Lessons In Fusion

By Primrose Madayag Knazan

WINNER, McNally Robinson Book for Young People Award

FINALIST, MYRCA Northern Lights Award

FINALIST, SYRCA Willow Award

Sixteen-year-old Sarah (it's pronounced SAH-rah, thank you) has a successful blog creating fusion recipes. When Sarah is invited to compete on Cyber Chef, a virtual cooking competition that soars in popularity at the height of the pandemic, her twists on her Baba's recipes are not enough to pique the palate of the show's producers. She is pushed to present dishes that represent her Filipinx culture, but these flavours are foreign to her since her parents raised her emphatically Jewish.

To survive Cyber Chef and find her cultural identity, Sarah must discover why her mother turned her back on all things Filipinx, and learn the true meaning of fusion.

"Lessons in Fusion is very modern and includes social media as well as the difficulties of life during a pandemic, yet it is also the timeless story of one young woman who is coming of age as she discovers her familial roots and the much bigger story of the need for diversity and cultural acceptance in all facets of life." - CM Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yellow Dog
• Release date: Oct 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781773370699

Book preview

Lessons in Fusion. Primrose Madayag Knazan

Lessons in Fusion

Copyright © 2021 Primrose Madayag Knazan

Yellow Dog

(an imprint of Great Plains Publications)

320 Rosedale Avenue

Winnipeg, MB R3L 1L8

www.greatplains.mb.ca

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Great Plains Publications, or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5E 1E5.

Great Plains Publications gratefully acknowledges the financial support provided for its publishing program by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund; the Canada Council for the Arts; the Province of Manitoba through the Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Book Publisher Marketing Assistance Program;

and the Manitoba Arts Council.

Design & Typography by Relish New Brand Experience

Printed in Canada by Friesens

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Lessons in fusion / Primrose Madayag Knazan.

Names: Madayag Knazan, Primrose, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210259957 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210259965 |

ISBN 9781773370682 (softcover) | ISBN 9781773370699 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PS8626.A312 L47 2021 | DDC jC813/.6—dc23

Government of Canada logo

LESSONS

IN FUSION

Primrose Madayag Knazan

Yellow dog logo

For Baba Syl

I miss our family dinners

Chapter One

If you like salty buttery popcorn, make it extra extra by adding the briny flavours of furikake and the nuttiness of sesame oil and browned butter. I eat this by the fistful; it is soooo good. Ugh, I’m craving it right now.

Furikake Popcorn with Sesame Browned Butter

2 tsp furikake seasoning (or make your own with crushed nori, toasted sesame seeds, and kosher salt)

1 tsp salt

3 tbsp butter

1 ½ tbsp sesame oil

½ cup popcorn kernels

Mix furikake and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.

In a small pot, heat butter on medium heat until it turns brown and smells nutty. Remove from heat and set aside.

Add sesame oil and 2 popcorn kernels to a heavy-bottomed pot. Set to medium heat. Cover.

When you hear both kernels pop, one after the other, remove pot from heat, remove cover and add the rest of the popcorn kernels.

Cover and place pot back on the hot element. Jiggle the pot back and forth to coat the kernels.

Once the popping starts, listen for it to slow down. Jiggle pot intermittently for kernels to fall to the bottom of pot.

Once the popping slows down and you can hear the popping of individual kernels, lower the heat slightly.

Lift the lid just a bit and place slightly askew to let out steam or you’ll end up with soggy popcorn.

When 3 seconds pass and there’s no more popping, turn

off heat.

Remove lid, wait 10 seconds.

Dump popcorn into a wide bowl. Use a spoon to drizzle butter over popcorn.

Toss the popcorn with a large spoon to coat. Drizzle more butter. Toss again. Repeat until all butter has been added.

Sprinkle the salt and furikake evenly over the popcorn. Toss with the spoon.

Serve while still warm. And be ready to make more because it’s THAT good.

