Bernice's Jazz Dish
Here’s an excerpt from my fiction book. I can’t wait to share more with you in the coming months.
Thanks for reading!
King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band performing in Chicago, 1923.
Old jazz plays on the radio, and Bernice bounces happily along to the trumpet solo. How could she not. It’s the kind of music that gets into your bones and forces you to move whether you want to or not.
All of her supplies were in stock, so she snuggles into her favorite chair and opens a new cookbook she got from a friend at The Social. The friend had picked up a copy last time she traveled to her favorite world — the name starts with a P, but Bernice can’t remember what it is.
The cookbook was divided into 4 sections. Puddings, Non-puddings, Breads, and non-breads. At first, Bernice thought this was a weird way to organize a cookbook. But then she realized pudding and bread didn’t necessarily mean the same thing on Earth as it did on other planets, such as the world where the book was written. They only had two categories of food. Puddings and breads. For some, that sounds like heaven. Bernice wasn’t quite so sure how to feel about it. Why would you try to fit everything into two categories, especially ones that didn’t easily capture the huge variety of food the multiverse has to offer. But again, Bernice simply enjoys a more, let’s say, expanded experience of food. And she’s doing her best to keep an open mind about the whole two-category thing.
According to this cookbook, puddings are anything you eat with a utensil (like a spoon, though they didn’t call it a spoon). Breads are anything you’d eat with your hands (like, well, bread, though that’s not what they called the stuff they used to make Pinchawnts, which we call sandwiches). Reading this book was like learning a new language, but Bernice was fluent in food, so it came naturally to her. Non-puddings and non-breads were essentially the same kinds of things, but they broke the rule. So, if you had a Kraomlet, a pudding, you’d eat it with a spoon-like utensil. But if you have a Traumfleur, almost identical to a Kraomlet, but refrigerated until handheld, is a non-pudding because you eat it with your hands.
The flavors of the foods sound incredible. Of course, Bernice didn’t quite know what most of it tasted like, but the descriptions were delightful. For instance, “Chiimiineoin is a classic spice, scraped from the air near the seas of Bawbawbergene. It enlivens the nose and tickles the tongue, waking one up with the cooling effect it has on the body. Most often used to balance the grantham pepper, which tastes like twinstiq and twanspid rolled into one.”
After thumbing through the book for a while, Bernice lands on a page that’s been marked with an embossed logo. It was a beautiful P. She assumed it was the name of the planet and that perhaps this was the seal of approval. So, she decides to make it.
She places the cookbook on its stand, which is under a lamp that matches her antique radio. Curling around from the other side of the cookbook is a magnifying glass held by a brass tiger paw. This is all set atop a gigantic butcher block table. Above the table are more than a dozen bundled and dried bouquets of herbs, some flowered and colorful, and some earthy and deep green. Just behind the counter is a giant window. The window doesn’t open, so there’s no exit from the kitchen. The only way in and out of the kitchen is through the Great Hall, and that only has one entrance too. So, the kitchen truly is a secluded sanctuary — a respite for Bernice, who as the oldest of the sisters, has carried so much for so long.
She twists the knob of the radio, testing the capacity of the hundred-year-old speakers. Perfectly timed, the host of the Jazz Hour (it’s always jazz hour on this station) says in a stereotypical public radio voice, “Now to one of our favorite escapes into jazz land, One Note Samba by Ella Fitzgerald.”
Bounce may not be the right word for how this song jumps into the room through the raspy radio speakers. It’s a rhythm all its own, and it’s the perfect marching orders for Bernice to gather ingredients, some familiar and some utterly mysterious, with names she still hasn’t quite committed to memory. She sways to the beat, stepping from left to right foot in some sort of syncopated body movement nobody would expect Bernice to perform. It was effortlessly cool.
She chops a sprig of chiimiineoin, which puffs up in little wisps as she slices, releasing a cooling mist that reaches her nose. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, allowing the sensation to carry her outside of this moment and into the world of jazz and improvised cooking. The chiimiineoin’s scent mingles with another spice — grantham pepper, perhaps — creating an aromatic blend that adds that hi-hat element to the dish, just like Ella’s scatting does for One Note Samba.
She stirs, she swirls, she tosses ingredients in with playful flicks of her wrist, letting Ella’s rhythms guide her movements. Every dash, every chop, every step her feet involuntarily make, is like another note in the song.
The simmering pot hisses as if singing back. “Shhhhhipppppipipipip quisssssssssscchhhh.” Bernice gives the side of the pot a few taps with the long-handled spoon. With each phrase Ella scat-sings, Bernice responds with a little sprinkle or pinch, her motions light and loose. She barely knows what she’s making, only that it involves a delicate sapphareon base, a sauce thickened with something between cream and custard, and a Traith leaf garnish that glows faintly when warmed.
Sapphareon makes the whole mixture shimmer like a gemstone and has an ethereal touch to its flavor. This dish is already coming alive. It’s as if the jazz music is mixing the ingredients. The glowing, shimmering, bubbling concoction is Bernice’s dance partner.
“Ba da ba dee doo dum,” Ella scats, and Bernice moves her hips in a way that makes sense only if this song is playing. A smile curls at her lips as she turns to dice the Traith leaves, releasing a floral aroma that fills the kitchen.
It’s only a dance now — it’s no longer cooking, or perhaps the two have become the same thing. Her feet shifting across the floor in time with the bass, her hands moving in rhythm with the piano. She’s whirling, stirring, tasting, laughing. This dish is a composition, and Bernice is following the directions to the best of her ability, but her instinct to improvise is more powerful that the notes on the page.
She’s whimsical. She is the Ella Fitzgerald of the kitchen.
For a moment, Bernice feels like she, too, is scatting, her movements nonsensical but perfectly in sync with the music in her head. She doesn’t need words or names for any of it — she’s fully immersed in the joy of creating, in the rhythm that flows from her fingertips to the pot, connecting her to the spices, the flavors, the distant world from which these ingredients were born.
The song may have been on for only one minute or for twenty minutes. Bernice has no idea, and nobody is counting. Time may have stopped altogether.
As Ella builds to the final scat, Bernice pours the mixture into a deep, glossy dish, layering it with tiny pearls of something called Klempter paste, which crackle and pop on contact with the batter. She slides the dish into the oven with a satisfying clank, shutting the door just as Ella sings, “That’s all, folks!” She twirls around, her apron dusted in flour and speckled with unknown spices, and faces her chaotic, messy kitchen. With a little grin, she gives a dramatic bow.
In her mind, the dishes cheer, clinking and clattering in applause. “Bravo, Bernice! Encore!”
Just as she sinks into her favorite chair, letting out a blissful sigh, Ms. Deb bursts in through the door with a hearty, “Howdy doody, Bernice! I’m here to help. What do you need?”
Bernice laughs, pulling herself back to Rosebeach. She cranks the volume, some other lively jazz number comes on. She pats the empty chair beside her. Ms. Deb gestures toward the messy countertop, but Bernice’s over the glasses look demands that Ms. Deb take a seat.
The two sit there, tapping their feet and smiling as the jazz continues to carry them away.