goneawayworld | 🟆002🟆

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🟆002🟆

Who: Catra, Dave, and Tenten
What: Late night kitchen shenanigans!
Where: The Rig's cafeteria
When: Weh
Warnings/Notes: I mean, Dave's involved, so there oughta be something here.

Tenten had meant to do a bit of recon. She really had. But her free time had been eaten up by extra chores, a result of an unfortunate incident where she'd managed to throw a rather swollen Stuff-body into a group of middle-managers having a smoke break. They didn't appreciate the splatter zone, so she'd been stuck out there for the past two days, doing more grunt work than anything else. Really, she just wants to sleep.

But she'd told Catra "One or two nights" and there they were.

She'd mentioned to Catra to be ready beforehand, she didn't want to wake up Setsuna by accident, and now they were wandering the dark halls at night. Tenten couldn't see, the light levels were just too low even if she used chakra, but she'd already memorized the way there. Just about two more turns and then they could worry about finding a way from the cafeteria into the kitchen.

...Wait, was that the glow of the mess lights on 'low' there?

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Catra watches with some mild performative disinterest. She knows how to use a knife! Just... not for this. When she's finally given the knife and charge of the mushrooms and onions, she sets to work. Interestingly, despite that disinterest, she takes a lot of care with the assigned task. When she starts, she's verrrry slow and careful, trying to make sure that everything is close to the same size and constantly eyeing the results she gets. If she keeps at that pace, this might take a while.

Tenten slices the peppers open, peels out the seeds, then gives them a few rough cuts. She pauses there, eyeing Catra's progress. "The cuts don't need to be too exact. As long as there's no huge size differences, it'll all cook evenly." She grabs another onion to demonstrate. She doesn't go too fast, no need to make Catra feel inadequate. "If you feel like it's roughly right, that's probably good enough. You'll want a little speed with the onions, too, they can be a bit brutal."

...Yeah, no, Catra can figure out what she means by that. She sets everything down and lets her have at it at her own pace. Then it's time for Tenten to grab a cleaver and go at the chicken. She doesn't just break it down, she cuts the entire thing into chunks, bone and all. The only part that goes unused is the spine, she just sets that aside.

Catra nods attentively at Tenten's instruction. Yes, she's difficult and a jerk and inclined to just push back anytime that someone tries to tell her what to do--but food is good. And Tenten is being exceedingly kind in showing her how it works. So she finishes the rest of the mushrooms and pushes them off to one side. Next come the onions.

"How can a plant be brutal?" She asks as she starts to slice into the thing. A few moments later, she gets her answer as her eyes start to water.

"Agh--!" She recoils for a moment, then leans forward, desperately trying to chop the onion as fast as possible--as fast as safely possible, anyway. "Ahg. Ew!"

Tenten bites the insides of her cheeks to keep from laughing, but she can't stop a little giggle. "Like that. Sorry, only thing to do is tough it out. Onions get to just about everyone." It's a good thing they were so tasty, or she'd have nothing to do with them.

"Let's see... Broth, eggs... Oh, let me-" she sets about measuring out the various powders into different piles on a paper towel. When it looks like Catra's coming close to being finished, she starts pointing an explaining. "Salt. Makes food kinda... salty. Also helps you keep in water. Black pepper here's a bit sharp. Basically you want these two for almost anything. White pepper's a bit sharper, but it also brings out the flavors in everything else. Turmeric's a little bitter, but adds a nice yellow color. Sugar makes things sweet. Corn starch, you add a bit of water to it and mix it in, it thickens up any liquids you add it to."

She pauses, then picks up a ginger root. "Ginger's sweet, but hot, and it smells really good." She quickly peels it and cuts it, then slides it over to Catra. "Don't eat it, but take a sniff."

"And now we're at the last bit of prep we really need to do!" In less than fifteen minutes, even! "Cracking these eggs into a bowl." That's right, more demonstration time. "You want to crack them one at a time into a different bowl first to make sure there's no blood or anything. Out in the field, it probably doesn't matter that much, but we don't need to eat bad eggs while we're here, right?" She cracks one and uses both hands to pull it open. "You can use one hand, but if you use two, it's easier to keep stray eggshells out."

