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xp_logsJust a couple guys getting to know each other and bonding over meatballs in that rare time between when things go crazy.
Today's kitchen adventure for Julio Richter was albóndigas. As usual, his mother had sent him a recipe to make everything from scratch. If he was going to learn to cook, she said, then he should learn every element. And as usual, Rictor had bought premade corn tortillas, packaged arroz rojo, canned frijoles de olla, and a carton of chicken stock. He could only suffer so much humiliation at a time, so best to let the good folks at Goya simplify some things.
And he had already screwed up on step 2 of the recipe: blend the tomatoes (roasted without incident this time) with peppers and adobo sauce to make the salsa. But he had misread the instructions for blender speed, and instead of a pleasantly chunky salsa, ended up with a thin, watery sauce. Off to a great start.
Cursing himself under his breath, he moved to the next step: preparing the meatballs. How would he get mixing ground meat, seasonings, and bread crumbs wrong? He was sure he'd find a way.
"Smells good." The voice came out of nowhere, as did Gabriel as he swung around a corner, fresh from a five-mile run that he had knocked out in a solid five minutes. He'd taken time to air-dry, so he looked more or less presentable, though there was still some sweat on his forehead, and his hair looked a bit matted.
He gave a nod in greeting to Rictor then scanned the counter. Rictor, he surmised, was a bit of a messy cook. But so was Gabriel — he hated cleaning, but he could knock it out fast before anyone complained, and it wasn't like it was wasting time. "How's it going?" He added in Spanish, heading toward the fridges to rifle for a Gatorade.
Wrist deep in a bowl of as-yet unformed meatballs, Rictor looked over his shoulder at his guest. "Oh, hey, Gabriel. What's up?" he replied also in Spanish, relieved not to have to switch languages between reading the recipe and talking. "I'm trying to make albóndigas."
"Ah." The fridge Gabriel opened was particularly chaotic, and he wasn't in the mood to search it. He closed it, then turned to again survey Rictor's workspace. "Just trying?" He watched Rictor mix the meat, the combination of ingredients looking different than he remembered seeing his mother make. But he chalked it up to regional differences. "Going well, then?" He wiped his forehead and moved to the next fridge.
"Well, the salsa is crap but I don't have enough tomatoes to redo it, so I'll have to suffer through it. And I think there's more meat stuck to my hands than rolled into balls" — which, he indicated, were a variety of sizes, and several of them not quite spherical — "But it's still better than the lasagna catastrophe from last week. Don't ask. It was awful."
Gabriel chuckled. "I'll take your word for it." He pulled a jar of mustard out of the fridge that was down to its last spoonful or two and wrinkled his nose. Rictor's challenge was a familiar one. "Your first time really cooking for yourself?"
Meatballs more or less assembled (probably less), Rictor went to the sink to wash his hands, wrinkling his nose at the gooey feeling of rubbing together hands coated in raw meat. "Yeah, pretty much," he answered. "I can only have a ham sandwich so many times before I'd rather starve. Plus, who doesn't love a man in an apron, you know?"
"Not wrong there." Gabriel grabbed a bottle and stared at the name scrawled in pen on it. The ink was smeared, and it was hard to decipher whose sports drink this was. He decided to chance it, shutting the fridge and turning his focus back to Rictor's efforts. "I'm gonna warn you," he said, eyeing the oddly sized balls and wondering whether to point out how unlikely it was they'd cook evenly. "No matter how good you get, it'll never taste like abuela's." He tossed the old jar of mustard into the nearest garbage can.
"Neither my abuelita nor my chiichii would even think of letting me usurp their kitchens," Rictor laughed. He set a skillet on the stovetop, poured in a few teaspoons (tablespoons?) of oil, and turned on the burner. "And you? Do you cook or do you get care packages from family so you don't have to?"
