;; five flavors of life (p)

[❥;; bexx]

"When you think of a dish you want to make, you have to be very careful as to think about the entire dish." she would go on to say as Sayuri began to jot down notes on a notepad. "You not only have to think of the main part of your dish but also what you're going to put on the side and as garnish. These things make a dish complete." Reina told her that for the dish she was going to make today for her, she was going to cook steak with black pepper drizzled with a light cream sauce, a garlic and onion pasta , served with an appetizer of Caesar salad. For everything to work out perfectly, she would need to have all things planned out before she even started to actually prepare the food in the kitchen.

Next she would walk over to the kitchen cabinets, bringing out one large plate, one small bowl, two medium sized bowls, two spoons, and a small sized stainless steel container. "It's very important that you have everything ready before you start to cook. You're allowed to go get anything you may need in an event that you've forgotten but most of time you have to be prepared if you're working by yourself. If you have assistants, they can bring you what you need. But this increases efficiency." Sayuri noticed how much preparation was actually needed even before the actual cooking part of the preparations had started. Even though she had watched her sensei perform these steps in the academy school kitchen, having Reina do a one on one walkthrough made it easier for her to take in. 

"Next is the actual cooking preparations. Remember that each knife serves a different purpose in the kitchen and must be marked clearly because a knife used to cut raw meat can never ever be used to cut vegetables." She would ask Sayuri to bring the knife block that contained at least twenty seven different knives. There were little stickers on them that Reina explained she had put in case she forgot which knife was used to cut what. She marveled at the collection of blades and watched carefully. First she brought the onion and the tomatoes to the sink and washed the tomatoes with cold water and peeled the onion. She said that ingredients always needed a thorough was regardless of how clean she believed they were.

Next she told her that the actual preparation of the ingredients needed to be done in a perfectly planned order. Chefs always started with marinating the meat of the dish since the meat needed time to sit in the marinade so that all of the flavors would lock into it. Reina started with applying a little pinch of salt and pepper with a little bit of Dijon mustard and rubbed the steak in the marinade. Then she would let the meat sit in the fridge until she needed it when cooking time actually came. Then she would wash the cutting board that she had used thoroughly with hot water, because she had been marinating raw beef. She would move on to the dicing and chopping. 

First she was going to dice a clove of garlic and put the diced garlic into the extra small stainless steel container. She explained the garlic was going to be used for the pasta, which would be cooked last and so it needed a seperate container. Then she would cut the onion taking note that onions stung your eyes and would make you want to cry. But with practice the crying and stinging would get easier to handle. The chopped onions would be put on one side of the plate as well. Afterward, she would grind the block of cheese she had taken out and put the grinded cheese to one side. The remainder of the cheese would go back in the fridge as too long of an exposure to the outside air may damage and mold the cheese faster.  

 

[❥;; bexx]

And as she walked back to the preparation area after putting away the cheese, she would set down her knife and once again take the cutting board and the knife to the sink board. It was absolutely vital that she remembered how important it was to wash down equipment fast because she didn't want to end up having to wash everything at the last minute. She could benefit from the extra time she would have. Besides, if she knew it was unlikely that she would need to use the particular piece of equipment for the rest of the cooking process, it would be much safer to wash and clean them before continuing. Putting the knife and cutting board on the dish racks to dry, she would carry on. She was almost ssone now.

Salad is the easiest thing that we have to cook today and it's always best served cold. So we will start with the salad." And with that, Reina would take the lettuce and peel off the first layer of it, telling Sayuri that most chefs will not use the first later. She also washed and dried the romain lettuce saying that the process of using two paper towels toclean off the water was very important for Romain lettuce. The water if not cleaned could make the lettuce all soggy and what they were looking for in salads was the crispiness of the lettuce. She was going to use four big leaves of the romain and the put the lettuce back in the fridge after. Once that was done, she would turn on her heel and make her way to the stove.

