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caffeineivore · 4 years

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Commission#4

For @vchanny-og

Prompt: Makoto teaches the girls to cook. To commission me please click here for information! To see what other people are offering up commissions please see here!

The recipe for peanut butter cookies is fool-proof, three-ingredients. Four, if you added chocolate chips. The first time that Makoto had made them, Usagi had eaten two dozen by herself, and when she’d found out how easy they were, she’d begged and whined and pouted until Makoto had agreed to teach her.

“Mamo-chan would love these, don’t you think? Especially if we add chocolate! And peanut butter is healthy and has lots of protein so he wouldn’t even disapprove!”

Eggs. Crunchy peanut butter. Sugar. Chocolate chips. Parchment-lined baking sheet for 11 minutes at 170 degrees Celsius.

Makoto lines up all the ingredients on the counter, helpfully preheats the oven to the correct temperature. She goes out to her balcony to check on her plants, and is halfway through dead-heading some leggy basil when the smell of smoke comes wafting through the open door. Thoroughly alarmed, she drops her clippings and runs in, yanks the oven open to find lumps of what look to be charcoal. Usagi’s wail could pass for a fire engine careening onto the scene complete with lights and sirens.

“I don’t know what happened, Mako-chan! I didn’t do anything except what you asked, and now everything is ruined and there are NO COOKIES and you are probably going to be mad at me!”

With a long, windy sigh, Makoto checks the counter. Peanut butter, check. Sugar, check. Chocolate chips, check-- and if she’s not mistaken, Usagi dumped in about half a cup more than the recipe called for. A bowl of cracked open eggs, yolks almost mockingly bright orange, winked up at her.

Makoto shakes her head, sends Usagi out to the bakery, and cuts up some peppers and tomatoes, retrieves her snipped basil. It seemed like she’d be having omelettes for dinner.

“So we sear the steak at a high temperature in a cast-iron skillet to take advantage of the Maillard reaction for the sake of optimal flavour.” Ami scribbles some type of complex chemical molecule diagram on the margins of the recipe that she’d meticulously copied from Makoto’s cookbook, and does a few equations, and murmurs to herself. “I suppose that makes sense. The temperature of the cooking surface will exceed 140 degrees Celsius, which will cause the reactive carbonyl group of the sugar present in the molecule interact with the nucleophilic amino group of the amino acid.”

“Yeah. Something like that. And then you finish in a low and slow oven so you don’t overcook the meat. This is an expensive cut of steak-- you don’t want it to be cooked to death.”

Makoto did not care over-much about the complex chemical reactions and science behind the process-- it was enough, really, to know that as long as one controlled the temperature and time, and seasoned the pricey cut of beef simply but well (sea salt, coarse-ground pepper and a few sprigs of rosemary), one could have a fancy date night meal in the comfort of one’s own home. “Medium rare is the optimal doneness for steak, in my opinion. Use a food thermometer, cook it to 54 degrees Celsius, then rest for three minutes before slicing, and you’re good to go.”

“I understand the reasoning behind safe internal cooking temperatures,” Ami muses as she follows Makoto’s lead, carefully wiping down the cherry-red surface of her steak with a paper towel to dry it, then sprinkling on salt and pepper on both sides. “Obviously, you don’t want harmful disease-causing microorganisms to grow within your food product, and it either needs to be too hot or too cold for the bacteria and viruses and fungi to survive. But why are there exceptions to the rule? Your recipe says that a rare steak reaches the internal temperature of 51 degrees, a medium rare of 54, a medium of 58 and so on. Doesn’t that put the person who prefers to eat their steak rare at greater risk? How does a restaurant get around that liability? It’s not as though it can do a medical check of the customer to ensure that they have no history of immunological disorders or gastrointestinal problems. And what about nations which choose to ignore these limits altogether? We serve sushi and sashimi here in Japan, which is certainly not cooked to 62 or highter. The French have their Carpaccio and tartare. The Lebanese have their kibbee nayee, and so on.”

Makoto watches as Ami grinds exactly three shakes of pepper onto each side of her steak, then rolls her eyes. “How does your guy like his steak cooked? That’s all I need to know.”

Ami blushes almost as red as the meat she’s fiddling with. “Umm. Medium rare is fine. And he’s hardly ‘my’ guy. More of Mamoru’s, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’ve already split hairs over the science of cooking. I don’t think I have enough energy to argue over the exact nature of your relationship with the mouthy blond menace. Do you think you can put together a nice green salad to go with these steaks? That way we can get done quicker, and I can make myself scarce before he comes here.”

