Newbie Dish
By Wanderer D
Rainbow Dash looked down at Twilight's present with a mix of fascination, dread, disappointment and horror. “A book?”
“Not just any book, Dash!” the purple unicorn said with a delighted smile. “A Cook Book!”
“Ah, a Cook Book!” Rainbow Dash smiled uneasily. “That makes it much better. Err... thank you, Twilight.”
Twilight blinked and lowered her head, looking sadly at Rainbow Dash. “OH... oh... you don't like it, do you?” she sighed as Rainbow Dash looked at her worriedly. “I should have listened to Spike. What do I know of birthdays? I guess my lessons in friendship didn't cover how to appropriately gift a friend on her special day.”
Rainbow Dash looked around for help, wincing but the others were too busy playing games or talking to notice. “Ah...” she patted Twilight's head with her hoof. “No! Not at all! This... this is perfect! I've always wanted to uh, cook, something for all my friends! And now I can! It's perfect!”
Twilight looked at her miserably. “You're just saying that, aren't you?”
The blue pegasus shook her head violently. “No! Pinkie Promise!” Rainbow Dash said, going through the motions. “Cross My Heart, Hope to Fly, Stick a Cupcake in my Oww!”
“Silly, you gotta be careful!” Pinkie Pie giggled as she bounced towards them. “So, what did you Pinkie Swear to?”
“Uh...”
“Rainbow Dash promised that she liked my birthday gift and that she would use it to cook something for us.” Twilight sparkle said, a small smile returning to her face.
“She did?! She did!” Pinkie shouted, drawing the attention of the others, who came over to see what the commotion was about.
As they talked excitedly amongst themselves about getting together in a couple of days to taste Rainbow's cooking, said pegasus looked around in panic and moaned.
It was early in the morning. The birds were chirping, the chickens were clucking and somepony was banging Fluttershy's door like there was no tomorrow.
The yellow pegasus was currently hiding under the tea table wondering who could possibly be trying so hard to bring down her door.
“Fluttershy!” a voice echoed into the house. “Let me in! I need your help!”
Blinking in surprise, the kind pegasus inched her way to the door and opened it. “Rainbow Dash?”
The rainbow-maned pegasus nodded. “The one and only.” she said proudly, then deflated. “I need your help.” she said, pushing her friend into her house and closing the door behind them.
“H-help with what?”
“This.” Rainbow Dash said, pulling Twilight's Cookbook out of her saddlebag.
“Oh.” Fluttershy said. “Um... I guess... I could help you with a simple recipe?”
“That's all I need!” Dash said, smiling and strutting up to the table where she opened it. “What should we make?”
Fluttershy expertly checked the index and flipped the pages. “How about this? It looks simple enough.”
Rainbow Dash leaned in and looked unimpressed. “A salad? No, that won't work!”
“It... won't?”
“No! It has to be something cooler!” Rainbow Dash started flipping the pages. “Too simple, too quick, not cool enough... heeellloooo? What is this? A-au-beriinge en pa-pa-pillote?”
“Oh my.” Fluttershy said, looking at the recipe. “I don't know Rainbow Dash... this might be too complicated to do for today... especially if it is your first time...”
“No! I can't! Twilight will be expecting something complicated! You know how she is! She'll be disappointed that I haven't read her book!” Dash begged. “Besides! With your help, I can get this done in ten seconds flat.” Rainbow Dash said.
Fluttershy sighed.
“Okay... so what do we need?” Rainbow Dash was now sporting a cook's hat on her head.
“Um... let's see...” Fluttershy looked at the recipe. “We need Eggplants....” she was buffeted by wind as Rainbow Dash disappeared and reappeared in a couple of seconds with a basket of eggplants. “Thyme...” *Whoosh* a fresh hooffull of the herbs landed next to her “oil” a rainbow colored blur and a bottle appeared on the counter.
She kept listing as ingredients piled up around her one by one until... thunk! “Here...” Rainbow Dash gasped. “Parchment Paper. That... that was a tough one, I had to go all the way to Canterlot to get it...”
“Well... I think we have all the ingredients here.” Fluttershy said, looking around.
“Nice!” Rainbow Dash said, picking up all of the ingredients and starting to dump them into a large plate. “So, we just mix this all up and we're done right?”
“Oh, no.” Fluttershy said with a shake of her head. “This dish requires several steps. Here, let's clear the table and get some equipment out.
“Okay, so, what do I do?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking down at the eggplants in front of her.