Winnipeg

My girl is going to win. You’ll see. I will bet money, like, real money.

I had just stuffed a handful of popcorn into my mouth. I chewed quickly and gulped the salty puffed kernels, chewing too fast to savour the nutty flavour. I carefully wiped the seasoning off my fingers with a napkin before picking up my phone to reply to Lena. Out of habit, I swept my tongue across the front perimeter of my mouth to ensure no bits of sesame seeds or nori were stuck to the front of my teeth before holding the camera lens at eye level and starting to speak.

Where are you going to get ‘real’ money, Lena? I asked, somewhat smugly to the video image of my BFF. I haven’t touched cash in almost a year.

Lena rolled her eyes so hard they could have rotated the orientation of the screen.

You’re always such a smartass, Sar, she said with a smirk. You know what I mean. Twenty bucks on Nessa. Those whipped ricotta crostini were epic.

Fine, I agreed. You can transfer it to me right after the show when Lai takes the title. Her bun bo hue blew my mind.

My phone vibrated and started to play the midi theme from an 8-bit video game I love. I got a notification that someone was trying to join our video chat. Typical. Jay was always late. I tapped a button and let him into the chat. His image popped up on the screen next to Lena’s, her box shrinking to accommodate his. I placed my phone down on a stack of books on the table, laying it sideways to give their images more space.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, Jay said in his usual quick, clipped notes. Just got home. What’d I miss?

E-ve-ry-thing! Lena stretched out each syllable. Jay did miss everything. It was the season finale of Cyber Chef after all.

My friends and I were OBSESSED with Cyber Chef since it aired a couple of months into the pandemic. Unable to produce the standard cooking competition television show with on-site cooks creating dishes for a panel of judges, the Food and Drink Channel came up with the idea to hold a virtual competition between food bloggers who never had to leave their homes. FaD Channel had an instant hit on their hands with a version of the show now airing in several countries. With only seven episodes each season and six weeks in between, FaD was churning them out quickly. It was February, and we were already at the end of season three.

I’ll recap, I said, turning down the volume on the commercial. For the appetizer round, Nessa made whipped ricotta cheese with blood oranges on toasted baguette. They looked better than Lai’s salad rolls, but Lai definitely took the entrée round with her spicy beef soup. Nessa’s chicken ’n waffles looked too basic for—

WHAT?! They were, like, sooooo good! Anyway, I don’t care if they’re basic, Lena said, arms crossed. I’m still making spicy chicken ’n waffles for dinner tomorrow. That chili marmalade looked ah-may-zing.

Lena was Team Nessa from the beginning. I was Team Lai since episode three when she made turkey larb. I made the Thai meat salad recipe the next day, and I was hooked. Ground turkey with mint, fish sauce, lime juice, and chillies in lettuce wraps. Salty, fresh, and funky. Who knew? The best part of the show was that the links to the recipes and videos were posted on the Cyber Chef website that night. You could even order the ingredients right off their site with just the click of a button. Not that my mom would let me use her credit card. I always texted her a list of the ingredients so she could add it to the family shopping list.

They just started the dessert round, I finished explaining.

Sure, sure, sure, Jay said. Thanks.

It’s star-ting! Lena yelled.

We stopped talking as the show returned from the break. I heard a doorbell ring. Not mine. Jay probably ordered pizza again. He always ordered junk food on days he was working at his family’s Argentinean cafe. After laying off most of their staff last year, his parents depended on him and his siblings more than ever to carry the slack.

Overhead shots of Lai dredging under-ripe banana slices in a light batter filled the screen.

When our high-definition televisions were taken over by shows featuring streaming videoconference boxes, many of us of the younger generation adapted quickly as we were already using video to talk to friends and family long before the pandemic. I spent the last few months of grade ten learning through group chats and video meetings. I had to teach my parents how to use video meetings for work. Talk shows, news, even reality shows had jumped on the streaming format. Why not cooking?

