Chapter 81: Cooking Vegetables

Another evening, another dinner that needed cooking. Lus stepped into the kitchen, grateful that his teammates greeted him with smiles. All except Fresa, that is. She glanced at him and the scales on her cheeks darkened in a blush as she looked quickly away.

He figured she must be feeling a little weird about everything that had happened. They hadn't really had a chance to talk, but it didn't matter as they all set to work, quickly finding a station.

Lus had noticed that everyone seemed to be feeling more competitive lately, likely trying to catch Chef Savannah's attention. It worked in his favor as he was no longer pushed into the most difficult tasks. Instead, he usually found himself doing the easiest and most straightforward jobs, which suited him perfectly.

Today, that started with chopping vegetables. Everyone else had spent a turn or two on vegetable prep, likely to show off their incredibly even knife skills, and now they gravitated to more complex work.

The only downside was that Lus did not have perfect knife skills, so he had to move slowly and carefully to make his cuts even. If he didn't, he would hear about it from Chef Savannah. Having managed to avoid her censure for the last three nights, he was eager to extend his streak.

Today's vegetables were more challenging than usual. He had to shred three large heads of kabrage, peel and dice a large pile of garoots into small cubes, and turn a small pile of onnins into thin, even strips.

He started with the garoots since they were the most difficult. He peeled the rough skins into a small waste bin on the counter specifically for vegetable waste, then got busy with a large knife on the rust orange roots.

The instructions specified that he should do a "fine dice", but he wasn't sure how large that was. Thankfully, his [Chef's Intuition] came to his rescue.

[.25 cm sides]

He nodded and got busy. It took some practice to find an approach that worked effectively, but he eventually settled into a rhythm.

Once Lus finished the last garoot, he slid the orange cubes into the bowl with the rest and moved on to the kabrage.

Shredding kabrage took quite a while, even though there were only three heads. He found it easiest to cut the head in half and start shredding with the insides. It went well for about half of the slice, but then it would start falling apart and he'd have to try and hold it together in order to finish shredding.

Finally, Lus finished with the kabrage and checked the clock. He had far less time than he'd have liked to chop the onnins, so he had to work quickly, in spite of the tears streaming down his face at the powerful scent.

He made the last cut just as the timer went off, signalling that it was time to switch stations.

As had become his habit, Lus stepped back and waited for the other chefs to pick their cooking station of choice, then went to his.

To his surprise, he found himself working alongside Fresa.

This happened occasionally- a part of the meal difficult enough that two chefs had to cook it together. But he had yet to be one of the two because it was usually the most interesting part of the dish to cook.

He glanced over at Fresa and found her studying the instructions, so he did the same. They were making the vegetable dish, which was also the side dish. Not only did they need all the vegetables that Lus had prepped, but they also had a number of vegetables that someone else had gotten ready.

It was a very complicated dish with multiple parts that needed to happen at the same time. Lus looked up at Fresa again and cleared his throat.

"So, uh- what do you want to start with?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I don't care."

"Then…" He glanced at the instructions once more. "I can start boiling the prootas if you want to work on the glaze for the garoots?"

Fresa nodded and they each set to work on their different tasks.

The prootas just had to be dumped into a few large pots of boiling, salted water, so he got two pots ready and waited for them to come to a boil. He added the prootas, then set a timer and moved on to the kabrage.

Lus set three more pots on the stove and added some oil to heat. He needed to cook the kabrage down and season it with a mix that had been prepped.

Once he had the kabrage in the pots, he checked on Fresa. She had the garoot cubes split between a few different pans, frying in butter with the bowl of glaze close at hand to pour over them as soon as they had softened enough.

"Do you need any help?" he asked, though it seemed pretty obvious that she had things under control.

Fresa shook her head. "Just get working on the onnins."

Lus first gave the kabrage a quick stir, then pulled out a large pan. He only had one spot left on his stove, so he would have to do the onnins in batches.

He got the first batch into the pan, then the timer for the prootas went off. He turned off the heat under them and gave the pots of kabrage another stir, then set up a strainer in the sink. He set a bowl underneath to catch some of the proota water, per the instructions.

Once he had the prootas drained, he poured them all into the largest bowl he could find, which was thankfully large enough to hold them all.

He pulled out the bowl of proota water and measured out a couple cups to add back into the boiled prootas.

Taking another quick break to stir the kabrage and onnins, he then began smashing the prootas. Once he had them fairly smoothly mashed, he added some butter to melt in and some milk.

Another pre-measured bowl of seasoning went into the prootas and he continued to stir until they were completely smooth, taking a couple more breaks to stir the kabrage and onnins.

Once the prootas were done, he removed the first batch of onnins from the pan into a bowl and added another batch.

He was about to stir the kabrage again when Fresa reached past him and took care of it.

"Thank you," he shot over his shoulder with a grateful smile.

She nodded, but quickly glanced away, clearly still feeling a little awkward.

Lus considered broaching the subject of what had happened, but he wasn't sure what to say. Before he could speak, she had returned to the garoots, leaving him to worry about the onnins.

Thinking back through the instructions, he paused and looked with horror at Fresa.

"We forgot about the sprouts," he gasped.

Instead of returning his horror, she smiled. "Don't worry, I got them into the oven already."

