This story uses characters and locations based on the Gunslinger Girl manga written by Yu Aida and published in monthly shōnen magazine Dengeki Daioh. The characters of Kara and Michele are original to myself.
Chapter Two – Raiding the Larder…
Now that they had decided on what to serve, the next job was for Kara to identify what they had on hand and what she would need her handler Michele to get.
She slipped on her loafers and headed down to the cafeteria. Since it was Friday, the "good" team would be working, so their prep team was on site in the kitchen.
"Ciao, Abramo!" Kara greeted as walked in. She went to a cabinet and pulled out some Tupperware containers and grabbed an open-top plastic basket from a stack on the floor.
"Ciao, Kara! You going to help us out today?"
"No, Claes and I are going to cook dinner tomorrow, so I need to take an inventory of supplies."
"What type of cuisine will you two do? French?" Nicilo asked as he fed pasta into a machine to flatten it out.
"We're actually going to try German. Triela said she'd help us out!" Kara noted.
"I wonder if she'll be any better then Henrietta," Nicilo deadpanned.
"She's getting better," Claes informed him as she came in with a cloth shopping bag. "She helps Michele, Kara and I on occasion. She still can only work directly from a cookbook, but we're trying to get her confident enough to experiment with ingredients and spices. Giuseppe has been a trooper when it comes to her dishes."
"Giuse spoils her mercilessly," Cannelita opinioned as she prepared the Marinara sauce. "He's always asking Ghita to make some special dessert for her."
"And yet, Ghita always does so. And she makes one for Giuseppe, as well. So who's spoiling who?" Abramo asked with a chuckle towards the other woman. Ghita just scowled at him.
"I'll check the cold locker while you check the vegetable pantry," Kara informed Claes, who nodded.
Kara went into the cold room, which was divided into multiple sections. One carried meats, another fish, a third cheese and dairy, and a fourth other perishables. She went first to the meat section. Finding a pork loin and some chicken breasts were easy, but she came up blank on German sausages, which she expected. She considered some Italian and chicken sausages, but they were spiced differently then German ones, so she decided to get the real thing.
Next, she went to the seafood section. She looked for any cooked crabs, but was not surprised to find none since the shelf life was barely a week so the chefs tried to use it by Wednesday. She knew there was some frozen king crab legs from Russia available, but Kara used fresh ingredients whenever possible. So in addition to the butcher, so she decided that Michele would also need to visit the fishmonger. She had more luck in the cheese section, since they had both Compté and Cambozola on hand as well as Swiss for the cordon bleu. She also verified they had vanilla ice cream and whipping cream. In the other perishables section she found beef broth and she verified they had plenty of jam and marmalade for the berliners. She put the meats in separate containers and labeled them with her name. They and a small container of broth went into a shelf in one of the industrial refrigerators that had her name on it.
"I found the panko, artichokes, potatoes, asparagus and red cabbage," Claes reported. "Obviously, no sauerkraut."
"What about the apricots and cherries?" Kara asked. Claes raised her bag.
"Excellent. The staples should be fine, so all we need is the sausages and some fresh crab."
"What kinds of dishes will you be making?" Ghita asked as she pulled some ladyfingers from oven.
"A chicken cordon bleu and Schnitzel Oscar, plus a roast pork loin with potato salad, asparagus and red cabbage as the entrée," Claes reported.
"Are you using brown or red potatoes?" Nicilo asked.
"I grabbed the brown ones because they were bigger."
"I prefer the red ones, myself," Nicilo noted.
Claes knew better then to second-guess the "A" team, so she made a mental note to swap them out.
"And add some buttermilk. It will give then a more whipped and creamy texture," he added and Claes amended said note.
"We're going to try and make a Bavarian onion soup, melting Cambozola cheese over it. Do you know any German breads?" Kara asked.
"Germans are big on rye, I hear, but I don't think that is a good choice," Nicilo noted.
"Pumpernickel," Abramo said with a laugh, ducking the ladyfinger Ghita tossed at him.
"Don't pay him any attention," Cannelita said. "The Germans make more types of bread then anyone else. However, just use a nice French-style bread. It really works the best."
"So how many courses?" Abramo asked.
"Well Germans appear to not have as many as Italians," Kara noted. "So we're bypassing the antipasto stage and using the soups and salad as a combined primo. Then the meats for the secondo and the vegetables as the contorno and finish with the dolce and caffè."
"How do Germans get so big on so few courses?" Nicilo quipped.