We Have Till Monday

“It’s a bit crowded here, Chef,” Bethany said. “Can I put the lettuce somewhere?”

August faced the audience. “If you’ve been to MAT in Nashville, maybe you’ve seen the sign that hangs above the hostess desk. I have the original at home, which used to belong to my nana. It says, ‘You Don’t Have to Eat the Vegetables.’” He got some laughs for that, and I smirked to myself. August turned to Bethany next. “Leave the crate on the floor. The lettuce is just gonna be a decoration.”

With that out of the way, it looked like August was about to make another round to see what we were up to, so I hurriedly swiped the trash into the bin on the floor before I placed the onion I’d sliced on a small plate. He’d said he liked a tidy kitchen. Tidy kitchen, tidy mind. Then I moved on to the latest instructions we’d been given: boil pasta and shred the block of cheese.

I wiped some sweat off my forehead and adjusted my ball cap, and I glanced around me to see how the others were managing. I hadn’t been told how much water to use for the pot. I didn’t know how much one cup of macaroni required.

Fuck it. I poured maybe four or five cups of water into a pot and set it on the stove. Then I threw in the pasta and turned up the heat.

August reached my station and cleared his throat. “Anthony Fender here is new at cooking, y’all.” Damn the fucking microphones too! “He happens to be an extraordinary musician and teacher, and maybe that’s kept him too busy to know that you don’t add the pasta until the water is boiling.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. The bastard was trying to withhold his mirth.

“This musician and teacher prefers clear-cut instructions,” I responded.

“Well, then!” August clapped his hands together and went back to the podium. Why did I get the feeling he was about to fuck with me? “As y’all’re finishin’ up with the cheese and the pasta’s on the stove, it’s time to prepare the bread. Mr. Fender, the bread is those two thickly cut slices in the plastic bag. And my plan was to just say, I want you to mince two cloves of garlic, but in the interest of makin’ myself perfectly clear, I’ll change that to fifteen grams of minced garlic. That better?”

Oh, they fucking loved him now. Everyone was laughing it up.

“Much,” I replied with a smile. “Be a good chef and keep that up.”

More laughter. In fact, much, much more laughter.

August coughed, hopefully to hide a laugh, but his gaze made it clear that I was gonna fuckin’ get it later.

This was fun.

It stopped being fun when we got closer to the end of the class and everything had to be done at the same time. The sun blasted me with heat, there wasn’t a goddamn breeze to be found, the air smelled of food, my stomach was growling, and there were too many things to keep track of at once. The battered onion rings had to be fried, the bread had been dipped in a dry rub and was next to be thrown into a skillet, but the skillet was currently hotter than hell and full of oil and chicken.

After chugging from the water bottle Clara had handed out, I dumped the shredded cheese into the pot with the mac, then made sure the garlic butter was ready.

My brain was spinning from all the ingredients. From lard, buttermilk, and brown sugar to habanero, beer, and something called matzo meal. I was fairly certain I’d used one teaspoon too much of black pepper too.

“Motherf—” Don’t fucking curse! I quickly withdrew my hand as a drop of sizzling oil hit my knuckles.

Okay, what was next? I flipped the two pieces of chicken for an additional eight minutes, and I set the timer on my phone again. Then I stirred the mac and cheese and grimaced to myself. The mac was overcooked, wasn’t it? It felt overcooked.

I had to fry the onion rings now too. And melt the garlic butter. Cazzo.

About five minutes later, August had finished a story about his one and only fusion restaurant, which I’d barely heard a word of, and he trailed down the aisle to check in with us. Fucking Bethany declared herself finished.

I dug something called a basting brush from underneath a dish towel and began brushing the hot sauce over the deep-fried chicken that was resting next to the stove. Onion rings needed to get the fuck out of the oil stat.

“It looks like things are comin’ along well here,” August noted.

“Looks can be deceiving,” I muttered and started fishing out the onion rings.

The audience chuckled with August. Then he addressed everyone. “Remember to clean out the skillet properly before you pan fry the bread,” he instructed. “That’s how you get a crisp, slightly blackened surface on the bread while it stays soft inside. Butter or oil in the skillet makes the bread stick to the iron easier, and we don’t want that. We don’t want the butter to make the bread soggy either.”