Cooking With Dad

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Lord Jaezred Vandree arrives at the Hung Rabbit with full shopping bags on both arms. He orders the kitchen staff to “go on and have a break”, which they appear to be both glad and afraid to do, shuffling rapidly out the door with their heads bowed as they pass by him. Once the kitchen is cleared out, he climbs up the stairs to bang on Rae’s door and holds out a purple apron in front of them.

“Your days of feeding on garbage are now ended. Today, you will learn how to cook.”
Rae is in a mood, slightly brightened by the arrival of Jaezred, but they answer the door with a frustrated energy. Initially reluctant to join in, eyes glancing back to the tiny desk in their room, they eventually relent, put the apron on, and follow Jaezred downstairs into the kitchen.

“Fine. I could use a distraction— Now, just because my sandwiches aren’t all lobster, doesn’t mean they are garbage.” They pull their hair up in a quick bun to get it out of the way.

“There are ways to eat cheap and simple meals that don’t involve things you picked up from the street,” Jaezred says as he rolls up the sleeves of his shirt and puts on his pink apron. “Now, we are going to make shakshuka.”

Rae nods slowly, recognising the name of the dish and some of the things that go into it, but having no idea where to start. “Okay, chef. What’s first?”

Jaezred begins taking the ingredients out of the shopping bags: a bottle of olive oil, a jar of chunky tomato sauce, a jar of firedrake powder, onions, green peppers, chillies, garlic, eggs, a small pouch of cumin seeds, parsley, cilantro, and Za’Suulan feta cheese. “First order in cooking is, almost always, to chop the vegetables.” He pulls out a knife out of a chopping block with a flourish and hands it to Rae.

Rae takes the knife and looks along its edge, nodding in satisfaction. “Perfect.”
They begin with the peppers, which they cut with relative ease, but no real finesse or speed. And they end up with a lot of slamming cuts through instead of gentle gliding.

“Easy, Rae. You’re cutting up vegetables, not Antonia Warborn. I know you can handle a blade with much more poise than that.”

Rae sighs in frustration, takes a breath, then starts again, softly gliding the end of the knife into the pepper, almost like a sword thrust, before bringing the rest of the blade down to chop the slices more gently. “Sorry. It’s not been a great…week, really. Hard to concentrate.”

“I know,” Jaezred says quietly. He scoots the onions and chillies closer to the cutting board. “Let yourself go. Focus on cutting.”

Rae quirks an eyebrow, but nods, and carries on cutting. They focus only on the motions of it and tune everything else out. “Sliced or diced?” they ask once they have the peppers sliced into thin strips.

“…Diced.”

As Rae gets to chopping the rest of the vegetables, Jaezred snaps his fingers. A fire roars to life in the wood in the stove. He puts a small pan over the fire and drizzles a generous amount of olive oil. When the chillies, peppers, and onions are ready, he gestures for Rae to come over. “Add the onions first, then the others. Sautée.”

“Sautée… Okay. I think I can do that.” Rae gently begins sautéeing the onions, keeping a careful eye and gently shifting them around the pan and checking how soft they have been getting with tentative pokes of a flat wooden spoon. They pass a glance over towards Jaezred with their hands near the others before adding them in too.

Jaezred watches over Rae’s shoulder with his arms folded across his chest and a pleased smile on his face. A comfortable quiet, against the background noise of the pan sizzling, falls between them. Without saying a word, he sprinkles a pinch of salt and cumin seeds and a spoonful of firedrake powder onto the vegetables, then he crushes garlic cloves with the flat of a knife and adds those to the mix as well.

The smell that begins to fill the Hung Rabbit’s kitchen is divine. Rae takes a nice whiff of the scent and exhales with the first sense of true relaxation for the first time in days, and their stomach gives a soft grumble in anticipation.
Jaezred chuckles and puts the jar of tomato sauce in their hands. “We’re almost there. Add this over the veggies and spread it across the pan.”

After the pan is covered in a thick layer of juicy red, he instructs, “Right. Now, using the spatula, make circular holes in the sauce, just to expose a bit of the pan’s surface. That is where we’ll poach our eggs.”

