A Warm Kitchen on a Winter Day

Chapter Two - 13 Hours and 25 Minutes Until Dessert

The cozy kitchen was old, with worn cabinets and dated appliances, but it had cooked many meals for many immigrant- and first-generation families—Irish, Italian, German, Irish-Italian, German-Italian, German-Irish, and most recently, Filipino. It had inadequate counterspace, poor lighting, and pale blue walls, but it was the room that generated Katherine's most nostalgic memories of time spent cooking, gossiping, and most of all, laughing with her mom, sisters, and Tala.

Katherine knew her cooking plan would tax the small kitchen and its aging appliances. She had a single-door refrigerator, a gas-powered range with four burners, an oven, and a portable air fryer. Despite the thousands of meals prepared there, the kitchen had no dishwasher, and even if it had one, it would be used as a drying rack and nothing more, as dishwashing was communal time.

Over the previous days, Katherine chopped, diced, cubed, minced, and mixed as many ingredients as possible, allowing her to focus on combining and cooking on the big day. Now, the big day was here, with dumpling soup up first. She cooked the ground pork and shrimp for the fillings—adding onion, sesame oil, and seasonings—and combined them in the dumplings. For the soup, she shredded rotisserie chicken, added broth, scallions, toasted garlic, and brought it to a boil on the range before lowering the heat, adding the dumplings, and letting it simmer.

As Katherine turned to more complicated matters, she began a mental check list: Stir the soup to make sure it doesn't burn; take a shower; change your clothes.

She knew that the beef caldareta—a fork tender Filipino beef stew with cubed potatoes, sliced carrots, garlic, and onion—would need time to simmer, so she turned to it next. She heated the potatoes and carrots in oil until their edges were slightly brown. She then sautéed the garlic and onion, added the beef chunks, and cooked them for about five minutes before adding water, bay leaves, and seasoning. She set it aside to cook on a stove top until the meat was tender.

Stir the soup to make sure it doesn't burn; check the caldareta occasionally; test the caldareta to see if the meat is fork tender; take a shower; change your clothes.

Katherine still wore her hoodie and sweatpants knowing the lechon and lumpia both needed preparation before frying. Lechon was a fried pork belly that was crispy on the outside but meltingly tender within. Katherine boiled the pork with bay leaves, garlic, and salt until tender and set it aside to cool in advance of air frying. Lumpia were Filipino egg rolls, filled with pork, garlic, onions, and carrots and fried until the outsides were a crispy, golden brown. Katherine prepared the lumpia rolls the day before, so she only had to bring them to room temperature and fry them later in the day, closer to when Imelda arrived.

Stir the soup to make sure it doesn't burn; check the caldareta occasionally; test the caldareta to see if the meat is fork tender; let the lechon come to room temperature then air fry it for 30 minutes at 350 degrees; fry the lumpia in the garage for 1-2 minutes each on medium heat; take a shower; change your clothes.

Katherine exited the kitchen through the back door, down the outdoor steps, and quickly made her way to the detached garage. The garage was used for many things, none of which involved parking a car. It held relics often found at subpar yard sales, such as broken lawn equipment, deflated kiddie pools, and a rainbow of old paint cans. Knowing that kitchen space would be stretched that day, Katherine planned to fill the garage with lumpia and rice, as she lined the three rice cookers on a far ledge and extended a folding table to house the electric stovetop. Frying in the garage also saved the entire house from smelling like egg rolls. Although she planned to fry the lumpia and cook the rice just prior to Imelda's arrival, she was in the garage to prepare the rice cookers. She added three cups of uncooked rice and sufficient water to each cooker, and she plugged them into the outlet, so when the time came, all she had to do was flip a switch to begin cooking the rice.