Recipes that change you

Carl checked his recipe card and sighed. <i>This is gonna be a pain in the ass</i> He could make chocolate lava cakes in his sleep he’d done it so many times, but he not only had to make it but give a presentation to the servers and hosts and hostesses. He hated doing menu tastings, they were needlessly stressful and ate up a perfectly good weekend.

Coming in at five AM to go over the new menu, while chugging down obscene amounts of caffeine was not the way he wanted to spend his saturday morning. Then he would look forward to getting yelled at by the sous and executive chef for breezing through his recipes or redoing them from scratch because they forgot something, or they wanted to add something or other. His coworkers felt similar, but it was part of the job and they only had to do these seasonally.

The summer menu was all latin/carribean themed. Empanadas, cuban sandwiches, lava cakes, mariquitas and plantains, citrus garlic sauces and bases, lots of roast pork and cracklins, whole heapings of rice and beans, and plenty of seasonings to be had.

All in all, the menu was bound to give someone a heart attack or gout...at least it was culturally accurate.

Still he was **** to sit here and wait while his coworkers ran around like chickens in a hen house following the strict orders of their executive chef, while the Sous followed them around as an equally bossy yet smaller shadow.

“CARL!” A voice barked to his right, waking him up from where he was slumped on the prep table.

“Huh!?” He shook, looking around pretending to clean his work station. His partner on the hot-line shook his head. Sal smacked him on the shoulder to keep him on his toes.

“Bro, get yer shit together..I know it’s early but Maxine will rip your head off for slacking” He warned. Carl turned his head in confusion, who is Maxine? Before he could ask any further questions Sal left to go make the breading for the Bistec De Empanizado, leaving him to question his own memory and hearing. Shrugging it off as a miscommunication he snuck below his workstation to grab the lava cake that was undercooked so he could indulge in the excess, he overstuffed the mold on this one purposefully so he could have something to snack on. All the other cooks did it when there was leftovers at least, waste not, want not.

Looking around the kitchen he could see he was the only one not preoccupied, which gave him plenty of time to observe. Drake and Paula were making the Tres leches cakes, and mixing the milks for the cream to set. The strong smell of fresh vanilla bean was intoxicating, as well as the sweetness from the cream cheese frosting itself.

Drake looked a bit odd however, he could have sworn he looked paler than usual and the same could be said of Paula. Both of the bakers also seemed to be...chubbier?

“Hey, Carl, have you seen the smoked paprika?” Louis asked from behind him, turning around from the odd sight of the bakers to open his eyes wide while taking in the visage of the older argentinian chef. His face seemed to have lost a lot of wrinkles, and youthened quite considerably. However the most shocking features were the two half foot long tusks growing from underneath his top lip, as well as the densely packed muscle straining against his chef coat.

Carl rapidly blinked his eyes in wonderment, why did Louis look like some buff orc man? He couldn't be that tired could he?

“Snrrt” Louis waited impatiently as Carl struggled to respond.

“Uhhh...I saw it near the grinder” He said slowly, not sure how to take this new information. Something very off was happening around here.

“This pork aint gonna be done till lunch time, at least you got off lucky...I gotta stick around till after lunch time” Louis snorted, grumbling to himself.

Carl stood frozen. The hell was happening around here?