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With enough practice, even Bennett had learned how to properly fry an egg. About 90% of the time.
Razor, meanwhile, understood how to set up a campfire, butcher an animal, and cook slabs of meat thoroughly enough to not get sick. He thought it was a hassle, but the annoyance of cooking was still better than becoming a detriment to his Lupical after falling ill – which still happened occasionally. When he was feeling particularly impatient.
Neither seemed to know what a vegetable was, but both had asked to be taught, which was why Lisa had decided to begin their culinary lessons with those.
She held up a carrot. “Who can tell me what this is?”
Razor growled.
“That's a…!” As if Bennett was taking a ‘wrong answers only’ challenge a little too seriously, he faltered before coming to a complete stop. “Oh no. I should know this.”
Lisa didn't sigh, shake her head, or offer any other indication of frustration or impatience. They would be difficult students for sure, but they were also willing students. That meant they were interested in learning.
Anyone who was willing to learn could be taught.
Lisa corrected them gently, and moved on. Potatoes. Rutabagas. Onions. Radishes. Some ingredients were easier for them to identify than others, but the two made it through the rest of the vegetable identification part of the lesson with only a handful of issues.
Then Lisa picked up a measuring cup.
“Small cup,” Razor commented.
“Very good!”
“For… booze?”
Lisa frowned. She'd heard a thing or two about how Razor had begun learning hunting skills from Draff. Things like field dressing a carcass and sharpening knives. Unless Varka had educated Razor on alcohol alongside claymore usage, her student had apparently been learning about more than just hunting from Draff.
“...I think I know what that is,” Bennett piped up.
Given that Bennett had been raised by retired members of the Adventurers’ Guild, his culinary knowledge was mostly practical in nature. He knew how to light a campfire, and cook meat until it wasn't raw. Bennett had some basic camping recipes – stew, fried eggs, smoked fish – in his arsenal, but little else.
So Lisa wasn't really surprised when he followed up that exclamation with, “But I've never used one before”. An interesting story about a time Bennett had used one of his shoes as a stew bowl followed. This had happened after all of his cooking equipment had fallen off the side of a ravine, and following several unsuccessful attempts at hunting meat to roast at his campfire that night. To Lisa, the contents of his “stew” had sounded worse than the way he had cooked and eaten it from the shoe: cabbage heated until it was mush, carrots that were slightly too crunchy, and some nearby flowers that Bennett had recognized as safe to eat.
“...It didn’t taste very good,” Bennett admitted at the end of his story.
“Well,” Lisa said, “I can’t teach you how to avoid bad luck. What I can do is help you make the best of what you have, as well as show you some tricks if you ever need to impress a dinner guest.”
Razor nodded. He was an attentive student who enjoyed learning new things, even if they didn’t appear to be immediately relevant. Although Bennett didn’t look hopeful, he also nodded along. Too many bad past experiences? Lisa guessed. People who’d told him it was pointless trying to teach him?
She’d heard things, here and there, about the types of people Bennett normally adventured with. His “dads” thought he was a good kid, and Fischl was completely nonplussed by the bad luck that stalked him day and night. The others had complaints, ranging from “too dangerous to be around” to “doesn’t pay attention”.
None of their complaints were, in Lisa’s opinion, justified. But that didn’t mean Bennett didn’t believe them.
Razor was a bit different, not weighing the opinions of others too heavily in his mind as long as his Lupical were safe and happy. But he’d shown an equal interest in learning to cook, and there were many who would’ve considered him even harder to teach than Bennett.
Lisa didn’t agree with that either.
Anyone who was willing to learn , she reminded herself, could be taught .
Their first lesson was mostly terminology and units of measurement. They moved onto kitchen tools and techniques by lesson two. How to easily remove the skin and fascia from meat. How to debone meat, chop vegetables, and use a knife without accidentally cutting oneself. How to clean their work area at the end.
The lesson after that involved seasonings – how to use them, how to identify them, and what they paired well with. Razor was unsurprisingly adept at identifying different seasonings by smell alone, while Bennett unsurprisingly struggled a bit, mixing up salt with sugar at one point.
By the fourth lesson, Lisa began teaching them about different cooking techniques. Sauté, roast, simmer. The children watched intently, as if they were trying to absorb every detail. She spoke slowly and explained thoroughly, under the impression that they wouldn’t know which questions to ask even if they had questions, and Bennett caught the corner of his shirt on fire twice during the practical portion of the lesson.
Nonetheless, there were smiles. Laughter.
“Lisa, you’re such a good teacher!” Bennett exclaimed at the end.
Razor seemed confused, as if he didn’t understand why it had taken Bennett so long to notice. “Purple lady good is teacher. Talks good. Teaches Razor, a lot.”
Lisa felt a warmth begin to spread in her chest. It lifted the weight off her shoulders, made the air feel just a little bit lighter–
“Every willing student deserves a good teacher.”