Antonio heard mention of the kitchens. "It's a real shame what happened on the kitchen level and on the dungeon level, and that's why I thought it might be fun for you guys to cook something here, well, one of the reasons, anyway. The main reason is to learn about different cuisines, of course!"

Antonio walked around the five stations, making sure everything was going smoothly.

ooc: Everyone who comes in, just check out what we are doing (creating food from either Italy, India, Mexico, U.K. or China, with an option to work on a shrimp creole dish at the end) and act like you were here the whole time, as always. I want to give all of you a chance to roleplay making the food for right now!

Wesley nodded quickly, wide eyed. "Okay!" she squeaked, grabbing a rag and moving the peals into a rubbish bin. Stacking pots and moving them to the sink, she smiled back at the girl, "Nice to meet you Iris! Wesley paused, knowing it would be common courtesy to introduce herself as well, but wondering if she could get away with saying her name was Nancy or Scarlet or something feminine. Lying is bad!, she told herself angrily, shaking her head, but Wesley's a boy's name!, her mind pleaded back, but lying. is. BAD. Giving in to what she knew was right, the small girl finally said glumly, "My name's Wesley."

Apparently Wesley was not a multi-tasker. Talking and looking one way, and moving pots another way was not going to work. "Ooops!" she exclaimed as a couple pots fell to the floor. Wesley bent over, hurriedly picking them up, blushing profusely. I'm such a bumbling idiot! "Sorry! I'm so sorry!"

"Well, I'm gonna start washing the dishes while ya'll are finishing it up so we don't have to do it at the end, so I'll gather up what we're done with and then bring me stuff as ya'll are done with it." she started gathering up knives and spoons and cups and cutting boards and headed towards the sink to start washing.

(UK table)

"Wesley." Iris said, she'd never heard that name before, "Well It's nice to meet you Wesley, I've never heard the name Wesley before you know. I like it." Iris opened the oven to check on the pie when she heard a crash that wasn't me! she thought as she turned around, to see several metal pots on the floor.

Trying not to laugh at the caotic behaviour of this Wesley, She bent down and went to help her pick the pans up, "calm Down Wesley, no need to get worked up about them! thankfully they are metal, but if they were china, Professor Dumont could have easily fixed them!" she said, hoping to calm the girl down. Maybe she would benefit in going to Nurse Avalon for a calming potion. Poor Kid.

"Thanks!" Wesley said as Iris bent over to help her, taking slower breaths. That's right. They're only metal. Iris was really level-headed; the small Hufflepuff would have never thought of the professor fixing any broken china. Wesley smiled gratefully at the Slytherin.

Picking up the pots, she placed them carefully in the sink, turned on the water, and held her hand under the sink's nozzle, waiting for the water to turn hot. If you have to cook cookies for them to be safe, then you probably have to heat the water for the dishes to be safe, the first-year reasoned. Wesley had never washed dishes before. Usually her mother always just waved her wand and bam! soap bubbles and sparkling dishes.

Biting her lip, the petite girl tilted her head thoughtfully. Doing muggle things is...interesting.

Daniel loved pasta so he walked towards the Italian table. He then looked at the people around it. "Hello there." he said. He then started to go and make a lasagna.

He started to saute garlic and onion and then the beef that he will use. He then looked at the others and smiled.

Abby looks around at the various kitchens and decides to make Shepards Pie. She had never had it before last summer, and would love to learn how to make it. Abby finds a kitchen area that is available, and looks at the recipe. (OOC: the recipe you provide is incomplete. I found another one that gives all the directions on how to prepare the pie. )

She checks to make sure she has all the ingredients she needs. Yes, there all there. Now, where to start? Abby reads the recipe and decides to start with the potatoes. She finds a bowl and fills it with water. Abby then peels and cuts her potatoes placing each cube in the water when finished with it. Abby then fills a two quart pot with cold water. She adds about a tablespoon of water, and turns the stove on at least she hopes she's turned the stove on. Abby picks the pot up and looks at the stove top. There is a circle about the size of the pot bottom that has turned bright red. She places her hand over the circle. Abby feels heat coming from the ciricle. The element must be on. She places the pot back on the circle, then drains the water out of the cut potatoes, and transfers them to the boiling water. Abby stirs the potatoes and reduces the heat until the water is at a steady boil. She then notices something that looks like a clock but doesnt' seem to be keeping time. It has a large knob in the center. Abby turns the knob to the line marked one. She then puts the strange thing down and times the device. In about a minute it starts ringing. This thing must count down the minutes. I wonder if I can time the potatoes with it. Abby sets the crazy looking device for 20 minutes. She check and makes sure her potatoes are still boiling, but not boiling over. The potatoes seems to be cooking right, so Abby goes back and reads some more of the recipe.

