[ONE-SHOT] Umami - Sherlock/John (ENG)
Title: Umami
Author: sevenswells
Beta/Brit-pick: unovis_lj and zonesthesia ; thank you for being so amazing. It has been a real pleasure working with you on this. <3
Rating: PG-13
Fandom/Pairing: BBC's Sherlock, Sherlock/John
Warnings: shameless food porn, but I do hope that kind of thing doesn't shock you
Genre: food fic laced with comedy sprinkled with a bit of crack and fluffy slash on the side
Summary: John tries to get Sherlock to eat. The thing is, even if he doesn't look it, Sherlock is quite the hedonist, and would only eat tasty stuff. So John's plan is to become the best cook Sherlock has ever known.
Comments: About the title: in her book Garlic and Sapphires, the famous food critic Ruth Reichl describes "umami" as "the Japanese taste that cannot be described. It is when something is exactly right for the moment."
I've put in this fic some of the dishes that I love the most, including sushi; if you want to know more about the food and the recipes described in the fic, go to this link: http://sevenswells.livejournal.com/69420.html#cutid1
Word Count: 6 197 w.
John thought he'd spotted Sherlock's eating pattern within a few days of his moving in: the man simply did not eat. The fact set off red alerts in the "doctor instinct" part of John’s brain -- there was no scientific name for it, not even a dubious theory of its existence, lurking in obscure corners of the Web, yet John knew it was there, as surely as the "chocolate zone" existed in the average female’s brain, that guided her to chocolate in times of hardship. But suddenly, even as John began to form plots to tackle Sherlock, pinch his nose, and shove food down his throat, maybe with a hose, as French geese were horribly fattened to produce foie gras (unsubtle plots, granted, but since coaxing, threatening, negotiating, and no other form of oral persuasion worked, he was nearly that desperate), he picked up a pattern within the pattern. Or, the phenomenon may have been masked by another, as with photosynthesis: on close observation, Sherlock did experience spikes of hunger. They appeared at very specific times, but, if not adequately attended to, faded as if they'd never occurred.
John became aware of that peculiarity the day they got back to their flat at six in the morning after solving a case involving a jewel-stealing gang of midgets -- which certainly made for a catchy blog article title, although John had never been so relieved that a case was over: he was getting sick of Sherlock's not-so subtle, if various, jokes about John's own height whenever the rather, well, compact body type of the thieves was mentioned. John was almost certain that Sherlock had regularly used the term "dwarves" instead of "midgets" on purpose, too, for the mere pleasure of being insulting. Just as Sherlock and John were about to close in on them that night, the little buggers had managed to steal electric golf carts at Harrod's, what the hell; "Don't be lazy John, we can chase them by foot, they only have tiny little legs," Sherlock had said before they saw the diminutive thieves zooming by in their golf carts, "at worst you'll run at the exact same speed as them, which wouldn't be surprising, but they can't outrun me." To top it off, the chase had almost ended in the sewers. Thank god they'd caught the vertically-challenged felons before they could reach their usual escape route in subterranean London, because after running all night, the last thing John wanted was to come back to his apartment reeking of Eau de Sewer before crashing into bed. It had happened before, and a shower had seemed an entirely impossible task to carry through at the time.
John let himself drop heavily into his armchair and considered in all seriousness finishing the night -- day, whatever -- right there, when he heard big clattering noises coming from the kitchen. He tried ignoring them for a minute, then roughly rubbed his palms over his face as though it had somehow melted and he needed to put it back into place, sighed a long-suffering sigh, and finally extracted himself from the armchair to see what the madman with whom he had the misfortune of sharing a flat was up to.
He found Sherlock -- well, he found Sherlock's legs, first; it looked like his upper body had almost entirely disappeared inside the fridge.
"Nothing to eat, I'm going to die of hunger," moaned Sherlock, nearly jolting John with surprise: the overdramatic tone was nothing new, but he'd never thought he'd ever hear that particular utterance coming from that mouth. "What is this? Yoghurt? Bleh. Expired."
Without warning, he tossed the pots of yoghurt over his shoulder. They landed and exploded at John's feet. John thought maybe he should start lecturing Sherlock about not tossing food on the kitchen floor, but he was too tired for that. So he merely stood there, waiting for Sherlock to finish so he could tell him that he would most definitely not clean up after him this time, and then he would go to bed.
"Oh God," Sherlock grumbled again, "Something, anything! I could eat a whole cow right now! Aha! Yes!"
He emerged from the fridge brandishing a half-eaten Pot Noodle that John had left there. (The reason John would leave unfinished Pot Noodle in the fridge came from his education as a child, and not from the reluctance to waste anything that fighting in a war could ingrain into you. John and Harry's mother held a rather radical stance on the subject of wasting food, so whenever Harry or John couldn't finish their morning cereals before going to school, Mrs Watson would put their bowl as it was in the fridge, and afterwards the children would eat it for dessert in the evening: sad, soggy cornflakes half-dissolved in milk, or Weetabix whose texture and taste had ended up remarkably reminiscent of wet sawdust -- not very fond childhood memories. This resulted in a contradictory behaviour conditioning with John: he would stow away in the fridge the stuff he didn't have the time or didn't want to finish, and he would leave it there, never touching it again, until the rotting food was on the verge of developing a conscious life; only then would he throw it in the garbage, not without feeling a little guilty each and every time).
The Pot Noodle Sherlock was holding was only one or two days old, so it had to be edible still, but the noodles inside had probably coagulated in a shapeless blob. Sherlock took out a fork anyway and started digging in.
"Bleh! Bleh! No good," he exclaimed between bites, grimacing. Then he went back to rummaging inside the fridge, "I need to fix this awful taste... ah! Taramosalata!"
"Sherlock," John finally called in an extremely weary voice, "are you really going to mix cold leftover noodles with taramosalata? And eat it?"
"Why not," Sherlock retorted, taking out the pink paste and scooping some to drop it in the plastic cup. The face he made after tasting the mixture was nothing if not eloquent. "Truly revolting," he stated, although his tone had the reflexive quality that came up when he announced the results of an experiment. "Interesting, nevertheless. Well, that settles that," he declared with a final tone, letting the cup drop into the bin -- John watched it happen with an automatic pang of guilt. Then, having lost all interest in satiating the ravenous hunger he claimed he felt only seconds ago, Sherlock strolled out of the kitchen and went to his room.
John realized something, though, after he woke up eight solid hours later from a well-deserved nap: there was a high probability that Sherlock had stopped eating not because he'd felt full after a few bites, but because it didn't taste good.
How could he forget the way Sherlock had latched onto the (excellent) dim sum after the Study in Pink case? He'd gorged on them like he had never seen food in his life and he'd still had room afterwards to nibble on the fortune cookies on their way back after trying to predict the fortunes, while the very thought of food would have made John pass out. At the restaurant that night, he'd foolishly tried to match Sherlock's appetite, bamboo basket for bamboo basket, and he'd lost. How could such an extraordinary occurrence slip his mind?
To his defense, that had been on the first night, and it had never happened again, so John had chalked it up to a rare, one-time thing, similar to how some strictly sober people could drink themselves silly once in a blue moon. He'd ended up putting it in another corner of his mind altogether after observing his flatmate's eating habits in the days that followed, sticking to the conclusion that he had no appetite at all. That was how he'd missed it. He hadn't been able to discern the pattern because it had been hidden by another. Sherlock's photosynthesis. In spite of the whole ascetic genius gig, it wouldn't be unlikely, John mused, if Sherlock possessed in fact a hedonistic streak -- the violin, the impeccable and stylish suits, the silk dressing gown; all concurred with that theory, if you started looking for clues.
