Cooking Lessons

"What's this?" Sirius asked, peeking into the pot that was on Remus's stove.

"Soup," Remus explained. "Lily brought it over."

It looked good and smelled even better; rich tomato broth with pasta, beans, celery, and onions floating in it, flecked with herbs and wafting its fragrant steam at Sirius. "Can I have some?"

"Sure. She always brings me enough for days." Remus was perched on a chair slurping his serving happily.

"She does, huh?" Sirius asked, slightly jealous. Bringing soup to Remus was something he'd never thought to do. He sat down at the small secondhand table and tried his portion. "This is good," he admitted.

"Lily's a good cook," Remus agreed, admiration clear in his voice.

Sirius grunted noncommittally.

***

It was odd that it should bother him that Lily was a good cook. After all, she was a girl. She was expected to be a good cook. And Sirius had never touched a pot, pan, or spice in his life, beyond perhaps heating up the contents of tins. Of course Lily was a better cook than Sirius was.

But that didn't mean that Sirius had to like it.

The common belief that Sirius Black dove into a new obsession and tackled the most complicated without studying the most basic was only true when Sirius thought he knew what he was doing. But Sirius had never entertained any notion competence in the kitchen, and so one Monday evening found him in the Ministry's library, pouring over a basic cookbook.

The cookbook was certainly understandable, in its way. Most of the vocabulary was familiar from potions. Sirius certainly knew what qualified and simmering as opposed to boiling, and concepts like reducing and thickening were not at all foreign. But as he gazed at the recipes he realized that there were a lot of things that the book didn't address. When was meat done? Were there different temperatures? And how did you take that temperature? There were a ton of spices mentioned- did you need them all? Or were certain spices used more often than others? When you cut a stalk of celery, did you include the leafy green stuff at the end, or that white bit? What was a whisk, and how did using one differ from using an eggbeater?

Sirius admitted he was going to need help.

***

Asking Lily was out, naturally. He was trying to become a better cook than her, and you didn't ask the competition when you were trying to outdo them. With his luck, Lily would tell him all the wrong information and although he wouldn't poison Remus, it would certainly taste like it. So he turned to the only other person he could think to ask.

"You want to WHAT?" Alice asked, choking on laughter.

"I want to learn to cook," Sirius said, like it was the most reasonable thing in the world. "Come on, Temptress. Man does not live by take-away alone."

"Frank makes a pretty good stab at it."

"I'm not Frank."

"There's tins and pasta," Alice pointed out.

"Which get boring. Look, can you cook, or not?"

"Tell me the real reason, and I'll tell you," Alice countered, smirking.

Sirius sighed. "I'd like to be able to cook for Remus, okay?"

"I knew it!" Alice sighed. "That's romantic. Wish Frank would learn. Sure. I can help you. What do you want to learn to cook?"

Sirius shrugged. "It doesn't seem like it's a matter of learning to cook anything specific," he said. "It's more just learning to cook in general. I mean, I looked at some recipes and it looked like if you stayed awake in first year Potions you can follow a recipe, and food has the advantage of not blowing up on you. But it's getting started I don't know how to do."

Alice considered the problem seriously now. "I could come over after work," she suggested. "We can take a look at your kitchen and then go shopping for what you would need to get started. And maybe we can make something simple tonight."

"Perfect!" Sirius grinned at her. "I'll see you tonight."

***

Sirius Black's kitchen was one of the places of mystery in his flat (there, and the medicine cabinet in the bathroom). He vaguely remembered putting things in cupboards, but what he'd put in was beyond him. He rarely opened the cupboards unless he wanted a glass or a plate.

"I'm impressed," Alice said as she surveyed the contents. "You actually put down shelf paper."

Sirius shrugged, hands stuffed in his pockets. "Yeah, well, both Mrs. Potter and Mrs. Lupin made me do it."

If Alice noticed he never mentioned his own mother, she didn't comment. She was too busy taking inventory. "Well, you have a couple of decent saucepans and some skillets. It looks like you have a stewpot, too. Two mixing bowls, that's good, and even a baking sheet."

"Is that what that is?" Sirius asked, looking at the flat sheet of metal.

"You don't know?"

"No. Mrs. Potter gave me some of her old stuff when I got the flat- the stuff she doesn't use anymore."

"She probably has nicer ones," Alice agreed. "These are pretty ancient. Look at the patterns on these plates!"

Sirius shrugged again. "What about them?"

