“Chef,” she replies. She hooks her arm over her notepad, trying to cover it from view without being too obvious.
“What’ve you got there?”
“Well, just preliminary notes for our dish, not anything official or anything like that.”
Chef Clarke nods. “What poultry are you and your partner thinking of doing?”
Mebel gestures at the empty space next to her. “My partner not yet arrive, as you can see. So I don’t want to make any decision without her.”
“Mm. Yes, I see that. However, because of the time crunch we have surrounding this event, you do need to come up witha proposed course by the end of the day, with or without your partner.”
That’s not fair, Mebel wants to wail. But she merely gives Chef Clarke a smile and says, “I think we decide on duck.”
“Wonderful. One of my favorite meats. And how will you be cooking it?”
“Ah,” Mebel says, frantically working through her memory. She and Gemma had had a cursory discussion, and in theory it sounded delicious, but they have no idea if it would work in practice. “We are thinking maybe a duck confit—”
At this, Chef Clarke’s smile wanes, and Mebel’s senses go into overdrive to compensate. Her only purpose right in this moment is to come up with a duck dish that would prove to Chef Clarke that she belongs in the school. “But we are going to do something special with the skin!” she says loudly.
Heads look up and turn toward her. Now she has not only Chef Clarke watching her, but most of the class as well. Wonderful.
Mebel makes an effort to lower her voice. “We are thinking maybe something like Peking duck, with the crepe, but the duck itself is cook in the own fat like a confit.”
Chef Clarke nods, his lips thinning as he considers this. “Bit of a fusion dish then? I suppose it could work. But what are you doing with the skin? Peking duck is traditionally roasted, which gives the skin that beautiful golden brown shade and subtle crunch. Are you going to fry your duck skin?”
Mebel, who has no idea what the fuck they’re going to do with the duck skin, nods vigorously. “Yes, sure, yes.”
“All right,” Chef Clarke says. “Well, I look forward to it. Let Gemma know when she arrives.”
With that, he stalks off, on the lookout for his next prey. Mebel is so limp with relief she practically melts across the kitchen worktable. She hurriedly writes down as much as she can remember Chef Clarke saying. She likes the sound of her and Gemma’s dish, and as she tries to work out a recipe for it, she wonders for the hundredth time where Gemma is. It really isn’t like her to disappear like this.
Mebel checks to make sure Chef Clarke is out of earshot before reaching over and tapping Adam on his back.
He turns around, wearing a look of mild irritation. “What is it, Mebel?”
Mebel notes with a pang that he’s calling her Mebel and not Mebs. “I—ah, have you hear anything from Gemma? I am worried about her, why she not come to class yet, is not like her to be this late and—”
“Right, yeah,” Adam says distractedly. Bella gives him a pointed look, and he says, “Okay, Mebel, I get that you’re worried, but I can’t do anything about that right now. We can check on her after class, all right?” With that, he turns his back on Mebel.
A sense of loneliness threatens to overwhelm her.Don’t be silly, she tells herself.This is nothing. Gemma probably overslept, like young people usually do, or maybe she has a cold, or is hungover. Ah yes, probably the last one. These English kids drink a lot, much more than Chindo kids, that’s for sure, and there have been many a morning where they’ve shown up to class bleary-eyed, their hair greasy and pulled back from their faces in a hasty ponytail. Yes, that’s probably what happened to Gemma.
Mebel just needs to—hmm. Well, she just needs to work on this stupid recipe. She looks around at the paired-up studentswho are murmuring quietly to each other. She catches bits and pieces of their conversations, and it all intimidates her. Terms like “sous vide” and “foam” are being thrown around. She recalls what Alain said about how chemistry is vital to the culinary arts, and she jots downChemistry. She stares at it, her mind blank. Or more accurately, her mind is whizzing with a dozen random ideas, gibbering uselessly at her. A quick snapshot of the many thoughts crowding her mind would show something like this:
Chemistry, that means mixing potions.
The act of firing up the stove and cooking a piece of raw meat is chemistry, isn’t it?
Can you foam duck? Oh, maybe you could foam the duck fat!
I could use a Nespresso foamer on liquid duck fat maybe.
And I-ee-I will always looove youuuu, and I—
All of the thoughts are voicing their opinions at the same time, while one of them is always singing a random song in the background. Once in a while, one of the thoughts would actually be an okay one, and Mebel would try her best to pluck that out of the sea of useless thoughts and jot that down. She does so now, writingMilk frother + duck fat.She leans back and tries to envision it. It sounds like an idea that might turn out to be absolutely brilliant or absolutely revolting, but at the end of the day, she won’t know unless she tries it.
By the time the class ends, Mebel is a frazzled mess. She hurries out of the kitchen and up the stairs, taking them two at a time, which just goes to show how worried she is about Gemma, because at her age, her knees are no longer of the two-steps-at-a-time caliber. She briskly walks down the hallway andknocks sharply at Gemma’s door, then steps back and tries to catch her breath.
No answer.