"If they do this, why do you cook with them?" Catra gripes, but she keeps on cutting onions with a grim determination, despite the tears that pricking at her eyes. Ow. Misery, true misery. As soon as the last of the onion is finished she shoves the board away and sighs in relief, though her attention soon turns onto the spices that Tenten is showing off. She nods attentively each time one is explained, then reaches out to take the ginger. Sniffs.

"Oh, that one is nice!" She says brightly. The eggs she takes and handles with a cool ease, though it's the first time she's done anything with them. Each one is cracked and put into the first bowl and then into the second. She only accidentally smashes one when she tries to smack it against the rim of the bowl a little too hard, too!

"Because after they're cooked, they taste great." Her tone is chipper. It was probably a rhetorical, but there wasn't a reason not to answer anyway.

She reaches out and snags a whisk, starting to mix the eggs together. "You did great on these, by the way. When I was starting, I was always picking out eggshell. Anyway, the clear bits are the egg whites, they turn white when they cook. The yellow bits are yolk, they're mostly protein and stuff. We're going to make egg drop soup, so getting them nice and mixed without adding too much air by going too hard is kind of important."

Once that's done, she sets it aside and gestures over to the stove. "Right. So, I usually have to use coals or an open flame when I'm out in the field, but stoves are so much nicer. For one thing, it's easier to control the heat. Something to remember when cooking is that you can always cook things a little more, but you can't uncook things, so don't put your heat too high to burn things." She takes down a pan, sets it down on a burner, and clicks it on to a good setting. Then she snags a bottle of oil and holds it up. "Cooking oil. Not all are equal, but if you're interested we can go into differences later. This keeps food from sticking to the pan, basically. Here, grab the ginger, onions, and garlic." Tenten squirts in the oil and steps back, holding out wooden spoon for Catra. "Toss them in and stir them up a bit with this. Once you can really start smelling them, toss in the chicken I chopped up and cook it until parts of it start looking a nice golden brown color. You're going to want to keep that moving too, so it doesn't stick to the pan or burn."

Catra stands back to watch Tenten mix the eggs, her tail flicking and eyes wide. Watching food come together almost feels like magic. Not that she'd let on that she feels so strongly about the subject. Cooking oil. Right. She nods.

"Okay," she takes the spoon in one hand and the aromatics in the other and dumps them into the hot pan. She begins to stir the sizzling contents around the pan. It's clumsy at first but when she has a feel for how little force she really needs, Catra seems to be getting the hang of it.

"Do I add it now?" She asks as the scent of garlic, ginger, and onions fills the room. "Um--" She reaches out and grabs the plate of chicken and dumps it into the pan all at once and hurriedly stirs them as well. It's awkward and clumsy and she's feeling a little pressed now. There's a LOT going on in the pan.

"How do I know what color to look for?"

Food is magic. Moreso than friendship.

"Relax, it doesn't need to be a constant movement. Just enough that nothing's sticking. Slow down, like, maybe fifty percent. You're doing fine!" It's not a lie. She's not hurling chicken out of the pan. That's a great start compared to, say, Lee. She leans in and points at one of the pieces. "See this? When it's maybe two shades darker, and that color's covering more of the chicken, we're going to move to our next step."

She sets down the beer, a small bowl of soy sauce, the black pepper, and the sugar so that Catra can reach them. "In maybe three more minutes, whenever you think it's done about right, sprinkle on the black pepper," that should've been done earlier, but Tenten had honestly forgotten, "the beer, the sugar, and then the soy sauce. The soy sauce will make everything slightly saltier, the sugar will balance out the bitterness, and the beer will just make it taste better. When you've done that, make sure everything looks even, reduce, then cover it with this top and reduce the temperature a little." She waggles it, then sets it down within reach. "We'll be just letting that simmer while we work on the soup."

There's a slight pause. "How do you feel about this so far?" While she waits for Catra's response, Tenten's setting up everything for the soup. Pot of water, flame on, all of the ingredients nearby... there. Yeah, that'd work.

"Slow down. Right." Catra grimaces a little behind her face mask. She's not sure quite what she's doing but hey... she's managing, she thinks? As the minutes tick past she hurriedly reaches over to add the ingredients at Tenten's cue, then steps back to watch as everything starts to simmer.