He sighed in relief. "Thank you again."

"You're welcome. And.. thank you. For, you know.. saving me."

"Oh, you're welcome. I'm just glad I was in the right place to help," he answered.

"I don't really like being in debt to someone. If I've been awkward, it's just because I'm not really sure how to handle this."

"Don't worry about it."

She rolled her eyes.

"No, I mean it. I owe you for being my friend. So just… keep being my friend and we'll call it even."

Fresa looked at him searchingly for a moment, then nodded. "If you insist."

He smiled in relief and turned his attention back to the onnins and kabrage. Both were almost done, which meant it was almost time to start assembling.

Because this was a more intricate dish, assembly was going to be a lot more labor-intensive. He was glad that he had someone else to help.

Lus moved the last of the cooked onnins to the bowl and turned off the heat under all of the pots of kabrage. He looked over to ask Fresa if she was ready to start plating and found her pulling the sprouts out of the oven.

He grabbed the bowl of mashed prootas and checked the plating instructions, complete with a picture of what it was supposed to look like.

"I'm going to get the mashed prootas down," he called to Fresa, who just nodded at him.

With a medium-sized spoon, he scooped up some prootas and dropped the scoop on each plate, then dragged so the scoop had a little tail across the plate.

He did that with every plate and by the time he had finished, Fresa was coming behind him.

She carried a pot of kabrage and added a small scoop on top of the pile of mashed prootas, using tongs so that there wasn't as much liquid with the kabrage shreds.

Lus returned the nearly empty mashed proota bowl and checked the instructions again. He took the bowl of onnins and a pair of tongs and followed after Fresa, draping a few onnins over the kabrage on each plate.

Fresa came next with the glazed garoot cubes, which she spread artistically around the pile of other vegetables, making sure not to disrupt the tail of mashed prootas.

Finally, Lus came by with the sprouts. He carefully placed exactly three on top of the onnins on each plate, making sure to pick the best-looking sprouts.

And then they were done. Lus stood back for a moment to admire the effect of all of the vegetables so carefully cooked and arranged. The food he made on the Argo often looked and smelled tasty, but it never resembled works of art like this dish did.

And right on cue, his reward popped up.

[Cooking Complete]

[XP Earned: 50]

He sighed at the low XP gain, but he wasn't surprised that Leviathan counted it as only one dish.

Lus dismissed the screens just as Majo came by with the main course: beautifully cooked gervin steaks with some kind of glaze on them.

"Do you need any help?" Lus asked.

Majo nodded. "There's another bin of steaks. I'll start at one end and you start at the other. Set the steak carefully at the end of the mashed proota tail."

Lus nodded and did as Majo asked. He grabbed the other bin of warm steaks and a pair of tongs and began laying the steaks at the end of the mashed proota tails.

The dish looked even more like an art piece now, with the warm, brown meat covered in a rich glaze at one end, the mashed proota tail connecting it to the beautifully piled vegetables, and the shining cubes of garoot around the edge adding a splash of color.

Once he had finished helping Majo, Lus returned the bin to Majo's work station and wandered over to where Fresa was helping Pltr assemble the desserts. They were as intricate as the main course, with some kind of white custard covered in colorful berries alongside a small container of golden sauce. A chocolate cake sat on the other side of the sauce container, decorated with fine sugar.

Finally, all the dishes were ready to go and while the wait staff came to serve them, Lus and the others began washing up the kitchen. They hadn't been asked to serve for quite a while, for which Lus was very grateful.

Instead, they spent as much as two hours after every cooking session doing dishes, sanitizing counters, and sweeping. Since they were on dinner duty, they also had to take out all of the waste in the bins: the food waste went into a special container outside that turned it into compost for the Senator's gardens.

The rest went into a trash receptacle a little further from the back door. Since nobody else ever volunteered for it, Lus often ended up taking out the trash.

He didn't mind though, because it gave him a breath of fresh air and a break from the stuffy kitchen.

They finished up the cleaning and were preparing to head to bed when Sous Chef Crrn poked his head in.

"There's some extra plates. A few guests didn't make it tonight. If you want some, you're welcome to come eat."

Lus shared a look with Fresa, Majo, and Pltr and together they raced out to the now-empty dining room where there were three plates of untouched food.

Before they could decide how to split it all up, Fresa pushed one of the plates at Lus. "I'm not actually very hungry, so you three enjoy. I'm going to head to bed."

"Thank you," he called after her as she left the room.

Majo and Pltr were watching him with interest when he turned back around. He just shrugged, grabbed a fork, and scooped up a bite of vegetables.

"Mmmm."

The others followed suit and soon all three were enjoying what was easily the best meal of Lus' life.

The vegetables were all perfectly cooked. The creamy mashed prootas contrasted nicely with the crisp sprouts, the flavorful kabrage and onnins, and the sweet glazed garoots. The meat was perfectly cooked and seasoned, practically melting in his mouth.

The dessert was amazing. He watched Pltr to figure out how to eat it, then followed her example, pouring the sauce over the custard, then taking a bite of cake and a bite of the custard mixture all together.

All Lus could think was that it was a good thing they didn't usually eat like this or he'd be as big as Relf before he got back to the Argo.