"Pandora, are you seriously going to teach me how to cook? Do you even know how to cook well enough to teach me?" I ask Pandora while we’re in the kitchen. She’s already had a shift in personality, and after spending three days apart to give me time to calm down, she came back pletely changed.
"Yes, Azraelith! I think I can teach you some great recipes. e here, I have everything we need — ingredients, tools, and whatever else you might need," she says while her tail holds a cleaver.
"...Haa... fine." I approach her as she grins with excitement, like she can barely wait to "teach" me how to cook, though I genuinely have doubts about her abilities.
"Perfect! Today we’ll make a fried steak with sauce, and pasta as the main dish! They’re fairly simple things, aside from the sauce I’ll be using. I don’t know how to cook anything too fancy, but simpler stuff like this I’ve learned."
"You can start by trying to cut the meat, older sister!!" She hands me the knife as I step closer to the counter, eyeing the meat on the cutting board. I slam the knife hard against the meat, but Pandora stops me right away.
"No! No, no, older sister, not like that! You hit the meat like you have something against it and its entire bloodline. Did you really need to raise the knife that high? You’re not dismembering something with bones, it’s just meat."
"What’s wrong with it?" I question her, not understanding. I barely started, just brought the knife down to cut the meat.
"You’re... you’re way too rough... that literally ruins the meat! The cut matters just as much as the other steps! Look, let’s do it like this — I’ll guide you, and you watch and learn." She es up behind me, getting very close, and places her hands over mine. The gesture feels quite natural, nothing like Pandora’s usual perversion.
"See, instead of slamming the knife into the meat like you’re furious at it, cut gently and make an angled vertical cut instead of a rough, straight vertical one." Pandora moves my hand, tilting the knife on the meat, then starts rocking my hand back and forth.
’...’ I watch the meat being sliced into careful strips. It’s very different from how I do it. Normally I just cut any which way, since it never seemed to make much difference cutting it other ways.
"If you don’t slam it and just slice it this way, the meat turns out more tender and smooth to eat." We finish cutting the meat, and immediately Pandora tilts the board, dropping the meat pieces into a bowl.
"Cut the vegetables. I’ll help you... but first I’ll squeeze some lemon on the board, just for the light citrus flavor that will go well with the salt we’ll use on the meat soon." Pandora crushes a lemon over another cutting board and places some vegetables on it. I step closer, and she es up behind me, holding my hands to set the rhythm.
The cuts are far gentler than what I usually do — just slamming the knife down and chopping everything quickly and forcefully. Her cleaner, softer cuts give the chopped food a much better appearance.
"While I make the sauce with eggs and vegetables, you can take the meat strips and toss them into the salt, covering them pletely."
"Won’t it end up too salty? Letting the meat sit bathed in that much salt will either make it dry or just unpleasantly salty..." I question her, and she shakes her head as she heads to another counter.
"It’ll turn out good. Later we’ll take it out of the salt and remove the excess. I’ll fry the meat with a little vegetable oil, and you’ll see the flavor will be nice because the sauce I’ll make will make the meat good and not too salty." While she does her part, I grab a bowl and fill it with salt.
I drop the cut meat into the salt and cover everything with more salt. I don’t know, I feel like this is wrong? Won’t this leave it extremely salty? Or do I really know nothing about cooking?
’Is Pandora fooling me or does she actually know how to cook? Is the sauce really going to make this salt-packed meat taste good?’ I think she’s the one who doesn’t know how to cook, but I just wait and watch her making the sauce.
She spends almost thirty minutes beating the sauce until it turns into a smooth, pale yellowish-whitish paste. Soon after, she asks me to take the meat out of the salt.
I hand the meat to her, and she smacks it against the cutting board, rubbing the meat into the lemon and vegetable juices. She then coats the meat in the sauce and seals it inside.
"What are you teaching me, Pandora? It almost looks like you’re cooking by yourself. Honestly, even what I did wasn’t really done on my own," I tell her, a little confused. Wasn’t I supposed to be learning?
"I’m teaching you the basics. You didn’t even know how to cut meat properly. Don’t think you’ll learn overnight. We’ll cook together every day until you learn how to cook."
"Seriously? Cooking every day isn’t boring for you? It’s not like there’s anything special about cooking," I question, a bit puzzled. I expected to learn everything in a single day.
"Yes, yes, learning to cook takes time. Besides, I enjoy being with you no matter what we’re doing!! You’ll see. Now we’ll let the sauce settle into the meat more evenly, then we’ll fry it and eat! You’ll like it. In the meantime, let’s make the pasta!" She pulls me along with her, far more excited about this than I expected.
"For the pasta, the dough is already ready. We just need to cook the noodles, make a sauce, and then pour it over them." She crouches down, grabbing the dough from the pantry while I watch.
"Nothing sexual?" I ask, wanting to know if there’s a catch.
"No. You said yourself you’re fed up with that already, so we’ll just cook, eat, and talk. Nothing more than that. I’m kind of a pervert, but if you don’t want to, I’ll obviously respect that." I smile hearing that.
"That’s good. Besides cooking, we can do more things together. There are some sports I’ve always wanted to try. With you, it’s possible." I throw out ideas that don’t involve sex.
"Sounds great. We have all the time in the world to do whatever we want. I also have some travel plans for us. There are so many beautiful settings in this world, or in my universe." She turns her attention back to the kitchen as we talk, both of us getting excited for the future.
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