“Okay… So just…” Rae follows the instructions, spreading the sauce around to make a hole for the egg, but when they crack their first one, the crack is messy and the egg lands partially in the hole, but partially in the sauce. “Oh, bollocks… Piss! Pissing hells!”

They try to scrape the egg into the hole, breaking the yolk in the process, until they feel a warm hand lay on their shoulder.

“Gently, gently, now,” Jaezred’s deep voice soothes them. “It’s alright. The dish will be messed up when we eat it anyway. Just pick up the pieces of the shell and then move on to the next egg.”

Rae takes another deep breath and steadies themselves. They carefully pick up pieces of shell before moving on, more gently cracking another egg, and more successfully guiding it to the proper location.

“Good job.”
Jaezred snaps his fingers again and the flames in the stove shrink into small, burning embers. He places a lid over the pan. “That will take a few minutes to poach.”

Rae relaxes a little more and turns around, pushing themselves up by their hands to sit on the counter next to the stove and occasionally peer at the eggs’ progress.

After a quiet moment, they speak up. “So. You know about the week we’ve had?”

Jaezred leans against the wall across from the stove. “Keros told me about it.”

Rae nods wordlessly in response, and taps their hands on the counter idly before coming to their next point. “We can figure it out, of course. The project I’ve been working on, I can just feel it’s hiding an answer in it somewhere. I can find it.” They stare off into space, and their face slowly turns a little angry again. “That is, if they let me back to use Daring Academy’s library again.”

“What? You’ve been banned from the Academy library?”

“Some old kook got obsessed with my work and had these completely inane theories and I…” Rae scratches the back of their neck. “…May have gotten a little angry, and told him where he could stick his theories, and I don’t think he cared for that very much… And coincidentally, he seemed to have some sway with the higher-ups and told me I should leave… A temporary setback, I’m sure. I’ll get back in. Somehow. I need to. So I will.”

Jaezred laughs. “Ah, I’ve always hated those insufferable boffins. Though for all the number of times I threatened them, they never had the balls to throw a noble lord out.”

“Well, if I could find a way to reach nobility, then maybe people would let me get on with my studies.” Rae chuckles a little alongside him.

“Anyway, I heard that you also gave Keros’s father a right bollocking, is that true?”

“You heard right. I let him off easy. Despicable bastard.”

“I’m yet to have the displeasure of meeting him, but I’m sure he deserved it.” Jaezred pauses to rub the back of his neck, as if trying to figure out how to say what he wants to say next. “Er, I do wonder about your family sometimes, Rae. Not as bad as Keros’s, I hope?”

Rae’s eyes shoot up as if caught off-guard, not expecting this. They clear their throat awkwardly. “My family? No. Not as bad as Keros’s… Well, not to me. They loved me, and spoiled me. I grew up very happy. But we were far away from a lot of other people. It took me a long time to realise they weren’t as kind to outsiders as they were to their own.”

“Oh? As I recall, you come from somewhere near the Underdark, yes? Unfriendliness is, unfortunately, the one trait that all Underdark and Underdark-adjacent folk share.”

Rae nods quietly. “Not quite in the depths, closer with the Underdark than the surface.” They carry on talking, but switch to Undercommon. “Quite a lot of trade and visitors from there. And some of the customs as well, I suppose. They would really not be happy if they knew where I was or what I was doing.”

“You ran away from home?” Jaezred asks in Undercommon.

“Couple of years ago now. And I haven’t regretted it for a single day.” Rae’s Undercommon is very well-spoken, and with a clear accent from Faerûn.

“Ah.” Jaezred walks over to the stove and lifts the lid to check on the eggs. “Whereabouts in Faerûn are you from, exactly? I might have been there.”

Rae peers at the eggs as the lid is lifted, continuing to speak while still looking at the dish. “Underneath Deepwing Mountains, southeastern kind of direction. The settlement was called Vorzutha, if that rings any bells.”