"The next part of the salad is to pan fry the bacon so that we can cut the cooked bacon into bits to top it off at the end. She removed the packaging from the raw bacon, picking out three slices and then setting the rest aside. She had then used a medium sized skillet and turned on the stove. Since it was an electrical stove, she would have to wait a couple minutes for the pan to heat up thoroughly. She cautioned Sayuri to never put oil when cooking bacon since bacon itself had enough oil that would be released to the pan to help cook it if the pan was hot enough. A small sizzling noise would come from the pan as she dropped the slices of bacon into it. It was quite easy to cook and wouldn't take long before she turned the heat off and drained the oil down the sink. She told her that some people liked to save the fat of the bacon for later purposes of the dish since it provided all the flavor that was from the bacon but for her dish today it was unnecessary.

As she waited for it to cool, she would chop the romain lettuce into medium sized pieces, throwing away the ends of it and toss the romain into the large bowl. Then she would head over to the fridge and grab the premade Caesar dressing she had made herself earlier that day and scoop spoonfuls of it into the bowl as well. She told Sayuri that too much dressing would take away the crispiness of the lettuce so she had to measure based on how much lettuce she was going to use. Too much dressing would also overwhelm the palette which wasnot what she was looking for especially in an appetizer. She would then use another knife to cut up the cooked bacon into little bits and add the grinded cheese all into the big bowl. She would end with a few mixes with her spoon.

Putting the raw bacon and also her finished Caesar salad into the fridge, she was now ready to actually start cooking the main course. First she would take out a pot and fill it half with tap water. She turned on the other side of the stove and began to boil the water that was in the pot. It was going to be used for cooking the raw pasta and since pasta was naturally hard, it would take a long time before it would boil to an acceptable softness. While she was waiting for the pot to boil, she would reuse the skillet she had used to cook the bacon to now cook the steak.

 

[❥;; bexx]

Reina would first need to heat the skillet and while she was doing this, she would retrieve the marinated steak out of the refridgerator. By then the skillet was already very hot and she would add olive oil to the pan. Smoke began to rise almost immediately after the oil hit the pan. "Olive oil, unlike other types of oil gives off a huge puff of smoke as you can see. Your movements will have to be fast before your whole stove is covered with smoke. Olive oil adds an extra flavor that other oils don't." Sayuri jotted that down on the notepad. She would remember this for future reference. She watched as Reina placed the steak in the skillet.

The waft of smoke that came up carried the rich aroma of the meat. She remembered that her sensei had said how beef was the easiest, yet sometimes the hardest meat to cook properly. There were three main categories of classification of how well a steak would be cooked: rare, medium rare and well done. But a good chef would hardly ever cook the meat to well done because it loses it's texture if it becomes fully cooked. Only when a customer requests that the steak be cooked to well done, the chef would assume medium rare. Medium rare was pinkish in the middle that would provide enough cooked meat and also give the meat tenderness.

Naturally the time needed to cook steak was about dive minutes depending on how thick the cut is and how well the customers wants it. Many can not see pinkin their meat and thus would request well done. The chef would need to accomodate to the customer's wants. Usually Reina would take a thick cut of steak and preferrably grill it but because she was only trying to teach Sayuri the basics, she decided to cook it in a pan instead. Because the steak was a little thicker than normal, she would need to turn the beef to a vertical position so that even the parts that connected the two sides of the meat could be cooked as well.

They were almost there! As she plated the finished steak onto the big plate, she would turn off the heat of both the boiling pasta and the heat used to cook the steak. Having tasted a little piece of a string of pasta, the softness was just right. She would bring the pot over to the sink and drain the pot of all it's water, leaving just the pasta in the pot. Then she would set the pot on one of the unused parts of the stove, away from direct heat source and then put the diced garlic from before into the skillet. Because the skillet was still very hot from cooking the meet, the garlic browned quickly. Then she took the onion and stirred it with the cooked garlic; turning the heat back up to low so as not to burn the garlic.

Finally she would put the pasta that was in the pot into the skillet and give it a few tosses, allowing the garlic and onions to mix together with the pasta. A little salt and pepper was added in while tossing to add extra flavor. Then she would plate the pasta onto the other side of the big plate, nestled beside the steak. But she wasn't quite done yet. There were just a couple of steps left until everything would be complete. Sayuri could feel the heat in the kitchen as she stood watching.

 

[❥;; bexx]

The final parts in the cooking of the dish would end with the creamy sauce that would be poured on top of the steak. She would first open the carton of cream and pour a little into the still hot skillet. The cream would need to be reduced under high heat so that clumps wouldn't form. Taking the second of the two spoons, she would gently stir the cream, adding some butter and a little bit of milk and just let it simmer for a bit. She still wanted the creamy texture of a sauce so overheating it would be a problem. It was relatively important that she grasped the right timing. She would also take a basil leaf and just add little pieces of it into the sauce to add color and flavor.

