[OTA] comfort foods

[st_ackeddeck]

Emma had spent more of the last four days in front of a fire with her cards than she wanted to admit to herself. She wouldn't even let herself think what Sabine or Dani would've said if they'd seen her. When not there, she'd been curled up in a blanket nest she made in one of the twin beds upstairs, crying until she felt dryer than the desert outside. It still felt too empty to sleep until exhaustion didn't leave her a choice, but it was better than the king bed would've been. She'd left that for her roommate. He'd been back sometime while she was upstairs, gotten his bag, and left again. That was okay. She didn't really want to people, and she'd only hurt him with her face, and her not knowing what to say or not make things worse just by existing.

Four days of only leaving the room long enough to get a bite to eat she wouldn't even taste was ridiculous, and when lying there unable to sleep got to be too much, she showered and dressed. Chop vegetables, boil water, Dani would've said. Shortly before dawn, the hotel kitchen was empty. Emptier than the castle's would've probably been that time of night.

With no appetite, she looked at what was available to decide where to start. Plenty of venison... a confit maybe, since it was so early, and would take time to cook. Once that was in the oven, she was lost for a moment, and grabbed a bag of onions. If a few tears formed as she sliced them thin, it was just the onions, that was all, and once she started them caramelizing, she felt steadier, and maybe ready to think of eating herself eventually. Soup later, from the onions.

Aligot. That was what she wanted. So she gathered her ingredients, and started to peel potatoes, dropping them whole into water with lemon juice. By the time sounds of the inn started to filter through, and others came into the kitchen she had more potatoes than she had any need for, and she started thinking of all the ways she could use them, each dish sounding as welcome as the last. Putting the peeled potatoes in the walk-in to keep cool, she went looking for a small chalkboard she'd seen in the café. In neat even letters, she wrote:

Today's Specials

Potatoes All Day

Latkes
6-11AM
Gratin Dauphinois
11AM-3PM
Raclette
3PM-7PM
Tartiflette
7PM-10PM
Aligot
12N-1PM, 8-9PM
Disco Fries
all day, made on order

DINNER SPECIAL

Confit de Venaison, Pané

Soupes du Jour
Potato Leek
French Onion


She added some scrolling designs in the margins and looked over her work. That would keep her busy. Busy was good. Feeding people, feeling like she was doing something useful, that was even better.

((OOC: Find Emma in the kitchens or the café, any time throughout the day. She's shy and sad, but always willing to talk about food, and willing to take requests.))

Comments

[st_upidgravity]

Steph had a lot of thinking to do and sometimes, the only proper response was to carb load while you did it. The headline of "potatoes all day" seemed promising, so she stopped at the sign and read through the options. Then she looked over at the redhead who was not Ignis. "So...which one of these is mashed potatoes?"

[st_ackeddeck]

"Aligot," Emma answered as she turned to look at the woman who'd asked. "Think... the love child of mashed potatoes and cheese fondue. But if you'd rather have mashed potatoes, I could make you some. They're easy."

[st_upidgravity]

"Cheesy mashed potatoes." Steph turned the idea over in her mind, matched it to her need to brood and wallow in misery. "Yeah, that sounds solid. I'm Steph, by the way. You're new."

[st_ackeddeck]

"Very new. I'm Emma." She glanced at the sign, the evidence of her own emotional state. "I think that's why all the cheesy potato variations. A way to keep busy, and wind up with the culinary equivalent of a hug. I started by thinking I could really use some aligot, and things went in all directions from there."

[st_upidgravity]

"Mashed potatoes are totally my 'things are impossible' comfort food. Usually my mashed potato cooking involves dumping water on dehydrated flakes though. So I'm kind of grateful that your coping involves a whole lot of stress cooking." Steph smiled. "Are you in the middle of anything? Want to sit down and work through a plate of cheesy mashed potatoes with me?"

[st_ackeddeck]

The thought of instant mashed potatoes wrinkled Emma's nose. She followed Mémé's rule: food didn't have to be fancy, or cost a lot, but it should taste good, and preferably be made from ingredients you could recognize.

"You could come back to the kitchen, keep me company while I whip us up a batch." Whip being the operative word; making aligot was a good arm workout. "My... mentor, I guess you'd call her, used to prescribe 'chop vegetables, boil water' for working through rough times. And there are worse coping strategies. At least people get food out of mine?"

[st_upidgravity]

"I'll even help, if you don't mind supervising." Steph pulled her hair back into a ponytail and secured it with the tie on her wrist. "My mentor usually recommended tr... running. Or working out. It's hard to be stressed when you're exhausted."

[st_ackeddeck]

"You can help mash the potatoes." A batch should be just about ready now, and Emma was pretty good about delegating simpler tasks in the kitchen, where she wouldn't even think of telling people what to do somewhere else.

"Making aligot is kind of a work out. Dani did a lot of tr-running too, when she was stressed." Emma had been glad to get back into the routine of training with Nina after the attack, but that took more explanation than she thought Steph would care about. "She's a badass. I'm... not."