So.
Facts: Sherlock did sometimes eat. Sherlock ate right after cases.
Nota: Timing was an important factor.
Hypothesis: Although he hadn't eaten much, would Sherlock have eaten more had the dish tasted good, like the dim sum that first night?
Protocol and expected results: prepare a tasty dish for Sherlock and feed it to him right after a case, and then maybe, maybe it could become the surest way to keep enough nutrients flowing in Sherlock's blood and prevent the anorectic idiot from passing out from inanition, without resorting to the Hose-Down-The-Throat Protocol.
*****
When the next hunger spike came, after a case of stolen identity complete with a plot twist about an evil twin seeking revenge, John was prepared. He sat a protesting Sherlock down and told him, firmly, to wait, assuring him it wouldn't take long.
He went to the fridge and took out the hummus, tahini, parsley, and shallots he had bought a couple of days before at a small run-down supermarket specializing in middle-eastern products; from a cupboard he retrieved paprika, pine nuts, and olive oil, a plate from another, and took out a pan from the one under the sink.
On the plate he arranged the hummus like a small crater, and poured in the tahini. Then he finely diced the shallots and chopped the parsley, sprinkled both ingredients evenly on the preparation, and added a pinch of paprika powder and a dash of olive oil. It was almost done; all that was left to do was slowly roast the pine nuts in the pan.
What John didn't expect, though, as he was standing by the oven, gently turning the pine nuts with a wooden spatula while they took on a golden shade, was that Sherlock would try to see what John was preparing. He suddenly felt Sherlock standing close behind him, a little too close (personal space, dammit! Sherlock would never learn) and a hot breath on his ear as he heard the low rumble of Sherlock's voice, "How much longer now?"
John shivered.
"It's done," he said, and his tone came out a little abrupt and tense. He switched the hob off, transferred the pine nuts to a bowl to allow them to cool a little, and finally sprinkled them on top of the dish. Only then he realized what he'd forgotten, and he felt the violent urge to kick himself.
"Bread! Goddammit!" He said out loud, knocking the heel of his hand against his brow.
He couldn't believe he was able to get exotic ingredients like tahini and forget one as simple and easily found as bread. Frustration rose up in his throat like bile. The dish had to be perfect in every aspect to get Sherlock to eat. John had failed, he'd miserably failed.
"Is it essential?" Sherlock asked, regaining his seat at the table.
"It's a dip preparation, so, yeah, it's better to have something to dip it with. Would crackers do?" John asked, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.
"Yes, yes, just give me the damn thing, I'm dying, here!"
It turned out the crackers didn't clash too much with the dish, and replaced the bread more or less adequately; if anything, their crunchiness contrasted interestingly with the creaminess of the hummus and the tahini. The parsley and shallots brought a fresh, crispy note to the mix, while the roasted pine nuts harmonized with the sesame cream's taste, discreetly setting it off, and, unlike any other kind of nuts, they crumbled very softly under the teeth -- one of the reasons why the use of crackers was a shame, since that subtle play of texture was lost.
Sherlock didn't say anything with the first bite, but John took the fact that he kept eating and then actually finished the dish, all in companionable silence, as a good sign.
He'd learned the recipe from his Israeli roommate when he was still a medical student; if you could find the right ingredients, it was incredibly simple to prepare and always a big hit with the girls John tried to seduce, provided that they didn't have a strong aversion to hummus. It should have felt weird serving his prized girl-trap dish to Sherlock, but John was merely glad he finally got the impossible git to eat.
After the success of that operation, John decided to stick to simple, yet tasty dishes that could be prepared within minutes. The second time didn't go as well. John had settled on French toast, something he mastered quite well since, again, the girls he'd dated as a student liked to be pampered in the morning too. But when Sherlock took a look at what was on his plate, he sniffed in disdain and simply said, "No."
"What do you mean, 'no'? Eat. You'll like it, trust me."
"No. Gran-Nan made pain perdu for us on Sundays, and she added vanilla, not vanilla essence, mind you, real vanilla, and she didn't use maple syrup, which is a sacrilege, only icing sugar. What's more, Gran-Nan was authentically French. Do you pretend to compete?"
With that he left the kitchen without so much as looking back.
John was livid. Fuck authentically French!
If that was a challenge, John was up for it. So things were finally starting to get serious?
Fine, he thought fiercely. Now, it's on.
*****
On his third try, John went for curry. It was a risky bet (since there was a chance Sherlock knew his Indian cuisine as much as he knew his Chinese) but John wasn't playing it safe anymore. Plus, there was a secret advantage to curry.
He prepared it the day before the case was scheduled to be wrapped up, while Sherlock was off at Bart's doing unspeakable things to corpses. For this recipe, John followed instructions he got from a nurse who worked at the surgery. Her name was Sangeeta, and she was of Pakistani descent, but actually came from Mauritius. The curries they prepared over there were a bit different from those in India, she'd assured him, so John saw an advantage in that too -- he'd be damned if Sherlock knew Mauritian cuisine too.
He started by thinly cutting aubergines, and he fried them in a pan with onions, garlic and ginger, then put them aside. Next he cooked pieces of chicken in the same pan. He could almost hear his grandmother's motto in his head: "all the flavour is in the bones". She used to make delicious chicken soup and stew, and she always insisted on never using chicken breast unless there was skin and bone still attached to it; the fat contained in the skin and the marrow contained in the bones were essential to bring full flavour to a dish. So John used whole, fresh pieces of chicken. When they turned golden, he set them aside, in the same bowl as the aubergine. He poured a bit of oil in the pan again, put chopped onions, puréed garlic and ginger to fry, then he mixed curry powder with a bit of water. He was hit by a puff of fragrant vapour when he mixed the curry paste with the frying onions, watching them change colour, from translucent to a beautiful, vibrant shade of saffron. He could get used to this, he thought as he smelled the mouth-watering odour of spices, blending with those of chicken and aubergine which he eventually incorporated. At this point in the recipe, Sangeeta had warned him to check the consistency of the dish and alter it with water and/or tomato purée, according to his taste. John did generally prefer more sauce, so he added both, and let the preparation simmer a little. Then, at the very end, while the pan was still hot, he slipped in a handful of shrimps and allowed them to cook, but not for long, because their delicate flesh hardened very quickly under heat.
The curry was ready. John let it cool down, poured it into a plastic container and stored it in the fridge.
The next day, right on schedule, Sherlock could finally prove it wasn't poison but anaphylactic shock that killed the anthropologist. Sherlock's explanation of the details of the case took a little while, so while he was animatedly talking about how he'd found out about the allergy that wasn't mentioned anywhere in the medical files, John took the opportunity to cook some white rice and re-heat the curry. When the steaming plate of rice and curry was set in front of him, Sherlock didn't stop talking; he absently seized a spoon and scooped some of the food on his plate. When he put it in his mouth, it looked like he was only taking a small pause to swallow before he resumed his rambling, but then a strange thing happened: his eyes widened, and for a full minute, while he chewed and tasted his food, Sherlock stopped talking.
"It's good, yes?" John said, letting amusement and smugness seep into his voice.
The secret advantage of that kind of home-made curry, Sangeeta had revealed to him, was that it tasted even better the day after it was prepared. You had to let the spices slowly impregnate the other ingredients and in the end, the flavour would come out enhanced, well-rounded, and appreciably different from freshly made curry. That was John's trump card.
"It's... perfectly adequate," Sherlock replied curtly, and proceeded to finish his plate, down to the last grain of rice.