Chris watched as everyone finished putting their enchaladas on the pan and he took it over to the preheated oven. He set the timer for tewnty minutes and placed the tray in there uncovered. "Now we wait." he said taking a seat.

"Oh thanks Satine." He said smiling at the girl. "You're a real help." he gathered some of the dirty dishes for her.

Cooking? No, seriously, cooking?! Professor Dumont could have picked ANY subject from the muggle world - any AT ALL, and he picked the ONLY thing she was REALLY bad at. And no exaggeration here unfortunately. Her first attempt at cooking (and last) had been making scrambled eggs. Somehow, for reasons that were still a mystery to her since she was SURE she had done it right, the pan had been too hot and the butter hadn't done its job so she had ended up with the eggs stuck onto the hot pan and in the end - simple black charcoal. Jake had never let her forget it...

"Right, I can do this," she said to herself in a quiet voice as she headed over to the Italian section, being a fan of Italian food herself and read over the instructions quickly. "Ok - shouldn't be too hard..."

Grabbing a bowl, Rachel grabbed the two eggs as instructed and cracked both of them messily into the bowl, spending the next two minutes picking out all the egg shells left over. Using the egg beater -which by the way was the COOLEST thing ever - she beat the eggs lightly, just as the instructions said, then added milk and bread.

Let stand for five minutes? Rachel stared at the disgusting looking mixture in front of her with a confused look. Should she mix it before leaving it for five minutes... Or should she just leave it? Making up her mind, she took the egg beater again and mixed the ingredients together for a little before leaving it, almost sure that she was doing this right.

How was it that she was good at potions but rubbish at cooking? They were almost the same thing, when you think about it. Glancing at the time, she prepared herself to wait until the five minutes were up and in the meantime turned to watch her classmates do their work.

"Hey!" replied Becca. "I'm Rebecca, that's Lilly, Natka, and Clark. It's nice to meet you." "We'd better work fast so we can finish in time!" she added smiling, as she began to add the remaining sauce ingredients and waited for it to boil. Then, glancing at what he had started doing she added with a hint of humor in her voice, "Um, though lasagna is very good, you do know we're making Spaghetti and Meatballs right?"

"Okay then. Sounds good to me," Anna said to Chris, nodding once in Chris' direction. With both hands, she began folding the pieces of the shell so that it more or less resembled what her mother's enchiladas looked like. When she was done, she beamed at her work, although, it was sort of a far cry from what she'd seen her mother do. Anna's enchilada was realy uneven and lumpy in parts, but she imagined it'd taste good regardless.

Anna grabbed ahold of the taco sauce and poured just enough over her enchilada. It looked like everyone else was on a different step than she was, so she didn't try adding the sauce to anyone else's enchilada for the time being. She did need some cheese now, though. She reached over and grabbed a handful of the shredded cheese, then sprinkled it over her tasty-looking enchilada. "Does anyone else need the sauce and cheese now?" she asked.

Right cooking. How hard could it be, just because he'd never tried cooking before, that's what the house elves and servants were for, it couldn't be all that difficult. Walking over to the Italian Station Reid quickly read over the recipe, trying to decipher what to do. In the end he just gave the book a confused look before grabbing the ingredients he'd need for the first part of the book.

Placing the medium sized bowl in front of him Reid grabbed two eggs and cracked them expertly. He may not be able to cook but for one role he had to pretend he did and so they'd taught him how to crack eggs since in the shot you saw his face and his hand. Therefore this part was no problem. Grabbing an egg beater, an electronic one at that, he slowly began to beat the eggs lightly, at least he hoped it was lightly and that he was doing it correctly. Figuring that he was done with the beating he leaned over for another look at the cook book.

