Cooking to Die For

Cillian smiled brightly at the camera. He was clad in a pant and jacket ensemble comprised of red leather and silver colored studs. He had no shirt beneath the jacket, but over it was a white body apron covering his chest that bore the words “Boar Hat” on the front. He had shaggy, silver colored hair and vibrant eyes as crimson as his clothes. He was exceptionally tall, standing several inches over six feet, with a body that was lean with corded muscles. He was standing in a rather large kitchen that was pristinely clean, the counter laden with a number of food stuffs, bowls, utensils, and other such kitchen accessories. There was a glimmer of excitement in his eyes, as he was clearly looking forward to everything that was about to happen.

“Hey there, and welcome to the very first episode of Cooking to Die For! My name is Cillian duCrosse, and this is my cohost Ahote Laspor.” He gestured to the man standing next to him, giving him a quick moment to say hello to the viewers if he wanted. “Today, we’re going to walk you through the makings of a full four course meal and dessert, with a dinner most of you probably know and love but haven’t seen presented quite in this fashion before! We’re going to start with some pesto lasagna rolls that are going to be accompanied with some home made breadsticks and a zucchini and tomato ragu. Then, we’re gonna follow it all up with a couple slices of Ahote’s delectable chocolate mousse pie!”

Cillian slapped his stomach enthusiastically like he was priming up a fat food belly for the upcoming feast, despite the fact that he had almost no fat to speak of on his body whatsoever. Looking over to Ahote, he told the man, “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get this fucking party started..!” Clapping his hands together, he moved over to the sink and washed his hands real quick and then came back over to where all the food was laid out. “Alright, for the lasagna rolls here is what we’re going to need: A box of lasagna noodles, unsalted butter, flour, milk, one egg, ricotta cheese, spinach, mozzarella, parmesan, pesto, olive oil, red pepper flakes, and a bit of salt and pepper.”

As he named each ingredient, he pulled them all aside, separating them from the rest of the stuff the two of them had gathered for their recorded demonstration. Pulling out a large pot, he filled it with water and set it over the gas burning stove, turning the heat up to high. “So the first thing you’re gonna want to do is cook the pasta. Lasagna noodles can take a while so we’re gonna go ahead and get this water heated up. If you want to get your water to boiling a little faster, a good tip is to put some salt in it to lower the boiling point.” He picked up the salt grinder and crunch a healthy sprinkling of freshly ground salt inside the water before setting the lid on top and leaving it to boil.

“While that’s warming up, we’re going to get started on our bechamel sauce.” He took out a skillet and set it on another burner, turning the heat on medium. As he verbalised the instructions, his movements followed suit, gathering up the amounts the recipe called for and adding them to the saucepan. “Put about two tablespoons of the butter in there and let it get nice and melty. Then we’re gonna add two tablespoons of flour and cook it for about two minutes until it’s got a nice toast color. While I’m whisking this, my buddy here is gonna give you guys a surprise drink recipe to have while you prepare your meal!”

He would turn the facetime over to Ahote then, giving his counterpart the spotlight to do his bartending thing. Once his companion had finished, Cillian finished adding the rest of the ingredients for the bechamel sauce, incorporating the milk, salt and pepper, egg, spinach, every cheese in existence, and the pesto. “Now that the sauce is done, we’re going ot get this lasagna ready to bake! First you want to oil down your baking pan and then put a thin layer of the bechamel sauce down. Then, we’re gonna lay these cooked lasagna noodles out flat on a clean surface, spread a healthy portion of the sauce on them and roll them up into little pinwheels.”

He did all of that just so, laying each roll up on the baking sheet with just a little bit of distance between them before taking the remaining sauce and drizzling it over the tops of all the noodles. “Mmm, yes. Trust me folks, this smells just as delicious as it looks. Now we’re gonna let this bake for about thirty minutes, removing the foil covering when there’s ten minutes left of the bake time.” Lifting up the baking sheet, he opened the preheated oven and shoved the pan inside before closing it and setting a timer for twenty minutes. Licking some of the sauce drippings off his fingers, Cillian hummed happily at the glorious taste. “My dude, you have to try this.”

He grabbed a clean spoon and scooped up a bit more of the remnants of the sauce off the pan, offering it to Ahote to try with a big doofy grin on his face. Afterward, he turned back to the camera. “I’m going to get my station cleaned up here in preparation for the next dish, and in the meantime Ahote here is going to walk you through one of the delicious side dishes we have planned!” And with that, he got to worked tossing out the trash he’d accumulated during the cooking and moved all his dirty dishes over to one of the large basins of the sink, getting right to work on cleaning everything off so he would have more room and fresh utensils to cook his next dish with.  

How fortuitous for Cillian that he should find some mild kinship in cooking with a man who also happened to be a bartender! The only thing the lanky man enjoyed as much as food was alcohol, so even as he stood there and stirred his dish, his crimson eyes watched Ahote with invested interest as he mixed the vodka, liqueur, and espresso together. They had already discussed beforehand that Ahote himself, ironically, did not drink despite owning a bar and being a bartender. So essentially, once his companion finished making the drink, it was going to be Cillian’s to partake of. Cillian wasn’t necessarily much of a coffee drinker, but he did enjoy alcohol with coffee flavors, so he was looking forward to getting to try the mix.

He quickly finished up his dishes after turning the camera back over to Ahote for the ragu dish, and once they were washed and dried Cillian lifted the Espresso Martini to his lips and took a sip. “Mmmm…” he hummed happily while Ahote chopped up his vegetables, “That’s some good shit.” The silver haired necromancer took a moment to hang out on the side and watch his companion work, taking a short rest from his first dish and washing dishes to observe his cooking partner and appreciate his culinary skill.

