If someone had told her even a week ago that she'd be giving cooking lessons to a bunch of aliens, well, stranger things had happened in her life, but it was still a completely surreal experience.
It was an easy atmosphere once they began, any nervousness she might have felt disappearing as her old teacher persona kicked in. She explained about washing the ingredients not only for safety but to preserve taste, about which knife was best for cutting which type of food, and how different degrees of cooking would change the taste. They might have a finite number of ingredients to work with, but there could be plenty of variation if they mixed up the spices and combinations.
Each of her 'students' was given a task, one chopping the vegetables, one slicing the meat, one melting butter in a set of pans, another measuring out the spices they'd need. After the prep work was done, she showed them how to actually cook each thing - how to tell when the meat was fully cooked through to avoid illness (but pointing out that each type of meat tended to be different), how to keep the vegetables from getting mushy, and when to begin adding the spices for tasting.
By the end of the lesson, they had a somewhat Mediterranean style meal, though the flavor of the vegetables made it a little more Turkish than the Greek she'd been going for. Not that they would understand any of that. The portions that were served on the plates were kept small but filling, and she loaded them up with the plates and utensils and sent them out to their companions in the dining room, staying behind to start on the cleanup.
no subject
It was an easy atmosphere once they began, any nervousness she might have felt disappearing as her old teacher persona kicked in. She explained about washing the ingredients not only for safety but to preserve taste, about which knife was best for cutting which type of food, and how different degrees of cooking would change the taste. They might have a finite number of ingredients to work with, but there could be plenty of variation if they mixed up the spices and combinations.
Each of her 'students' was given a task, one chopping the vegetables, one slicing the meat, one melting butter in a set of pans, another measuring out the spices they'd need. After the prep work was done, she showed them how to actually cook each thing - how to tell when the meat was fully cooked through to avoid illness (but pointing out that each type of meat tended to be different), how to keep the vegetables from getting mushy, and when to begin adding the spices for tasting.
By the end of the lesson, they had a somewhat Mediterranean style meal, though the flavor of the vegetables made it a little more Turkish than the Greek she'd been going for. Not that they would understand any of that. The portions that were served on the plates were kept small but filling, and she loaded them up with the plates and utensils and sent them out to their companions in the dining room, staying behind to start on the cleanup.