"Um. I'm okay? It's a lot..."

She waves her hands to dismiss those worries. "You're doing great. All we're going to do now is just cover it with the lid," which she does, "...and let that sit for fifteen minutes. Now we're going to work on the eggdrop soup. By the time this is done, that'll be ready for the other ingredients and we'll be all finished."

She moves over to the pot. The flame's on, but it's not quite boiling yet. "Soup is really easy. You've got water. You've got stock, we're using chicken. It's basically all the stuff that they boiled out of bones to add a lot of flavor." She pours it in, then some ginger, soy sauce, white pepper, salt, and some of the mushrooms and onions Catra cut up. "Now, all of these are going to come up to a boil. That's getting all of the flavor and nutrients out of everything you've cut up and letting it soak into the water, turning it into a good broth."

While that's working, she gets the corn starch nice and slurried up with some water and pours that in, stirring everything up while watches the other pan, just in case. She slows down as the soup reaches a boil, then reduces the heat. "So you see how slowly I'm stirring now?" She steps back, then holds the spoon out to Catra. "Give it a go. While you're doing that, take the bowl of eggs with one hand and slowly pour it in. You want a stream a little thinner than a pencil, okay? Just pour and stir slowly. And once you've emptied the bowl, give it maybe thirty seconds, then turn the heat off and that's going to be done and ready to eat. I'm going to be right back."

...She'd forgotten the tomatoes for the chicken. Whoops. Tenten dashes over to grab some and hurriedly dices them, keeping an eye on Catra to make sure she's still feeling fine about all of this. It was sounding like she was getting overwhelmed, but they were so close to being finished. Hopefully the realization that they were there would be enough. She lifts the lid on the chicken, then dumps in the tomatoes, the sliced peppers, and the mushrooms, and starts folding that on in, turning up the heat just a tad so that everything ought to be finished at the same time.

Catra seems a little intimidated by a whole new barrage of information and her biggest response is a muted noted as she watches Tenten do, well. Everything. She does her best with the eggs, but her impatience wins the day as she accidentally dumps most of the bowl in her first go. Oops. Maybe Tenten won't notice.

Too late. That little 'glump' noise is missable, but not when you're listening for any problems. She reaches out, waving her hand urgently while not moving away from her pot. "Ah! Stir! Fastfastfast! Don't let it cook into one big clump!"

...Also don't spill most of the soup!

"Agh--!" Tenten is attentive. Catra hurriedly stirs the pot as quickly as she can--which means that a glop of soup splatters on the counter and the stove, setting the burner to hissing and spitting. Catra yelps.

"It's making noise!"

Can't spell attentive without ten! Unless, you know, you're doing it in Japanese.

Jeez, they were so close to calling this done without any major mishaps. Then again... Well, close enough, that egg drop soup would finish anyway. Assuming it wasn't one big glob of semi-poached egg in a tasty broth. "All right! Heat off, set the pot on a counter. We can wipe up that little mess later."

Just in time, too, because it looked like Catra's panic was beginning to snowball a little. Maybe she should have done the second dish herself? Too late now. "You okay? You can probably take all of that off now, we're done."

"I'm fine," Catra says a touch peevishly as she turns the heat off on the stove and steps back to set the pot on the counter. Ugh. She crossed her arms, looking snootily displeased with the preceding events.

As it turns out, all the time powers in the world don't do shit for one's internal clock, and Dave's was fucked up even before spending three years in a lightless spacelike void. So yeah, he is up and about past bedtime, poking his head into the kitchen to see what can be snagged.

He expects the kitchen staff. This isn't the first night he's slipped in and he knows by now that they don't give a shit. The two girls getting their Martha Stewart on are a surprise, though.

"Wow," is all he says to announce his presence. For a guy who never shuts up, he moves hella quietly. There's just suddenly a Dave there, arching an eyebrow at their much more ambitious take on late night snacking. "Someone was feeling productive, huh? Just woke up at 1AM with a burning desire for some culinary girltime?"

Okay, that? She hadn't quite been expecting. Between being caught up in trying to figure out how to soothe Catra's nerves and the anticipation of eating, her attention is well and truly split. So, congrats Dave. You snuck up on a ninja. Your reward?

