A Chicken in Every Pot
Two whole chickens had been reduced the bones in a catered midday feast celebrating Phil Coulson's resurrection. The heaping pile of mashed potatoes was a mere smear in the bowl. The flattened skins of two peas were the only scraps left in the bowl of vegetables. Crumbs and streaks of color were all that remained of three different kinds of pie.
One thing you could say about the Avengers, they knew how to eat, Clint Barton thought with satisfaction, as he helped clear the table. He took one platter of chicken bones and upended it above the trashcan.
A hand flashed out to snatch the carcass from midair.
"What are you doing?" Steve demanded in horror. He looked like he might clutch the chicken remains to his chest, if they hadn't been kind of greasy.
"I'm throwing away the bones," Clint answered cautiously.
"But there's still good meat on this," Steve protested.
The others in the kitchen regarded the carcass dangling from Steve's big hand. OK, you could see meat on the bones, but you'd have to scrape it off with your fingernails to get enough to make a sandwich.
All eyes turned to the captain who had that slightly wild-eyed look they had come to recognize as the past colliding with the present like incoming waves smashing into an undertow.
"Steve, it's not 1930 any more," Tony said.
Steve's eyes snapped to the billionaire and the captain's spine stiffened. "No, but there are still soup kitchens, aren't there?" he snapped in a way that made the billionaire flinch.
Steve immediately regretted his words. "I'm sorry, Tony. It just seems like such a waste."
"We've thrown away chicken bones before," Pepper pointed out.
Yes, but these whole carcasses brought the past to life in a way a pile of denuded chicken wings couldn't.
Steve returned the carcass to its platter and gestured at the two birds. "Right, these are mine. Nobody touch them," he ordered. He washed his hands then jogged out of the kitchen. "I'll be back," he called.
The others made wide circles around the off limits birds while they finished cleaning up the kitchen. Phil Coulson sat at the kitchen table, forbidden to help.
"Any idea what that was about?" Bruce asked the Captain America expert.
"A flashback to the Great Depression, like Stark said," Phil offered. "We'll find out soon enough."
Steve came back as Bruce and Natasha were wiping down the counters. Everyone made way for him, then circled back to see what he was doing. Cap set bags of fresh produce on the clean counter. The leafy tops of carrots and celery poked out of the cloth sacks.
Steve turned to face his friends. He looked calmer and definitely shamefaced. "I'm sorry, guys. I was out of line. I just ... I saw that carcass going into the trash and I had a flashback to my childhood, to my mother making chicken soup. These bones would have fed my family for two more meals at least. I couldn't stand to see them wasted, but I had no business snapping at you, especially you, Tony. After all you do for people. After all you've done for me — I'm sorry."
Tony waved away the apology. "Not a problem. If you can't yell at your friends, who can you yell at?"
"So, you're going to make soup?" Bruce asked. "Do we even have a soup pot?"
"I'm pretty sure I saw one in the back," Steve said. While Cap ducked down and crawled half into the lower cupboard, Tony scowled at Bruce. "This is a Stark kitchen," the engineer pointed out. "If a kitchen is supposed to have a soup pot, then this one has a soup pot!"
"Not that you'd know a soup pot if you saw one," Pepper finished.
"No, I hire professionals for that sort of thing."
Steve emerged with a metallic clatter and a loud bang, dragging out the biggest darn pot in the kitchen.
"There, soup pot!" Tony told Pepper in triumph, as if he'd known it all along. She just rolled her eyes.
"I didn't know you cooked, capt ... Steve," Coulson said. He still wasn't used to calling his childhood hero by his first name.
"We did," Natasha said. "Those of us who paid attention when Steve talked about his mother," she amended, when a couple of the others looked at her blankly. "He said he kept house and cooked when his mother went back to work after the death of his father."
"Right," Clint agreed. He was a spy. He'd paid attention.
Coulson looked regretful that he'd missed the occasion.
"Jarvis recorded it. Just ask the next time you run out of Supernanny reruns," Tony said.
"Thank you."
"No one else cooks?" Steve asked, as he put the carcasses into the pot. "I can understand the prince and the billionaire had people to cook for them, but everyone else?"