As I watched Nessa infuse oat milk with Earl Grey to add to frosting, I thought of how I would attempt infusing the bergamot tea flavour. I would grind up half of the tea leaves into powder and mix them into the icing sugar. The frosting would have a stronger Earl Grey flavour and would have pretty specks throughout. There might even be a little bitterness from the straight-up tea leaves, but we like a little bitter with our sweet, right?

This was probably why I was so into Cyber Chef. It piqued my imagination. It also gave me ideas for my own food blog. I started creating my own recipes when I was fourteen. I filed the Earl Grey frosting recipe in the back of my mind to test out later. Hmm, we have butter and vanilla. I’ll need Earl Grey tea, icing sugar—

Who’s winning? my mom asked as she plopped down next to me on the couch. She grabbed a handful of popcorn. My Furikake Popcorn with Sesame Browned Butter was one of her favourites. She loved how the briny saltiness combined with the nuttiness of the sesame browned butter. My mom was my taste tester whenever I would experiment and she wasn’t shy about giving me feedback on the many, many, many times I had ended up with a fail.

Lai is deep-frying bananas, I recapped. And Nessa is making London fog macarons.

We watched in silence as my mind whirled. You need colour, Lai! I wanted to shout as she pulled out homemade mango ice cream from the freezer. Yellow on yellow. So boring. As if she heard me, Lai tore up basil leaves and threw them into a pot of boiling sugar. Basil syrup on fried banana and mango, what?!

The fried bananas remind me of something my mom used to make, my mother said wistfully. I wasn’t familiar with my lola’s cooking. She lived in British Columbia with my uncle Christoffer. It was called turon. It was fried saba banana wrapped in spring roll wrappers.

Do you know the recipe? I asked before remembering there was no point in asking.

I have no idea. She turned to me and smiled. It’s a pretty common dish. Turon should be easy enough to Google. Auntie Cher probably knows how.

My mom turned back to the TV, grabbing another handful of popcorn.

I like Lai, she commented between bites. But she’s a little too avant-garde sometimes.

It doesn’t matter what show we’re watching, I said, taking the bowl back before she finished it. You always cheer for the Asian woman, just because you’re Filipino.

And you don’t?

I smirked. My Filipino half didn’t grant anyone my automatic allegiance.

I’m cheering for the one with the best recipes, and that’s clearly Lai. Besides, the Philippines and Laos are thousands of kilometres apart. I think. I have no idea where Laos is. It’s near Thailand, right?

My mother cocked her head at me.

Do you know where Thailand is?

Asia. I smiled back.

Shh, you two! Lena called out. I forgot they could hear us.

The show cut to Nessa’s video as she assembled the macarons, lavender in colour and flavour. She artfully placed a matchstick salad created from julienned green and red apple next to each macaron. She mixed a bright orange passion fruit sauce that would likely be dotted on the white plate or added as an artful swipe. The dish was the beginnings of something you could get in a restaurant.

Cyber Chef contestants were stacked with YouTubers, food bloggers, Instagrammers, even Twitch or Tik Tok accounts. One time there was a podcaster. Every week, each contestant submitted short videos of themselves preparing what was supposed to come across as an easy-to-follow recipe. Sometimes they were eye-opening and mouth-watering. Some were total disasters.

In a separate box in the corner of the screen were the three judges: a celebrity chef, a FaD Channel social media exec, and a professional Food Content Creator—yes, you can actually do that for a living. The judges would have the ingredients in front of them and we would watch as they furiously tried to replicate the recipe in their own homes. After all, the mark of a good recipe is that it turns out the way it’s described.

The recipe videos were typically three to ten minutes long in real life. Making the recipe always took longer, but all footage, including the videos, the cooking, the interviews, and the judging, were edited to fit the one-hour format, including commercials. The season finale required recipes for a three-course themed dinner.

