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Summer/Fall 2015

The One with Agave

 

By Jennifer Juneau

 

/Episode 6/Six Chefs Compete in/The One with Agave

 

            The cameras rolled. Chef Gordon R. Crank stood in the center of fellow judges Joe Slick and Gram. Fidgety and puffy-eyed, and for no apparent reason, Crank drilled in a jackhammer voice, “Greta, switch places with Keri.” Keri and I no sooner settled into our new cooking stations when he told us to switch back.

            “Bud, swap spots with Tamara,” Slick said, finding his voice among bureaucracy. He evaluated their new positions. “Swap back.”

            Six of us: Bud, Ben Jax, the pilot, Keri, Tamara and I, were left competing in the most intense culinary competition on the planet: ÜberChef USA. One of us will be awarded a quarter of a million big ones plus the ÜberChef crown at the end of the season.

            A special guest star would be visiting the SHAX network set in today’s episode. Crank stressed that our guest was a majorcelebrity and a major foodie. She will be judging the dish we’d assemble, so we’d better impress her.

            “Here’s a hint,” Gram said. He pointed to the four-foot-tall, two-foot-wide crate that stood in front of the judges. “Can you guess what’s inside?” Nobody guessed. The crate giggled. In favor of delivering his lines, Crank stared at the wall that divided our soundstage from the adjacent soundstage where a crime drama was being filmed. The wall was as thin as rice paper. His ears peaked. The ÜberChef USA cue card lady snapped her fingers thrice above her head.

            “Right,” Crank said. “On the count of three, Slick will lift the crate. Ready? Two! Four! Six!—”

            “Hold it,” Gram said, “how come I never get to lift the crate?”

            “Nobody expects you to do nothing more than to agree with us,” Slick said. “You’re not as famous as we are.”

            “And not nearly as important,” Crank said, wearing his best showbiz face.

            “I can’t breathe,” the crate said.

            After Slick lifted it, an anorexic midget in lipstick appeared. Its wiry arms were raised in the air. The teleprompter said for us to look excited and to scream: “Agave!” When we did, we pronounced it like this: /əˈɡeɪv/.

            Foaming at the mouth, Crank corrected us, “That’s right, it’s the gorgeous and intellectual superstar, Agave!” When he said her name he pronounced it like this: /əˈgeɪvi/. He stressed the “vee” at the end. “Welcome Agave.” He gave her a peck on the cheek.

            “Get the pronunciation right,” Slick said to us peons. “She’s far more important at age six than any of you will be in your lifetime.”

            “Unless of course they win the ÜberChef title,” Crank said, picking lint off his suit jacket.

            The judges closed in on Agave. Crank pulled a celery stick from his pocket and handed it to her. “Call me Gordon,” he said.

            “Call me Joe,” Slick said.

            “Call me Gram,” Gram said. “But don’t ever call me late for dinner.” He leaned closer, “Especially if you’re cooking Cheez Balls.”

            Canned laughter blew out of a loudspeaker and we were cued to laugh at the hackneyed joke.

            This six-year-old’s face had been pasted on the covers of Newsweek and Time. Her name used to be Honey. Frosted Flakes colored hair extensions fell in spirals down her back, she had eyebrows dyed to match, had her teeth capped, she was Botoxed to the max and wore fake eyelashes from Maybelline. She starred on her own reality TV show since she was five-years-old and fat. The most skeptical viewer became mesmerized by her intellect, as they tuned in each week and watched her laze around her shack down south stuffing her mouth with Cheez Balls. She’d adjust her falling coke-bottle glasses and elapse into a complex rant about the differences between Wise brand and Utz’s. On one emotional episode, Honey was rushed to the hospital with a belly ache. Three weeks later she came home one hundred and fifty pounds thinner, went vegan, and switched her name to Agave. Her agent claimed that her rapid weight loss was due to breast-feeding and from chasing her toddler twins around. The agent retracted her statement when she realized she had the excuse confused with another, more grown-up celebrity client of hers, who was bashed in the tabloids for dropping weight overnight. Rumors of an eating disorder surfaced but Agave pooh-poohed it. Since she became skinny she has been on every Hollywood director’s casting list. She published a bestselling book called, Agave’s Coming, Watch Out which focused on squat. ÜberChef USA needed her. The American people needed her to redirect their attention from the war on terror and crappy healthcare to reality television.

            “Despite her petite frame, Agave eats like a horse!” Crank beamed.

            “Exactly like a horse,” Gram said, “she eats carrots, she eats apples, she eats hay.”

            Agave twirled in place with her legs overlapping each other. She gathered the front of her dress in her hands. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.

            Ten minutes later, she walked back past my station smelling of cigarette smoke.

