A/N: This was originally a 'what-if' I posted on my Tumblr that bloomed into a ficlet. And yes, I do own a copy of the Feeding Hannibal cookbook, and these are all real recipes in them, testicles and tongues included. It is epic as well as hilarious. Food puns galore.
Aside from Christmas and birthdays, Parker doesn't really do the whole gift-giving thing. She understands the whole concept, of course, but she doesn't like stealing something just to give it away when she could just keep it for herself. After all, she's the one who stole it, right? Eliot and Hardison are both well-aware of it. They don't expect any spontaneous gifts from her; instead, they take what closeness she gives them and value it, since it's far more important anyways.
Which is why it surprises Eliot so much when Parker stops him as he's walking past the sofa and without ceremony slaps a hardcover book into his hands. "Surprise!" she exclaims.
"Uhm..." He does a mental recall of important dates and comes up empty. "What is it and why are you giving it to me?"
"It's for you," Parker replies succinctly. "It's a cookbook. So you can make the food from the TV for us. All you have to do is replace the people parts with animal ones, and we can have dinner like the creepy doctor does."
Eliot blinks. "I'm sorry, replace the what?" Surely he could not have heard that right.
Hardison puts a hand over Parker's mouth before she can answer and explains, "It's from a TV show, man, Hannibal. Y'know, Hannibal the Cannibal, the fava beans and Chianti dude. They made a show." He gives an apologetic half-shrug. "Parker decided to join me when I binged on Netflix last weekend."
Ah. Okay. That makes so much more sense. "Right. And..." Eliot turns the book over in his hands: Feeding Hannibal: A Connoisseur's Cookbook. "They made a cookbook to go with the show?"
Parker licks Hardison's palm to make him let go, wiping his hand on his hoodie with disgusted sounds. "Yep, and we want you to make them because they look really cool, and I like when you cook the fancy stuff for us," she declares, slithering over the back of the sofa and climbing up his side like a tree. "So will you?"
"What, like the whole book?" he asks, and she nods, her chin digging into his shoulder. Eliot glances down at the book, then back up at Parker's wide, earnest gaze. "Yeah, sure," he replies after a moment. Why not? The brewpub hardly needs supervision, the way things have been going, and it'll be nice to have a project to work on between jobs. And he's always glad to test his culinary skills.
Parker makes an inarticulate sound of happiness and kisses his cheek (she's been getting better at the whole casual-affection thing) before springing onto her feet again, almost skipping to the kitchen to sit at the breakfast bar where she likes to watch him cook. Hardison follows her at a more sedate pace, smiling.
He thumbs through the book as he walks into the kitchen, glancing at recipes and making mental notes before turning back to the breakfast section. "High life eggs it is," he remarks, as it's the only thing they currently have all the ingredients for; anything else, he'd have to make a few shopping trips. Eliot starts to open the cabinet with the pots and pans in it, but he's stopped when Parker suddenly jumps on his back, clinging to him piggyback style. "What is it?" he asks, straightening up a little and hooking his hands beneath her knees, not that she needs the support.
"Do not make the fish Jell-O," she says, eyes wide.
It takes him a minute to realise that she's talking about the kholodets that he'd seen in the mains section. "It's not actually Jell-O, Parker, it's—"
She puts a hand over his mouth before he finishes. "Do. Not. Make. It. Promise you won't. Swear on Julia Child."
The fact that she even knows Julia Child is impressive enough on its own that Eliot smiles against her palm and nods. Parker takes her hand away. "I won't make it."
"Promise?"
"Yes, I promise. I swear on Julia Child," he agrees. "Now, get off me. I can't cook with you on my back."
She stares at him for another moment, then slides off his back and goes to sit on Hardison instead.
Two days after the high life eggs, he decides to start with Ravenstag Stew for main courses. He knows that both of them will eat venison, and he can make the meat pies from the leftovers. "Hardison," Eliot says without looking up from slicing vegetables. "What are you doing?"
The hacker gives him a look of total innocence, like he's not setting up one of his ever-present little cameras on the breakfast bar, pointing into the kitchen directly at Eliot. "Whatever do you mean, most venerated chef?"
"Hardison," Eliot warns, putting as much of his I am wielding a sharp object and have no qualms about using it on people who annoy me tone into the name as he can.
"Relax, man, I'll fix up your voice and make sure nobody sees your face," Hardison reassures, fiddling with his laptop and the camera alternatively. "Just for some of the real fancy ones, okay?"
Eliot almost wants to argue with him a little more, just for the sake of it, then decides against it. Hell, maybe it'll help people actually cook edible food instead of living off microwaved burritos and potato chips like some people he knows used to. "Fine. But if you make me sound like Spencer Smurf again, I'll slip laxatives in yours," he warns and nearly laughs at the look of utter fear that comes to Hardison's face, like he thinks Eliot would actually do it.
But he wouldn't do that to his food. A good chef always respects their ingredients.
Between various jobs and waiting for things to come into season,
it takes a few months to get through the whole cookbook, and with surprisingly few hitches, too, considering Parker's unique sense of taste and Hardison's general avoidance of eating certain organs. Eliot gets around that by just not telling the hacker that no, he did not use any substitutions in the la Tortilla Sacromonte, so yes, he did just enjoy a dish made with brain, sweetbreads, liver, and testicle. And it did not taste that bad, now did it? Punk.
Some dishes yield enough for four or five people, so he doesn't make them until they have company over. Which is actually more often than he would have ever thought. Yes, Nate and Sophie come to visit, but Parker has invited her friend Peggy and their waitress Amy over more than once, and Archie, too. Quinn's stopped by a time or two, usually with assorted bruises and broken bones, but always with an empty stomach. And of course, Eliot's brother and his crew stop by plenty.
He knows he'll be making some of them again. Okay, a lot.
When he makes the heart tartare tarts, Parker steals the whole tray and eats them all. Hardison manages to snatch one before she disappears into an air vent with her prize. She does the same thing when he makes the prosciutto with watermelon, which she insists on calling "bacon flowers," even though it's ham, Parker, ham; speaking of prosciutto, she gets a kick out of the cantaloupe feathers and plays with them more than she actually eats them. Eliot also resigns himself to the fact that he cannot cook with oyster shells unless he is going to let her have them after. And in the course of their little culinary project, he learns a few things about them.
Hardison will not eat octopus. No. Not even for Parker's puppy eyes. He will not look at it, he will not touch it, he will not smell it, and he will leave the room if it comes near him. He can stand just about anything else, even the damn beef tongue and lamb testicles, but he will threaten to start emptying bank accounts into the void if that octopus even touches his plate.
Parker will eat almost anything, it turns out, as long as she can watch Eliot make it. Black noodles were just the beginning, it seems. No more fortune cookies for breakfast. Well, for the most part anyways. She can and will fight someone to the death over Lucky Charms; hell, so would Eliot. Marshmallow cereal is a sacred thing. She's even asked if he'll teach her.
Eliot is torn between being proud that she wants to learn from him, and being mildly terrified about teaching her how to break down body parts and handle sharp utensils with precision and accuracy.
He never does make the kholodets, which Parker adamantly refers to as fish Jell-O, no matter how much he coaxes her.
And he is not even surprised when he finds out that someone has taken an X-Acto knife and removed that page from the book.
Eliot supposes he's lucky that people understand enough about him and his partners that nobody ever questions why a cookbook from a TV show about cannibals is on the shelf next to Mastering the Art of French Cooking.