John was quite satisfied of this little success that night. But he only realized the true extent of his victory when the next day came and he found Sherlock in the kitchen around noon, looking a bit lost. He turned to John when he entered the room, hesitated, then finally asked, "Aren't you going to prepare something today?"
John stood shell-shocked, not knowing how to react at first; then he gathered himself and told Sherlock to sit down while he fixed them lunch. There was white rice, one aubergine and a few shrimps left from the day before. He also had leeks that he'd wanted to turn into soup at some point, but he could easily reassign them. In a corner of the fridge, there was miso paste for a secret project he reserved for the future, for when he would feel confident enough; however, he could use some of it for something simple now. There was a bottle of soy sauce and a couple of cans of baby corn in the cupboards, too. The menu was decided, then. He would make a Chinese fried rice of sorts with the white rice, the shrimps, the leeks, and the baby corn. As for the aubergine... there was something he'd always wanted to try preparing, but he wasn't sure he'd succeed.
He cut the aubergine in half, lengthways, and spread miso paste over the two parts. Then he wrapped them in tin foil and put them to cook in the oven for about forty minutes. He checked with a knife to see whether they were cooked enough and when the point sank easily in, he got them out. Then he mixed soy sauce with brown sugar, poured that mix on the eggplant halves, and put them back in the oven. While he let the sweetened soy sauce caramelize the aubergine, he quickly prepared the fried rice.
In the end, the candied aubergine turned out perfect, its taste slightly sweet and sour, its flesh indecently lush and melting on the tongue; it felt like a decadent treat. John decided he was getting really good at this.
While they both ate in appreciative silence, and since his mind wasn't set on preparing food anymore, John finally got around to consider the situation. Something had changed. It felt like they had reached a major turning point: Sherlock had asked for food. The timing wasn't right, the post-case hunger had occurred and been taken care of the day before, but Sherlock had asked for food, and they were eating now, so what was this?
Could it be that John had finally managed to inspire some gluttony in the overgrown stick insect he had for a flatmate? Could it be that John's cooking skills had got Sherlock interested in food? The idea seemed ludicrous, and yet the evidence was right in front of him: Sherlock was eating, not from survival reflex, but because he was enjoying it. He was enjoying John's food. Warmth spread through John's body at the thought. He had to keep his head, though: capturing Sherlock's interest was one thing, keeping that interest was another. He had to surpass himself.
He had to get even better.
*****
"John? Hoo-hoo! John? There's a package for you!"
As soon as he heard Mrs Hudson's voice, John looked up from his newspapers only to find that Sherlock had already got up and was going for the door.
"Crap," John said out loud, and jumped to his feet. The rustle of the newspapers falling to the floor alerted Sherlock that John was out to stop him and he started running, but John was already on him.
"Oh no you don't," John said as he caught Sherlock by the elbows in the nick of time, just before he reached the door. It all happened very fast from then on: Sherlock pivoted, secured a hold on John's arm, then he proceeded to twist it putting his full body's strength behind the move; John reacted in time and swept a leg behind Sherlock's ankles. They both ended up on the floor, wrestling like they bloody well meant it.
"Boys?" Mrs Hudson called behind the door. "Are you there? Is this a bad time?"
"In a minute, Mrs Hudson," John replied hastily, pushing his hand against Sherlock's face while Sherlock hooked his fingers at the waist of John's trousers and pulled. John changed his strategy when he saw that trying to stop his trousers from going further down his knees wasn't getting him anywhere: he suddenly let go and, as the lack of tension projected Sherlock backwards, he hurriedly stepped out of the trouser legs and went to answer the door in nothing but his shirt and underpants. Dignity was overrated anyway, although he preferred not to look Mrs Hudson in the eyes as he retrieved his package.
And just as he thought the situation couldn't get any more awkward, he heard Mrs Hudson say, in an embarrassed and slightly reproachful tone, "Well, dear, if you and Sherlock were busy, I could always come back later, you know."
John felt his whole face burn and he tried to tell her that nothing... that him and Sherlock weren't... but she had already turned her heels and was heading back downstairs.
"It's Italian," Sherlock said, out of the blue. He hadn't budged from his position on the carpet. Maybe he'd decided he was quite comfortable there after all. "Tonight's Italian, isn't it?"
"Fuck off," John muttered, picking up his trousers from the floor and hiding the package under his shirt.
He had no idea when exactly Sherlock had turned this into a game, but he knew it had kept escalating, and now Sherlock's obsession to know what John would prepare before he got to the kitchen was starting to get bloody ridiculous. And, as usual when it came to Sherlock's stupid games, John couldn't help but play along. John thought maybe it had all started with the cheesecake, or maybe the pecan pie; Sherlock had got both right, about 48 hours before John even started the preparations. Well, he hadn't been very careful about hiding either -- plus he'd messed up both recipes, the cheesecake had turned out unpleasantly gooey for some reason, and the pecan pie had been downright burnt. Why Sherlock had ended up eating them anyway was still a mystery to John, but after those rather disastrous tries and the infamous French Toast Defeat, John had decided to stay away from pastries and other sweet stuff and stick to savoury dishes.
Somehow, he'd found it frustrating when Sherlock had guessed the dishes beforehand, so John had started to get craftier and craftier. The Marrow Bones Coup had been a particularly good one; he'd obtained the bones through Mrs Hudson, and she'd kept the secret safe until the very last minute. The other ingredients had only been brown bread and coarse salt, which wasn't much of a giveaway. Sherlock had pronounced himself dead certain that the dish would turn out to be foie gras on toast, but John could tell he'd been grasping at straws at that point. And although Sherlock was an incredibly sore loser, John knew he'd still enjoyed the brown bread toasts and piping hot marrow sprinkled with coarse salt. It had been one of the simplest dishes John had ever prepared, but simple didn't necessarily mean it would taste bland.
His grandmother had been so right, John had thought as he'd bitten down on his toast and felt the richness of the melting marrow, which was precisely balanced in texture and taste by the crunchiness and slight bitterness of the brown bread. There had been something deeply carnal, almost primitive, about the pleasure each mouthful had provided. "All the flavour is in the bones."
In the safety of the kitchen, John opened his package and sighed in relief when he saw all the ingredients he had ordered from the online Italian food store were there: pancetta, spaghetti and pecorino cheese. John used to think that carbonara sauce was made with onions, bacon cubes and crème fraîche (he should have known something was wrong with that recipe; crème fraîche was French, wasn't it?), when it was actually garlic, pancetta, and the smoothness of the sauce was due to egg yolks and a bit of grated pecorino. John secretly blessed the Internet and its myriad of food blogs; the amount of stuff you could learn there was incredible.
He set about preparing the dish, when he suddenly remembered that night had fallen, and he was in the kitchen, which meant the game was over, and Sherlock had lost. For today at least. John smiled to himself as he started cutting the pancetta on a wooden board. It was good being able to surprise his friend the genius from time to time.
*****
The time to put his secret project in motion had finally come. Sherlock was in Wales for a week. He'd seemed a bit disappointed when John had told him he couldn't accompany him this time (it was a locked room mystery, after all, with an impressive array of suspects, nothing John had planned on doing could possibly be better than this), but hadn't protested too much nevertheless. Of course he could tell John was up to something, and John suspected Sherlock also knew it had something to do with the miso paste that had sat untouched in the fridge after the candied aubergine. And if he'd managed to link the miso paste to John's refusal of the free trip to Wales, then Sherlock had most definitely deduced the type of food that John would prepare for him when he would return. John hoped Sherlock's idea of it remained vague, but he didn't count on it. It was easy to guess "Japanese food" from the miso paste, and from that point on, deducing the rest was child's play: the answer was simply the first that came to mind whenever Japanese cuisine was mentioned.
