Chinese Food for Rosh Hashanah

The Recipe.

“No, you are staying home and helping out with Rosh Hashanah.” said Naomi, who was starting to wind up to full-on manic mode and looked like she’d blown in on a storm. She threw her son’s laundry on the foot of his bed, then pulled up the window shades, throwing light on things best kept obscured. 

“There’s only one other trombone player, and she’s got Covid,” said Adam, hitting the pause button on his computer game. 

“Don’t they know it’s a high holiday?” said Naomi. 

“There’s only five Jews in the entire school,” said Adam, “we’re outnumbered by Wiccans”.

Naomi rolled her eyes. She hadn’t been to a synagogue in ten years or more, but it was the principle of the thing. “Get off that game now, tidy up your room, and get your ass downstairs”

“Is Connie coming?” said Adam. Connie, his sister, was away at college, he hoped.

“She’ll be here in about half an hour”, said Naomi, “your brother and Doc will be coming too”

It was Adam’s turn to roll his eyes, “please tell me that Doc’s nutso girlfriend and her stupid dog are not coming again”.

Naomi had forgotten about the last time Doc visited, accompanied by a trashy new girlfriend and her stupid lapdog. The dog nearly lost an eye in an ambush by the cat.

"Oh, the cat!".

No, Adam had not seen the cat that day, though if he’d bothered to look around his room he might have spotted a shadowy thing beneath the chest of drawers, flexing its claws as if in preparation for combat.

The Ingredients.

“You’re doing it all wrong,” said Connie, “you need to hold the peeler like this and swoop, swoop it away from your body.” The severe baby-bang haircut revealed that she’d recently been brutalized by a stylist with anger issues.

“Swoop, swoop,” said Dan from the dining room, who was going through an androgynous phase. He was wearing mascara, had a new tattoo on his forearm, and preferred to be known as “Danny” now.

“Why isn’t Dan helping?  There’s tons of swooping to get done.” said Adam, resolutely opposed to Dan's self-proclaimed genderfluidity. He was staring at the potatoes and carrots that were piled up on the kitchen island. His brother was getting a royal treatment as usual.

“He’s only just got here, give him a break,” said Derek, who was home early from the town offices, where he’d been working on the new zoning regulations. Derek prodded at the simmering pot roast, which looked suspiciously like pork. He marveled at Naomi’s religious gymnastics. 

"They’ve only just got here", said Danny, "give them a break".

“Who paid for them tats?” said Connie, pressing on the money button. Dan’s barista job at the coffee shop didn’t even cover his New York rent. He was a failure-to-launch, a constant source of worry for his parents and a drain on the family budget, making the younger siblings into collateral victims. Connie’s question about Dan’s new body art created a broad coalition of support.

“He’s only just got here, give him a break,” said Derek, for whom repetition was the preferred instrument of comic torture.  

"They, them," said Danny. Things were following a familiar pattern.

Naomi reappeared from her bathroom-cleaning mission. She pulled a bag of egg noodles out of the pantry, which, combined with the in-prep potatoes, represented enough carbs to feed all the Jews and Wiccans in Hamilton County. “Dan! Didn’t I ask you to clear and set the table”, she said.

“Them’s only just got here…” said Derek, dad-joking beyond the point of utility and amping up the level of mutual irritation, “also them wants to be known as Danny now”

“And don’t forget to take the trash out, Danny” said Naomi as her son beat a retreat from the kitchen.

Meanwhile Connie had finished peeling the potatoes and was shredding away at the carrots, hitherto Adam’s sole responsibility.  “You’re still doing it wrong,” said Connie.

“Fuck it, you do them,” said Adam, dropping the peeler on the counter and stepping back to let his sister go berserk at the vegetables.

Cooking Instructions.

The doorbell rang. Derek walked from the open-plan kitchen into the dining room and peeked warily out the window. It was his elder brother, Doc, dressed in a hideous golf outfit consisting of a pink pastel polo shirt and emerald-green pants that evoked the complete social and economic meaning of the word “slacks”.  

“It’s Doc,” hissed Derek.

“Fuck, he’s early,” said Naomi.

“And he’s got that woman with him, Marissa, and her witless cockapoo. She's wearing a MAGA hat with sequins”

Connie stabbed the potato knife into the chopping block.

“The cat!” said Adam. He neither liked nor disliked the cat, but he respected the creature as an equal member of the cast.

Nobody had seen the cat all day.

Derek went to greet his brother and his girlfriend at the front door. They’d arrived in a lipstick-red BMW, and their ensemble seemed entirely too shiny and colorful to fit through the door of the drab little house.

In the kitchen, Naomi was a-whirl. “Throw the potatoes and carrots into the pot with the joint. I’m going to start the oven up in a little while,” said Naomi. She wiped her hands on her apron.

In ran the cockapoo, Pearl, sporting a sparkly red collar. Pearl could smell the cat here and there and everywhere, and scampered around the kitchen, following its nose into corners, beneath chairs, forgetful that the cat possessed sharp claws.   The dog was followed by Marissa, who teetered unsteadily on high heels.