"I cook," Gabriel said simply. He eyed the burner for a second then decided to reach over and lower the temperature on the stove. "But I've kind of learned as I go. Trial and error and YouTube, you know? Wasn't in the kitchen much growing up." He twisted the cap off the Gatorade bottle. "My family was pretty traditional," he added, trying to sound more casual than the statement felt.
The hot pan sizzled with the addition of each meatball, but for safety, Rictor kept his distance, using tongs to add each one. "At home and on my father's side, it's the same European, colonial standards of women's work. But it's different with my mother's side. I mean, cooking is still the woman's job, but I was allowed to at least help cut vegetables, you know?"
Gabriel just nodded. He knew all about gender roles and conservative expectations. "I had older sisters," he said after a swig of his drink. "No need for my help even if I'd wanted to. Which," he added with a small smile, "I'll admit I didn't."
Rictor returned the smile, and Gabriel's use of a past tense did not escape his notice, though he did not comment on it. He turned back to the meatballs, carefully turning them to brown them all over, and savoring the aroma. Ugly as they were, they at least were beginning to resemble food. "Hey, I don't think I ever thanked you in person for what you did in the summer. For my family and me. Thank you."
"Oh, please." Gabriel waved him off. "It was nothing." That was, strictly speaking, not true. But it was what you said. "I'm glad I could help," he added as he put his sports drink down and moved behind Rictor to root through another cabinet. "I mean, we all are. But I hadn't been to Mexico in a while, so it was a good excuse."
"I love the Yucatec jungle, but I know that's not everyone's favorite. Next time, I'll do an ecoterrorism somewhere sunnier. For legal reasons, that is a joke. Where in Mexico are you from? You sound . . . Northern?"
"I mean, I'm Tejano," Gabriel said with a shrug, ignoring the pang of unease that came when he talked about his family. "Most of my people are on this side of the border." This was not entirely false, since most of his people these days were in a mansion in Westchester. But he was relieved his back was to the other man. "Still have some relatives in Chihuahua I think." He pulled a box of granola bars out — not his — and took one. "Definitely not yucateco," he said after a second.
"That much is obvious," Rictor quipped, transferring the meatballs to a plate before dumping in onions and other aromatics to the pan. "So you must have been here for a while, huh? To be with Marie-Ange's team." The aromatics felt aromatic in short order, despite the lack of browning on the onions, so he went ahead and put the meatballs back in, and then poured in the stock and salsa. Most of it got into the pan, too, and not all over the stovetop. "Fuck."
"Yeah, I guess." Gabriel turned around, unable to help a small smile at the splatters. "Let me think." He tried to remember when he'd arrived at the mansion, but the way the world had reset itself made that tricky. Everything from before M-Day felt like a lifetime ago. And everything since had aged him. "Eight years? Nine?" He shrugged. "I dunno. Something like that. Doesn't feel like that long, but also feels like longer. Time plays tricks like that." Especially for him.
Rictor looked over his shoulder at Gabriel, and tried to guess his age. It was hard to pinpoint. Gabriel had a youthful air to him and clearly a good skincare regimen, but the stubble and having been here for a decade already suggested he was much older. He was a curious person indeed.
Turning back to his simmering pan, he nudged the meatballs with a wooden spoon and adjusted the heat as Sharon had shown him a while ago to avoid overcooking the meal or making an even bigger mess of the stovetop. "The recipe says this needs another 30 minutes, so you're welcome to try some when they're done."
"Oh, thanks." Gabriel tried to sound more enthusiastic than he intended, and a part of him was, to be fair, curious to see how this came out. "They're looking familiar," he conceded, because in a macro sense, that was true.
"They're meatballs, they can't go too wrong." Though maybe Rictor should have paid more attention to the heat setting, as the sauce had climbed to a rapid simmer and a bubble popped loudly, catapulting a small meatball out of the pan and onto the floor. "Son of a bitch."
