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And, it was perfect. Sweet and spicy with a kick. The kick landed in his gut and urged him into motion. It asked what if?
What if he did put this plan into motion? What if he did open up this restaurant? What if he did live out his dream?
It was the sight of this morning’s paper that cooled the fervor and left a bitter taste in his mouth. The morning headlines read N’heir Do Well: The Cost of Prince Alex’s Wayward Ways.
It was an exposé detailing what the cost of his travels and gallivanting were costing the citizens of Cordoba. It was all lies. People wrote what they wanted to believe about him. There were times Alex believed it himself. Most of Alex’s trips were comped by the ones who invited him. They earned more from him showing his face than the cost of his lodgings and food, and Alex was only ever there for the food.
Aside from his travels, Alex spent little to no money of the allowance allotted him. He didn’t have expensive tastes unless it came to food. The restaurant was the biggest expense he would ever incur, and he was not about to put that bill on taxpayers.
He took another bite of the cake. The sweetness stuck to the roof of his mouth, but the spice hit him again in the gut. What if?
He looked down at his plans again. What if he did open his restaurant? He’d be the restless heir no more. The tabloids would have to find another story to write about him, and they likely would. But he wouldn’t care because he’d spend the day in a real kitchen. He’d craft menus to take his diners’ taste buds on the journeys he’d traveled. He’d open up a world of culinary adventure all while seated at a table.
What if?
Chapter Two
As easy as pie was a misnomer. Jan Peppers knew that from a young age. Pie making was an exact and precise art.
She kept all ingredients, including the flour, in the freezer. Keeping the different ingredients as cold as possible was her number one rule. The colder, the better.
The fruit was cold. The water she leveled off in the measuring cup was ice cold. The butter was cold. Fat worked best in cold.
Jan shivered in the walk-in freezer at the back of her kitchen. Her slim body had hardly any ounces of fat beneath her pale skin. No matter how much she ate, she couldn’t seem to keep any of the calories on her trim frame. The fat just never stuck by her. Probably because she treated it so well in the kitchen and preferred to bake with as much of it being present as possible instead of substituting it out for insane imitations like coconut, or avocado, or applesauce.
The thought of the fruit substitute made
her shiver. Jan balanced the ingredients in two arms. She kicked the door closed behind her and began her assembly.
That fact that fat liked to hang around her but not on her had won her few female friends in high school and college. Her fellow bakers often cast her a side eye. No one trusted skinny cooks, especially a dough-slinging pastry chef. Even her customers were wary. Until they sat at a table with her and had their first forkful of what she pulled out of the oven.
The vents over the range filled the oven with the honeyed smell of heated fruits, the earthy smell of savory spices, and the warm, lusty smell of freshly baked dough. Jan pulled the golden brown concoction out of the oven just as the bell over her shop door dinged. The shop was already filled with her regular lunch hour customers. They’d all paused the moment the fresh pie came out of the oven, and its lush scent filled the small shop.
The pie shop opened at seven for breakfast pies. There was only one slice of Jan’s famous maple bacon breakfast pie left, and Mr. Fitz was eying that from the far end of the counter as he finished his second slice. Today’s special was a Tourte Milanese with layers of ham, Swiss cheese, and bell pepper. Only Jan had put a spin on the Italian dish and added a nod to Japan with yuzu citrus. The lemony fruit made a few of her customers pucker and then grin with surprised delight.
“Good afternoon, Chef Peppers,” said Mr. Dalton, a regular who’d been coming to the shop since it opened three years ago.
“Hey, Mr. Dalton. Your usual?”
“You know me.” He grinned, taking his usual seat, at his usual table, and going through his usual machinations of unfolding his napkin and wiping off the fork and knife she sat before him.
Mr. Dalton’s usual was a regular old shepherd’s pie. Made traditionally with potatoes instead of the daikon Jan had introduced two years ago. Infused with yellow onions and never again the sweet cipollinis she’d tried to sneak in last year. And always with the beef and not the bison she’d tried to spruce it up with last month.
“I’ll just have a regular shepherd’s pie.” Mr. Dalton smiled up at her after he’d scrubbed the already clean silverware.
Jan tried and failed to hide her annoyance. She would never win a poker game. Her emotions were always clear as day on her face, just like the ingredients were always on her sleeve. It was another way she didn’t quite fit into the culinary world. Her workspaces often looked as though a hurricane touched down.
“Sure thing, Mr. Dalton.”
Jan sliced another piece of the shepherd’s pie. It was nearly gone. It was a favorite of her customers.
Though the majority of her menu was an explosion of fusion pies, her bread and butter were the mainstays. Apple pie. Shepherd’s pie. Pecan pie.
Most of her customers rarely tried her specials. They were mainly a tourist draw. But tourists came and went every day, taking their sense of adventure with them and leaving Jan stuck with the everyday common folk.
It wasn’t that anyone said her creations tasted bad. They all just wanted the familiar. The tried and true. But Jan wanted to try new things.
She placed today’s special, a chocolate pie spiced with cayenne, on its plate for the dinner crowd. She hoped it would get some love at the bottom of a few tourists’ bellies. The pie would only keep for a couple of days, and she knew her regulars were unlikely to take on the dessert with its kick.