“You need to slice them.” the yellow pegasus answered, using a knife to slice the bottom and top of the Eggplant. “Like that... now...”
“Got it!” Rainbow Dash grabbed the knife and started slicing as fast as she could.
Fluttershy ducked behind the table as pieces of Eggplant flew all over the kitchen. When she felt it safe to look again, Rainbow Dash had chopped the eggplants into tiny pieces.
“Easy as pie!” the blue pegasus bragged.
“Um... you were supposed to cut it into slices...” she said.
Rainbow Dash looked down at the minced Eggplants. “Oh.”
They had gotten a new batch of Eggplants and this time they had cut them into slices. Fluttershy's batch were all carefully sliced into equally thick pieces, while Rainbow Dash's batch was... varied. Declaring it a success, the blue pegasus insisted they move on the the next part.
“Now we need to use spread some oil on top of them...” Fluttershy started to say, when she noticed that Dash had emptied the oil into a large bowl and dumped all the slices in there.
“What?” Dash asked when she noticed the other pegasus incredulous look. “That's faster!”
After fishing the slices out and letting the excess oil drip off, Rainbow Dash had been tasked with sprinkling thyme on top of the neatly organized slices which, to Fluttershy's relief she managed to do.
“That was easy!” Rainbow Dash said. “What's next?” she rushed to the book. “Tomato... concasse? What is that?”
The tears would not stop. “Why can't I do this?!” Rainbow Dash shouted, looking with hatred at the onions.
“Here...” Fluttershy said, pushing her out of the way. “You go boil the tomatoes so we can skin them.”
With practiced ease the yellow pegasus chopped the rest of the onions, some shallots and some garlic.
“Wow, you're pretty good at that!” Rainbow Dash commented.
“Thanks!” Fluttershy said, smiling gently at her friend. “How are those tomatoes doing?”
“Fine!” Dash said, only to be interrupted by a strong whistling sound.
“Rainbow Dash?” Fluttershy asked. “You didn't throw the tomatoes into the pressure cooker, did you?”
“Um... I might have?” Rainbow Dash said as the whistling grew in intensity. “I read in the book that it can help cook faster.”
“But... if you don't close it properly...”
With a bang the top of the pressure cooker shot straight through Fluttershy's roof and both pegasi had to dive under the table or be bathed in hot tomatoes.
They slowly came out and looked towards the stove. The pressure cooker had fallen to the side, and as they watched the butter in the pan that Rainbow Dash had decided to melt went brown and started sizzling before bursting into flame.
“I... read that sometimes adding a bit of oil to the butter helps?” Dash ventured.
“Mushroom duxelles” Rainbow Dash read aloud. “chop a bunch of mushrooms and some shallots; sweat the shallots in butter... add the chopped mushrooms and a squeeze of lemon... Sounds easy. I'll start melting the butter...”
“No!” Fluttershy shouted. Then, in a smaller voice she repeated. “No... how about... you chop the mushrooms and the shallots... you're good at chopping stuff...”
“Julienne some carrots, celery and leeks...” Rainbow Dash looked confused. “Who's Julienne? Do we really need her to do this?”
She looked up, surprised, as Fluttershy facehoofed.
“Okay, Fluttershy! The grill pan is searingly hot!” she shouted stepping back as the red-hot piece of metal radiated intense heat.
Fluttershy whimpered.
“Hey! Fluttershy! How many of these parchment paper hearts did we really need?
Finally, after six hours of work, the hour-long prepping time was done. Rainbow Dash watched as Fluttershy carefully placed the salvaged papillotes into the oven. And not a moment too soon as there was a knock on the door.
“Hey! Come on in!” Rainbow Dash smiled as she let Twilight, Rarity, Pinkie Pie and Applejack through.
The group stared at the wrecked remains of Fluttershy's kitchen.
“We're almost done!” Dash said, running back to stand by the oven. “This part only takes a couple of minutes.”
“Wow... it looks like a tornado went off in here!” Twilight said as she watched Rainbow carefully take the food out of the oven.
“This looks delicious!” Pinkie Pie shouted, looking at the small papillotes.
“Dash, I’m impressed... you really outdid yourself!” Rarity said taking a bite.
“Yeah... I was really expecting something simple...” Twilight said. “Like a salad!”
Fluttershy's eye twitched.
The scream of frustration woke up Luna from her nap in the moon. She looked down at Equestria, confused, then shrugged, falling back asleep.
The End
