Gluk, Stock, and Two Smoking Lasers
A deep, soft sigh got out whenever Jerec stepped into his kitchen at the day's end. He didn't feel that physical relief, that recognition of exhaustion, when he came through the front door, likely because he brought people home. But not into the kitchen. This was the place he wasn't anything to anyone. He could relax. He didn't need to mask.
Though hunger rumbled in his gut already, he rested with his elbows on the counter for a solid minute or two, eyes closed. The day's agitation drained down another notch or two. Then he gathered his ingredients and got to it.
Oil in the pan, a big pan and the best cheap oil he could find. Seven Corners grocery prices were obscene these days, one small aspect of how CorpSec had cracked down on Darkwire and anyone associated with Darkwire and anyone associated with their associates. He diced a small amount of hard dry sausage and tossed it in with a handful of fungi from the neighbor's basement garden.Then came the protato balls: protein/tuber paste, dirt-cheap subsistence stuff. He fried them up in the oil that already had the sausage and fungi going.
He was doing most of his work in the big pan, but he'd set a pot of water going in back. As a double handful of thick, flat noodles started to boil, he threw in a stock cube and a bunch of Herglic black pepper. By this point the protato balls were crisping up in the pan and almost-but-not-quite threatening to burn no matter how aggressively he shoved them around. They needed to be a little crunchy or they'd just dissolve into tasteless sludge once soup time came around. That meant flying kind of close to the sun.
He held off disaster while the noodles cooked. As soon as they hit al dente, he set aside half the noodles' broth - really just peppery, starchy stock - for a different meal and dumped the rest of everything, stock and noodles, right in the big pan with the fry-up. The broth grabbed onto the almost-charred mess of protato balls, sausage, and fungi and incorporated it right away.
Best thing now was to let it rest on low heat to get gloopy, but after the day he'd had - shavvit, the customers - Jerec slopped a bunch of the gluk in a bowl and retreated to his living room. Entertainment on Denon was exhausting, the kind of thing meant to convince people that their best interests were the same as those of people who lived at much higher ecumenopolitic altitudes. He watched it all anyway, slurping soup, trying not to think about today, or tomorrow, or balancesheets, or bills, or friends long gone. Just brainless holotube and noodle soup.
Though hunger rumbled in his gut already, he rested with his elbows on the counter for a solid minute or two, eyes closed. The day's agitation drained down another notch or two. Then he gathered his ingredients and got to it.
Oil in the pan, a big pan and the best cheap oil he could find. Seven Corners grocery prices were obscene these days, one small aspect of how CorpSec had cracked down on Darkwire and anyone associated with Darkwire and anyone associated with their associates. He diced a small amount of hard dry sausage and tossed it in with a handful of fungi from the neighbor's basement garden.Then came the protato balls: protein/tuber paste, dirt-cheap subsistence stuff. He fried them up in the oil that already had the sausage and fungi going.
He was doing most of his work in the big pan, but he'd set a pot of water going in back. As a double handful of thick, flat noodles started to boil, he threw in a stock cube and a bunch of Herglic black pepper. By this point the protato balls were crisping up in the pan and almost-but-not-quite threatening to burn no matter how aggressively he shoved them around. They needed to be a little crunchy or they'd just dissolve into tasteless sludge once soup time came around. That meant flying kind of close to the sun.
He held off disaster while the noodles cooked. As soon as they hit al dente, he set aside half the noodles' broth - really just peppery, starchy stock - for a different meal and dumped the rest of everything, stock and noodles, right in the big pan with the fry-up. The broth grabbed onto the almost-charred mess of protato balls, sausage, and fungi and incorporated it right away.
Best thing now was to let it rest on low heat to get gloopy, but after the day he'd had - shavvit, the customers - Jerec slopped a bunch of the gluk in a bowl and retreated to his living room. Entertainment on Denon was exhausting, the kind of thing meant to convince people that their best interests were the same as those of people who lived at much higher ecumenopolitic altitudes. He watched it all anyway, slurping soup, trying not to think about today, or tomorrow, or balancesheets, or bills, or friends long gone. Just brainless holotube and noodle soup.