Makoto knows better than to attempt to teach Rei anything too outlandish in the kitchen. Rei is a traditionalist in every sense of the word, and probably would not be caught dead in some hipster gastro-pub serving deconstructed salad of micro-greens topped with lobster foam something-or-another no matter how many Michelin stars and James Beard awards the place might have won. Rei is also reasonably competent with her hands and not particularly accident-prone, so something like steamed gyoza seems right up her alley. Sure, making the filling and dough from scratch is an extra effort, but her friend had never been the type to settle for mediocre and ordinary.

Her first warning that things might not turn out quite so well is when Rei takes a full step back when she sets the food processor on the counter. “What is that?”

Her tone could only have been snottier had the food processor been possibly coated in dung and mildew and maybe plastered with boy band stickers. “It’s a food processor. So we can easily chop up the chives, grind up the pork.”

“I have a perfectly serviceable set of knives here.” Rei turns up her aristocratic little nose and points to the knife-block, which, to be fair, holds a set of heirloom-quality blades. Trust the senshi of war to know her sharp objects, Makoto thinks drolly, but she acquiesces. “All right. You can mince the chives with that, I guess. But I’m using the food processor to grind the meat.”

They both get to work, and Rei glares at the machine as soon as it starts up as though the noise offended her on a personal level. She’s not bad-- indeed, her cuts are decent even by chef standards, but by the time Makoto has finished up her meat and mixed in soy sauce and ginger and garlic and a pinch of allspice and an egg, she’s only about a quarter of the way done with her chives. Slowly and stubbornly, she soldiers on as Makoto measures out flour and water and a pinch of salt.

“What in the world is that?”

Now, the question is directed towards the stand mixer plugged into the wall outlet. Makoto doesn’t even dignify that with a response, and dumps in flour, salt and water, lets fly. Sure, she can knead the dough by hand if she wanted to. And stretch it, cut it, roll it out for the dumpling wrappers. And maybe, if he’s very, very lucky, Jun would have gyoza sometime within the next two years. She’s just about ready to start rolling the dough when Rei finally finishes cutting the chives by hand, and dumps them into the bowl of the ground meat mixture, scowling at the way the damp green mince clings to her fingertips. Makoto finishes mixing the filling, then shows Rei, quickly, how to pinch the edges of the dumpling shut.

She waits until the knives are washed and put away and the pot is simmering before turning to her friend with a mischievous look, tongue firmly tucked in cheek. “Well. I’m sure Jun will appreciate your painstaking work on this meal, doing things the old-fashioned way by hand. He’ll know just how much you care from the sheer effort you went through.”

If looks could kill, Makoto would be buried six feet under complete with an ugly angel-shaped monument and an elaborate wreath of flowers on her grave. She manages to keep a straight face while she takes the dumplings out the pot, then excuses herself. She’s still laughing when she arrives at her own apartment a good half-hour later.

Leave it to Minako, of course, to want to learn the most complicated, exotic dish of them all.

“I think it would be perfect! He doesn’t eat pork or beef, and I love spicy food, and I know you’ll help me and it will turn out wonderfully!”

Makoto eyes the recipe bookmarked on Minako’s phone-- very heavily starred on Pinterest, and apparently the handiwork of some world-renowned celebrity chef. “Indian lamb curry, though? That’s… quite ambitious of you, Minako.” Indeed, the list of ingredients is daunting in and of itself, even for a seasoned home cook, and Minako’s idea of gourmet home cooking generally involved cracking an egg over her boiling ramen noodles.

“Oh don’t you worry. I’ve watched a TON of youtube videos. And cooking reality shows. That Gordon Ramsay is HILARIOUS. And it all goes into the slow cooker, so it hardly requires fancy techniques and knifework and the like. All I have to do is toss everything in there and push a button and spend the rest of my time making myself look gorgeous and sexy, right??”

Makoto eyes the recipe again. She’s pretty sure that Minako has never heard of the term ‘garam masala’ in her life. “Maybe you should at least let me taste it before you serve it. Just in case.”

Six hours later a mostly-decent-looking sample of the dish is placed in front of her. The curry is an appetizing orange-brown colour, and the kitchen smells invitingly of spices. Minako had even taken the time to toss some finely chopped parsley onto the meat for a pop of bright green. Makoto is pleasantly surprised, and gives Minako an approving smile which lasts all of three seconds-- the three seconds it takes to put a piece of the meat in her mouth. She gags, and spits it out. “Oh, GOD! What did you put in this?! It tastes like the Dead Sea… if the Dead Sea were on fire!”