As the basil was added, Reina would turn down the heat. She took a little taste of the cream sauce and decided to add a pinch of salt as it was lacking and then turned off the heat altogether. Then she would bring the sauce over to the plate and lavish it in spoonfuls on the steak. Once this was all done, she would take the leftover sauce which wasn't a lot and drizzles it lightly onto the pasta, giving it added flavor. The other basil leaves she had prepared were used as decoration as plating was just as important as the actual quality of the food. Food needed to look visually appealing for customers to want to eat it. Then she would bring out the salad from the fridge and plate that into a medium sized bowl with sone extra cheese on top.

So now the cooking was finally done as she cleaned the plate a little with a white cloth in case any of the oil from the skillet touched it. She was a very picky person. She brought the plate out to the bar table and told Sayuri to enjoy while she herself back into the kitchen to take care of the pots and pans which needed to be washed. Reina disappeared into the kitchen again as Sayuri set her notepad on the bar table and say on the high chair, marveling at the plate of food before her. Only while seeing her cook did the thought of hunger come to her. She hadn't eaten all day. Now she was dying to taste it. She would start with the appetizer.

Caesar salad seemed easy enough to make back she knew it was hard to make to taste good. She used her fork and jabbed at a lettuce, almost like she was attacking it. The crispiness of the romain was definitely there since she almost had a hard time just eating it because it was so crispy. But she'd always been a fan of Caesar salad and so it was natural that she would like what Reina had done. The sauce wasn't overpowering at all as she hadn't out that much on it and the whole appetizer was very appealing to her tastebuds. She would then take to the main course of the dish.

And the moistness of the steak would surprise her. Sayuri wasn't too fond of beef because there were always some restaurants in Yukigakure which would serve very hard to chew beef. She had become so sick of the blandness that she hadn't had any kind of beef in a long time. She smiled as she took the first small bite out of the steak. That was the texture that she liked. It was moist and tender, what beef should be. The pasta was also rich in garlic and onion flavor without the garlic being overwhelming. The cream sauce was perfect for both components of the dish. Reina had done a very good job and Sayuri was beginning to envy her skill.

 

[❥;; bexx]

While she was still enjoying her steak and pasta, Reina had already finished cleaning the pots and pans. She came out of the kitchen and then asked for Sayuri's opinion of her dish, telling her that it was one of the simpler dishes she had first learned when she had just started to cook. The biggest challenge that she had with this was the time management because everything needed to be done in a certain order so as not to lose track in the middle. "It's always easier to watch someone cook a dish than to actually cook it yourself. I've tried this dish at least ten times before I got all components and another ten times until I handled just the right flavoring and seasoning." She told her that it was hard to grasp everything at once. Sayuri praised Reina for her skill, telling her how much she envied her abilities and talents.

"I really don't have much talent, Sayuri-chan. I wasn't born with genes that gave me this though my father has been a restaurant owner almost all his life." she would go on to mention how she had loved food since a very young age and kept loving food growing up. Her father was apparently a very talented chef himself who was notorious for several dishes in the small town. Growing up alongside her father, she spent most of her time in the kitchen with him, developing the interest in cooking. And it heightened when she saw how happy the customers were after a meal at the restaurant. She had wanted to be like her father.

Sayuri had the same kind of experience though her parents died when she was but a baby. She told Reina how similar her situation was and how fond of food she was. Seeing such a similarity sparked an idea into Sayuri's head. She would ask the girl if she could be her apprentice and learn from her. Reina shook her head. "I myself am just an apprentice chef. An apprentice chef wouldn't be right to have an apprentice. But what I can do for you is give you a chance to follow my father as an apprentice chef. You're allowed to come into the kitchen just to watch and learn." She was already very grateful for this rare opprtunity.