"I can roast an elk or fry bear steaks over an open fire," Thor said, "But this kitchen of wizardry is beyond me."
"Tony can bake," Pepper offered.
"Really?" Bruce asked.
"It's just applied chemistry," Tony said dismissively. "Fermentation. Maillard reactions. It's easy, and it was a good way to make friends when I was the youngest kid in school," he said honestly. "I learned from Jarvis. He used to let me help make cookies," Tony said nostalgically. When everyone looked in confusion at the speaker in the wall, Tony said, "No, I mean, the family butler."
"My namesake," Jarvis the AI explained, while everyone nodded their understanding.
While he collected pitchers of water to fill the pot, Steve's questioning eyes fell on Pepper and Bruce.
"All I make is reservations," Pepper said.
"Coffee. You used to make great coffee," Tony reminded her.
"A legacy of my secretarial days," she agreed. "Otherwise, the microwave was my best friend until I started living in Stark luxury."
"When I was in college, I did a mean stir fry," Bruce said, "but it's been so long ... I've been living in the opposite of luxury for so long, I've forgotten my cooking skills and they were never much to begin with. Most of the places I've been hiding out, I was lucky to have a hot plate let alone a stove. But most of those places also have a myriad of street vendors."
The widely traveled spies nodded agreement, remembering street vendors they had known.
"Cooking was not one of the skills that the Red Room considered essential," Natasha said. "But Clint was undercover as a chef for five months," she added mischievously.
He rolled his eyes. "A chef? I was a short order cook. I flipped pancakes and scrambled eggs for breakfast and made burgers and fries for lunch — no dinner service at our diner. I can tell a rare burger from one that's well done just by looking at it and I know a great recipe for making pancakes from scratch. That's about it."
Steve noticed that Natasha hadn't answered the question, but it was Clint who called her on it. "Natasha is a saucier."
"I'll bet she's saucy," Tony said roguishly.
Natasha flipped a knife to land a scant half-inch from the engineer's hand. He yelped and drew back, hiding behind Pepper.
"Stark!" Steve warned.
Clint just shook his head, because Natasha could take care of herself. "I mean, she can make sauces, Tony," he explained as if to a child. "A simple hamburger or a plain chicken breast, add a mushroom sauce or a shallot butter sauce and you'd think it came out of a pro kitchen."
Natasha shook her head. "It isn't hard. It's just a matter of patience and stirring, lots of stirring."
"So what you're saying is everyone cooks a little," Phil said in amusement. "I've been eating out of the SHIELD commissary for a long time, but I used to be able to follow a simple recipe."
"Cap still wins first prize," Tony said. "He's cooking from scratch."
"I'm not really that far advanced," Steve said. "I can make soups and stews, anything that simmers in a pot of water on the back of the stove. Throw in whatever meat is available and fill it out with vegetables from the garden. That was how my mother did it. And dumplings, if there's enough flour."
The others regarded him with awe. "You can make dumplings?" Clint asked, as if it was the most difficult skill conceived (though maybe he and Steve were thinking of different types of dumplings).
While everyone talked, Steve had been adding things to the pot: two big carrots snapped in half, two white things that looked a lot like carrots (aka parsnips) also snapped in half, three stalks of celery similarly snapped, a head of garlic cut in half and two onions cut in quarters (with their papery skins and all), a palmful of salt and a batch of whole peppercorns, then he tied up a bundle of herbs — parsley and other greenery the Avengers didn't recognize — and tossed it in the pot.
When he turned away satisfied, he found all his friends regarding him expectantly.
"What?" he asked.
"Can we help?" Clint asked.
"Not right now, this is just the stock — the base," Steve said. "After we get all the flavor out of the carcasses, then we'll add more vegetables." He grinned. "Then I'll need someone who's good with knives to help me chop the vegetables. Do you know anyone who's good with knives?" he asked the SHIELD agents.
The agents instantly produced their own blades. Clint pulled a wicked looking hunting knife out of his boot. Natasha slid a stiletto out of her sleeve. Even Phil the invalid produced a knife from the back of his collar.
Cap paced in front of them as if reviewing his troops. He nodded seriously. "You'll do," he said, though really only the hunting knife was useful as a kitchen knife.