To John, this would be the most difficult challenge to date.
He'd decided he would prepare sushi for Sherlock.
Apparently, it took three long years of hard learning to become a mediocre sushi chef in Japan, and an entire lifetime to become somewhat decent. John didn't have three years, but he had an Internet connection and a lot of determination.
He'd actually started the research a long time ago, slowly gathering data from food blogs, articles, and DIY Youtube videos, cross-checking the information he'd found, and from that comparative analysis he'd drawn his conclusions and developed his own method.
First crucial point: the rice. From what he'd read, using a rice-cooker was prohibited. Sushi rice had to be cooked the old-fashioned way, in a pot, after having been rinsed thoroughly. First you had to cook it with high heat until it was boiling, then you switched to low heat for about fifteen minutes, and finally you had to let it steam for ten minutes.
Second crucial point: the rice vinegar. Not too little, not too much; getting the proportions right was tricky, so John decided to rely on his sense of smell for this one: splash the vinegar on the still-hot rice, and the resulting fragrant steam would tell him if he had it right. The vinegar had to be mixed in the rice rapidly, but also gently, using a spatula. The rice had to be stirred as little as possible.
Third crucial point: the moulding. Moulding the rice part of the nigirizushi was simple enough, if you managed to keep your movements firm, but not squish the rice altogether. Apparently, it was also best to shape the top part a little like a dome, or a fan according to the Japanese. With his careful yet assured doctor hands, John was able to get this part right. Moulding the slice of fish with the rice was little more problematic. No matter how much he'd watched the Youtube videos, his movements couldn't match a pro's, so he ended up keeping himself to two golden rules: keep your hands cool, and try to press the fish against the rice with very few movements, otherwise your body heat would warm up the fish meat, which would be a catastrophe.
Fourth point: the fish. It had to be top quality, of course, and as fresh as possible (John had seen Youtube videos of chefs cutting up live calamari for sashimi, and the flesh was still quivering in the plates when they served them. John was all for freshness, but he thought that was taking the concept a little too far). For that part, John had asked Angelo for help. Angelo happened to know a guy who knew a guy who worked at Billingsgate, so he could get one of his cousins to get the order to that guy and then deliver all the fish John needed on the day Sherlock returned from Wales. It was perfect.
"Anything for Sherlock's fiancé," Angelo had said cheerfully, giving John a monumental pat on his back. (So now John wasn't Sherlock's "date" anymore, but his fiancé. Brilliant. He didn't know if he should consider it an improvement, but Angelo seemed to think it was.)
Fifth and final point: the cutting of the fish. It was probably the most important point, since it made all the difference between an amateur and a pro. John certainly wasn't a pro, but, as a doctor and a soldier, he considered himself good with knives. A few commandments had to be respected there too: always use the sharpest knife, and then sharpen it some more. Always cut with the grain of the fish, never against it. Finally, the movement of the knife had to be confident, precise, final; there was no room for fits and starts.
For the whole week, John tried his hand at making sushi. He practiced cutting low-grade fish, he ate endless quantities of rice perfumed with vinegar, until he almost made himself sick, he moulded nigiri until he could reproduce the movements with his eyes closed. By the end of the week, John felt he was finally ready. All that was left to do was to wait for Sherlock to return.
*****
Sherlock crossed the threshold to their apartment, took one look at John and declared, "Sushi. I knew it."
John couldn't stop the grin that was tugging at his lips, and Sherlock grinned back.
"How was the case?" John asked as he led the way to the kitchen.
"Brilliant," Sherlock replied, removing his coat and his scarf, tossing them carelessly on the sofa as he followed John. "They all murdered him in turn, and were all separately convinced that they'd killed him, when it was in fact a suicide, a very carefully planned one, probably one of the most vicious and twisted schemes I've ever encountered: the dead man had wanted to take revenge on his whole family and had tried to get them all accused of his own assassination." Sherlock said the words "vicious" and "twisted" like some people would say "breakfast in bed" and "free theme park tickets". "You should have come," he added. "You would have loved it."
"I know," John said quietly. "But, as you know, I had business here. So, first..."
"Miso soup," Sherlock finished for him before John could set the bowl before him.
"Yes, to keep you waiting. I also made black seaweed with carrots, shiitake mushrooms, and soy sauce, crunchy green beans with sesame, and a little cucumber, wakame, and crab salad with a bit of sweet sake-based dressing that I made myself."
He set three more little bowls containing the appetizers he'd just described on the table, accompanied with a pair of chopsticks, then he turned to the counter where he started preparing the sushi.
He was almost done, carefully half-searing a slice of tuna with a torch when he heard Sherlock say, in a thoughtful voice, tinged with something John couldn't identify, "All of this. It's very... very good, John. Thank you."
"Wait," John said in return, finishing to plate the last piece of sushi, "the best has yet to come. Ta-daa!" He sing-songed as he put down the plate in front of Sherlock.
The latter remained speechless, which John took as a good sign, so with great enthusiasm, he proceeded to present each type of sushi to him, pointing at the different pieces, "Mackerel. Salmon. Salmon roe. Urchin. Shrimp. Kappa maki -- cucumber rolls. Half-seared tuna with a bit of chive. And finally, scallop makizushi with crushed mango on some, and blackberry jam on others, as you can see. Go on. Try some."
"John," Sherlock said, and John froze.
Sherlock looked... he didn't look like himself. Something was wrong.
"I'm afraid I can't eat, I..."
John's heart sank. Those were the words he'd dreaded to hear, but that he didn't think would ever come. Not now. Not after all the efforts he'd put into this...
"Don't you dare!" he suddenly exploded. "I know I'm not 'authentically Japanese', and maybe you've tasted better sushi in a restaurant somewhere, or you personally know a Japanese chef, well guess what? I don't care! I put my soul into this, Sherlock!"
"Precisely. I find..."
"I told you, I don't care! Eat what's on your bloody plate, dammit!"
"Please let me finish what I have to say, John," Sherlock said, getting up. John finally saw the emotions warring on his face. He'd never seen Sherlock look so... open. Vulnerable.
"The dedication you've put into this shows," Sherlock began. "It has shown in every dish you've prepared for me until now. And now... I find myself quite... overwhelmed. And I don't think I can eat, not right now. Not before..."
John didn't get it. He didn't get it until Sherlock crossed the distance between them in two long strides, cupped both sides of John's face in his hands, and kissed him within an inch of his life.
John had never been kissed with such desperate passion before; feeling like he was the centre of the other person's universe, like he was being worshipped and adored. The sheer force of the sentiment that was brought down upon him like lightning, like a primordial burst of energy, made him hiss a little breath, which Sherlock took as an invitation to take further possession of John's mouth, after having thoroughly ravaged his lips.
So this is how you felt, John thought as he slowly let himself be swept away by the tidal wave of Sherlock's emotions, accepting, letting him take what he needed. This is how you felt, and here I believed I was the only one who felt that way.
He finally responded to Sherlock's kiss, which provoked a surprised, throaty little sound from Sherlock, that John found interesting enough to try to reproduce by nipping those lips he'd always wanted to nibble on.
When they broke off, they were panting heavily, pressed flush against each other, hands buried in each other's hair. John's gaze found Sherlock's; he saw his full-blown pupils, accompanied with a glint of fever he'd never thought he'd see in those eyes.
"Well..." John said, slowly. "I suppose..."
He turned his head to look longingly at the plate he'd gone through so much trouble to prepare and that remained untouched on the table. Sherlock bent his head to press his lips against John's throat, then began to suck on tender skin, in a deliberate attempt, John was certain of it, to leave a mark there.
