Round 21 Lt Emerson Ravenscroft, "La Cena"

[Sabrina Holly]

((Blueheart’s Quarter’s, USS Atlantis))

::Despite not having had a good night’s sleep, Emerson swung his legs over the side of the bed, stood up, and stretched to the ceiling with a satisfied sigh. Then he plopped himself back onto the soft, downy bed, a faint smile spreading across his face, as he picked up a PADD from the bedside table and typed a message for Raj:

Hey,

Hope you’ll be back in time for dinner. I’m cooking.

See you soon, baby.

XOXO

Em

He hit the Send button and then flinging the PADD aside, he dropped backwards onto the bed, arms spread out, heaving another sigh of satisfaction. Seconds later he leaped out of bed, scratched his bare bum, and headed to the replicator to get himself a strong cup of coffee. It was going to be a busy day, he told himself, but a meaningful one too.::

((Three hours later))

::Having replicated all the raw ingredients that he would need, including basic cooking utensils, using his very own personal collection of culinary subroutines that counted among some of his most cherished and valuable possessions, it was now time to commence cooking for a boyfriend.

He decided to make Escalivada as starters. He placed whole eggplants, sweet red peppers, red tomatoes, sweet onions, beetroots and sweet potatoes on a grill. The trick was to make small, elongated incisions in the vegetables to prevent them from bursting when grilled. Once well cooked, he removed them from the grill and peeled and sliced them into strips, before dousing them with olive oil and a dash of sea salt, roasted mustard seeds roasted minced garlic.

To accompany the escalivada, Emerson prepared Escudella. For the rich stew, he brought pasta, cabbage, white beans, chickpeas, turnips, onions and carrots to a slow simmer, and substituted the traditional “feet and bones” with botiffara sausages instead. The escudella would go well when eaten with mollete, he told himself and promptly replicated some of the bread.

For the main course, he decided to make a special seafood paella, arroz negro. Replicated squids rarely contained ink, so he replicated the cephalopods and the black ink separately. First he cooked the cut up squids, cuttlefish, shrimp, mussels and fillets of cod in the cephalopod ink in a frying pan before throwing in some bay leaves. In a paella pre-heated beside the pan, he stir-fried some chopped onions and then added the round grain rice and stirred it constantly until it browned, after which he added some parsley, pepper and salt to taste, a half-glass of chardonnay and one liter of fish broth. After about ten minutes, he added the cooked seafood and the remaining broth and allowed it to simmer for ten to fifteen minutes until the rice was done.

Next, he prepared the fat-trimmed pork skin strips for the traditional pork rind-style chicharrónes. After having boiled the skin and cooled them down, he rubbed some ground cayenne pepper onto the strips before deep-frying them in oil until they puffed up and started to float to the surface. The chicharrónes would go very well with almogrote, a delicious cheese sauce made with goat cheese, paprika, red chilli pepper, olive oil, garlic and tomatoes.

After thinking for a few minutes, Emerson opted to prepare Tarta de Santiago for dessert. After baking the ground-almond pie within the replicator itself (which he modified after learning the trick from one of Discovery’s former engineers), he dusted a generous coating of powdered sugar over a cut-out of St James’ sword. He later removed the piece of cut-out and admired the design it left behind on the pie. He replicated some vanilla ice-cream to go with the pie.

He wiped the sweat off his brow and checked the time. Almost six hours had passed. From the store room, he removed a Gran Reserva bottle of Rioja and two wine glasses and brought them out to the dining table which had been draped with a blood red tablecloth with the various dishes laid out on top. Remembering to authorize the computer to turn off the fire alert, Emerson lit two ivory candles and placed them on either side of the central floral arrangement of red roses interrupted by sprigs of lavender.

He stepped back to admire the presentation and sighed for the third time that day.::

RAVENSCROFT: Computer, play romantic harp instrumental playlist, Emerson 2T. And dim the lights down two degrees.

::As the computer chirped and complied, the flame-haired linguist almost skipped into the shower to dress for the occasion, humming a cheery tune as the sonic shower came on.::

TBC

====================================

Lt Emerson Ravenscroft

Xenolinguist

USS Atlantis

NCC-74682

as simmed by

Commander Raj Blueheart