The woman finds a messenger at her front door. She gives him some ginger cake for his travels and then rejoins her daughter and granddaughter in the living room, watching television. There, they learn that a space probe from Allied Orbit has encountered aliens who may not consume food in the way humans do. The granddaughter suddenly turns the television off and cries, after which the woman fixes her a bowl of cornmeal porridge. The woman and her daughter discuss the recent news and how the doctor, a Sri Lankan woman, may have been responsible.

Nine years earlier, the woman is making mackerel rundown stew for her daughter, working with the few spices she has. On the news, she hears about the doctor, a spacecraft engineer for Allied Orbit who works on the space probe that would later meet aliens. However, by mistake, she accidentally puts a food chip on the space probe’s internals where a regular chip should be. Afterward, the doctor is fired, and all food chips are banned despite their utility in easily replicating food. The woman is glad about the ban, as it restores more agency to actual cooks. Later, in the news, she hears about the doctor’s dish of fish ambul thiyal. Curious, she looks up the recipe and, for her daughter, tries to make it.

Six years after the aliens are discovered, the neighborhood meets in Emancipation Park. There all there for the woman, who has made it to the final round of an Allied Orbit contest for food ambassadors. Everyone claps for her, as they cheer for her to win and send Jamaican cuisine up to space. When they ask her what she’s cooking, she thinks long and hard about it, thinking through the various cuisines of the other contestants from other continents, and figures out whether she should continue making Jamaican fusion or a purely Jamaican dish. She ponders the nature of the whole contest, how, after alien contact, the aliens were interested in the space probe’s food chip, after which Allied Orbit wanted to send another space probe with the best dishes on Earth.

The daughter is surprised to hear, later, that the woman wants to cook cornmeal porridge. She decides it because it’s a welcoming, warm meal that her granddaughter likes to eat, that she herself used to eat after her grandmother made it for her. In the last round of the contest, the judges like it a lot, and the woman remains firm in her choice.

Years later, the woman makes macaroni pie, and her granddaughter watches. She makes it for the food bank at a nearby school, as she has offered to make food for the summer program. She reminisces on winning the contest several years ago and how she’s gotten so many opportunities to cater ever since. At the door, however, she finds the doctor there and allows her in. In the living room, the doctor tells her that the aliens have contacted again and said that they liked the cornmeal porridge. The woman asks what the aliens want, to which the doctor says that the aliens want them to send their best cooks to them, as a gentle request. The woman hesitates, as she doesn’t want to leave her life on Earth, but the doctor tells her that all the other cooks from the contest have already agreed.

Decades later, the granddaughter makes a pot of cornmeal porridge. Suddenly, the door opens, and the woman is back. The granddaughter thinks about how the woman disappeared decades ago and wonders if it’s really her. They reunite and catch up. The woman explains that she had to go in order to protect her family. While away, the aliens ask the cooks if they’re Earth’s leaders, to which the cooks clarify that they’re not, after which they’re let go. However, because of how time works differently for them, the cooks hardly experienced time, whereas decades passed on Earth. Now, the woman is still her age, but her granddaughter is as old as she. She tells her that the daughter has passed, that she has her own family now too. Right away, the woman looks at what she’s cooking: cornmeal porridge. Laughing, the granddaughter allows the woman to take over.