Tony gave a mocking salute. "What about us, captain?" he said, including Pepper, Bruce and Thor with a nod.
"Hmm," Steve mused, while he frantically racked his brain to come up with jobs for more people. It was just one pot of soup!
He was saved by the bell — literally. His cellphone began to ring like a fire bell and the other Avengers' phones chimed in, each with the ring tone that meant Assemble!
They shot out the door, leaving Phil sitting at the kitchen table eying the simmering pot warily. "Now what do we do?" he asked Pepper, forgetting that there was someone else to answer.
"Shall I look up a recipe for chicken stock, Agent Coulson?" Jarvis asked.
"Good idea, Jarvis. How hard can it be?"
As it turned out, not very. Just simmer uncovered for four hours. The recipe didn't say anything about stirring, but Phil used a long spoon occasionally to move stuff around on the bottom of the pot, just so nothing would burn.
When the Avengers returned from what Nick Fury called a drill, Bruce called a false alarm, Clint called punishment for arguing with Fury and Tony called a freaking waste of time, they were greeted by the smell of simmering chicken and vegetables.
"My soup!" Steve exclaimed, aghast that he'd forgotten. Captain America in full regalia ran for the kitchen.
Shirtsleeves rolled up, Phil sat at the kitchen table, reading a book and standing guard over the stockpot. Pepper sat across from him, working on her Starkpad.
"I hope it's all right," he told Steve. "I turned off the burner about half an hour ago and covered the pot."
Captain America looked into the pot. He sighed with relief. After the fuss he'd made about wasting food, he'd really have been embarrassed if he'd ruined the soup, because of a freaking drill!
"It looks great, Phil, thanks."
"Thank Jarvis. He found the recipe so we knew how long to let it cook."
"Thank you, Jarvis," Steve said gratefully.
"Always glad to help, Captain Rogers."
"We, uh, also cooked the chicken you brought from the market," Phil said uncertainly. "I hope that was right."
"More chicken?" Clint asked. "Weren't the carcasses enough?"
"They've given up all their flavor to the stock," Phil said. Research was part of his job description and he'd been researching chicken soup all the time the Avengers were gone.
"So we add more chicken for more flavor," Pepper affirmed. "She'd become a vicarious expert by helping Phil."
"So, is it knife time?" Clint asked, twirling the hunting knife from his boot.
"Do we want the soup for dinner?" Steve asked.
"Yes!" his friends chorused.
"Then yes, it's time to chop," Steve said. "But first …" He tugged off his gauntlets and regarded his dirty, sweaty friends. "Everybody needs to wash up."
The Avengers scattered to quick showers and vigorous hand washing, before assembling in the kitchen again. Phil and Pepper had gotten out cutting boards and proper kitchen knives.
Steve passed out vegetables to Natasha and Clint, asking for half-inch cubes. Or something similar when Clint protested you couldn't cut curvy celery into cubes.
Steve strained the stock, removing the carcasses and all the tired vegetables, then he returned the liquid to the pot. That gave him time to plan tasks for his other impatient helpers. (Phil and Pepper were patient. They'd done their part.)
He gave the cooked and cooled chicken to Tony to shred, no knives required, and handed Thor a head of garlic to smash and pick out the papery part.
"Smashing. Is that not a job for the Hulk?" Thor joked, as he pressed the garlic flat with the palm of his hand.
"I'm sure he'd do a very good job of it," Bruce said, "but he'd probably smash the table, too."
"Can't have that," Tony commented. "We'd have to eat off the floor."
Clint and Natasha had finished chopping the onions and celery and carrots. Steve put the vegetables in a pan to sauté and set Bruce to stir it so nothing burned. "It is just like chemistry," the scientist said, pleased.
"With fewer explosions," Tony said.
"Unless you let Cap work the microwave," Clint said.
Steve looked up from where he was prepping the proper proportion of herbs and protested, "That was once!"
They laughed and worked as a team, getting all the ingredients ready in record time. When the vegetables had softened and the chicken was shredded, Steve put it all in the pot and stirred. It smelled like his mother's kitchen, he thought with a smile. It smelled like home.
"Just a half an hour to let the flavors blend," he said.