“Marissa, how nice to see you”, said Naomi. It was an untruthful greeting, but Naomi was mindful of the occasion.

“I hope you locked up that cat this time,” said Marissa, looking around the kitchen with disapproval. She couldn’t understand why these people didn’t hire some help.

“Ah, Marissa, would you like a drink?” said Dan, ingratiating himself to his Uncle’s girlfriend, via whom he hoped to hit up the man for some money.

Marissa rather liked this ingratiating boy. He’d been very solicitous the last time she’d visited, plying her with wine and complements, and with soothing reassurance that Pearl the cockapoo would quickly recover from the knife fight with the cat.

Adam and Connie observed Dan with disgust as he fawned over Marissa.

There was a risk that Doc would get jammed in the small kitchen, in close proximity to Connie, buffered only by Adam, so Derek intercepted his brother in the hallway and steered him toward the living room, promising him the prize of a glass of scotch. Derek preemptively turned on the TV and switched to Fox News to pacify his brother.

“Dinner will be a while”, said Derek.

“Have you seen this?” said Doc, “the Iranians have launched a direct attack on Tel Aviv. We should bomb them back to the dark ages.”

Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, Adam was super impressed by his older brother Dan’s shameless toadyism. Apparently, Marissa and Dan were soulmates, fancy that! Scorpios! Zionists! The country was going to hell! They both loved of dogs! Even Naomi couldn’t stand the shameless debasement exhibited by her oldest son, so she left the kitchen to go greet her brother-in-law and get him settled down with a strong drink.  They didn’t have much family; even so, she was wondering whether it was all worth the effort.

“Put everything in the oven and turn the heat to 325 degrees,” said Naomi to Adam as she walked out of the kitchen, “and Connie, please get the key lime pie out of the garage freezer. It needs to defrost”. Naomi could hear the TV playing in the living room. Marissa had lost the stupid cockapoo, which was probably upstairs hunting the cat. Marissa could not navigate the stairs in heels, so she followed Naomi into the living room, where a bottle of wine beckoned to her. Dan was quickly in attendance, wheedling his way into Marissa's favor, desperate as he was for his uncle to cover the cost of the next semester.

Back in the kitchen, as Adam grabbed the pot roast off the counter, he saw the cat scoot across the dark kitchen floor, a blur of fur. It must have been hiding somewhere. Adam threw the pot roast into the oven, kicked the door shut, and twisted the dial to 325. Very slick, like a TV chef. “Voila!” he exclaimed.

“Bravo,” said Connie, golf-clapping. “Let’s go play a game on your computer, they won’t notice we’re gone.

Adam was mildly shocked by his sister. Somehow, in their shared disgust at Dan, Doc and Marissa, and the yappy cockapoo, an unlikely alliance was forming. 

Plating of the meal.

It was getting dark, when suddenly everyone in the house was alerted to a drama in the kitchen. Naomi screamed, “The cat, the cat! We’ve killed the cat”.

The charred and smoking remains of the cat was lying in the sink, where Naomi had thrown it when she removed the flaming tray from the oven. She was hosing the carcass with the faucet, which extinguished the flames but created a thick sickly steam. Derek rushed in and opened the windows. The stench of burning flesh was unbearable, and the fire alarm would go off any moment.

Marissa staggered into the kitchen. She’d been drinking wine all afternoon, her eyelids were heavy, her mouth drooped, words came slowly and sloppily, “looks like… you… hic… burnt… the pot roast”. She waved a glass of wine around like a flag. Two sheets to the wind, she was not picking up on the real drama. Dan was still working her over and held her upright, her confidante.

Doc ambled in, took one look, and left.  His brother’s family were a horrible disappointment, especially the oldest boy, a shameless grifter. He and Marissa should leave, go get dinner at the golf club.

Adam and Connie rushed into the kitchen and were momentarily awestruck, not least by the look of complete horror on their mother’s face.

Seeing Adam, aghast, Naomi grabbed a serving spoon. Her idiot son had cooked the family cat. She’d wipe that stupid expression from his face, but before she'd had a chance to do so, the cat leapt up onto the kitchen island, arched its back and hissed.

Dessert.

It was getting late.

“Don’t look so sad, Danny”, said Adam, who stifled his laugh by coughing. The smell of the cooked cockapoo lingered.

“I spent the whole fucking afternoon working the angles with Marissa and Doc.   I swear, I was this close to getting Doc to pay for school,” said Dan, pinching the air with his finger and thumb.

“Do you think Marissa will be OK?” said Connie. 

“I think so,” said Derek, who’d wrestled Marissa to the ground and helped his brother carry her out to the car after she passed out. Nobody particularly liked Marissa or her politics, but on reflection, it was agreed that the punishment she’d incurred far exceeded the crime.

“What are we going to do for dinner?” said Adam. The evening had turned out better than he’d anticipated, quite exciting really, but he was hungry now. The pot roast looked quite delicious but having shared the oven with Pearl the dog, its consumption seemed taboo.  

“Chinese?” suggested Naomi, and there was unanimity.