Suddenly Lai’s screen was in the forefront, and Nessa’s was pushed to the background. Lai dipped a spoon into the green grassy syrup, pulling up a string of superheated green sugar. She drizzled the syrup in thin zigzags across the bottom of an oiled inverted metal bowl that had just come out of the freezer. I had seen this technique on other cooking shows. My mom was right, Lai is super fancy.

Oh no! I shouted.

One of the judges gave a tiny scream. She had burned her wrist as she flicked the melted sugar instead of using a slow, methodical drizzle. We all said the words out loud: FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS as they scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Every few weeks, the judges missed one of the instructions of the recipe. When the contestant forgot to add something to a recipe, we would say ADD IT TO THE RECIPE. The judge quickly rinsed the burn under cold water and returned to the counter. I took a breath in, then out. It wasn’t a deal breaker. Cooks burn themselves all the time, right? I had enough burns across my own hands and arms to compare myself to professional cooks and chefs.

The soft sugar threads formed a lacy coating on the outside of the upside-down bowl. As the sweet structure cooled and hardened, she placed the crispy banana next to a rounded scoop of mango ice cream. She dotted raspberry sauce in the negative space of the white plate then picked up the metal bowl, carefully sliding out a glittering sugar strand dome, placing the semi-transparent sparkling cloche carefully over the dessert, concealing the sweet surprise within.

Nessa! Nessa! Nessa! Lena chanted. I tapped a button and muted her voice. As the person who hosted today’s video call, I had the power to mute whomever I wanted. I could see her bouncing on the couch, her blond ponytail swinging back and forth. Her lips silently mouthing Nessa! Nessa! Nessa! Jay ate a slice of pizza. All I could hear was his chewing. I muted him, too. All season he was indifferent, except for when Ethan was eliminated in episode four. I could tell Jay was disappointed because he couldn’t even finish the tacos he had ordered for delivery.

Each camera on the screen panned over the completed dishes. My mom and I audibly oohed and aahed over the elegant presentations, the judges’ dishes almost carbon copies of the originals. I thought Nessa’s macs were fancy; Lai’s upscale dessert was breathtaking.

Images of the two bloggers appeared in the top corners of the screen as the judges discussed the dishes. Images from the contestant’s videos were placed side-by-side with the judges’ versions. If the recipes were written correctly, they should be similar. That wasn’t always the case.

Nessa told a story about how her mother’s favourite hot drink was a London Fog. She learned to make it as a teenager and would bring her mother the sweet, foamy hot beverage whenever she had a hard day. Her mother was an ER nurse and hadn’t been in the same room as Nessa and her children in almost a year. Last week she was diagnosed with COVID-19.

That’s going to be tough to beat, my mother commented.

It’s about the recipe, I insisted. Not the story.

She patted my hand. I reached into the now-empty bowl of popcorn. I licked the crumbled seaweed and toasted sesame seeds off each fingertip.

Lai gently reminded the audience and judges that she had attended culinary school but stopped cooking professionally when she became a single mother of twins. From previous episodes, we already knew her mother had helped raise her sons as Lai transitioned from cooking in a restaurant to teaching in a Red Seal culinary program. Her mother died of breast cancer when the boys were seven. A twist on a Lao-Thai dessert, fried banana and mango, was her mother’s favourite treat. Lai wanted to elevate it.

Both of them had touching stories of their mothers, the theme for today’s finale.

Lai instructed the judges to tap on the fragile sugar bowl with the flats of their spoons. As each judge tapped, the sugar bowls gave way, cracking into grassy looking shards throughout the platter. My mother and I whoa-ed at the same time.

As the image of each contestant faded to black, the judges discussed amongst themselves the pros and cons of each dish. Just as Lena and I had surmised, Nessa clearly won the appetizer round, and Lai ran away with her entrée. The judges were split on desserts. The image of the show’s host appeared, a gorgeous Canadian-Moroccan model with a snarky wit that gave her a huge social media following. She let the audience know that the judges would announce the winner live after the break.

I brought back the volume of my friends as my mother stood up for a quick bathroom break.

