Amidst The Stars

The Boulangerie

  Having resigned himself to the fate of only being a waiter at Huang's, Vicente hadn't expected Yao to sit him down after dinner one long day and present him with a thick stack of paper. The first piece of paper was half-covered in words, the other half in hastily-drawn pictures. After taking a closer look at it, he realised that they were recipes. "What's all this?" He asked.

  Yao dropped his notepad onto the stack of paper. "Do you remember all the pastries we bought before we moved to Arlingdale?"

  "You can't just answer a question with another question — " Vicente caught himself. "Not really. I remember egg tarts and curry puffs from Hong Kong, and different buns from Taipei, but not much else."

  Vicente jumped when Yao slammed a hand down on the stack. "All of these are recipes for pastries — well, pastries and desserts. I did my best to look up what I forgot, and I looked through that folder Mother left behind."

  "You mean the folder I hid in my closet that you somehow found?"

  "Whoops."

  He lightly kicked Yao under the table. "Whatever. But these..." he gestured at the stack. "They're all recipes?"

  "That's what I said." Yao began flicking through the stack, showing him pictures of pineapple pastries, turnip pudding and even more sweet treats he thought he'd forgotten about. "I got recipes for tofu skin sweet soup, red date pudding, taro balls, all the stuff we've had before." His eyes gleamed. "Imagine if we could serve this all at our restaurant! People love desserts, this will give us the chance to strike gold."

  "But you're already cooking all the food," Vicente pointed out. "Can you handle all the orders if we expanded the menu?"

  He shook his head. "Of course I can't. That's why I want you to help me." Before Vicente could butt in, Yao continued, "ever since we were young, you've always loved making desserts. Starting from next week, I can make the main dishes, and you can make the desserts. It'll be like we're kids again!"

  When he and Yao were kids, they nearly collapsed from exhaustion every day from cooking, studying and taking care of Leon and Ling, and it was a challenge to stay awake at school, but he didn't mention it. It would be nice to get to work in a kitchen for fun instead of for survival. "I guess I could do it," Vicente said slowly, "but your stack of desserts here is as thick as a copy of War and Peace. There's no way I'd be able to memorise them all and cook them well."

  If professional pastry chefs can do it, so can you, was probably what Yao was thinking, but he shrugged. "We don't have any desserts on the menu yet. We can add a few right now and add some more if people like them." He pulled out two pieces of paper. "Let's start with Portuguese-styled egg tarts and custard buns. They're not too hard to make."

  He was already starting to feel excited, thinking about kneading dough and making custard and feeling the stuffy heat of the oven. "That sounds good." Vicente took the recipes and looked over them, trying to make sense of Yao's messy handwriting. Next week couldn't come any sooner.

...

  It took Yao a day before the desserts were to be added to the menu to find a problem.

  He flurried into Vicente's room at seven in the morning, making Leon fall off his bunk (thankfully he didn't break his nose again). Yao climbed up the ladder frantically to shake him awake. "We don't have time to make the puff pastry!"

  He squinted at his brother, only seeing a blurry, flesh-coloured blob as he fished for his glasses. "Hah?"

  "We need puff pastry to make the egg tarts, and we don't have the time to make the dough and roll it out and laminate it and things!" Yao's face came into focus as Vicente put his glasses on. "We'll need to buy some ready-made pastry."