"Oh, well," John sighed, resigned. "I suppose dinner can wait."
Author: sevenswells
Beta/Brit-pick: unovis_lj and zonesthesia ; thank you for being so amazing. It has been a real pleasure working with you on this. <3
Rating: PG-13
Fandom/Pairing: BBC's Sherlock, Sherlock/John
Warnings: shameless food porn, but I do hope that kind of thing doesn't shock you
Genre: food fic laced with comedy sprinkled with a bit of crack and fluffy slash on the side
Summary: John tries to get Sherlock to eat. The thing is, even if he doesn't look it, Sherlock is quite the hedonist, and would only eat tasty stuff. So John's plan is to become the best cook Sherlock has ever known.
Comments: About the title: in her book Garlic and Sapphires, the famous food critic Ruth Reichl describes "umami" as "the Japanese taste that cannot be described. It is when something is exactly right for the moment."
I've put in this fic some of the dishes that I love the most, including sushi; if you want to know more about the food and the recipes described in the fic, go to this link: http://sevenswells.livejournal.com/69420.html#cutid1
Word Count: 6 197 w.
John thought he'd spotted Sherlock's eating pattern within a few days of his moving in: the man simply did not eat. The fact set off red alerts in the "doctor instinct" part of John’s brain -- there was no scientific name for it, not even a dubious theory of its existence, lurking in obscure corners of the Web, yet John knew it was there, as surely as the "chocolate zone" existed in the average female’s brain, that guided her to chocolate in times of hardship. But suddenly, even as John began to form plots to tackle Sherlock, pinch his nose, and shove food down his throat, maybe with a hose, as French geese were horribly fattened to produce foie gras (unsubtle plots, granted, but since coaxing, threatening, negotiating, and no other form of oral persuasion worked, he was nearly that desperate), he picked up a pattern within the pattern. Or, the phenomenon may have been masked by another, as with photosynthesis: on close observation, Sherlock did experience spikes of hunger. They appeared at very specific times, but, if not adequately attended to, faded as if they'd never occurred.
John became aware of that peculiarity the day they got back to their flat at six in the morning after solving a case involving a jewel-stealing gang of midgets -- which certainly made for a catchy blog article title, although John had never been so relieved that a case was over: he was getting sick of Sherlock's not-so subtle, if various, jokes about John's own height whenever the rather, well, compact body type of the thieves was mentioned. John was almost certain that Sherlock had regularly used the term "dwarves" instead of "midgets" on purpose, too, for the mere pleasure of being insulting. Just as Sherlock and John were about to close in on them that night, the little buggers had managed to steal electric golf carts at Harrod's, what the hell; "Don't be lazy John, we can chase them by foot, they only have tiny little legs," Sherlock had said before they saw the diminutive thieves zooming by in their golf carts, "at worst you'll run at the exact same speed as them, which wouldn't be surprising, but they can't outrun me." To top it off, the chase had almost ended in the sewers. Thank god they'd caught the vertically-challenged felons before they could reach their usual escape route in subterranean London, because after running all night, the last thing John wanted was to come back to his apartment reeking of Eau de Sewer before crashing into bed. It had happened before, and a shower had seemed an entirely impossible task to carry through at the time.
John let himself drop heavily into his armchair and considered in all seriousness finishing the night -- day, whatever -- right there, when he heard big clattering noises coming from the kitchen. He tried ignoring them for a minute, then roughly rubbed his palms over his face as though it had somehow melted and he needed to put it back into place, sighed a long-suffering sigh, and finally extracted himself from the armchair to see what the madman with whom he had the misfortune of sharing a flat was up to.
He found Sherlock -- well, he found Sherlock's legs, first; it looked like his upper body had almost entirely disappeared inside the fridge.
"Nothing to eat, I'm going to die of hunger," moaned Sherlock, nearly jolting John with surprise: the overdramatic tone was nothing new, but he'd never thought he'd ever hear that particular utterance coming from that mouth. "What is this? Yoghurt? Bleh. Expired."
Without warning, he tossed the pots of yoghurt over his shoulder. They landed and exploded at John's feet. John thought maybe he should start lecturing Sherlock about not tossing food on the kitchen floor, but he was too tired for that. So he merely stood there, waiting for Sherlock to finish so he could tell him that he would most definitely not clean up after him this time, and then he would go to bed.
"Oh God," Sherlock grumbled again, "Something, anything! I could eat a whole cow right now! Aha! Yes!"
He emerged from the fridge brandishing a half-eaten Pot Noodle that John had left there. (The reason John would leave unfinished Pot Noodle in the fridge came from his education as a child, and not from the reluctance to waste anything that fighting in a war could ingrain into you. John and Harry's mother held a rather radical stance on the subject of wasting food, so whenever Harry or John couldn't finish their morning cereals before going to school, Mrs Watson would put their bowl as it was in the fridge, and afterwards the children would eat it for dessert in the evening: sad, soggy cornflakes half-dissolved in milk, or Weetabix whose texture and taste had ended up remarkably reminiscent of wet sawdust -- not very fond childhood memories. This resulted in a contradictory behaviour conditioning with John: he would stow away in the fridge the stuff he didn't have the time or didn't want to finish, and he would leave it there, never touching it again, until the rotting food was on the verge of developing a conscious life; only then would he throw it in the garbage, not without feeling a little guilty each and every time).
The Pot Noodle Sherlock was holding was only one or two days old, so it had to be edible still, but the noodles inside had probably coagulated in a shapeless blob. Sherlock took out a fork anyway and started digging in.
"Bleh! Bleh! No good," he exclaimed between bites, grimacing. Then he went back to rummaging inside the fridge, "I need to fix this awful taste... ah! Taramosalata!"
"Sherlock," John finally called in an extremely weary voice, "are you really going to mix cold leftover noodles with taramosalata? And eat it?"
"Why not," Sherlock retorted, taking out the pink paste and scooping some to drop it in the plastic cup. The face he made after tasting the mixture was nothing if not eloquent. "Truly revolting," he stated, although his tone had the reflexive quality that came up when he announced the results of an experiment. "Interesting, nevertheless. Well, that settles that," he declared with a final tone, letting the cup drop into the bin -- John watched it happen with an automatic pang of guilt. Then, having lost all interest in satiating the ravenous hunger he claimed he felt only seconds ago, Sherlock strolled out of the kitchen and went to his room.
John realized something, though, after he woke up eight solid hours later from a well-deserved nap: there was a high probability that Sherlock had stopped eating not because he'd felt full after a few bites, but because it didn't taste good.
How could he forget the way Sherlock had latched onto the (excellent) dim sum after the Study in Pink case? He'd gorged on them like he had never seen food in his life and he'd still had room afterwards to nibble on the fortune cookies on their way back after trying to predict the fortunes, while the very thought of food would have made John pass out. At the restaurant that night, he'd foolishly tried to match Sherlock's appetite, bamboo basket for bamboo basket, and he'd lost. How could such an extraordinary occurrence slip his mind?
To his defense, that had been on the first night, and it had never happened again, so John had chalked it up to a rare, one-time thing, similar to how some strictly sober people could drink themselves silly once in a blue moon. He'd ended up putting it in another corner of his mind altogether after observing his flatmate's eating habits in the days that followed, sticking to the conclusion that he had no appetite at all. That was how he'd missed it. He hadn't been able to discern the pattern because it had been hidden by another. Sherlock's photosynthesis. In spite of the whole ascetic genius gig, it wouldn't be unlikely, John mused, if Sherlock possessed in fact a hedonistic streak -- the violin, the impeccable and stylish suits, the silk dressing gown; all concurred with that theory, if you started looking for clues.
So.
