Sister of the Bride by Lauren Morrill EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Lauren Morrill
- Language: English
- Genre: Romantic Comedy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
TOBY
What do you call a fake noodle?
PIPPIN
Please not the dad jokes.
TOBY
Come on, Pip. What do you call a fake noodle?
PIPPIN
I don’t know, what do you call a fake noodle?
TOBY
An impasta!
PIPPIN
Ugh
Polly’s flight is due to land in an hour, and I still have seven lasagnas to
make.
“Time?” I call, and Fernando shouts back, “One thirty.”
At the prep table in the back of the kitchen, I’m surrounded by
cauldrons of Bolognese and béchamel, stacks of noodles Nonna made fresh
this morning, and enough cheese to build a scale model of Noah’s ark. For
the last eight years, this has been my Thursday task: layering pasta and
sauces and cheese into enormous cast-iron trays that keep my arms in the
kind of shape that usually requires a very malevolent person trainer. I can
do it in my sleep. I often do do it in my sleep, if you count the nightmares I
have where I forget to make the lasagnas and have to try to bang them all
out in the fifteen minutes before the restaurant opens.
When I was a kid, this was Dad’s job, but I could usually be found
perched on a stool nearby, talking through my school day or the latest Red
Sox scores and occasionally pitching in.
“Noodles, Bolognese, béchamel, cheese…noodles, Bolognese,
béchamel, cheese.” I mutter it to myself over and over like an incantation.
Between layers I wipe my hands on my apron. I pause only to brush stray
hair from my eyes with the back of my hand or to call for a time check;
Fernando’s always ready with a response.
There are already thirteen finished lasagnas on racks in the walk-in
cooler. These seven will make an even twenty, each ready to be cut into a
dozen pieces that are individually baked until their edges are nice and
crispy, then served atop a pool of Nonna’s marinara, made from the same
recipe her father brought over from Sicily almost a hundred years ago. Two
hundred and forty portions to last the restaurant through the weekend. Our
regulars know they have to get in early, because once the Thursday lasagnas
run out, they’re out of luck until the next weekend.
For almost a hundred
years it has been this way, and it’s one of the things I made sure not to
change when Dad died. I had to make some alterations to cut costs, of
course—running a restaurant is expensive, and the books were starting to
creak by the time I took over—but the lasagnas? Those stayed.
“One carbonara, one risotto, and one spaghetti, hold the marinara, hold
the meatballs,” Evie calls as the door from the dining room swings closed
behind her.
A groan rises from the kitchen, and Evie throws her hands up, her order
book flapping. “I know, I thought we’d made some progress last time, but
the Buttered Noodle King of Back Bay has returned with a vengeance.”
Fernando stills his chef’s knife, which has been making rapid work of a
pound of garlic for tonight’s dinner service, and tilts his head back as if to
plead with god.
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