by Colette Rosenhof » Sat Oct 06, 2018 6:06 am
Colette tried her best to keep a fairly neutral smile through all of it, but eventually she had to step in and stop Katarina before she caught something on fire. Not that Basil had done terribly better.
"Alright, well, zis was... very informative. I see zat we will have to start from ze beginning." Colette found that she was more comfortable talking while she herself was cooking, and so she set to work. Setting aside the attempts of her "students" she began to heat some butter in a frying pan, cracking six eggs into a small pot and adding some butter.
"Some regard cooking as an art, zat ze ingredients are ze paints, ze plate your canvas, and your dish your masterpiece that took form zrough your emotion and imagination. Ozers regard it as a science, strictly following recipes. Ze truz is zat cooking is, like many zings, a combination of zese two. It is an art, as presentation had been shown time and again to make food taste better. It is chemistry, as all food is chemicals, and ze science of how chemicals change and interact when combined and heated." The entire time she spoke she was slowly stirring the eggs with a spatula in the pot over a burner, occasionally lifting the pot from the heat but constantly stirring.
"Traditional recipes are zose zat have been passed down from generation to generation, learned zrough repetition, changed by fortune, misfortune, and the introduction of new cultures. Zrough practice and trial and error, a mechanic learns zeir trade, and eventually is able to determine ze problem simply by listening. So is true of a cook and zeir sense of taste and smell." Some mini portobello mushrooms and tiny tomatoes still on the vine were placed in the frying pan and she went back to stirring her pot.
"I cannot teach eizer of you a complex recipe until we have first mastered ze basics, for ze same reason one cannot teach someone how to build a website if zey do not know how to use a computer, or how to build a home if zey do not know how to use a level. You must learn your tools and your ingredients, and how to use zem. <Basil, cut two slices of bread and place them in the toaster, medium setting.>" She spoke in French briefly, setting the pot aside while taking the time to cut up a little bit of chives. As the toast finished she mixed a tablespoon of creme fraiche into the eggs before setting each piece of toast onto a plate. The eggs were dished out evenly between the two, set atop the toast, where freshly cracked pepper and the chives were added. The tomatoes and mushrooms were plucked from the pan and set beside the eggs. Setting a fork on each plate she lifted them and offered them to the pair. The eggs were probably unlike any the two of them had seen before, not the chunky lumps one got at a restaurant but a yellow mass not unlike creamed corn.
"Zis may take more time zan eizer of you would wish. And if I may be honest, I am not very familiar wiz eizer traditional Symkarian or Jewish recipes. But if you two are willing to put in ze time and work to learn ze basics wiz me, zen I will do my best to teach you zese recipes. I do have ze benefit of having a couple of expert taste-testers, no?"