Page 31 of Tying Little Tay (Littles of Rawhide Ranch #13)

Tay

By the time the rest of the kitchen team joined the kitchen, Tay had almost finished rolling out all of the pasta. Hand rolling was tricky and needed a lot of flour and quite a significant amount of space.

They’d swirled the spaghetti into little nests that were ready to be picked up and popped into boiling water, had laid out three trays of tiny cappelletti, and had put the sugo for the ravioli into the blender, so that it was ready to fill the pasta.

Nico took one look at their face, and asked, “What can I do to help?”

“It’s fine,” Tay protested. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” he said. “Your brow is all furrowed and you look really stressed. You’ve laid out the pasta for the ravioli, why don’t I put the filling on each one, and you follow me and close them up?”

It wasn’t a bad idea; an assembly line was often how ravioli and tortellini for big dinners had been assembled while Tay had been in Italy. And it would give them more time to focus on the ice cream, and they were very aware of the fact that time was moving on.

“Yes, please,” they said, and the two of them worked together in intense silence until everything was ready.

“I’ve got this,” said Nico, before turning to Lily. “We’ll run a reduced menu today, only bread and oil, and prosciutto and melon for the starters. And if I cover pasta and you cover pizzas, then Tay can work on their ice cream.”

“Sure,” said Lily. “Yell if you need a hand with the pasta, Nico.”

Tay stared at both of them. “You’re not upset that I’m shirking work?”

Nico let his gaze fall upon the trays and trays of fresh pasta that Tay had made that morning. “It’s hardly shirking. And besides, I want to taste the ice creams.”

“Maybe after,” said Tay. “The first batch has to be for Guilia.”

Hannah ushered them over to the dessert area of the kitchen and showed them to the workstation where Guilia usually made the ice cream. “It’s cooler in here,” she explained. “That’s how we don’t have ice creams and sorbets melting before they’re served. You’ll do far better working here.”

Tay pulled out their phone and looked down at the snapshots of recipes that they’d taken. This was going to take some doing, but it was definitely possible.

They had never, however, been more grateful for an ice-cream machine. That meant that they could focus on the flavors and the ingredients but didn’t have to take on the difficult task of mixing them together.

It was very strange, tasting the different savory elements that were going into the two ice creams, and Tay was a bit concerned that they might have bitten off more than they could chew.

At one point they almost added the crumbly goat cheese in with the olive-oiled heavy cream and only just managed to stop themself in time.

Working near Hannah was nice though. She had very calm energy for a Little, and Tay got to taste the different desserts that she was making to go alongside the savory ice creams. The rosemary cake was light and fluffy and had a sweetness to it that Tay hadn’t been expecting.

It would pair perfectly with the richness of the olive-oil ice cream.

And then the honeyed, roasted figs… They were one of Tay’s favorite desserts anyway, though they’d usually devour them with clotted cream instead of the salty goat-cheese ice cream that they were making. But the pairing made perfect sense when Tay tried them in their mouth together.

“ Fuck! ” they said, and Hannah laughed.

“That’s good?”

“Yeah!”

Hannah tried the mixture as well, giving her approval, before Tay added it to the ice-cream machine. Then they had to think about how they were going to surprise Guilia with it that evening.

“You should eat something,” said Lily, bringing over a bowl of the stellina en brodo that was simmering on the stove.

“I’m fine,” said Tay, but Lily put the bowl down on the workbench firmly.

“No, no you’re not. You’ve been hyperfocusing and you need to eat and drink. Where’s your water bottle?”

Everyone in the kitchen had their own water bottle; it was one of the things that Guilia insisted upon. It sometimes got very hot, what with the pizza oven in the corner and all of the pasta dishes that Tay put out, and Guilia put a great emphasis on the importance of hydration.

Tay was tired and probably more than a little dehydrated and wanted to argue with Lily as a result, but one look at the woman’s face had them grabbing their water bottle off a shelf and filling it up.

“That’s better,” Lily said. “I want the entire water bottle emptied by the time you finish that bowl.”

It had been an excellent choice of food, and Tay finished off every single spoonful. The brodo—the chicken broth—was exactly what they needed to settle their stomach after trying all of the new flavors.

The heavy cream that they’d managed to produce from the milk was delicious but very rich indeed.

As the rush of the lunch service died down, all of the kitchen members—and even Paulo and Miriam from front of house—came to watch Tay take the ice cream out of the freezer where it’d been put after its time in the machine