Minako shoots her a wide-eyed look from those baby blues, thoroughly bewildered. “Welllllll… all these videos said to salt with every step of the cooking pricess. So I did. It was probably like close to half a cup of salt total, because I added some after every other ingredient. And then I didn’t have tomato paste so I substituted ketchup. Basically the same thing, you know? And I didn’t have the tablespoon of fresh ginger, so I used a tablespoon of ginger powder, and shelled pistachios look just like cardamom pods for like a tenth of the price, and I used Old Bay seasoning instead of Bay leaves… But the only thing I absolutely couldn’t figure out at all was this ‘garam masala’ stuff! So I left it out.”

Without a word, Makoto dumps the entire contents of the slow cooker into the trash, picks up her phone, and dials the local Indian restaurant, Within short order, two takeout containers are delivered-- an Indian lamb curry, and an accompanying container of cheese naan and rice.

“Just… put it in your own plates,” Makoto tells the other girl, shaking her head between gulps of water. “The kitchen smells like you’ve been cooking all day. It’ll be our little secret and he will never, ever know.”

#fanfiction #fanfic #sailor moon #inner senshi #commission #vchanny-og

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sweep-the-seconds · 6 years

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Recognizing a Champion

Where do the best watches in the world come out of? And I can certainly go ahead and say that America is not the answer. No, the best quality and most luxurious timepieces come from Europe. In my opinion, Germany has one of the most beautiful watch brands in the world. Of course I would most likely be shot for not saying the Swiss don’t make the best watches in the world, but I do believe they are equal.

Swiss watches are easily the most recognizable category that is synonymous with accuracy and quality. They have been that way for a very long time. The only reason we even have Swiss watchmaking is for the fact that they were tired of paying prices from the British. So they walked away and said “fine, we will do it on our own”. I know this is a gross oversimplification of what happened, but you get the point. Without this turn of events we wouldn’t have some the big names like AP, Patek, or even Rolex as well as some technological that are still being used over a hundred years later. Switzerland became all about its image in horology and has since evolved into the mark of excellence in watchmaking. For good reason. There are few things that can beat a quality Swiss timepiece, or even the joy and beauty of it on your wrist. Whether it is a Rolex or a Patek, precision and reliability versus the added benefit of being meticulously detailed. Down to millimeter sections that require a microscope to accomplish. The money is well worth it, and it doesn’t matter if the budget is ten-thousand or a hundred thousand, it is a safe bet that you will get your money’s worth with something out of this country.

As amazing as the Swiss are, I have an equal love for German watchmaking. Having not been around or as prominent for as long as its counterpart, the German brands have fought to make a name for themselves. And not only has it proven itself in many ways by the way of design, reliability, and value, we can see that the passion driving these watches is on the same level as any Swiss manufacturer. Even at the bottom end of the price spectrum, we have NOMOS Glasshutte punching well above its weight. What we end up with is an in-house movement, with beautiful finishing, and a fresh design that can only be described as German. Minimalistic, smart, and beautiful watches come from NOMOS that have an unbelievable value. For the money, the quality of the movements, the beauty of it, and the original design set this apart from many other watch brands. There are few that can pull of what NOMOS has done.

Another, easily coming in at a tied-for-first holy grail watch of mine, is A. Lange & Sohne. Again, they have not been around as long as the Swiss have, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at any of their catalog. The amount of sheer effort and care put into each watch is mind blowing, but quality like this will cost a hefty sum. Details like beveling every piece of the movement is painstaking and can weeks per piece. It is truly a brand that has taken the German idea of being straight to the point and concise and given it some flair that is in this returned fashion. It is minimalistic without being minimalistic. It is the understated flair that makes the A. Lange so great. Personally, I believe they are the most beautiful movements of any watch manufacturer in the world. They are amazing in photographs, but it really needs to be looked at in person. Picked up and examined. Tell me then that the German watchmakers are at least punching at the same level as Swiss, because most would have me beaten in the streets for suggesting that Swiss could be beat.

This is not to say that I would never buy a Swiss timepiece, I am wearing one now with Geneve proudly painted onto the dial. But I do say that there is healthy competition between these nations. And for the best, it keeps everyone performing at their best. Now not only do the Swiss brands compete with each other, we have a brand that is becoming more appreciated and picked up over the last twenty years that can get in the ring and compete with any of the heavyweight contenders that is thrown at it. Germany has given us affordable in-house movements with unique design, as well as some unbelievable quality that rivals the best of the best. This only brings out the best of everybody, and I believe that die-hard Swiss watch supporters need to tip their hats to a powerhouse that is here to stay.

#watch #patek #patekphilippe #alangesohne #swiss #germany #debate #opinion #versus #thoughts #rant #geneve #bauhaus

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