            “Welcome back Agave!” Crank said in the most overzealous voice he could muster. He raised his finger and began conducting his symphony of untrained chefs. “In honor of Agave the main ingredient in your challenge stars her favorite food—lettuce.”

            “I would have guessed oats,” Slick said, “but hooray for lettuce. Can anyone guess what you’ll be cooking with lettuce?”

            “If you can’t,” Gram said, “then you’ve never touched a salad.”

            “That’s right,” Crank said. “You’re going to cook salad because it’s a salad cooking challenge. Agave, darling, tell them.”

            I glanced over my shoulder to see the reaction of the others. Ben Jax, who was stationed behind me, raised his hand, no doubt, to ask how one cooks salad. I shook my head, warning him not to humiliate himself once again as he did in the ice cream challenge.

            “Me. Vegan,” Agave said, pirouetting like a ballerina in a make-believe world.

            “Which means no animals today,” Crank frowned.

            We were told to divide ourselves into two teams. We decided the boys against the girls for the hell of it. Agave would judge the two salads at the end of the challenge and the team whose salad met her approval was safe from elimination. A contestant from the losing team would go home. Agave had power over us so we’d better kiss her microscopic ass.

            “Agave, darling, go take a beauty nap in the green room,” Crank said. He looked at his Swatch watch. “This challenge may take a bit.”

            We had sixty seconds in the pantry to gather our ingredients.

            “We’re taking you girls down,” Ben Jax threatened near the only package of white miso.

            “I’d like to see you try,” Keri said. She kicked him in the balls and grabbed the miso he was reaching for.

            Ben Jax cradled himself on the floor, yelling out to his team: “Grab taco shells! Cilantro! Red onions! Tomatillos!”

            On the way back to our station, I took a detour to find the restroom. There were a row of doors down a long hallway and I entered the first one. Our six-year-old guest star was hunched in the corner dragging on a cigarette.

            “Oh my gosh don’t tell my mom,” Agave rattled with smoke streaming through her caps. “You don’t understand what it’s like! The pressure to enlighten a whole nation. The pressure!” She grabbed a fistful of her hair. “I, I, I’m about to slit my wrist.” Long, vigorous, drag.

            “Wow, is this the green room?” I said, looking around. The room was luxurious and larger than my New York City digs. The walls were painted pistachio and the carpet was a plush avocado. There were two chocolate brown leather couches, a glass coffee table with a heaping basket of green apples and sparkling water in neat bottles the color of beetroot. A large screen TV was fixed to the wall. I wanted to curl up on the couch and sleep there forever. I grabbed a Granny Smith.

            “Do you know where the bathroom is?” I said, biting into it.

            “Third door to the left,” she said.

            “By the way, cute dress.”

            “Walmart,” she said. “Five bucks.” She blew smoke rings. “Was $6.43.”

            Back in the kitchen Tamara, Keri and I floundered in a disarray of ingredients. While rooting around the pantry each one of us must have concluded: “We need___” only to scoop up our private visions of the ideal salad without communicating with one another. Alongside us the men, led by frontrunner Ben Jax, caused us to squander our rendezvous with culinary instruments. The lid on the food processor wasn’t secure and toasted walnut pieces shot up all over Tamara’s face. I burned a batch of homemade croutons while watching the men’s team execute their salad with precision. Our competitors coveted the finesse we lacked. Keri snatched the ruined pan from me, tossed half the croutons out and seared strips of seitan. I over-whisked a vegan Caesar dressing to the consistency of water. The men’s team’s path to victory was imperiled for one second when Bud yelled out obscenities about someone’s mother while sucking his finger. He tore his skin on the lid of an opened can of red beans. Ben Jax called, “Medic!” An Asian guy who looked like some extra hanging around the set awkwardly hurried in with a box of Band-Aids. Bud’s fumble was recovered. The pilot nearly finished plating the dish when Crank yelled, “Stop! Cooking!” We surrendered with our hands up.

            The men gathered at the front. Their salad waited under a silver lid, while Crank went to fetch Agave. The men wore spurs.

            “Someone’s been snooping around wardrobe,” Slick said.

            “All the doors looked alike,” Bud said. “We wound up in wardrobe while searching for the loo.”

            “I hear ya buddy,” Gram said. “Identical doors are a bitch.”

            Maybe the judges were warming up to us after all, I thought, and Gram’s empathy proved it.

            “While looking for the loo I stumbled upon the green room!” I shouted up to them from my station.

            “You would, Greta,” Slick said.

            Crank walked back in carrying Agave who faked a yawn. “Our little star woke up! Men, show us what you’ve g—” A gunshot came from the soundstage next door. A voice from the neighboring set said, “Stay where you are with your hands up.” We leaned our heads toward the wall. The drama was getting good and we were hooked.