By the time Ahote looked to be finishing up the ragu, Cillian had already drank the whole martini and set the dirty glass in the sink, and was getting everything set up for the breadsticks. “Thanks, Ahote! Now, any recipe using yeast tends to take a while, so if you’re taking notes for this dinner at home I recommend that you start with the breadsticks. However, for purposes of this show we’ve used a few shortcuts so that we can give you a final product without over extending our time. Here’s what you’re going to need.” Once more pointing to each item on the counter, he listed them off. “Flour, yeast of some kind -- it can be active dry or instant, either is fine -- granulated sugar, salt, vegetable oil, some butter, and garlic powder.”

Reaching under the counter, he pulled out a large Lacri-Aid kitchen mixer. “You can do this by hand if you want, but it’s much easier to do with one of these puppies cause they come with a dough hook that’s better for mixing. Whatever you use, make sure you have a nice big bowl. The first thing to do is let the yeast dissolve. Follow the instructions on your yeast packets on how to properly activate the yeast. Usually it’s letting it set in a little bit of warm water and sugar for ten minutes or so. I already got that process started while Ahote was working on the ragu, as you can see here.” He turned the mixing bowl toward the camera, where the cameraman zoomed in and showed the yeast mixture inside.

Then, he set the bowl into the mixer and secured it in place. “Next, we’re going to add in the rest of the sugar that we didn’t use in the yeast activation, a cup and a half of flour, and about a teaspoon and three fourths of the salt and oil. Use the regular paddle attachment to mix this all together if you’re using a Lacri-Aid to get it all smoothly combined.” As he spoke, he dumped in each of the ingredients and turned the machine on, which quickly got to work mixing everything together until it was perfectly combined.

“Once that’s all set, we’re going to switch attachments to the dough hook, add the remaining flour into the mixture, and let the hook turn the dough on a low speed.” Cillian dumped the rest of the flour in and set the machine up until it was whirring lightly. “We’re looking for a nice smooth, elastic finish. Since yeast is a bit weird to work with, it’s possible you may need to add a little more flour to get the desired texture. Just keep an eye on it and add a little more at a time until you’ve got what you want, but you really shouldn’t need to put in more than another fourth cup of flour at most.”

He stepped away from the mixer and pulled out a large clear mixing bowl. “While that’s doing its thing, we’re going to prepare for proofing the yeast. You want a nice big bowl that leaves room for the dough to grow. Make sure it’s nice and greased up so the dough doesn’t stick. I recommend using butter cause that will give the dough a little more flavor, but a light oiling could work too.” Putting on a plastic glove on one hand, he scooped up a couple fingerfuls of butter and rubbed it along the sides of the bowl, smearing the stuff until it evenly coated the inside surface from top to bottom. Then, he removed the glove and tossed it in the trash.

Turning off the mixer, Cillian grinned down at it a bit. “Alright, that looks about perfect. Now we need to let this proof, which takes quite a bit of time. So remove it from the mixter and put it in the greased bowl, and make sure to cover it with some kind of saran wrap. For proper proofing, you’re going to want to put the covered bowl in a spot where it won’t get too much light or too much air current. A proving drawer is best if you have a kitchen with one of those, but otherwise an unused oven or even a microwave will work.” Turning behind him, he opened up a large microwave and set the bowl in before shutting the door and leaving the dough there without turning the microwave on. “Now, that needs to sit for about an hour and a half. However, I did all these steps before the start of the episode so we could have some already risen dough to continue with.”

Reaching down to the second oven that was currently turned off and cold, he pulled out one of the two bowls he’d prepared early. Inside was dough much like what he’d just finished making, but it was almost twice the size, filling up the entire bowl rather than only half of it. He dumped the mixture out onto a cutting board and set the bowl in the sink. “Next step is to punch a bit of the air out of the dough. You can use a utensil for this if you really like but your fist is fine too. Don’t flatten it completely; you just wanna get out some of the air. Then, we’re gonna divide this into twelve equal portions.”

Taking a large ulu knife out of a drawer, he quickly cut the ball of dough in half and then continued to cut each subsequent side in half until there were twelve even pieces. He set them all aside long enough to put a light dusting of flour on the counter to keep the dough from sticking to it, and then picked up a chunk of dough and started rolling it. “We’re gonna try to rope these into sticks about nine inches long. Try to make them as equal in thickness as you can all the way across, cause you want them to cook evenly the whole way through. When we’re done with each of these we’re gonna set them on a lined baking sheet.”

He rolled out each stick and put them on a sheet that had some baking parchment on it. “Perfect. Now we’re going to let these prove again. Like I said before, using yeast is a time consuming process! We’re looking for about an hour on these this time around. And, as before, I did this step ahead of time as well.” Heading over to his actual proving drawer, he opened it and pulled out a baking sheet that had twelve breadsticks already laid out on them, these ones slightly larger than the ones he just finished making. Putting the new ones in the drawer, he showed the older batch to the camera. “Look at those… beautiful, and ready to bake! Put them in the oven at four hundred twenty-five degrees, where they’re gonna bake for about eleven to thirteen minutes.”

Cillian shoved them in the oven and set the timer. “Once they’re done and out of the oven, just brush a little butter on them while they’re still hot and sprinkle on some salt and garlic powder to taste. Then, they’re ready to eat, and you’ve got a full course dinner all ready to serve! But of course, what would be dinner without a mouth watering dessert? Why don’t you tell the people what sweet dish you’ve got planned for us tonight, Ahote?”