Alright grabbing some milk and a measuring cup he quickly transferred the milk into the measuring cup before slowly pouring it into the egg mixture. Just then a thought came to him. Should he have poured the milk in while he was mixing so it all mixed together. Oh well too late now. I guess I'll just have to see. with that in mind he quickly grabbed up the three slices of bread and crumbled them over the bowl. Done with the first part he stood back and looked at his watch waiting and counting down the minutes until he could begin again.

And the five minutes are up! Glancing back down at her still disgusting looking mixture, she reached over and almost knocked over the milk carton while taking the spices. Sprinkling them onto the mixture, she groaned as she saw that she was going to have to touch the ground beef - a fact that had alluded her when she had started working on this catastrophe.

Quickly casting a cleaning charm on her hands, she took a breath and then put her hand into the beef mash thing and popped it into the mixture, her face all scrunched up in disgust. "Yuck - that looks absolutely horrible," she commented to herself as she gazed down at the contents of her bowl. It was a good thing she hadn't eaten before class... All this cooking and beef and icky mixtures would have definitely caused her to be sick.

Taking a wooden spoon thingy that looked like it could do the mixing job well, she wiped her hands with a piece of parchment since she hadn't located any other means and began mixing the contents of the wooden bowl, surprised by how hard it was. She felt her arm muscles working as she mixed and mixed - but the mixture didn't really seem to look any less gross.

The fifth year groaned again as she saw that she was going to have to touch the mixture now - yes, it did look a little less icky now that it was all just one great lump of beef, but it was still BEEF! Scrunching up her nose, Rachel plunged her hands into the beef and took her first helping. She pretended it was wet sand - even though wet sand was usually a lot grainier, but it was the best she could come up with - and slowly formed the meat balls.

Looking at the balls at the end, she saw that she had made almost forty meatballs when the instructions said only 24. Ahh... 1 and a half inches in diameter... Hers were a tad small. Sighing, she added couples of meatballs together and generally played around with the amounts until she had 25 of them, and all fairly similar sized. Eh, good enough.

Ew, grease!! This class was gross - and she HATED cooking. Grabbing one of the baking pans, Rachel overgreased it, for she had learned from the butter experience, and swiftly popped all 25 balls of meat onto the tray. Walking over to where there was a selection of ovens for them, she put her baking pan in and set the temperature to 450 degrees -just as the instructions say- and turned to face the clock once more to count the 25 minutes she was supposed to wait. In the meantime, she cast another cleaning charm on her hands, then used a parchment to scrub her wand as well as she could.

"How is everyone doing?", Antonio asked. It looked to him that everyone was doing okay, though some seemed to enjoy the cooking more than others. "It's always nice to know how to cook muggle style, you never know when it might come to handy, believe it or not," he said.

ooc: I will let you guys work through the night and into tomorrow, at least, before I post homework. Remember, I read through the thread, so please behave!

"Nice to meet you Rebecca." he said and then waved at the others. He looked around and whispered to Rebecca. "I thought that we should also prepare a lasagna." Daniel giggled, "I have an unexplainable craving for it now." he said and then laughed at himself.

"But let us first make the spaghetti and meatballs, shall we?" he said gesturing to get a knife. "What else is not yet prepared?" he asked.

Lucy had immeditaly made her way to the table marked India, and she was excited about the dish they were making too. Lucy was half Indian and half French, but she enjoyed her Indian culture more. She helped out with everything she could and waited for the professor to come over to them. She turned to Linda and smiled. "They don't like it, because they've never tried it. Which they should because I mean its wonderful in my opinion." She said leaning against the table. "I enjoyed working with you guys." She said smiling at the two.

ooc: even though i didn't do anything

Helena set to work on one of her favorite foods - chicken enchiladas - with a smile and bright blue eyes. As a child home and bored, she had begged her Mexican housekeepers to teach her how to cook on her own. She barely needed the directions for this one.

As she preheat the oven to the appropriate temperature, Helena smiled once in Chris's direction as she put the chicken breast in the skillet. She let it cook for a few short minutes and flipped each piece over until they were cooked the whole way through. She then slid the hot chicken onto a cutting board and cubed each piece with ease.

