Kitchen Avengers
Dec. 2nd, 2011 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantWhenever I'm exploring new characters, I always enjoy asking myself two things: Can they sing? and Can they cook?
Tony (all these people are film canon only, sorry): Well, we have canon that he can't make an omelet, and my first reaction was, if you can't cook an omelet with twenty-first century nonstick technology, you can't cook anything. But then I reconsidered, because an omelet actually requires a peculiar sort of kitchen zen: you have to pay it continuous benign attention without monkeying with it. And Tony's attention does not work that way.
But what if you gave him a food where the whole point was to monkey with it? Like stir-fry -- once it's in the pan, you basically have to just keep messing with it. Also it's done really quickly, which is good given who we're talking about here.
Also I suspect Steve does all the tedious chopping for him.
Steve: This isn't based on any genuine knowledge, but I have the image of military food of that time period as just being, you know, throw it all in a pot with some water and simmer it all day long. So I imagine Steve can cook anything that benefits from that kind of treatment. Beans. Pot roast. Stew.
Also I think he can peel potatoes all day long. Talk about zen. Potato after potato after potato, and when someone tries to talk to him, it takes him a second to reconnect with real life.
On the other hand, if he wanted to, I think he could learn to be a good cook. Super senses and reflexes would help, of course, and as someone who this very day carved an ugly parenthesis starting at the tip of her thumb and digging half an inch into her thumbnail using a potato peeler, I think a cook could definitely benefit from accelerated healing. But also -- I think that he's suffered enough deprivation to appreciate abundance, and also that he'd be more comfortable up to his elbows in onions than out sitting at a restaurant table waiting for someone else to serve him.
So I can imagine that eventually he develops some real skill in the kitchen. But your modern-day desserts, your creme brulee and molten flourless chocolate cakes and basil-nasturtium sorbets, don't do anything for him. He wants to make vanilla pudding and custard pie and sponge cake.
The first time someone tells him he can make a decent strawberry shortcake in December, he probably gets tears in his eyes.
I don't really know the rest of the Avengers well enough to predict. But unless there's canon contradiction of this, I'm going to say Natasha can't cook at all. Not even a pot of coffee. Not even a cup of instant coffee. And she takes care to demonstrate this for every new group of teammates, because she knows very well what happens to women who work with men and let the word get out that they can cook.
Rhodey strikes me as a guy who can do bachelor cooking (grilled cheese, scrambled eggs, some weird concoction involving hamburger and cream of tomato soup), but also has one or two recipes that are big and impressive and dirty every dish in the kitchen. Really good chili, say, or ribs with a sauce that is his own invention and has twenty-eight ingredients.
Fury? I could go two ways on Fury.
(1) No one knows whether he can cook. No one has even ever seen him eat. It's rumored he subsists on the souls of the damned.
(2) He cooks like a normal guy. He particularly enjoys a good steak. It's purest coincidence that one of his arch-enemies has parallel burn marks on his palms.
Pepper? When do you think was the last time Pepper had time to cook?!
Coulson can cook, oh, hell, yes. Coulson can cook anything. Things that require practiced delicacy of touch, like homemade tortillas or lattice-top pie crusts. Things that require main force, like chicken cutlets pounded paper-thin and wrapped around fillings. Things that taste just like what your grandmother made (whether your grandmother made fried chicken livers, like mine, or stuffed cabbage rolls, or bolognese, or sauerkraut buried in the yard, or pork with homemade mandarin pancakes, or whatever) -- and also things that taste just like Ferran Adria made them.
He also once tied up two intruders with his apron strings. For the third one he had to make do with skewers and kitchen twine.
Tony (all these people are film canon only, sorry): Well, we have canon that he can't make an omelet, and my first reaction was, if you can't cook an omelet with twenty-first century nonstick technology, you can't cook anything. But then I reconsidered, because an omelet actually requires a peculiar sort of kitchen zen: you have to pay it continuous benign attention without monkeying with it. And Tony's attention does not work that way.
But what if you gave him a food where the whole point was to monkey with it? Like stir-fry -- once it's in the pan, you basically have to just keep messing with it. Also it's done really quickly, which is good given who we're talking about here.
Also I suspect Steve does all the tedious chopping for him.
Steve: This isn't based on any genuine knowledge, but I have the image of military food of that time period as just being, you know, throw it all in a pot with some water and simmer it all day long. So I imagine Steve can cook anything that benefits from that kind of treatment. Beans. Pot roast. Stew.
Also I think he can peel potatoes all day long. Talk about zen. Potato after potato after potato, and when someone tries to talk to him, it takes him a second to reconnect with real life.
On the other hand, if he wanted to, I think he could learn to be a good cook. Super senses and reflexes would help, of course, and as someone who this very day carved an ugly parenthesis starting at the tip of her thumb and digging half an inch into her thumbnail using a potato peeler, I think a cook could definitely benefit from accelerated healing. But also -- I think that he's suffered enough deprivation to appreciate abundance, and also that he'd be more comfortable up to his elbows in onions than out sitting at a restaurant table waiting for someone else to serve him.
So I can imagine that eventually he develops some real skill in the kitchen. But your modern-day desserts, your creme brulee and molten flourless chocolate cakes and basil-nasturtium sorbets, don't do anything for him. He wants to make vanilla pudding and custard pie and sponge cake.
The first time someone tells him he can make a decent strawberry shortcake in December, he probably gets tears in his eyes.
I don't really know the rest of the Avengers well enough to predict. But unless there's canon contradiction of this, I'm going to say Natasha can't cook at all. Not even a pot of coffee. Not even a cup of instant coffee. And she takes care to demonstrate this for every new group of teammates, because she knows very well what happens to women who work with men and let the word get out that they can cook.
Rhodey strikes me as a guy who can do bachelor cooking (grilled cheese, scrambled eggs, some weird concoction involving hamburger and cream of tomato soup), but also has one or two recipes that are big and impressive and dirty every dish in the kitchen. Really good chili, say, or ribs with a sauce that is his own invention and has twenty-eight ingredients.
Fury? I could go two ways on Fury.
(1) No one knows whether he can cook. No one has even ever seen him eat. It's rumored he subsists on the souls of the damned.
(2) He cooks like a normal guy. He particularly enjoys a good steak. It's purest coincidence that one of his arch-enemies has parallel burn marks on his palms.
Pepper? When do you think was the last time Pepper had time to cook?!
Coulson can cook, oh, hell, yes. Coulson can cook anything. Things that require practiced delicacy of touch, like homemade tortillas or lattice-top pie crusts. Things that require main force, like chicken cutlets pounded paper-thin and wrapped around fillings. Things that taste just like what your grandmother made (whether your grandmother made fried chicken livers, like mine, or stuffed cabbage rolls, or bolognese, or sauerkraut buried in the yard, or pork with homemade mandarin pancakes, or whatever) -- and also things that taste just like Ferran Adria made them.
He also once tied up two intruders with his apron strings. For the third one he had to make do with skewers and kitchen twine.
(no subject)
Date: 12/4/11 05:02 am (UTC)And thank you!