Facts: Sherlock did sometimes eat. Sherlock ate right after cases.
Nota: Timing was an important factor.
Hypothesis: Although he hadn't eaten much, would Sherlock have eaten more had the dish tasted good, like the dim sum that first night?
Protocol and expected results: prepare a tasty dish for Sherlock and feed it to him right after a case, and then maybe, maybe it could become the surest way to keep enough nutrients flowing in Sherlock's blood and prevent the anorectic idiot from passing out from inanition, without resorting to the Hose-Down-The-Throat Protocol.
*****
When the next hunger spike came, after a case of stolen identity complete with a plot twist about an evil twin seeking revenge, John was prepared. He sat a protesting Sherlock down and told him, firmly, to wait, assuring him it wouldn't take long.
He went to the fridge and took out the hummus, tahini, parsley, and shallots he had bought a couple of days before at a small run-down supermarket specializing in middle-eastern products; from a cupboard he retrieved paprika, pine nuts, and olive oil, a plate from another, and took out a pan from the one under the sink.
On the plate he arranged the hummus like a small crater, and poured in the tahini. Then he finely diced the shallots and chopped the parsley, sprinkled both ingredients evenly on the preparation, and added a pinch of paprika powder and a dash of olive oil. It was almost done; all that was left to do was slowly roast the pine nuts in the pan.
What John didn't expect, though, as he was standing by the oven, gently turning the pine nuts with a wooden spatula while they took on a golden shade, was that Sherlock would try to see what John was preparing. He suddenly felt Sherlock standing close behind him, a little too close (personal space, dammit! Sherlock would never learn) and a hot breath on his ear as he heard the low rumble of Sherlock's voice, "How much longer now?"
John shivered.
"It's done," he said, and his tone came out a little abrupt and tense. He switched the hob off, transferred the pine nuts to a bowl to allow them to cool a little, and finally sprinkled them on top of the dish. Only then he realized what he'd forgotten, and he felt the violent urge to kick himself.
"Bread! Goddammit!" He said out loud, knocking the heel of his hand against his brow.
He couldn't believe he was able to get exotic ingredients like tahini and forget one as simple and easily found as bread. Frustration rose up in his throat like bile. The dish had to be perfect in every aspect to get Sherlock to eat. John had failed, he'd miserably failed.
"Is it essential?" Sherlock asked, regaining his seat at the table.
"It's a dip preparation, so, yeah, it's better to have something to dip it with. Would crackers do?" John asked, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice.
"Yes, yes, just give me the damn thing, I'm dying, here!"
It turned out the crackers didn't clash too much with the dish, and replaced the bread more or less adequately; if anything, their crunchiness contrasted interestingly with the creaminess of the hummus and the tahini. The parsley and shallots brought a fresh, crispy note to the mix, while the roasted pine nuts harmonized with the sesame cream's taste, discreetly setting it off, and, unlike any other kind of nuts, they crumbled very softly under the teeth -- one of the reasons why the use of crackers was a shame, since that subtle play of texture was lost.
Sherlock didn't say anything with the first bite, but John took the fact that he kept eating and then actually finished the dish, all in companionable silence, as a good sign.
He'd learned the recipe from his Israeli roommate when he was still a medical student; if you could find the right ingredients, it was incredibly simple to prepare and always a big hit with the girls John tried to seduce, provided that they didn't have a strong aversion to hummus. It should have felt weird serving his prized girl-trap dish to Sherlock, but John was merely glad he finally got the impossible git to eat.
After the success of that operation, John decided to stick to simple, yet tasty dishes that could be prepared within minutes. The second time didn't go as well. John had settled on French toast, something he mastered quite well since, again, the girls he'd dated as a student liked to be pampered in the morning too. But when Sherlock took a look at what was on his plate, he sniffed in disdain and simply said, "No."
"What do you mean, 'no'? Eat. You'll like it, trust me."
"No. Gran-Nan made pain perdu for us on Sundays, and she added vanilla, not vanilla essence, mind you, real vanilla, and she didn't use maple syrup, which is a sacrilege, only icing sugar. What's more, Gran-Nan was authentically French. Do you pretend to compete?"
With that he left the kitchen without so much as looking back.
John was livid. Fuck authentically French!
If that was a challenge, John was up for it. So things were finally starting to get serious?
Fine, he thought fiercely. Now, it's on.
*****
On his third try, John went for curry. It was a risky bet (since there was a chance Sherlock knew his Indian cuisine as much as he knew his Chinese) but John wasn't playing it safe anymore. Plus, there was a secret advantage to curry.
He prepared it the day before the case was scheduled to be wrapped up, while Sherlock was off at Bart's doing unspeakable things to corpses. For this recipe, John followed instructions he got from a nurse who worked at the surgery. Her name was Sangeeta, and she was of Pakistani descent, but actually came from Mauritius. The curries they prepared over there were a bit different from those in India, she'd assured him, so John saw an advantage in that too -- he'd be damned if Sherlock knew Mauritian cuisine too.
He started by thinly cutting aubergines, and he fried them in a pan with onions, garlic and ginger, then put them aside. Next he cooked pieces of chicken in the same pan. He could almost hear his grandmother's motto in his head: "all the flavour is in the bones". She used to make delicious chicken soup and stew, and she always insisted on never using chicken breast unless there was skin and bone still attached to it; the fat contained in the skin and the marrow contained in the bones were essential to bring full flavour to a dish. So John used whole, fresh pieces of chicken. When they turned golden, he set them aside, in the same bowl as the aubergine. He poured a bit of oil in the pan again, put chopped onions, puréed garlic and ginger to fry, then he mixed curry powder with a bit of water. He was hit by a puff of fragrant vapour when he mixed the curry paste with the frying onions, watching them change colour, from translucent to a beautiful, vibrant shade of saffron. He could get used to this, he thought as he smelled the mouth-watering odour of spices, blending with those of chicken and aubergine which he eventually incorporated. At this point in the recipe, Sangeeta had warned him to check the consistency of the dish and alter it with water and/or tomato purée, according to his taste. John did generally prefer more sauce, so he added both, and let the preparation simmer a little. Then, at the very end, while the pan was still hot, he slipped in a handful of shrimps and allowed them to cook, but not for long, because their delicate flesh hardened very quickly under heat.
The curry was ready. John let it cool down, poured it into a plastic container and stored it in the fridge.
The next day, right on schedule, Sherlock could finally prove it wasn't poison but anaphylactic shock that killed the anthropologist. Sherlock's explanation of the details of the case took a little while, so while he was animatedly talking about how he'd found out about the allergy that wasn't mentioned anywhere in the medical files, John took the opportunity to cook some white rice and re-heat the curry. When the steaming plate of rice and curry was set in front of him, Sherlock didn't stop talking; he absently seized a spoon and scooped some of the food on his plate. When he put it in his mouth, it looked like he was only taking a small pause to swallow before he resumed his rambling, but then a strange thing happened: his eyes widened, and for a full minute, while he chewed and tasted his food, Sherlock stopped talking.
"It's good, yes?" John said, letting amusement and smugness seep into his voice.
The secret advantage of that kind of home-made curry, Sangeeta had revealed to him, was that it tasted even better the day after it was prepared. You had to let the spices slowly impregnate the other ingredients and in the end, the flavour would come out enhanced, well-rounded, and appreciably different from freshly made curry. That was John's trump card.
"It's... perfectly adequate," Sherlock replied curtly, and proceeded to finish his plate, down to the last grain of rice.
John was quite satisfied of this little success that night. But he only realized the true extent of his victory when the next day came and he found Sherlock in the kitchen around noon, looking a bit lost. He turned to John when he entered the room, hesitated, then finally asked, "Aren't you going to prepare something today?"
