“We’ll catch you later, Seb?” Benny asks.
“Maybe,” the taller guy says. “I’m just prepping some doughfor Katherine before I head out to teach my yoga class. I’ll be back after, if you’re still around. Good luck with filming, though—both of you. Friends of Flavor is lucky to have you guys.”
Why is he so pure and beautiful? Be still, my nontoxic-masculinity-starved heart. I manage to smile back at him before Benny says, “Later,” and leads me away.
“Jeez, down girl,” he mutters in my ear once we’re out of the kitchen.
I swat at his stomach, which he has time to flex before I reach it.Ugh.“Hush, you. He’s just such a sweetheart.”
“Uh-huh. And a sweet face and sweet bod and—”
“And he’s, like, thirty and married, so you can hop right offme.”
“Riiight,” Benny sniffs, and did he justroll his eyesat me? “All right, forget about your heartthrob for today. You ready for filming?”
I study his face with suspicion. There’s something in it—in his words and voice, too—that seems off. If it was anyone else, anyone with a legitimate reason, I might almost detect something like jealousy. But it isn’t anyone else. It’s Benny, and that isn’t us.
So I nod and answer, “As I’ll ever be, probably. You?”
“Oh yeah.” He waves a hand like this is nothing to him, and his expression relaxes again. “Nothing to worry about.”
I sure hope he’s right.
“You know what would be super convenient? If someone made this stuff and sold it at the grocery store like, I don’t know, in ajar.”
“Oh for the love of—” Benny pretends to smack his head against the prep kitchen counter, then looks back up, directly into the camera. “Forgive her, everyone, for she knows not what she says.”
I smirk, not taking my eyes from the handful of mystery herbs I’m chopping, which will go in the pot with the garlic, onions, and tomatoes that I meticulously crushed, chopped, and diced by hand. “I’m just saying. I survived for eighteen years without ever having homemade spaghetti sauce and I’ve turned out fine.”
“Aren’t you a fan of this channel? Are you trying to implode the whole business model?” Benny teases, waving his floury hands in the air. They’ve thrown him another softball today, whether intentional or not, by providing all the right ingredients for gnocchi and homemade sauce. He practically cheered when he saw it all laid out on the counter.
“Anyway, you know what they call the stuff you’re used to?” he asks. I raise an eyebrow. He’s already struggling not to laugh at his own joke. “Impasta sauce.”
I groan. “Oh lordy, I—no. That was so bad. You don’t get to make fun of me anymore today. Taking away your privileges.”
He just shakes his head, still chuckling. “You’ll see what Imean when we’re done. You haven’t had marinara till you’ve had it homemade.”
He does the thing where he rolls ther’s excessively as he corrects my terminology and I roll my eyes in turn, ignoring the little shiver that goes down my spine every time he goes all Italian on me. The latter reaction is very much involuntary and I’m very muchnota fan.
Though we’re only a little way into our second video, we’ve established our unspoken roles. Benny is Mr. Suave Foodie, happy to use his lifetime of experience in a restaurant kitchen to take charge of the cooking process and use all the right lingo. I, on the other hand, represent the Normals of the world—the newcomers who have watched a ton of Friends of Flavor but don’t have any training outside a home kitchen. He teases me for not knowing everything about everything; I get to rib him when he gets too mansplainy.
I drag the knife slowly through another bunch of tiny aromatic leaves. I’m not especially efficient at chopping, but keeping my fingers is more important to me than speed. My fear of coming across as a dumb blonde is still in the back of my mind as I go through each motion deliberately. But I’m trying to embrace what Icanoffer, even if it’s not loads of culinary knowledge and technique.
I’m not going to be a better cook than Benny by the end of the summer, if that’s what Friends of Flavor is looking for in their fall intern, but I can supply an approachability that not all of theFoF chefs have. Viewers want to feel like they’refriendswith the Friends of Flavor, and I happen to be your friend who’s not the biggest culinary expert but is still out here trying her best.
This is what I keep telling myself anyway, while Benny strains every one of his prominent muscles by carrying this show on his back.
I can follow instructions like nobody’s business, though, bar a couple of mishaps no bigger than the food processor lid. I pick up the cutting board and brush the chopped herbs into the still-warm saucepan where I sautéed the onions and garlic earlier, giving these the same treatment in order to, as Benny says, “release their flavor.” I peek over my shoulder to see whether he looks ready to provide me with my next steps. He’s just set his own pot of water on the burner to bring it to a boil. His back is to the camera and me, and he reaches up to readjust his backward ball cap, giving all of us a prime view of those ridiculous biceps stretching his tight T-shirt sleeves, back muscles rippling underneath the thin cotton just in case we didn’t get the point already.
I whip my head back around, willing the blush from my face, and see that I’ve been brushing my hand over the empty cutting board for at least a few seconds. Boy, do I hope the camera didn’t pick up on that.
“Looks great. Now let’s bring it all together and add some heat.”
I jump at the sound of Benny’s voice from right behind me. He reaches around and takes the saucepan in front of me. He dumps the sizzling herbs into the tomato pot and moves the latter to the stovetop where he’s been working, starting up the gas underneath it.
I belatedly step aside, trying to look unaffected as I tap my nails on the counter. “Just out of curiosity slash, um, in case viewers want to know…how much longer till it’s ready?”
“Unclear. From here we kinda just taste test.”
