The Prince and the Pie Maker

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

As easy as pie was a misnomer. Jan Peppers knew that from a young age. Pie making was an exact and precise art.

She kept all ingredients, including the flour, in the freezer. Keeping the different ingredients as cold as possible was her number one rule. The colder, the better.

The fruit was cold. The water she leveled off in the measuring cup was ice cold. The butter was cold. Fat worked best in cold.

Jan shivered in the walk-in freezer at the back of her kitchen. Her slim body had hardly any ounces of fat beneath her pale skin. No matter how much she ate, she couldn’t seem to keep any of the calories on her trim frame. The fat just never stuck by her. Probably because she treated it so well in the kitchen and preferred to bake with as much of it being present as possible instead of substituting it out for insane imitations like coconut, or avocado, or applesauce.

The thought of the fruit substitute made her shiver. Jan balanced the ingredients in two arms. She kicked the door closed behind her and began her assembly.

That fact that fat liked to hang around her but not on her had won her few female friends in high school and college. Her fellow bakers often cast her a side eye. No one trusted skinny cooks, especially a dough-slinging pastry chef. Even her customers were wary. Until they sat at a table with her and had their first forkful of what she pulled out of the oven.

The vents over the range filled the oven with the honeyed smell of heated fruits, the earthy smell of savory spices, and the warm, lusty smell of freshly baked dough. Jan pulled the golden brown concoction out of the oven just as the bell over her shop door dinged. The shop was already filled with her regular lunch hour customers. They’d all paused the moment the fresh pie came out of the oven, and its lush scent filled the small shop.

The pie shop opened at seven for breakfast pies. There was only one slice of Jan’s famous maple bacon breakfast pie left, and Mr. Fitz was eying that from the far end of the counter as he finished his second slice. Today’s special was a Tourte Milanese with layers of ham, Swiss cheese, and bell pepper. Only Jan had put a spin on the Italian dish and added a nod to Japan with yuzu citrus. The lemony fruit made a few of her customers pucker and then grin with surprised delight.

“Good afternoon, Chef Peppers,” said Mr. Dalton, a regular who’d been coming to the shop since it opened three years ago.

“Hey, Mr. Dalton. Your usual?”

“You know me.” He grinned, taking his usual seat, at his usual table, and going through his usual machinations of unfolding his napkin and wiping off the fork and knife she sat before him.

Mr. Dalton’s usual was a regular old shepherd’s pie. Made traditionally with potatoes instead of the daikon Jan had introduced two years ago. Infused with yellow onions and never again the sweet cipollinis she’d tried to sneak in last year. And always with the beef and not the bison she’d tried to spruce it up with last month.

“I’ll just have a regular shepherd’s pie.” Mr. Dalton smiled up at her after he’d scrubbed the already clean silverware.

Jan tried and failed to hide her annoyance. She would never win a poker game. Her emotions were always clear as day on her face, just like the ingredients were always on her sleeve. It was another way she didn’t quite fit into the culinary world. Her workspaces often looked as though a hurricane touched down.

“Sure thing, Mr. Dalton.”

Jan sliced another piece of the shepherd’s pie. It was nearly gone. It was a favorite of her customers.

Though the majority of her menu was an explosion of fusion pies, her bread and butter were the mainstays. Apple pie. Shepherd’s pie. Pecan pie.

Most of her customers rarely tried her specials. They were mainly a tourist draw. But tourists came and went every day, taking their sense of adventure with them and leaving Jan stuck with the everyday common folk.

It wasn’t that anyone said her creations tasted bad. They all just wanted the familiar. The tried and true. But Jan wanted to try new things.

She placed today’s special, a chocolate pie spiced with cayenne, on its plate for the dinner crowd. She hoped it would get some love at the bottom of a few tourists’ bellies. The pie would only keep for a couple of days, and she knew her regulars were unlikely to take on the dessert with its kick.

Jan sliced a healthy heaping of the potato pie for Mr. Dalton and brought it over to his table. The man rubbed his hands together and licked his lips before digging in. Watching him devour her food, Jan warmed.

It did matter to her that her customers were reluctant to take a risk. But at the end of the day, all that mattered was that her food sold. She just wished she could sell more of it.

“You’ll be headed back over to the king’s land soon with Ms. Pickett, won’t you?” Mr. Fitz asked as she came back around the counter.

Jan nodded that she was. And she was looking forward to it. The people of Cordoba were much more open to fusion foods. She knew a certain prince who would certainly appreciate a Hot peppered chocolate pie.

“You’ll be coming back though, right, Jan?” piped up Mr. Dalton. “You won’t leave us for that fancy place?”

There was a part of her that wished she could. Jan was far from a restless soul. She craved stability and consistency, but only in her routines, not in her recipes. She’d long dreamed of traveling the world but had only left the country that one time a month ago.

She wasn’t the type of girl that went on the adventure. She was the type of girl who read about it but not in a storybook or the newspaper. Jan read about other cultures and other worlds in cookbooks. She experienced those places in the fruits, sweet meats, and exotic spices from the safety and serenity of her kitchen.

She might be a tall, thin, plain girl. Such a plain Jane that even the E wouldn’t stick to her name. But inside the kitchen with a mixing spoon in her hands, she could be anyone and anywhere she wanted to be.

There had been that one time that she’d been presented with a golden ticket to be that girl outside of her kitchen. Prince Alex had asked her to partner with him in a restaurant venture. He hadn’t been serious. Alex had the attention span of a gnat and the commitment of a rabbit.

Even if he had been serious, Jan couldn’t up and leave her responsibilities here. Unlike the Prince who was beholden to no one, Jan was trapped. At least she’d lucked out and gotten trapped in business instead of in marriage with her partner.

She’d purchased this pie shop with her former fiancé a few months before their ill-fated wedding. In lieu of a honeymoon, they’d put a down payment on the business. Unfortunately, on the day of the wedding, he’d jilted her for his high school sweetheart.

Not only had her ex gotten married on their wedding day, at the ceremony their families had planned, and her father had paid for, but they’d also gone on an extravagant honeymoon in the Caribbean while Jan had been left to open up the pie shop the following Monday morning.

No, Jan just couldn’t form another partnership with a man who didn’t have both feet in the venture. Alex had likely forgotten about the rash proposal he’d whispered to her in an airport terminal as she watched her best friend get engaged.

Maybe in a couple of years, she’d have earned enough to buy her ex out of the business? Maybe when his ties were no longer around her, she could travel and taste the world’s foods? Maybe she could open up another restaurant in a place where people were open to trying new things?

But that was a dream for another day.

The doorbell dinged, and the lunch rush began in earnest. With one last look at her fusion special, Jan pulled another shepherd’s pie out of the warmer and began slicing into it.