Reina told her that the best way to learn was to practice practice practice. With practice came perfection. She told her that if she wasn't able to make the dish the first few times to not give up easily and perservere. With each time she practiced she could tone her skill and realize small mistakes. She would take the analogy of learning a jutsu which took lots and lots of practice regardless of the rank. But giving up in the middle would mean a waste of time for what she had already started so it was just not an option. Reina was certain Sayuri would become a great cooking nin in the future if her passion and love for cooking doesn't fade. It was all so simple, really. She would nod her head in understanding while finishing up Reina's creation. 

Half an hour or so later, Sayuri would find herself walking out of the little town and into the country of Yuki no Kuni. Her notepad that she had used to document all the important steps of the cooking process was safely tucked in her cape. Making her way through the snow didn't feel like so much of a pain. Her spirits were high and her mood heartened by having found a new friend who shared the same passion she had for cooking and food. She would go back to the mansion and carry out the first attempt at making her first ever dish. Just the mere thought of that excited her as she trudged through the inches of snow and headed back into the village of Yukigakure no Sato.

 

[❥;; bexx]

From that day onward, Reina and Sayuri became the best of friends. They shared recipes with one another and would use the wee hours of the morning to raid the restaurant kitchen before the official kitchen staff came in to experiment. Sayuri would take quite awhile trying to learn that one dish that Reina had shown her. But as her friend had said; practice did make perfect. She had made many errors, big and small over the trials of trying to cook the dish but after about ten tries, she finally was starting to get the hang of it. It felt so good to her to be able to do something right. And so, one day she would go back to the little town restaurant and coon for Reina, to return the favor.

Reina decided it would be best if she stayed in the kitchen with her friend while she cooked, just to give her any hints here and there if she needed it. Not that she was particularly scared Sayuri would set the kitchen on fire. The taking out of the ingredients and washing of them as well as the preparation of the bowls needed weren't much of a problem. Reina nodded her head as she saw how fluid her movement was around the kitchen. There was no anxiety, no panic. She could tell that her friend definitely did a lot of practice before she showed up at the kitchen wanting to cook for her. She was pleased at her progress.

It was like watching a performance pm a personal stage in a kitchen. The chef was the only actor and the food was the final product. The process would be like the singing or acting that came in between. She smiled encouragingly at her friend as she continued. Sayuri did have a very good memory as the positioning of all utensils and knives were different from her own kitchen. But again there was no panic involved. She knew where everything was and took what she needed when she needed it. It seemed that she followed the exact of steps that Reina had shown her earlier without flaw. Definitely impressive

She also noted that she wasn't quick to finish, focusing on the details of everything that she did while carrying it out within reasonable speed. Reina had seen many people have the mistaken belief that cooking with speed automatically meant that the person had to whizz through every step. Often the final product would come out sloppy and lose presentation points. Thank god Sayuri wasn't like one of them. She was more methodical and organized, focusing a little heavier on fine details. It was great to watch her work. Reina could see the determination in her eyes and on her face as she carried out each task. This was what real chefs were like. The end result wasn't all that mattered. Everything in between had their individual significance. 

She watched as Sayuri went from dicing, to chopping to grinding and then washing and finall to cooking. Every step was followed in sequence and she never had even a second of hesitation. She was able to grab hold of the flavoring techniques too which Reina had originally thought would have caused problems for her. Perhaps it had once upon a time. But now it was like she had been born to be in a kitchen cooking. It was definitely one hell of a performance from a mere academy student. She was more convinced than ever before as she watched Sayuri cook that she would be one of the greatest chefs with more practice. There was talent and skill which unfortunately some people who called themselves renowned chefs merely lacked and boasted about half the time.

  

[Axcel]

+100

[❥;; bexx]

It was quite surprising to note how she suddenly would remember Reina while trying to cook an edible meal on a stranded island. She did need to thank both Reina and Reina's father. They both allowed her to spend much of her free time at their restaurant, helping out in the kitchen. A lot of the techniques she now knew today were thanks to the teachings of her friend's father andhis team of men. How long ago it felt since that day when she met her culinary friend. It had been a long time. Back then she had only been an academy student and today she was starting to climb the ladder of the shinobi ranks, realizing her dreams one rank at time. She began to wonder where Reina was since Yuki no Kuni had been destroyed by the unforgiving war.