…Nessa! Nessa! Nessa! Lena was still going.

Have you been cheering for Nessa this whole time? I asked.

Of course! she said proudly. Did you not see those macs? Want, want, want!

But Lai’s dessert was a masterpiece!

Way too complicated for me. She dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand. You shouldn’t need an instruction manual to eat a glorified banana split. Seriously.

Jay, what do you think? I asked. Who’s going to win?

He turned towards his tablet and gulped down the bite of pizza he was chewing.

The one the third judge likes.

I sighed, then muted them both and picked up the big bowl to bring to the kitchen. I poured a quick glass of water and headed back. My phone was blinking. I picked it up and saw three texts from Lena.

Lena

WHERE R U?

WATCH THE LAST COMMERCIAL!!!

NOWWWWWWW!!!

All caps were pretty common for Lena, but punctuation in the right place wasn’t normally her style, so it must have been important. I picked up the remote and was able to rewind on my television through the magic of digital cable.

Do you want to be the next Cyber Chef? a deep voice said dramatically over clips from the previous season. For our upcoming season, the Food and Drink Channel is searching for the next recipe superstar and this time, we’re looking for the next generation of Cyber Chefs! Do you create recipes? Do you have a food blog? Do you have a food channel? If you are between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, the next Cyber Chef can be YOU!

My phone buzzed again.

Lena

do it

do it

DO IT!!!

Buzz. Another text.

Jay

u shoud enter

I sat down and quickly looked up the Cyber Chef website. I scrolled through the requirements. Fill out a form. Send a short video of a recipe. Send the link to your platform—your webpage, social media, podcast, or YouTube channel. Have your parents sign a waiver.

Could I do this? Me? The next Cyber Chef? No, that’s the wrong attitude. I CAN do this! Me! Sarah Dayan-Abad, the next Cyber Chef!

My phone buzzed again.

Lena

in ur face Sar! Nessa rules!

u o me 20!

I grabbed the remote and fast forwarded to until I reached live TV. I forgot I was behind.

Lai’s image, with eyes the same shape as mine and my mother’s, faded to the background and was replaced by Nessa’s blond hair and blue eyes taking up the centre screen. She hugged her husband and kids. Another box popped up, the caption Nessa’s Mother underneath. She wore a hospital gown, a sterile white wall behind her. She looked frail. I decided I didn’t want to rewind and witness Lai’s defeat.

I turned back to the Cyber Chef website and tapped on the button to open the application form.

Ten months ago

Toronto

An executive paced back and forth in her high-rise condo. Two years ago, Poppy had been promoted to Vice-President of Talent Acquisition and Development, a position she had been working towards for the past eleven years. However, all her corporate momentum had come to a grinding halt. Filming on all shows was put on pause at the FaD studios over a month ago and already, the unions and accountants were breathing down their necks. The pandemic wasn’t going away anytime soon. People were dying, literally dying, and the bills were piling up.

She sat down and opened her laptop. Her email contained the link to the video conference interface they had all started using last week. She had straightened out the painting on the wall behind her and had angled her desk in order to get the best lighting on her face.

Poppy wore a cornflower blue blouse with a fashionable wide bow at the neckline, loose sleeves, and wide cuffs with mother-of-pearl buttons. On her bottom half she wore comfortable pink-striped pajama pants and her feet were bare. She crossed her legs yoga style and tucked her legs under her desk. She checked her lipstick one more time before logging on to the meeting.

The faces of the other network executives appeared on screen, each in separate boxes. All of them were older White men. Most wore shirts and ties. One wore a turtleneck. She wondered how many of them were also wearing pajama bottoms, sweats, or shorts.

Victor, the president of the network, logged on and they all sat up in rapt attention. He gave a spiel about how the company wanted to support everyone in these trying times. After rattling off phone numbers for mental health aid and promising a better work-life balance, he finally got down to business.

"We will be short thirty percent of our usual content