Her Billionaire Toy Boy

While they were waiting for everything to cook in the oven, Mira and Sam elected to wash their dishes. The cooking class staff would have done this for them, but Sam insisted that part of being a chef was the propensity to do everything, from start to finish, and that included burnishing all of the pans and bowls they had used until they gleamed.

As Mira stood next to Sam with her arms covered in suds up to the elbow, she thought that Sam was quite possibly the strangest, most down-to-earth billionaire she had ever met.

“It’s rather meditative, isn’t it,” said Sam presently, passing Mira a gleaming pan to be rinsed. He had gallantly offered to take care of the part of the job which involved getting close and personal with food debris; although, Mira did notice that the whole concept and job of cleaning the dirty dishes did not seem as horrible when the job was tackled so quickly after the mess was made. The hotness of the water and the sweetness of the soap, as well as the distracting handsomeness of her dish-washing partner, made the whole thing seem much less like a chore.

“I suppose it is,” Mira said meditatively.

“There’s something about taking a gross thing and making it cleaner that is some sort of a metaphor for a successful, pleasant life, too,” said Sam after a moment.

“I would never have taken you for someone so Zen,” said Mira teasingly. Sam looked at her happily.

“Cooking—and the kitchen—is very much my happy place,” said Sam. “I find that I can cook and rinse away almost any problem in the world with a sharp enough cheese and a sparkling enough kitchen counter.”

Mira would never have previously found herself agreeing with this sentiment, but as she paused to rinse off an impossibly sharp knife, she reflected upon the prescience of these words. Her usual after-work routine of staring at a grimy refrigerator and quickly shoveling whichever foodstuff happened to be the quickest, easiest, and most soon to go bad into her mouth was not a particularly relaxing ritual. Neither was her unfortunately common habit of going to bed with the kitchen dirty and waking the next morning to find that she had to rinse out about four different appliances before she could get her life-giving morning java started.

She resolved that when she got home—or the next day—or at the next most convenient juncture—she would re-arrange her kitchen and instill a nightly habit of making sure that the entire place was sanitized and washed down.

As if mirroring this intention, Sam quietly wiped down the entire sink and then flashed a smile at Mira. “It really feels as if we’ve earned our food now, doesn’t it?”

Mira hadn’t quite thought of it this way. She smiled back at him. It was a whole new way of appreciating food and she thought that she stood a good chance of being converted entirely to this way of thinking.

Sam seemed to know what was going on inside her head. “You look happy,” he said, equally enthused.

“I think I am,” she said after a moment.

“You sound confused.”

“I might be hungry.”

“You might have excellent timing, then,” Sam said lightly. “Let’s go crisp up our asparagus, and then it’ll be time to eat…”

They returned to their cooking station. “Why wait until now to cook the asparagus,” said Mira. “Everything else is basically done.”

“But that’s why,” said Sam, winking at her. “Cooking asparagus is the easiest and most difficult thing in the world. Because, of course, the stuff barely needs cooking at all—so overcooking it is dangerously simple. Basically, we’re going to throw the asparagus in a simple marinade. Just olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, and let those sit for half a minute. Then, we’re going to flip them into our seasoned cast iron skillet.” He did so. “And then let them blacken on the outside, which is only going to take a matter of seconds. And then they’re done,” said Sam, flipping the freshly cooked asparagus, still sizzling, directly on their plates.

Mira sat before her plate and speared one experimentally with a fork. “So, it’s still basically raw on the inside. You’ve only just crisped up the outsides and heated it through.”

“That’s the ticket,” said Sam pleasantly. “Fully cooked asparagus is gross. If it’s about half-cooked, that’s precisely what you want: Still crunchy. You don’t want it to go all brown and soft.”

Mira crunched her way through an asparagus spear with very low expectations. But then, as the lemon zest and rosemary with the crisp oiliness of the spear made its way over her palate, she grinned. “That is the best asparagus I’ve ever had,” she exclaimed. “Not coincidentally, it’s also the only properly cooked one, I think. None of the other spears I’ve ever tried had any bite to them at all.”

“Well, I’m glad that I was able to be here for your first try at them, then,” said Sam. He raised his wineglass in a mock toast. “To properly cooked asparagus.”

“Hear, hear,” Mira said, and then she turned her attention to the still-puffed soufflé Sam had just pulled from the oven. She delicately inserted a spoon. A moment later, she had to physically restrain herself from gobbling down the most sumptuous eggs she had ever tried.

“They barely even seem like eggs,” said Mira.

“Creamy beyond belief,” said Sam, in agreement. “Ridiculously light and rich.”

The same adjectives applied to the flour-less chocolate cake which was pulled out of the oven seconds before it was placed before the pair of them. When Mira broke into it, a stream of fudgy chocolate poured out of the center.

“That is way more satisfying than I thought it would be,” she commented. She then took a bit of the chocolate and knew, instantly, that on a day of tasting things which were more well-prepared and seasoned than anything she’d had in her life, that this cake was the best thing that she had ever tasted.

“This one,” she said, jabbing her fork in its general direction. “This is the one.”

“The one what?”

“The cake. I want to make this cake every day for the rest of my life.”

“We’ll get the recipe, then,” Sam said gravely; and he made sure that the recipe was copied to both of their emails before they left. Mira gathered up her things, feeling satisfied but not stuffed, feeling light as a feather and completely sated. She wanted to get up the next morning, already, so she could drink a fresh pot of coffee and do marvelous things in her kitchen.

“I’ll drink to that,” Sam said, and they went on their merry way.