John stood shell-shocked, not knowing how to react at first; then he gathered himself and told Sherlock to sit down while he fixed them lunch. There was white rice, one aubergine and a few shrimps left from the day before. He also had leeks that he'd wanted to turn into soup at some point, but he could easily reassign them. In a corner of the fridge, there was miso paste for a secret project he reserved for the future, for when he would feel confident enough; however, he could use some of it for something simple now. There was a bottle of soy sauce and a couple of cans of baby corn in the cupboards, too. The menu was decided, then. He would make a Chinese fried rice of sorts with the white rice, the shrimps, the leeks, and the baby corn. As for the aubergine... there was something he'd always wanted to try preparing, but he wasn't sure he'd succeed.
He cut the aubergine in half, lengthways, and spread miso paste over the two parts. Then he wrapped them in tin foil and put them to cook in the oven for about forty minutes. He checked with a knife to see whether they were cooked enough and when the point sank easily in, he got them out. Then he mixed soy sauce with brown sugar, poured that mix on the eggplant halves, and put them back in the oven. While he let the sweetened soy sauce caramelize the aubergine, he quickly prepared the fried rice.
In the end, the candied aubergine turned out perfect, its taste slightly sweet and sour, its flesh indecently lush and melting on the tongue; it felt like a decadent treat. John decided he was getting really good at this.
While they both ate in appreciative silence, and since his mind wasn't set on preparing food anymore, John finally got around to consider the situation. Something had changed. It felt like they had reached a major turning point: Sherlock had asked for food. The timing wasn't right, the post-case hunger had occurred and been taken care of the day before, but Sherlock had asked for food, and they were eating now, so what was this?
Could it be that John had finally managed to inspire some gluttony in the overgrown stick insect he had for a flatmate? Could it be that John's cooking skills had got Sherlock interested in food? The idea seemed ludicrous, and yet the evidence was right in front of him: Sherlock was eating, not from survival reflex, but because he was enjoying it. He was enjoying John's food. Warmth spread through John's body at the thought. He had to keep his head, though: capturing Sherlock's interest was one thing, keeping that interest was another. He had to surpass himself.
He had to get even better.
*****
"John? Hoo-hoo! John? There's a package for you!"
As soon as he heard Mrs Hudson's voice, John looked up from his newspapers only to find that Sherlock had already got up and was going for the door.
"Crap," John said out loud, and jumped to his feet. The rustle of the newspapers falling to the floor alerted Sherlock that John was out to stop him and he started running, but John was already on him.
"Oh no you don't," John said as he caught Sherlock by the elbows in the nick of time, just before he reached the door. It all happened very fast from then on: Sherlock pivoted, secured a hold on John's arm, then he proceeded to twist it putting his full body's strength behind the move; John reacted in time and swept a leg behind Sherlock's ankles. They both ended up on the floor, wrestling like they bloody well meant it.
"Boys?" Mrs Hudson called behind the door. "Are you there? Is this a bad time?"
"In a minute, Mrs Hudson," John replied hastily, pushing his hand against Sherlock's face while Sherlock hooked his fingers at the waist of John's trousers and pulled. John changed his strategy when he saw that trying to stop his trousers from going further down his knees wasn't getting him anywhere: he suddenly let go and, as the lack of tension projected Sherlock backwards, he hurriedly stepped out of the trouser legs and went to answer the door in nothing but his shirt and underpants. Dignity was overrated anyway, although he preferred not to look Mrs Hudson in the eyes as he retrieved his package.
And just as he thought the situation couldn't get any more awkward, he heard Mrs Hudson say, in an embarrassed and slightly reproachful tone, "Well, dear, if you and Sherlock were busy, I could always come back later, you know."
John felt his whole face burn and he tried to tell her that nothing... that him and Sherlock weren't... but she had already turned her heels and was heading back downstairs.
"It's Italian," Sherlock said, out of the blue. He hadn't budged from his position on the carpet. Maybe he'd decided he was quite comfortable there after all. "Tonight's Italian, isn't it?"
"Fuck off," John muttered, picking up his trousers from the floor and hiding the package under his shirt.
He had no idea when exactly Sherlock had turned this into a game, but he knew it had kept escalating, and now Sherlock's obsession to know what John would prepare before he got to the kitchen was starting to get bloody ridiculous. And, as usual when it came to Sherlock's stupid games, John couldn't help but play along. John thought maybe it had all started with the cheesecake, or maybe the pecan pie; Sherlock had got both right, about 48 hours before John even started the preparations. Well, he hadn't been very careful about hiding either -- plus he'd messed up both recipes, the cheesecake had turned out unpleasantly gooey for some reason, and the pecan pie had been downright burnt. Why Sherlock had ended up eating them anyway was still a mystery to John, but after those rather disastrous tries and the infamous French Toast Defeat, John had decided to stay away from pastries and other sweet stuff and stick to savoury dishes.
Somehow, he'd found it frustrating when Sherlock had guessed the dishes beforehand, so John had started to get craftier and craftier. The Marrow Bones Coup had been a particularly good one; he'd obtained the bones through Mrs Hudson, and she'd kept the secret safe until the very last minute. The other ingredients had only been brown bread and coarse salt, which wasn't much of a giveaway. Sherlock had pronounced himself dead certain that the dish would turn out to be foie gras on toast, but John could tell he'd been grasping at straws at that point. And although Sherlock was an incredibly sore loser, John knew he'd still enjoyed the brown bread toasts and piping hot marrow sprinkled with coarse salt. It had been one of the simplest dishes John had ever prepared, but simple didn't necessarily mean it would taste bland.
His grandmother had been so right, John had thought as he'd bitten down on his toast and felt the richness of the melting marrow, which was precisely balanced in texture and taste by the crunchiness and slight bitterness of the brown bread. There had been something deeply carnal, almost primitive, about the pleasure each mouthful had provided. "All the flavour is in the bones."
In the safety of the kitchen, John opened his package and sighed in relief when he saw all the ingredients he had ordered from the online Italian food store were there: pancetta, spaghetti and pecorino cheese. John used to think that carbonara sauce was made with onions, bacon cubes and crème fraîche (he should have known something was wrong with that recipe; crème fraîche was French, wasn't it?), when it was actually garlic, pancetta, and the smoothness of the sauce was due to egg yolks and a bit of grated pecorino. John secretly blessed the Internet and its myriad of food blogs; the amount of stuff you could learn there was incredible.
He set about preparing the dish, when he suddenly remembered that night had fallen, and he was in the kitchen, which meant the game was over, and Sherlock had lost. For today at least. John smiled to himself as he started cutting the pancetta on a wooden board. It was good being able to surprise his friend the genius from time to time.
*****
The time to put his secret project in motion had finally come. Sherlock was in Wales for a week. He'd seemed a bit disappointed when John had told him he couldn't accompany him this time (it was a locked room mystery, after all, with an impressive array of suspects, nothing John had planned on doing could possibly be better than this), but hadn't protested too much nevertheless. Of course he could tell John was up to something, and John suspected Sherlock also knew it had something to do with the miso paste that had sat untouched in the fridge after the candied aubergine. And if he'd managed to link the miso paste to John's refusal of the free trip to Wales, then Sherlock had most definitely deduced the type of food that John would prepare for him when he would return. John hoped Sherlock's idea of it remained vague, but he didn't count on it. It was easy to guess "Japanese food" from the miso paste, and from that point on, deducing the rest was child's play: the answer was simply the first that came to mind whenever Japanese cuisine was mentioned.
To John, this would be the most difficult challenge to date.