Today's kitchen adventure for Julio Richter was albóndigas. As usual, his mother had sent him a recipe to make everything from scratch. If he was going to learn to cook, she said, then he should learn every element. And as usual, Rictor had bought premade corn tortillas, packaged arroz rojo, canned frijoles de olla, and a carton of chicken stock. He could only suffer so much humiliation at a time, so best to let the good folks at Goya simplify some things.
And he had already screwed up on step 2 of the recipe: blend the tomatoes (roasted without incident this time) with peppers and adobo sauce to make the salsa. But he had misread the instructions for blender speed, and instead of a pleasantly chunky salsa, ended up with a thin, watery sauce. Off to a great start.
Cursing himself under his breath, he moved to the next step: preparing the meatballs. How would he get mixing ground meat, seasonings, and bread crumbs wrong? He was sure he'd find a way.
"Smells good." The voice came out of nowhere, as did Gabriel as he swung around a corner, fresh from a five-mile run that he had knocked out in a solid five minutes. He'd taken time to air-dry, so he looked more or less presentable, though there was still some sweat on his forehead, and his hair looked a bit matted.
He gave a nod in greeting to Rictor then scanned the counter. Rictor, he surmised, was a bit of a messy cook. But so was Gabriel — he hated cleaning, but he could knock it out fast before anyone complained, and it wasn't like it was wasting time. "How's it going?" He added in Spanish, heading toward the fridges to rifle for a Gatorade.
Wrist deep in a bowl of as-yet unformed meatballs, Rictor looked over his shoulder at his guest. "Oh, hey, Gabriel. What's up?" he replied also in Spanish, relieved not to have to switch languages between reading the recipe and talking. "I'm trying to make albóndigas."
"Ah." The fridge Gabriel opened was particularly chaotic, and he wasn't in the mood to search it. He closed it, then turned to again survey Rictor's workspace. "Just trying?" He watched Rictor mix the meat, the combination of ingredients looking different than he remembered seeing his mother make. But he chalked it up to regional differences. "Going well, then?" He wiped his forehead and moved to the next fridge.
"Well, the salsa is crap but I don't have enough tomatoes to redo it, so I'll have to suffer through it. And I think there's more meat stuck to my hands than rolled into balls" — which, he indicated, were a variety of sizes, and several of them not quite spherical — "But it's still better than the lasagna catastrophe from last week. Don't ask. It was awful."
Gabriel chuckled. "I'll take your word for it." He pulled a jar of mustard out of the fridge that was down to its last spoonful or two and wrinkled his nose. Rictor's challenge was a familiar one. "Your first time really cooking for yourself?"
Meatballs more or less assembled (probably less), Rictor went to the sink to wash his hands, wrinkling his nose at the gooey feeling of rubbing together hands coated in raw meat. "Yeah, pretty much," he answered. "I can only have a ham sandwich so many times before I'd rather starve. Plus, who doesn't love a man in an apron, you know?"
"Not wrong there." Gabriel grabbed a bottle and stared at the name scrawled in pen on it. The ink was smeared, and it was hard to decipher whose sports drink this was. He decided to chance it, shutting the fridge and turning his focus back to Rictor's efforts. "I'm gonna warn you," he said, eyeing the oddly sized balls and wondering whether to point out how unlikely it was they'd cook evenly. "No matter how good you get, it'll never taste like abuela's." He tossed the old jar of mustard into the nearest garbage can.
"Neither my abuelita nor my chiichii would even think of letting me usurp their kitchens," Rictor laughed. He set a skillet on the stovetop, poured in a few teaspoons (tablespoons?) of oil, and turned on the burner. "And you? Do you cook or do you get care packages from family so you don't have to?"
"I cook," Gabriel said simply. He eyed the burner for a second then decided to reach over and lower the temperature on the stove. "But I've kind of learned as I go. Trial and error and YouTube, you know? Wasn't in the kitchen much growing up." He twisted the cap off the Gatorade bottle. "My family was pretty traditional," he added, trying to sound more casual than the statement felt.
