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NESSETH'S HOME - MID-AFTERNOON
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Maybelline heads towards the house that Plume indicated to her, a quick question of the good Doctor pointed her to Nesseth, along with the information that currently Nesseth is working a more relaxed schedule (something she's heard from Louma as well), making her intended task a bit easy to coordinate at the moment. She's wearing a light green colored top and skirt, rather then her usual jumpsuit she wears when working, as she knocks at the lizard's door.
Nesseth tilts his head as he answers the door, curious as to who could be stopping by. He blinks, then glances down with a smile upon seeing May. "Oh, hey there, May! Is there something you need?"
Maybelline clears her throat as Nesseth initially looks over her head, but smiles when he sees her. "I hope so! Plume pointed me here, and Vix certainly has talked up your talents... Err, that is... So, I hear you're a good cook."
Nesseth blushes a bit at the fact that he's apparently getting to be known as a bit of a cook. "I... suppose I might be okay at it. I didn't know Vix spoke that highly of it."
Maybelline chuckles, giving a bit of a shrug, "Well, it's also Vix. She does seem to upsell everything, including her friends. Honestly, 'okay' might be good enough for what I'm looking for, all things considered."
Nesseth steps back and holds the door open for May. "Heh, that does sound like Vix alright. Well, if you're looking for some food, come on in."
Maybelline steps inside enough to let Nesseth close the door, but shakes her head, "Oh! No no, I'm not looking for food. Well, sorta. More like... I was hoping maybe you could help me learn how to cook? But uh, not just anything. Orelan food specifically?"
Nesseth blinks as he shuts the door behind May. "Orelan food, eh? Like, Lizards specifically, or something more just Orelan in general?"
Maybelline scratches her head a bit awkwardly, giving Nesseth a guilty grin, "Ah um, see, that's the part I don't know? History was never my strong point, and assumptions were made that I'd never have a career leaving Sarn. I don't actually know much about Orelan culture, including the food. What I'm hoping for is something a little more to the uh... snake palate? For... probably obvious reasons."
Nesseth chuckles as he leads the way towards the kitchen. "Snake tastes, hm? I think I know a few recipes for that. Good thing is, both of our kinds are fond of meat, so recipes have some good crossover."
Maybelline grins, "That's sorta what I was hoping? I'm trying to teach myself to cook more now, and Louma went out of her way to start learning baking... I want to surprise her back. She's sighed a few times about how hard it is to get proper Orelan food here. I was hoping to get kind of a profile of it for flavor, and maybe a few recipes."
Nesseth smiles, nodding as he steps over to one of the cabinets and pulls out a small box full of recipes. He plunks it down on the table and pulls out a chair for May. "Sure, no problem! A lot of the recipes I know of tend to include a fair bit of citrus-y accents, kind of a by-product of the two races being seafaring ones for a good while. Feel free to look through the box and pick out a few. I'll get the cookware ready."
Maybelline ponders as she walks to the table and climbing up onto the chair. She opens the box and starts peeking through the recipes. "Citrus-y? Not what I was expecting, though the meat makes sense."
Nesseth shrugs a little as he digs through the cabinets and extracts a couple of bowls and a pan to fry up whatever dishes May picks out. "It's a bit of extra flavor, plus it's a good thing to keep us from getting sick while out on the seas. I'm betting a lot of the dishes you ate while coming here from Sarn had something of the sort added to them."
Maybelline continues to thumb through the recipes, picking a few out here and there. She pulls out one for a zesty meat roll, another for a thick marinade, and lastly one for a kabob. "How about these?"
Maybelline thinks back to the boat ride from Sarn, "I guess I didn't think too much on what I ate aboard the boat, to be honest. I was having a rather... bad week, personally." Her ears roll back a bit, ashamed of herself.
Nesseth hums as he moves over to the table and takes a peek at the recipes May pulled up. He nods and smiles. "These are pretty easy ones to work with, let me grab the ingredients, and we can start." He tilts his head a bit as he makes his way to the pantry, "Mmh, I could see that being a bit of a distraction, yeah. Still, if you happen to find yourself on a ship again, say heading back to Sarn, or out to Orela, you'll notice some citrus flavors in most dishes."