Tenten lets out an involuntary shriek of surprise and whirls, chucking the wooden spoon at his forehead.

Catra's ears flick back towards Dave's footfalls as he enters the room before she even turns to look at him. She's a bit of an odd duck at the moment, too: gloves, hairnet, and one of those beardnets that she's wearing awkwardly stretched across most of her lower face too. She's about to make a smart remark when Tenten simply hurls a spoon in his direction and instead she doubles over laughing.

If there's anything he can thank Bro for, it's making him really good at handling unexpected projectiles. The spoons comes whipping at him faster than he can catch – goddamn actual ninjas – so he only just barely manages to sidestep it on pure instinct. He winces at the sound of the spoon impacting a cabinet door and clattering to the floor, but his hands stubbornly remain in his pockets, all cool and definitely not recovering from a brief heart attack.

"Jesus, shit. I figured she'd be the one throwing crap at me." He inclines his head towards Catra, and then as if just noting the hairnet and shit, tacks on a quick, "Nice look, by the way."

"You startled me," she snaps, ears burning in embarrassment. At least it'd been a spoon and knot a knife or something, she'd hate to have to explain that to the night staff. She folds her arms over her chest and glances away sulkily.

Tenten managed to skip all that food service clothing. Mainly because she wasn't, you know. Covered in fur. She pauses, gives Catra another glance, and turns her head away. At least it wasn't just her thinking it looked silly.

"Shut it, smartass," Catra snaps at Dave. His amusement at her attire kills her amused laughter and she hurriedly shucks off gloves, hairnet, and so forth to be dropped into the nearest trash can.

"They said they didn't want me to get fur in the food, that's all," she adds after a moment. Then:

"I've never cooked before. Tenten was showing me."

The look Dave shoots Tenten is exasperated, almost helpless, as Catra's mood sours and she dumps all her cooking attire.

"I did say 'nice', didn't I? I'm pretty sure that's the word that came out of my mouth. Does 'nice' mean something else around here? You gotta let me know right now before I really step in some shit and get something worse than a wooden spoon chucked at me."

He shrugs and just leans in to peer at their handiwork. It's way more homey and cozy-looking than any meal he's ever eaten, at least. His stomach suddenly reminds him of what he actually came here for and he fights to keep an impassive face.

"I mean, y'all did better than I would have," he says. "Not like I've ever managed anything fancier than a Hot Pocket. You used a stove and everything, damn."

"It did sound a little sarcastic." Just a smidge. A tad. But, and this is just going off of her limited exposure to him, she's pretty sure that whatever he says is going to sound slightly sarcastic half the time. He probably couldn't help it.

"Anyhow, I mainly just helped a bit. Catra did most of the work on this one." It was true! Mostly. Sure, Tenten had separated some stuff, but Catra did do a load of grunt work. "We were just finishing up and, well." There's a slight shrug. There's not a whole lot of question as to what's on Dave's mind now, even as impassive as he was. What other reason would someone have for coming to the kitchen at night?

...Wait a minute. "Say, Dave. How long have you known that the night staff was totally fine with us being in here?"

"Pretty sure we have to offer some up to the staff as tribute," Catra says with a drawl, "but I don't think we can eat this whole thing between us. Since I assume you're gonna ask if you can have some." As she speaks a couple members of staff are already helping themselves to samples of both chicken and soup and making approving noises between themselves.

"Wait, yeah, good question. We thought we were going to have to sneak in here."

Edited 2020-05-11 04:01 (UTC)

He shrinks back a bit under the combined callouts, frowning. He lifts his hands all I am defenseless here, chill out as he sidesteps to let the staff better access the food.

"Woah, hey. I only realized they didn't care like, yesterday," he says. "I was sneaking around like a goddamn French orphan before that, all snaggin' unattended bags of chips and fucking off into the night before Inspector Javert can beat my ass. Turns out none of the regular staff around here give a shit. At least y'all figured it out right away, I spent a few nights being all stealthy about it and probably looking like an asshole, stealing shit literally no one was trying to prevent from getting stolen. Good job, Dave, master criminal right there, those kitchen staffers never knew what hit them or particlarly cared."

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sorry for slow

No rush.

Re: No rush.

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