He'd decided he would prepare sushi for Sherlock.
Apparently, it took three long years of hard learning to become a mediocre sushi chef in Japan, and an entire lifetime to become somewhat decent. John didn't have three years, but he had an Internet connection and a lot of determination.
He'd actually started the research a long time ago, slowly gathering data from food blogs, articles, and DIY Youtube videos, cross-checking the information he'd found, and from that comparative analysis he'd drawn his conclusions and developed his own method.
First crucial point: the rice. From what he'd read, using a rice-cooker was prohibited. Sushi rice had to be cooked the old-fashioned way, in a pot, after having been rinsed thoroughly. First you had to cook it with high heat until it was boiling, then you switched to low heat for about fifteen minutes, and finally you had to let it steam for ten minutes.
Second crucial point: the rice vinegar. Not too little, not too much; getting the proportions right was tricky, so John decided to rely on his sense of smell for this one: splash the vinegar on the still-hot rice, and the resulting fragrant steam would tell him if he had it right. The vinegar had to be mixed in the rice rapidly, but also gently, using a spatula. The rice had to be stirred as little as possible.
Third crucial point: the moulding. Moulding the rice part of the nigirizushi was simple enough, if you managed to keep your movements firm, but not squish the rice altogether. Apparently, it was also best to shape the top part a little like a dome, or a fan according to the Japanese. With his careful yet assured doctor hands, John was able to get this part right. Moulding the slice of fish with the rice was little more problematic. No matter how much he'd watched the Youtube videos, his movements couldn't match a pro's, so he ended up keeping himself to two golden rules: keep your hands cool, and try to press the fish against the rice with very few movements, otherwise your body heat would warm up the fish meat, which would be a catastrophe.
Fourth point: the fish. It had to be top quality, of course, and as fresh as possible (John had seen Youtube videos of chefs cutting up live calamari for sashimi, and the flesh was still quivering in the plates when they served them. John was all for freshness, but he thought that was taking the concept a little too far). For that part, John had asked Angelo for help. Angelo happened to know a guy who knew a guy who worked at Billingsgate, so he could get one of his cousins to get the order to that guy and then deliver all the fish John needed on the day Sherlock returned from Wales. It was perfect.
"Anything for Sherlock's fiancé," Angelo had said cheerfully, giving John a monumental pat on his back. (So now John wasn't Sherlock's "date" anymore, but his fiancé. Brilliant. He didn't know if he should consider it an improvement, but Angelo seemed to think it was.)
Fifth and final point: the cutting of the fish. It was probably the most important point, since it made all the difference between an amateur and a pro. John certainly wasn't a pro, but, as a doctor and a soldier, he considered himself good with knives. A few commandments had to be respected there too: always use the sharpest knife, and then sharpen it some more. Always cut with the grain of the fish, never against it. Finally, the movement of the knife had to be confident, precise, final; there was no room for fits and starts.
For the whole week, John tried his hand at making sushi. He practiced cutting low-grade fish, he ate endless quantities of rice perfumed with vinegar, until he almost made himself sick, he moulded nigiri until he could reproduce the movements with his eyes closed. By the end of the week, John felt he was finally ready. All that was left to do was to wait for Sherlock to return.
*****
Sherlock crossed the threshold to their apartment, took one look at John and declared, "Sushi. I knew it."
John couldn't stop the grin that was tugging at his lips, and Sherlock grinned back.
"How was the case?" John asked as he led the way to the kitchen.
"Brilliant," Sherlock replied, removing his coat and his scarf, tossing them carelessly on the sofa as he followed John. "They all murdered him in turn, and were all separately convinced that they'd killed him, when it was in fact a suicide, a very carefully planned one, probably one of the most vicious and twisted schemes I've ever encountered: the dead man had wanted to take revenge on his whole family and had tried to get them all accused of his own assassination." Sherlock said the words "vicious" and "twisted" like some people would say "breakfast in bed" and "free theme park tickets". "You should have come," he added. "You would have loved it."
"I know," John said quietly. "But, as you know, I had business here. So, first..."
"Miso soup," Sherlock finished for him before John could set the bowl before him.
"Yes, to keep you waiting. I also made black seaweed with carrots, shiitake mushrooms, and soy sauce, crunchy green beans with sesame, and a little cucumber, wakame, and crab salad with a bit of sweet sake-based dressing that I made myself."
He set three more little bowls containing the appetizers he'd just described on the table, accompanied with a pair of chopsticks, then he turned to the counter where he started preparing the sushi.
He was almost done, carefully half-searing a slice of tuna with a torch when he heard Sherlock say, in a thoughtful voice, tinged with something John couldn't identify, "All of this. It's very... very good, John. Thank you."
"Wait," John said in return, finishing to plate the last piece of sushi, "the best has yet to come. Ta-daa!" He sing-songed as he put down the plate in front of Sherlock.
The latter remained speechless, which John took as a good sign, so with great enthusiasm, he proceeded to present each type of sushi to him, pointing at the different pieces, "Mackerel. Salmon. Salmon roe. Urchin. Shrimp. Kappa maki -- cucumber rolls. Half-seared tuna with a bit of chive. And finally, scallop makizushi with crushed mango on some, and blackberry jam on others, as you can see. Go on. Try some."
"John," Sherlock said, and John froze.
Sherlock looked... he didn't look like himself. Something was wrong.
"I'm afraid I can't eat, I..."
John's heart sank. Those were the words he'd dreaded to hear, but that he didn't think would ever come. Not now. Not after all the efforts he'd put into this...
"Don't you dare!" he suddenly exploded. "I know I'm not 'authentically Japanese', and maybe you've tasted better sushi in a restaurant somewhere, or you personally know a Japanese chef, well guess what? I don't care! I put my soul into this, Sherlock!"
"Precisely. I find..."
"I told you, I don't care! Eat what's on your bloody plate, dammit!"
"Please let me finish what I have to say, John," Sherlock said, getting up. John finally saw the emotions warring on his face. He'd never seen Sherlock look so... open. Vulnerable.
"The dedication you've put into this shows," Sherlock began. "It has shown in every dish you've prepared for me until now. And now... I find myself quite... overwhelmed. And I don't think I can eat, not right now. Not before..."
John didn't get it. He didn't get it until Sherlock crossed the distance between them in two long strides, cupped both sides of John's face in his hands, and kissed him within an inch of his life.
John had never been kissed with such desperate passion before; feeling like he was the centre of the other person's universe, like he was being worshipped and adored. The sheer force of the sentiment that was brought down upon him like lightning, like a primordial burst of energy, made him hiss a little breath, which Sherlock took as an invitation to take further possession of John's mouth, after having thoroughly ravaged his lips.
So this is how you felt, John thought as he slowly let himself be swept away by the tidal wave of Sherlock's emotions, accepting, letting him take what he needed. This is how you felt, and here I believed I was the only one who felt that way.
He finally responded to Sherlock's kiss, which provoked a surprised, throaty little sound from Sherlock, that John found interesting enough to try to reproduce by nipping those lips he'd always wanted to nibble on.
When they broke off, they were panting heavily, pressed flush against each other, hands buried in each other's hair. John's gaze found Sherlock's; he saw his full-blown pupils, accompanied with a glint of fever he'd never thought he'd see in those eyes.
"Well..." John said, slowly. "I suppose..."
He turned his head to look longingly at the plate he'd gone through so much trouble to prepare and that remained untouched on the table. Sherlock bent his head to press his lips against John's throat, then began to suck on tender skin, in a deliberate attempt, John was certain of it, to leave a mark there.
"Oh, well," John sighed, resigned. "I suppose dinner can wait."