The hot pan sizzled with the addition of each meatball, but for safety, Rictor kept his distance, using tongs to add each one. "At home and on my father's side, it's the same European, colonial standards of women's work. But it's different with my mother's side. I mean, cooking is still the woman's job, but I was allowed to at least help cut vegetables, you know?"
Gabriel just nodded. He knew all about gender roles and conservative expectations. "I had older sisters," he said after a swig of his drink. "No need for my help even if I'd wanted to. Which," he added with a small smile, "I'll admit I didn't."
Rictor returned the smile, and Gabriel's use of a past tense did not escape his notice, though he did not comment on it. He turned back to the meatballs, carefully turning them to brown them all over, and savoring the aroma. Ugly as they were, they at least were beginning to resemble food. "Hey, I don't think I ever thanked you in person for what you did in the summer. For my family and me. Thank you."
"Oh, please." Gabriel waved him off. "It was nothing." That was, strictly speaking, not true. But it was what you said. "I'm glad I could help," he added as he put his sports drink down and moved behind Rictor to root through another cabinet. "I mean, we all are. But I hadn't been to Mexico in a while, so it was a good excuse."
"I love the Yucatec jungle, but I know that's not everyone's favorite. Next time, I'll do an ecoterrorism somewhere sunnier. For legal reasons, that is a joke. Where in Mexico are you from? You sound . . . Northern?"
"I mean, I'm Tejano," Gabriel said with a shrug, ignoring the pang of unease that came when he talked about his family. "Most of my people are on this side of the border." This was not entirely false, since most of his people these days were in a mansion in Westchester. But he was relieved his back was to the other man. "Still have some relatives in Chihuahua I think." He pulled a box of granola bars out — not his — and took one. "Definitely not yucateco," he said after a second.
"That much is obvious," Rictor quipped, transferring the meatballs to a plate before dumping in onions and other aromatics to the pan. "So you must have been here for a while, huh? To be with Marie-Ange's team." The aromatics felt aromatic in short order, despite the lack of browning on the onions, so he went ahead and put the meatballs back in, and then poured in the stock and salsa. Most of it got into the pan, too, and not all over the stovetop. "Fuck."
"Yeah, I guess." Gabriel turned around, unable to help a small smile at the splatters. "Let me think." He tried to remember when he'd arrived at the mansion, but the way the world had reset itself made that tricky. Everything from before M-Day felt like a lifetime ago. And everything since had aged him. "Eight years? Nine?" He shrugged. "I dunno. Something like that. Doesn't feel like that long, but also feels like longer. Time plays tricks like that." Especially for him.
Rictor looked over his shoulder at Gabriel, and tried to guess his age. It was hard to pinpoint. Gabriel had a youthful air to him and clearly a good skincare regimen, but the stubble and having been here for a decade already suggested he was much older. He was a curious person indeed.
Turning back to his simmering pan, he nudged the meatballs with a wooden spoon and adjusted the heat as Sharon had shown him a while ago to avoid overcooking the meal or making an even bigger mess of the stovetop. "The recipe says this needs another 30 minutes, so you're welcome to try some when they're done."
"Oh, thanks." Gabriel tried to sound more enthusiastic than he intended, and a part of him was, to be fair, curious to see how this came out. "They're looking familiar," he conceded, because in a macro sense, that was true.
"They're meatballs, they can't go too wrong." Though maybe Rictor should have paid more attention to the heat setting, as the sauce had climbed to a rapid simmer and a bubble popped loudly, catapulting a small meatball out of the pan and onto the floor. "Son of a bitch."
no subject
Date: 2024-02-13 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-14 06:19 pm (UTC)"I can only have a ham sandwich so many times before I'd rather starve."
I adore this quips like this, however.
"They're looking familiar," he conceded, because in a macro sense, that was true."
A great closing paired with Gabe's earlier thoughts re: what Rictor was making.