It was hard to imagine the losses the family had to suffer because of the sudden events. Their business would have fallen to ruins, their family forced to flee the country. It sort of brought her mind to focusing on what had happened to the Yukina Clan. She was certain that the elders would have retreated to another land by now since they were masters of the clan. But what of the other clan members and the villagers of Yukigakure no Sato? She knew that Yuki was overall a small village compared to the great shinobi villages and the country therefore was also smaller, but there were hundreds of people living on the land. Where had they gone?

She was not particularly pleased that she didn't know the fates of the people she had lived with. There were many elderly people who she knew must have suffered when they were trying their hardest to flee as she recalled that the village's neighboring little towns were inhabited mostly by the elderly or small children; two of the most vulnerable groups of people. They would not have had the ability to defend themselves against the force of the war. She only prayed that everyone was safe either in hiding or having pledged allegiance to another nation and it's village for security. Just like Tomomi had done.

This was why she hated wars and even fighting in general sometimes. Though it differs when she becomes totally insane because insanity takes away all rationality out of a person. But in her sane state she hated wars as they did no good except destroy things--physical buildings and sometimes everything that a person had gone to so much trouble trying to build. If she had had a house in Yukigakure and the war had demolished it, she wouldn't be too happy. It merely seemed like no one cared about the consequences of wars; only that they had to happen for some sort of gain. It was unfathomable why the world turned into such a horrible place. 

Why had Yuki been hit too? Though she felt for all the other small countries and hidden villages which had been demolished by the war, she was perplexed at why Yuki was hit too. They were one of those countries that didn't really fit in with the other countries. Not many people wanted to visit because of the constant blizzards and heavy snowfall. There was little to nothing that could be gained with the striking of Yuki even though she was more than aware that this was just her opinion. She hated the fact that there were so many unknowns and that she wouldn't be able to find out the real truth unless someone were to tell her what really happened during that time. If only she could find the Yukikage--

  

[❥;; bexx]

She was so deep in thought that she didn't even hear Ren approach her until he physically grabbed hold of the now almost burnt fish and asked her if she was alright. She would blink a couple of times before saying that she was. She explained to him that she had just been deep in thought, as if he couldn't see that from her expression and the fact that she was zoning out. He had come back from another round of wood chopping and had brought back three very large bundles of wood. He had really worked very hard the last couple of days and she could only repay him by cooking him a meal as nnest she could with whatever she had. By now the icy cutting board, stand and the little knife she had created using Yuki no Kami had all melted back into liquid and was adding moisture to the sand particles. 

While he took a seat on the sandy plains and put down his cargo of wood, he would peer into the cloth that was still wrapping the rest of the vegetables she had collected earlier that morning. He questioned her where she found them and she responded that she had found a clearing beyond the muddly slope she had slipped on which housed plenty of ripe vegetables. Though he didn't seem to care about the vegetables. Instead he cared more about the fact that she had gone again down the muddy slope when she had an injured foot all because she wanted to cook something for him to eat. 

He then spent the next few minutes telling her how silly she was and that there could have been a chance that she would injure herself even more. She told him that she had been fully aware of such but knew also that her capabilities were far beyond that of what he believed--which was somewhat true. Being a shinobi didn't mean much but it certainly meant she knew her limits. And so she had already stopped listening to what he had to say very soon and instead focused her gaze on the glistening ocean waters. A sad sigh would escape her lips as she stared at the sparkling water.

Realizing that she had stopped listening entirely, he would return her sad sigh with his own exasperated sigh. But he wouldn't go any further than that as he didn't see much of a point. Instead he would focus his attention to the almost burnt fish that was still in his hand. Although it was charred a bit, he was eager to try it since he hadn't quite had much fish for awhile now and had begun to miss it. He didn't really fish while he was on the water, preferring to explore different places or just paddle his boat instead since quite frankly, he didn't know how to cook so even if he caught fish, he wouldn't be able to eat it

Taking a glorious chunk of meat off the fish, his eyes would widen as he started to chew. When be finally swallowed and found his voice again, he complimented her on her culinary skills, telling her that she didn't seem like the kind of person that would know how to cook. She had to giggle at that statement as she recalled how many people had told her that. At least he enjoyed the meal as he quickly polished off the rest of the fish and left only bare bones to what had been a fish only moments before. It felt good to bs complimented, like she had finally done something right for a change. She had forgotten when the last time she had been complimented was and savored every moment of it.



{EXIT}

  

[Messatsu!]

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