[st_upidgravity]

Steph caught the mimickery of her hesitation and grinned. "Training," she said, finishing the word she'd started to use before. "I used to be a gymnast in high school. It was a lot like boot camp. Lots of running and weight lifting and so so many falls off the beam."

She followed Emma into the kitchen and rolled up her sweatshirt sleeves. "I am ready and willing to mash."

[st_ackeddeck]

It sounded like a lot of things people did in the castle gym when they weren't sparring. Not something Emma had done much of. "I knew some acrobats, with the carnival," she said instead as she drained the potatoes, so they could start to work. "Performing most days, and doing set up or break down the rest, that was close enough to boot camp, I think."

[st_upidgravity]

"You were part of a carnival? Like Cirque du Soleil?" That, and Haly's, were the only references Stephanie really had for such things. And those were both circuses, weren't they? What was the difference, she wondered? More games? Sketchy rides? Meth?

Steph washed her hands in one of the sinks, then went to the counter where Emma was working.

[st_ackeddeck]

"More like a fair. Rides and games, not animals and aerialists." They'd had a few acrobats, though, to go through the crowds, draw them to key spots along the midway or keep them there. "I was a fortune teller instead of high school." Well, middle school for the carnival. By the time she should've been in high school, she and Sabine were traveling through Europe on their own.

"If you start mashing these, I'll put the crème fraiche on the heat." She gave Steph a ricer and started peeling garlic.

[st_upidgravity]

Steph looked at the implement in her hand, opened and closed it a couple times. She thought of mashing potatoes like...a masher. One of those tool things with the wavy metal. This was more like a nutcracker.

Huh. Cool. She picked up a potato, still hot, and gleefully squished it down.

"A fortune teller? So do you what... read palms?"

[st_ackeddeck]

"Tarot. I've done palm readings," and was as accurate as any other palmist she'd seen, which was to say her cold reading was good enough to pass, for those who wanted to believe. "When someone really wanted one, but I've been reading the cards since I was five. My grandmother taught me. She's also the one who taught me to make aligot." Emma had started much as Steph was, helping to mash the potatoes, back when she still had to stand on a chair to reach the counter.

[st_upidgravity]

"That sounds cool. I've never had a tarot reading." Because, if Stephanie was honest, getting a tarot reading in Gotham was just asking to walk into some weird fortune teller themed villain plot. Just look at every single poker game that the Royal Flush Gang had ever ruined. "I did once call one of those phone psychics when I was a kid. She told me I'd marry a handsome man I met in a far off land. The phone bill was about a hundred dollars."

[st_ackeddeck]

"And now you're here." Was it possible there was a Miss Cleo type phone psychic who wasn't a fake? There was something about the phone psychics that Emma didn't like. She wasn't sure what it was that made them bad when in person cold readers like Addy were just doing what they could to get by. Maybe that hundred dollar phone bill.

"Maybe you should be on the lookout for handsome men. I could read for you sometime, if you want. Not now, obviously, but..."

[st_upidgravity]

Steph laughed and resolutely did not think of Vax who she wasn't sure was even speaking to her anymore. "I don't know. Does California count as a far off land if you're from New Jersey?"

She paused her in mashing to look over at Emma. "Is that a real offer? Because it sounds like fun but you know, sometimes people are just being polite."

[st_ackeddeck]

"It's the only job I've ever had." And the only way her powers might have been useful to Excalibur, not that they'd done much good lately... no matter what Nathan and Alex said. "And I don't think this place needs a fortune teller, from what I've heard. Yeah, it's a real offer. I can't promise I'll see some handsome future husband, but that's the chance you take."

[st_upidgravity]

"I will totally take you up on that then. Maybe I'll find out who the handsome man is. Or that you shouldn't let ten year olds have access to their mom's credit card."

Another potato went squish. "How many potatoes am I crushing?"

[st_ackeddeck]

"I don't think we need the tarot to tell us a ten year old with a credit card is likely a bad idea."

Comparing the mound of potatoes in the pot with the cream just beginning to steam, Emma decided, "That should be about right." Taking the potatoes from Steph and putting them back on the stove, she added milk, and butter small chunks at a time, beating them smooth again with a wooden spoon after each addition.

She tipped her head toward the smaller pan with the warm crème fraiche. "Pour in about half of that to start while I stir." She could do it all herself, but Steph was helping, right?

[st_upidgravity]

"That is a good point you make." Steph picked up the pot and stood ready to pour as directed. "This is the, what did you call it? Cream something?"

[st_ackeddeck]

"Crème fraiche," Emma said, letting her French accent through on the French words the way she usually didn't when speaking English. "It's a lot like sour cream, but thicker without any thickening agents, not quite as tangy, and it has enough fat it doesn't curdle when you heat it. In other words, better. For anything where it wasn't the flavor of sour cream you were really going for.

[st_upidgravity]

"That sounds fancier than any potatoes I've never had have deserved." Steph laughed, even as she poured. The steady stream of hot creme didn't so much as waver. "Do you speak French? That sounded pretty good."

[st_ackeddeck]

Emma laughed shyly. "I am French. I moved, with my grandmother, to the States when I was five. Girls at school can be vicious when you're different." She shrugged. "I developed a good ear for accents to blend in."