            The ÜberChef director cleared his throat in an exaggerated manner and made a motion as if to slit his throat. Although we’d rather learn what happened to our missing heroine, Jane, nobody was in the mood to get sued for not complying with the ÜberChef USA filming rules. So Ben Jax lifted the lid and our attention shifted to the men as he exposed a work of art. He described his team’s taco salad with dignity, “What we’ve got here is a deconstructed taco…”

            “Wait a minute, amigo—‘deconstructed’? I don’t get you,” Slick interrupted. “You come up here with this cavalier attitude, as if you’ve just dismounted a horse. You nose around checking things out in all I can describe as a ghost town where the bandit has long fled. You have no idea what you’re doing, you don’t play the game right, and quite frankly, you’re annoying. You think you’re all cutesy and intelligent, that this mess you put a spin on can impress us when all you’re doing is writing your ticket back to New Mexico. Just because two people back in Santa Fe told you you could cook, you think you could come onto ÜberChef USA using the word ‘deconstructed’? Do you think your shit doesn’t stink? Well. I’ve got news for you, amigo. It reeks. Who the hell do you think you are?”

            Ben Jax said he wasn’t sure. The teleprompter told us to widen our eyes and to appear scared. Ben Jax plowed on anyway. “With crushed corn tacos sprinkled over bitter greens, scattered edamame, California avocado drizzled with tomatillo sauce and topped with a scoop of salsa fresca.”

            Tamara looked at me warily. Keri, with her chin up, wore her poker face.

            “I made the salsa myself,” Ben Jax said. I stared down at the heap we assembled.

            Agave inspected the men’s salad. “Are the tacos homemade or from a box?” she said, as if.

            “Ortega,” Bud stated. “I stuffed the shells in a Ziploc bag and crushed them with my boot, like this.” He stamped his snakeskin boot on the floor. His spur fell off.

            Agave crinkled her nose. “What are those icky green and black thingies stuck on the sauce?”

            “The salad is topped with chives and black olives,” Bud said. “My idea, ma’am.”

            “I hate chives and I hate you!” Agave said. She turned her back and crossed her arms.

            “Agave, don’t be a jerk,” Crank said. “I’d do something about those chives, men.”

            “Yeah,” Gram said, “kids don’t like onions but they love temper tantrums.”

            “L-l-let me.” The pilot, who was the elderly member of the men’s team, stuck his fingers in the salad to pick off the chives but all he came up with were fingers drenched in snot-thick tomatillo sauce. He turned animalistic on Ben Jax and showered him with spittle. “I t-t-told you we put t-t-too much s-s-sauce G-God damn it!” Agave swatted the plate off of the counter and it landed—Splat!—on the floor spraying Bud’s boot with goop.

            “Gram, clean that up, will you?” Crank said, authoritative as hell. “Greta, Tamara, Keri, bring up your dish.” We walked on eggshells with Keri balancing the plate carefully to show that we cared. Tamara unrolled a crimson lace placemat and Keri placed our work of slapdash trash on top of it. Now what? Now what? Tamara nudged me in the back. I recalled the fish challenge sometime back and how the judges turned my stale halibut with solidified margarine into a stunning salad with beurre blanc by way of language. I cleared my throat.

            “Gentleman,” I began in a sultry voice, “Tamara, Keri and I concocted a succulent endive salad bathed in a silky vegan Caesar. Smoking-hot croutons sit atop braised seitan, absorbing the juices of lemon, white miso and capers, a ménage à trios of flavors. Toasted walnuts excite a naked bed of lettuce—”

            “Greta,” Crank said, looking off to the side, “you’ve given us a whorehouse on a plate.”

            “Super whoa,” Gram said, rubbing crap off his hands. “Did the girls just get hotter or what?”

            “Game-changer,” Crank said, “forget Agave, boys, we’re judging this dish.”

            “Whoa, whoa, wait a second, girlfriend,” Slick said, holding up a hand, “it’s up to Agave.”

            “No it isn’t,” Crank rattled. “The competition is arbitrary. It’s unpredictable. We’re forces to be reckoned with. No contestant knows what they’re going to get.”

            “ÜberChef is like a box of chocolates,” Gram said. “Besides, this whorehouse belongs to us.” He pointed to himself.

            “And I say No Way Jose, it’s up to Agave. Agave?”

            The disinterested imp was looking off into space with her finger up her nose. “I need another nap,” she said. She kicked off her shoes and ice skated her way out of the room.

            Crank and Gram shoveled in mouthfuls of our salad. Their hands were spread widely under their forks to catch the Caesar dressing that dripped all over the place.

            “Risqué,” Crank said, licking his lips. “My body is swollen with heat. I taste hot, I taste sweet, it’s smoky, it’s creamy, it’s pure heaven.” He broke into a sweat.