"Well, they're so fifties!" He stared at her blankly. Alice sighed. "Never mind. Let's see. You've got some good knives, but you could use a new cutting board. And a new whisk. This one's all rusted."

"Is that what a whisk is?" Sirius asked. "I was wondering. What do you use it for?"

"To whisk things." Sirius fixed her with a granite glare. "All right. It's a method of mixing things. It mixes is a lot of air and keeps whatever your mixing nice and light."

Sirius nodded in a way that demonstrated that explanation made TOTAL sense to him. "What else do I need?"

Alice was noting things down on a pad. "Just some basic groceries. And I was thinking tonight we could start with a simple tomato sauce and meatballs. How's this one look?"

Sirius scanned the recipe that Alice had indicated and nodded satisfaction. "Sounds good."

***

Sirius had been to the market, of course. Even tins and boxes of pasta couldn't be conjured out of thin air, and while one might be able to transfigure paper into food, it sure left the diner with a flat feeling afterwards, and had far too much fiber. But Alice steered Sirius into sections that he'd yet to venture into.

"How is it I could get O's in both Herbology and Potions and be so afraid of little bundles of herbs?" he asked, meaning for the question to be rhetorical.

Alice didn't take it that way. "I think it has to do with just the idea of cooking," she mused. "People find it intimidating because they experience it in such a sensory way."

Sirius turned over the bunch of oregano he was holding, sniffing it experimentally. "I guess," he said doubtfully. "When you're actually going to put something in your mouth, it does make you a little more apprehensive. We handled nasty stuff in Potions, but if you knew you didn't have to eat it, it wasn't so bad."

"That's definitely part of it," Alice agreed as she studied the parsley. "But it's also because we have such a definite idea of how things should taste. You see the same thing in drawing. People are much more willing to attempt drawing a desk or a book or even an animal, because most people don't look so closely at them. But they balk at drawing a human being, because we pay such close attention to them all the time, and you can see the flaws. People worry that their cooking won't taste exactly the way they expect it to or the way Mum's did-"

"Merlin, I hope not!" Sirius muttered.

"And the idea of cooking becomes this huge task that they're afraid to take on," Alice finished as if Sirius hadn't interrupted. "You've got the oregano. This is flat leaf parsley. I've yet to figure out what's all that different about it from the curly leaf, but unless a recipe calls for it, use the flat leaf."

Sirius nodded, studying the bunches carefully. "What else do we need?"

Alice showed him how to pick out ripe tomatoes, and how to determine which onions would have the best flavor. Then there was olive oil- a single bottle plucked out of enough varieties to be utterly baffling. Not only were there different grades of olive oil (and yes, Sirius's inner twelve-year old got a good giggle out of buying the "extra-virgin" variety), but there was vegetable oil, peanut oil, seseme oil, canola oil, grapeseed oil... and Alice said each had their own separate uses.

"I'm sure it has to do with their physical properties and what they originally come from," Alice explained, "but I don't remember exactly what is used for what. I know Mum uses either vegetable oil or shortening when she bakes, and someone told me that they use peanut oil in Chinese restaurants because it takes the high heat better."

Sirius began to wish he'd brought a notebook, because cooking was full of interesting trivia and facts that probably had some scientific basis that he thought he might like to look up later.

"You're not going to make me make my own pasta, are you?" Sirius asked dubiously as Alice plopped a bag of flour into his cart.

"Not at all. One rule of cooking, Sirius, never do more than you can handle. If you're making your own sauce, that's impressive enough. Don't try to make your own pasta and your own bread, too. We'll use the stuff that's already been made. But you need flour for your pantry."

Flour wasn't the only thing he needed, apparently. The cart piled high with staples. Flour, sugar, cornstarch, little bottles of dried herbs and extracts, boxes of pasta and tins of diced tomatoes and sliced mushrooms. Shortening, oils, cubes of stock for the freezer, eggs, butter, milk... Sirius was a little appalled at the mound of food in the cart by the time they were done.

"It won't be nearly this bad normally," Alice consoled him after he paid the bill. "Most of these things you don't buy each time you go shopping. When you run out, you'll replace them gradually. And with all this food around, you'll have to keep cooking."

***

The recipe was remarkably easy to follow, although Sirius felt clumsy and uncertain in the kitchen. Alice chopped tomatoes and herbs with a smooth, quick precision he couldn't quite duplicate, and when she checked the sauce her stirring motions were swift and graceful, not clumsy like his.