Maybelline chuckles, "Well hopefully next time I'm on a boat, it'll be with a little bit of a better attitude and I'll have a chance to enjoy myself instead of sulking the whole time. And yeah, figured those would be simple ones to start with. I uh, might not know my way around the kitchen completely, but I can follow a recipe. Usually."
Nesseth comes back out with his arms full of various ingredients, with a decently-sized chunk of meat hanging from a hand in a mesh net. "You'll probably enjoy cooking this stuff, then. It's more a matter of just making sure the meat doesn't burn than anything else."
Maybelline laughs, "I was never much of one for cooking. Especially not when I was at the university. But I can build most anything, with good enough plans. And what's a recipe but a plan, eh? The more precise the better! I'm not one for letting the most important detail out of my sight."
Nesseth grins as he gets the food all set up on one of the counters. "Then you'll probably feel right at home with this, then. You're guaranteed a good outcome if you follow the recipes to the letter." He chuckles, "Though, one fun thing about cooking is that you can improvise and change things, and still come out with something good, if not better."
Maybelline frowns just a bit, thinking, "Now, see, improvising is something I'm a little less confident about. You have no idea how many drafts I've been through on my plans for the generator."
Nesseth nods for May to join him at the counter, pulling out a little stool from another cabinet so she can work on the prep area. "Fair enough. The recipes will at least give you something good to work off of to start, and you can experiment a little once you get more confident."
Maybelline hops down off the chair and walks over to climb onto the stool. She nods, "Engineering... I'm pretty confident. But mistakes there have pretty dire consequences." She places a hand at her side gently. "I'm not used to a realm where I can just arbitrarily say 'I'll just try this and if it fails, no big deal!'"
Nesseth nods as he notices May's hand lingering no her side. "Yeah... thankfully, screwing up with food isn't bad. Sure, it means the food is no good, but that's replaceable."
Maybelline drops her hand off her side and nods, picking up one of the recipe cards from the counter. "Well, I doubt no matter what I do, a kabob isn't going to explode, that's for sure."
Nesseth chuckles again, nodding. "Yeah, they won't explode. At most, it'll just maybe burn, but even that's pretty unlikely."
Maybelline laughs, "And just a plain old fire burn! That's basically nothing! I've suffered from a magic burn twice in my life, and I'll take regular fire any day. Though, I'll do my best to avoid that too, honestly."
Nesseth shakes his head, but he's smiling all the same. "Well, if there happens to be a fire, I can offer one good bit of advice: Cover the pan if you're using oil. Any other case, you'll burn the food way before it gets set on fire."
Maybelline nods, "Makes sense. Wouldn't want to put water on a fire with oil, that'd just spread it around. That's simple enough."
Nesseth chuckles. "Only other way to start a fire is by forgetting about the stove. I'm sure you're attentive enough to not do that, though."
Maybelline nods. "The stove in my quarters is kinda small, but is magic powered. You know that igniter I gave to Louma when you all went to Mean Peak? Same principles. So it's not quite so dangerous to leave running as a wood burning one, but I'm still cautious with it."
Nesseth hums. "I could see that being really helpful, yeah." He pauses for a moment, then lightly claps his hands together, "So! Which recipe did you want to start with? The meat roll, maybe?"
Maybelline sets down the initial recipe card and nods excitedly. "Sure! I mean, whatever is good, but that one did sound pretty delicious. So you going to show me, or talk me through it? I am more of a hands on learner, but I might go slow."
Nesseth shrugs, gesturing at the materials as he takes a step to the side, giving May a bit of space to work. "If you want to do hands-on, I can just talk you through it. You've got the recipe card, so have at it."
Maybelline folds her fingers together and cracks her knuckles, then grins. "Alright! Piece of cake." She starts to follow the recipe card with fairly exacting precision, definitely taking the approach of 'measure twice cut once' in all of her actions, meticulous and careful as she follows the recipe as closely as she can, with Nesseth giving advice here and there as they prepare the food together.
Nesseth guides May through the process of cooking up the recipes, moving from one to the next in order. The results are quite good, thanks to May's meticulous approach. At some points during the process, especially when it comes to the bits where the two just have to wait, Nesseth takes a few blank cards and jots down copies of the recipes for May to take home, so she can start her own little recipe box, if she wishes.