much a possibility.
The KoBra had two main dishes:
• Picanha (beef rump) grilled on skewers (in the Brazilian style of churrasco) in traditional Korean galbi marinade
• Lombo (pork loin) grilled churrasco-style with a spicy vinaigrette sauce (similar to pico de gallo)
There were also various pickled veggies (very Korean) that you could add as a side, homemade beverages like lime caldo de cana (sugarcane juice with lime added), and a kimchi-and-cheese-stuffed pastel—a traditional Brazilian pastry. That was my personal favorite.
It was all delicious, actually.
“Okay, so we already have the meat on for lunch,” my dad said, pointing at the skewered pieces of beef roasting over the small grill. In addition to the grill, the truck had a griddle top, two burners, and an oven. There was no AC in here, so the truck’s roof had windows for ventilation, and my dad had installed a fan in the corner. And, as expected, the truck was already turning into a mini greenhouse. I felt a drop of sweat roll down my forehead, and I glared at Rose, because everything was her fault.
The picanha would be sliced off as it was cooked so that the pieces served were never stale. My dad continued, “But we’re going to prep the meats for tonight.”
He had us prepare the galbi marinade for the beef: mixingtogether soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, loads of garlic, sesame seeds, Korean chili powder, onion, ginger, and thin slices of pear. “You get me the ingredients and I’ll mix,” I ordered Rose.
She put a hand on her hip. “Excuse me?”
“This is my dad’s truck; I have seniority.”
A throat cleared right behind me. “Excuseme?” my dad asked.
I closed my eyes. This was going to be a pain in the butt every step of the way.
“You two areequals. There’s noseniority, you kidding me?” My dad tapped the rim of my hat so that it fell over my eyes.
Rose grabbed a metal bowl and whisk. “You probably know where everything is, so doesn’t it make sense foryouto get the ingredients?”
“She has a point there,” my dad said, not able to hide his glee.
Once Rose finished blending everything together, my dad placed the beef rump in a giant metal bowl, then poured the marinade over it. “This is for later. We already have some marinated meat for the next stop. I’ll leave this here until after this stop, and we’ll come back for it and start roasting. It needs at least three hours to marinate.” He sealed the bowl shut with plastic wrap, then took it to the giant commissary fridge.
He believed in making the marinades fresh, the day of. “It would probably be more flavorful if we made a large batch and kept it for a long time, but I like the freshness of the marinade in contrast to the roasted meats. It’s different,” he said as he handed me the ingredients for the vinaigrette: onions, tomatoes,parsley, vinegar, olive oil, and bell peppers. Rose was jotting all this down, her cap and apron impeccably placed. She looked like she was attending the Harvard of food truck schools.
“May I please make the sauce?” I asked her, waving a wooden spoon in front of her.
She shrugged. “Sure, I’m fair.”
Gritting my teeth, I mixed the ingredients in yet another large metal bowl. From what I could tell, everything in the KoBra was made in a giant metal bowl—the kind that older Korean ladies, ahjummas, use to make vats of kimchi. My dad’s Korean-ness always came out in these stealth ways that I don’t think even he noticed.
Last were the pasteis. These had been my favorite, ever since I was a kid. They were deep-fried hand pies—half-moon shapes with crinkled edges for the KoBra’s version. Traditionally, in Brazil, they were stuffed with various meats like ground beef and chicken, or cheese and veggies, and sold on the street. My dad put a twist on tradition by stuffing them with kimchi and cheese. When my dad had first made them a few years ago, I was seriously grossed out.Kimchiandcheese? In a pastel? But once I had taken a bite of the melty, crispy goodness, I was a convert. And now, it was what the KoBra was known for.
The pastry dough had been premade by my dad. He put his hands on his hips. “Are you guys going to fight about who rolls out the dough?”
Rose and I looked at each other.