"It takes practice," Alice reassured him. "You'll get the hang of it."

She showed him how to mix the meat, egg, and breadcrumbs for meatballs, and then how to fry them quickly before they put them in the sauce. Sirius's meatballs crumbled, although Alice's stayed nice and round.

"It doesn't matter," she reassured him when he grew frustrated. "It will taste the same."

"But..." he gestured futilely at the pan with the spoon, "it looks a horrid mess!"

"So? It's still edible." Alice was giving no quarter. "You're not going to do everything perfectly the first time, Sex God. Get used to it. Meatballs are an art."

She was right. Both that Sirius would not do everything perfectly the first time, and that the resultant "mess" was more than edible. In fact, Sirius was rather pleased with himself.

"Enjoy experimenting," Alice said as she left at the end of the evening to go home to the flat she shared with Frank. "And don't blow up your kitchen."

Sirius stuck his tongue out at her.

***

Soup. Soup was what Lily made, and soup was what Sirius was going to make better. He leafed through the cookbook he'd finally broken down and bought, studying the recipes carefully. Alice had warned him not to try anything too complicated at first, and that lots of ingredients and steps didn't necessarily taste better. Some foods, she said, were good because they were simple.

There was a recipe that looked likely. It consisted of sausage, stock, onions, pasta shells, and tinned tomatoes, and a few herbs. Simple steps, simple process, and you sprinkled it with parmesan cheese afterwards. It sounded perfect.

The full moon was still two weeks away, so Sirius attempted the recipe on a Saturday when Remus was due over. He made the garlic bread that Alice had showed him how to make, and put together a salad with a bottled salad cream. It took him less time than he anticipated, but the soup smelled divine.

And it was worth it when he saw the bafflement dissolving to surprised pleasure on Remus's face when he arrived that night. "I didn't know you could cook," Remus said, sopping his fourth piece of bread in the remnants of his third bowl of soup. "When did you learn?"

"I just started," Sirius said proudly. "Alice showed me the basics."

Remus smiled, but there was a wistful quality to his expression. "What is it?" Sirius asked.

"I don't suppose... I mean... I don't cook much myself, except the little Mum showed me, but... would you mind if I learned with you?"

It wasn't what Sirius had pictured. He'd envisioned serving a delighted and surprised Remus gourmet meals, letting Remus lounge about as he prepared dinner. But new pictures began to edge those out of his brain... Remus chopping vegetables as Sirius sautéed, Remus mashing the potatoes as Sirius watched the roast, pouring over the recipe books together, deciding what they wanted to try, laughing at their mistakes together.

"Yeah," Sirius decided. "That sounds good."

***

It was good. They ventured into the world of stews, and found them as easy as soups. They tackled lasagna. They laughed over badly formed omelets, and groaned over mistakes. Remus's attempt at a soufflé became something of a legend between them, and the night Sirius overdid the garlic was grounds for a running joke.

When Remus moved in in May, some of the magic went out of cooking together as cooking became a nightly chore and not a fun thing to do once a week. But it wasn't gone completely, and they discovered new joys from it. Sirius often came home late from the Ministry to find a hot meal waiting for him, and was touched. And he liked doing the same in return. And there was always the guilty pleasure of blowing off cooking altogether and getting take-out, and sitting on the couch side by side as they ate it straight from the containers in stocking feet and pajama bottoms.

The cooked one night for Lily, James, and Peter. A roast, mashed potatoes, homemade gravy, asparagus with hollandaise sauce and strawberry shortcake. James and Peter had eaten until their eyes glazed over, and even Lily conceded that, for two confirmed bachelors, they put out a pretty good spread.

It didn't seem like much, but Sirius found himself looking forward to dinner more and more.

***

"What sort of soup do you want this month?" Sirius asked Remus in June.

Remus was sitting on the sofa, bare feet on the table as he thumbed through the Quidditch magazine. "Whatever Lily brings is fine. Why? Did she ask you?"

"No. I just thought..." Sirius hovered awkwardly in the doorway.

Remus smiled at him. "Honestly, I'd prefer yours. It's much better. But Lily always looks forward to it- it makes her feel like she's doing something for me. Do you mind if she does it?"

"Not at all," Sirius said, greatly cheered. "That's fine."

After all, the entire point of the cooking exercise had been realized with that one little speech. And the funny thing was, it just wasn't that important anymore.

Sirius went back into the kitchen to finish making dinner.