Steve covered the pot again and turned to find all the Avengers staring at him — again.
"Now what?" he asked nervously.
"You were singing," Natasha answered.
Steve blushed a darker brick red than he had when Tony took him to the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. (Bad enough to see girls in bathing suits and workout gear that looked like underwear, but to see them literally parading around in bras and panties!)
"I'm sorry," Steve said in a much too small voice for a great big super soldier. "I won't do it again."
He'd been all happy, now he looked crushed. These mood swings had to stop, Tony thought.
"When did you get so bipolar?" Tony said crossly. "We don't care if you sing."
Steve met their eyes and saw agreement among the other Avengers.
"I didn't realize I was singing out loud," Steve said. "I was thinking about my mother."
"You said she sang when she cooked," Pepper remembered.
"Then my father and I would sing along and it was fun, even if we did sound like donkeys braying," Steve chuckled at the memory. At his friends' questioning looks, he added, "Bad lungs, remember. I could never hold a note for long and I'd start wheezing if I tried too long."
"Steve, you do remember you don't have those weak lungs anymore, right?" Natasha said dryly.
Steve's jaw dropped. Of course he knew that, but he'd never considered it in the context of singing.
Coulson defended his young hero. "You have to remember that Steve has only been Cap for three years going on four. He was weak and wheezing for 20. It's a lot to get used to."
"You mean you've never sung since the serum?" Clint asked in amusement. "Not in church or on the march?"
"I always sing under my breath in church, so I don't disturb anyone else. That's habit," Steve said. "And Bucky begged the Commandos not to let me sing. He literally bribed Dum-Dum to leave me alone. We sang in the taverns sometimes, but they were so noisy, you could hardly hear yourself think, let alone sing. You mean it wasn't bad?"
"No, it wasn't bad at all," Pepper said. "But even if it was, we wouldn't laugh at you."
"Yeah, uh, no," Tony said. "For the record, I reserve the right to make fun of you at any time for any reason."
"Noted," Steve said gravely.
"But, also for the record, your singing was not hard on the ears."
"It fell within the range of harmonics generally considered pleasant, captain," Jarvis offered helpfully. "The sound of a donkey braying is substantially different."
"Um, thank you, I think."
Steve saw the others were STILL looking at him.
"So, give us a song," Tony demanded.
"No, give us soup," Clint countered.
"Give us both," Thor said practically.
In the Catholic Church of his childhood, the congregation didn't sing hymns, but Steve's mother had frequented camp meetings. They were cheap entertainment and people would pray for her sick son to be healed. Everyone sang there, and the hymns had stuck in Steve's mind.
His head full of memories of his mother singing to God, Steve remembered a hymn that seemed to fit his bizarre life. So as he served up chicken soup, he sang, first quietly and then with more confidence: "Amazing grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found…" Tony snorted and the others chuckled at the aptness of the lyrics. "… was blind but now I see. Through many dangers, toils and snares I have already come. 'Tis grace that that brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home."
God's grace in the person of the Avengers, Steve thought. Amen.
The Avengers sipped their soup with appreciation, enjoying it all the more because they'd had a hand in its creation.
"This is as good as any soup I've had in a restaurant, Steve," Tony praised. Then an odd look crossed his face.
"Something wrong?" Steve asked anxiously, wondering if Tony had swallowed a bone.
"No, it's great. I just realized. I think this is the first meal I've ever had where the cook wasn't paid to fix it."
"That's why it tastes so good, because it was prepared with love," Pepper said, making Steve blush and the others smile.
Tony cleared his throat. "So, who cooks tomorrow?" he asked brightly, deflecting attention and fooling no one.
Clint and Natasha exchanged speaking glances. She nodded once. "Burgers with wild mushroom sauce and mashed potatoes," Clint offered. "If you bake dessert."
"Deal."
A/N: I suppose you can tell I watch a lot of Food Network. So, cooking isn't difficult as long as you can follow directions. Telling when meat is perfectly done is my downfall and getting everything ready at the same time. In my mind, all the Avengers can throw together a simple meal, but with their busy lives, they haven't had the time or facilities (or motivation) to practice. Until now. Stock recipe is loosely based on Ina Garten's from foodnetwork dot com.