            “The only problem with this dish is that there isn’t enough of it,” Gram said. “If this isn’t food porn then I’m a monkey’s uncle.”

            “Robust, intense. I can’t quit,” Crank said.

            Slick was caressing the back of his neck, along with the rest of the men. He picked up a fork. “Ah, hell. Let me take a whack at it,” he said.

            “Plunge into that seitan,” Crank said. “It’s sensuous.”

            The judges placed their forks down and caught their breath. Crank’s face was flushed. “Greta, your team outdid themselves. I mean, wow.” He reached into his pocket and tossed us a buck. It fell on the floor and I put it into my apron pocket.

            Gram pulled out a billfold. “All I got are credit cards,” he said. “Gordon, will you spot me a ten?”

            “Me? I’m strapped,” the multi-millionaire said, holding up empty palms.

            Slick gave us the once-over after he was satiated. “I thought the meal was sloppy,” he said. “I’m inclined to drag you girls out by your hair and leave you on the side of the road.”

            “That’s because you came too late,” Gram said.

            “He’s right,” Crank said, “sloppy seconds is not the same as first dibs, buddy.”

            “How would you know,” Slick said.

            The clock said it was time for the judges to decide the winning team and we forgot about Agave who was smoking her nap. The six of us lined up as the judges formed a huddle to the side, covering their mouths and whispering. They shot us looks and pointed at us. Crank made a gesture as if he were feeling up voluptuous boobs. They laughed and slapped each other as if they were comparing their conquests of yesteryear.

            “The decision was easy-peasy,” Crank said. “Essentially, the men produced taco crumbs on lettuce. The girls win hands down. Stand to the side, darlings, we’d like to keep you around for a while. Gentlemen, one of you is about to say ‘Adios’.”

            We stood against the front counter, a daisy chain of damsels who outsmarted the judges with a perfunctory dish.

            Slick walked by each one of the men with his hands clasped behind his back and stared them in the eye as they stood at attention like soldiers during barracks inspection. He taunted them with accusations of becoming a one-trick-pony. A bunch of flukes. He confronted Ben Jax first and asked why he deserved to continue in the competition.

            Ben Jax removed his cowboy hat and held it to his chest. “Mr. Slick,” he began, “I know I am a true ÜberChef. I had my balls bashed in inside the pantry by that sick little twit and I still managed to select prime ingredients while writhing on the linoleum.”

            “Agave bashed your balls in?” Slick said. He turned to Crank and Gram. “Where the hell was I?”

            “Agave? Wow,” Crank said. “Who knew she had it in her. One to Agave, zero to Ben Jax. Wow, wow, wow.”

            “Not Agave,” Ben Jax said. “The other twit.” Everyone’s head swung in Keri’s direction.

            “Bud,” Slick said, “enlighten me.”

            Sandwiched between Ben Jax and the pilot, Bud pointed to his teammates with his thumbs and said, “These guys did jack shit. I arranged the lettuce, I pureed the tomatillos, I opened a can of beans and had my fucking finger sliced off in the process, and most importantly I crushed the taco shells.” He lifted his foot to show us his snakeskin boot again.

            “He’s right, I saw him crush the taco shells,” Gram said.

            “But you also p-p-put ch-ch-chives,” the pilot sputtered. “A-g-g-gave h-h-hates ch-ch-chives.”

            “You throwing me under the bus?” Bud snapped, ready to punch the pilot’s face.

            Crank rolled his eyes and whipped out his Magic 8 Ball. “Is the pilot lying?” and the Ball said, I See It As Y-Y-Yes. “I agree,” Crank shrugged. “I can’t take it anymore, I mean, really. We don’t have all year to listen to him.” Slick and Gram considered this as Crank turned his head to the wall. AND ACTION! rang out from the set next door.

            The pilot wouldn’t put up a fight but he wouldn’t budge either. His face was devoid of expression. The rest of us became dim lit lumps against the Formica countertop, safe and secure for now, as the pilot stood frozen in the spotlight. Winning a challenge didn’t make me feel as invincible as I should have felt. It made me feel insane.

            Tamara whispered to me, “Keri seared the seitan in pork lard.”

            “You heard the big man, get going buster,” Gram said, with his hands on his hips.

            “Th-th-that’s all folks,” Slick said.

            The pilot’s face crumpled. “I w-w-won’t l-l-leave until I f-f-find out what h-h-happened to J-J-Jane.”

            Crank stepped forward in an attempt to throw him out with his bare hands but the pilot took off his apron and threw it into the trashcan in the nick of time. As he swung open the doors he turned and said, “Thanks for n-n-nothing.”

            “And a big eff you to you too,” Slick shouted.

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