Darkroom: A Moo U Hockey Romance Kate Willoughby (read full novel .TXT) 📖

She removed the ball of dough, cut a hunk off of it and returned the rest to the bowl, making sure to cover it again with the damp cloth.

“Did you ever play with Play-Doh when you were little?” Helen asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Then this part will be familiar.”

Using her flattened hand, she rolled the hunk into a foot-long rope and cut the rope into pieces that looked like the peanut butter filled pretzel bites my dad liked to eat. She then demonstrated how to make sure each piece was flattened with flour on it, top and bottom, so it didn’t stick to the board or the rolling pin. The result was a little disc about two inches in diameter.

“I think I can handle that,” I said with confidence.

“Fantastic. After you make them into rounds, Elizabeth and I will take over.”

Elizabeth and Helen each took one of the flattened discs, turning them around and around while moving the rolling pin back and forth. In a few seconds, they were a little thicker than kettle chips. By the time they had a few of them done, Harold was showing Ruby how to drop a spoonful of the filling into the center of the disc and crimp them shut.

“Make sure they’re sealed tightly,” Elizabeth said.

“I remember,” Ruby said. “I got scolded if there were any leaks.”

Still rolling the dough, Helen laughed. “So did I! My mother got so mad when I did that.”

We all got into a rhythm and before long we had an entire sheet tray of dumplings, lined up in neat rows ready for cooking. They were cute and plump, like tiny calzones. But we didn’t bake them and they weren’t in the least tomatoey. After an extended dip in the boiling water, Helen scooped them out and put them in a shallow saucer.

“All right,” she said, “dig in!”

And using their “food pliers,” everyone picked up a dumpling, dipped it in one of the two sauces and started eating.

Except me.

This time it wasn’t using the chopsticks that was holding me back, it was the appearance of the dumplings. They were slimy looking and white—again, the complete opposite of calzones. But I couldn’t very well refuse to eat one.

“So good,” Ruby said as she chewed, a dreamy expression on her face. Out of sight of everyone else, she nudged me with her foot.

I decided to eat one, no matter how slimy it was, and then say I wasn’t feeling well and walk home. Someone else could take over dough prepping. Half the time, Helen and Elizabeth were rolling so quickly, Ruby and Harold fell behind. But I attributed that to the fact that sealing the dumplings was the most important job, so they had to be thorough.

I used Hudson’s stab-and-pinch method to nab the dumpling, dip it in the sauce and lift it to my mouth. As I took a bite, some of the rich broth ran down my chin, but I didn’t care because—oh my God—it was oh, so delicious. The dough wasn’t slimy at all. It had a smooth but chewy texture and a burst of rich pork and shitake mushroom flavor bathed my tongue as I chewed. The sauce was a winning combination of soy, a little sugar, garlic, a little punch of vinegar and nutty sesame oil.

I moaned. “This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Even better than dim sum.”

“Good thing you’re wearing an apron,” Ruby said with a smile as I grabbed a napkin to wipe my chin.

We polished off half the sheet pan before we started the assembly line back up. Amazingly, we ran out of dough and filling at about the same time, but by then we had about a hundred dumplings. Most of them had been frozen and bagged and Helen made us take a large Ziploc’s worth home with us, plus a little container of the dipping sauce.

As we walked home, Ruby asked, “So was that so painful?”

“A little bit, at the beginning when you guys were all speaking Chinese. I didn’t even know you were bilingual.”

“I’m actually tri-lingual,” she said. “I speak Hawaiian too.”

I gave her a deadpan look. “Of course, you do. Any other languages? Latin? Dutch? Portuguese?”

“I know a few words of Tagalog a friend taught me.”

I glowered at her.

“Okay, okay,” she said with a laugh. “Sorry. Don’t be mad. It’s not like it’s my fault. My mom taught me Mandarin and my dad insisted I go to Hawaiian school after regular school.”

My jaw dropped. “Really?”

She nodded. “Every day, I went to another school to learn, not just the language, but everything about Hawaiian history and culture that you could want to know. For instance, I know how to roast a whole pig in a pit.”

“A handy skill,” I remarked.

“Right? You never know when you’ll need to feed fifty people.”

We stopped at an intersection and waited for the light to turn. The fall foliage was spectacular and there was a definite chill in the air that made me turn the collar of my jacket up.

“So, be honest. What did you think?”

“I had a good time. I thought it was going to be torture, but I had fun.”

“You should be proud of yourself. At the end there, you even tackled filling and sealing, and that’s the hardest part.”

“I did, didn’t I?” I said, shaking the bag of frozen dumplings.

“You, Miss Indi Briscoe, are a little more Chinese now than you were a few hours ago. How does it feel?”

I smiled at her. “It feels pretty good, actually.”

19

Hudson

I was just about done tidying up the apartment when AJ came home with a long face.

“I thought you were spending the afternoon with Ruby,” I said.

“I thought so too, but she broke up with me, dude,” he said, dropping his backpack on the floor.

I’d sort of seen this coming but hadn’t said anything. After that double date for dim sum, AJ was even more gaga over Ruby than ever, but it seemed like the feelings weren’t mutual.