He takes a moment to think. “Hmm. Can’t remember if I have. I assume your family is important over there?”

“My father is head of the guard, and my mother was very active and outspoken in the community. Not quite leadership important, but, you know. People knew them.”

“And may I ask what they did to make you realise their true nature?”

“The man that introduced me to the study of wizardry, and the art of Bladesong, was a wood elf. I knew they were wary of outsiders, so I kept the fact that I was meeting with him from them. Once they found out how much had been happening under their noses they were… disgusted. They were very cruel and unfair to him in a way I had not seen from them before. I didn’t like it.” Rae’s gaze moves downward as they reflect on this.

Jaezred makes no sound for a long time. He rests his hands on the red brick of the stove, staring down at the pan as if contemplating the Zakharan dish they’re making. Until he finally says, “I used to think that all surface elves were horrendous. Hardly more than animals. That was what I was taught. And then, as you know, I fell in love with one. When I realised that my goddess or my family could kill her, I abandoned them.”

Rae looks up at him, studying him, seeing him in a new light. They then also turn their eyes to the pan before continuing. “Well. You’re not the only one who fell in love with a surface elf. That is, if you can call the feelings I had at a younger age love. I don’t know. They felt like love. From what I’d heard.”

The drow turns to look at Rae with a raised brow. “…Were they very muscular?”

“…Surprisingly so for a wizard. I think that was the thing.” They get a little flush of embarrassment, but manage a little chuckle as well.

“Oho, I knew you had a type!”

“Shut up!” Rae gives him a playful shove in the shoulder.

“Keros would do well to keep you away from the Fort Ettin training yard. So many large, rippling muscles on display, who knows what that’d do to you… Oh, and whatever you do, never go anywhere near Harnash! A whole country of buffed up orcs — I mean, you’re sure to perish from overheating.”

“Alright, alright, cut it out!” Rae fully starts chuckling, they smile bright and openly before burying their face in their hands to stifle laughter. “Is our meal ready yet? I’m starving now.”

Jaezred summons a gust of chill wind from his palm to kill the last of the fire and takes the lid off the pan. One egg has its yolk smeared over the tomato sauce, but the other is perfectly intact, a thin white film over its yolk. “Put a finger here. Gently. Can you feel it? The yolk is firm but not wispy. That means it’s just the right amount of jammy. Now—” He takes the pan off the stove and puts it on the counter. “All that’s left is to garnish with herbs and crumbled feta cheese.”

Rae listens attentively, follows the instructions, and nods along as Jaezred explains. At the same time, he procures a loaf of whole wheat bread from the shopping bag and cuts it into slices.

Once the pan is off the counter and on a table outside, they move quickly to fetch plates and cutlery for the pair of them, but Jaezred waves it off.

“No, no, we eat this off the pan, using bread as our delivery method.” To show them how, he scoops the tomato sauce, along with the veggies, the ruined egg yolk, and a bit of the herbs and cheese, onto his piece of bread and takes a bite. “Mmm.”


“Oh… Oh, I see.” Rae puts the plates and cutlery down and reaches for their own piece of bread. They carefully follow his lead, scooping as much as they can up, including the perfect egg, and take a wide-mouthed bite to make sure they don’t lose any.

It’s tangy, spicy with a kick, and incredibly flavourful, complete with the delicious warm hug of a jammy egg. They close their eyes in satisfaction and sink into the chair.

“Not bad for a first-time cook, eh?” Jaezred ruffles their hair. “Well done, champ.”

“Anything’s easy when you have a good teacher.” Rae beams a smile at Jaezred. “Thank you for taking the time to teach me.”

Jaezred grins back at them — a genuinely proud smile coupled with a twinkle in his eye. “I bought some more basic ingredients for you and you’ll find a couple more easy-to-follow recipes in there. No more garbage sandwiches from this day onwards, understood?” He nudges them in the ribs playfully. “Oh, and Rae? You will find a way to save Keros. I know you will.”

Rae smiles at the jests and jabs, but nods with a determined look at the last comment.

“I know it too. Thank you.”