Helena put it back in the pan and grabbed the sour cream, cheese, and onion from the fridge. She mixed these, as well as the parsley, oregano, and black pepper, in with the chicken and let it sit on the heat for a few minutes, glancing around the room airily as she did so.

Cedric was working alone,Well he feels great even if he was working alone at least he can make the style and the taste of the food in his own way.He will make sphaggeti,a italian spice and sweet one,He was not french and italian but living in those countries influence his taste.He place the pasta in a big deep pan and waits for it to boil.

Excellent! Who knew Muggle Studies could get better? They were making a few of his favourite dishes! Ok, so there was the Roast Dinner option, but chicken chow mein was at least second. He looked at the instructions on the board and walked over to the China cooking station. He was going to create a mean chicken chow mein. Oh yeah. Miles looked at the first direction. Oh, it was going to take that long, so he wouldn’t be cooking for another two hours? Meh. He picked up the pund of mung bean sprouts and placed them into a sieve to drain them for a couple of minutes. He began to whistle a little, just because this instruction was taking a little longer than expected. He wanted to get to using the wok! That was the interesting part of cooking Chinese.

Miles then got the chicken out and cut it into thin strips. He was a little bit shaky as the knife was pretty HUUUGE. EEP! But he was fine, just as long as he was steady and careful, he wasn’t planning on chopping his fingers off. Next was the noodles, aaaah, how he loved noodles. He ran some boiling hot water and added some salt, before placing the noodles in there. After this, he washed out the sieve he had used before and drained the noodles in cold water quickly. Yummy! Miles got excited as he read the next instruction, did it mention the word ‘wok’? It did! He grinned as he took the wok and placed it on one of the hobs and added 2 tablespoons of oil. Miles folded his arms and waited for it to heat up …tick tock…. When he felt the heat coming off of the oil, he added the noodles. Yey! He was well on his way to making the best chicken chow mein. He moved the noodles around, going “Wheeee!” As he did so. Once they were golden, he took the noodles out.

Haha! Next was the chicken. He heated another wok and put two tablespoons of oil in. Miles looked away for a second to look at what other people were doing. Everyone looked so hungry whilst making their dish. So was Miles. He looked back, and realized that the last tablespoon of oil had missed the wok and he had poured it onto the counter. “Ewwww.” He cringed like a little girl as he went to get a wet cloth. Yucky yuck yuck, he hated oil, it was all … oily. Once that was clean, he poured one more teaspoon of oil into the wok and added the garlic and the meat. He was glad that he didn’t have to use the oil again, he nudged it away from his food just to confirm it. Icky.

Once the meat was nearly cooked completely, Miles added the rest of the vegetables and continued to stir it around the wok. Boy, it smelt mouth watering. Miles made a circle in the middle of the wok where all the sauces could go. “Wheee!” He smiled again as he poured them all in. He got too excited over this. He put in the green onions and the noodles and stirred quicker than usual, before placing it all on a serving plate, ready to be eaten. Miles made a drooling noise as he stared at his dish. He wanted to eat it NOOOOW.

Undecided, Kiri dawdled for a few moments while the rest of her classmates rushed off to different tables. In the end, she got up and walked to the China table. It was almost empty - one of the few people there was a fellow Slytherin who was vaguely familiar to Kiri. She thought she'd seen him with Vanessa a few times.
She nodded at him and then let her gaze travel across the ingredients on the table. There seemed to be at least 50 different pots and cups. Glancing at the directions, Kiri saw that the dish would take quite a bit of preparation. A little apprehensively, she took one of the big knives and set to work.

Very mindful of the knife's lethally sharp edge, she cut the chicken into strips slowly. When she was done, she carefully replaced the knife on the table, as far away as possible so that it wouldn't get in the way (or, more importantly, slice in half anything that came near it in the process of in-the-way-getting) and began dumping noodles into the boiling water. She had no idea how much salt to use, so in the end she only added a little bit. While she waited for the noodles to soften, she grabbed one of the huge woks and turned up the heat.

Not much later, the noodles were bobbing up and down in the boiling water. Kiri removed them hastily and, once no more water was dripping from them, put them into the wok. She saw now that she should have used more salt, because some of the noodles were clumped together. However, soon she'd managed to separate them again as she stirred them around in the wok. Unfamiliar as she was with the equipment, she watched over the noodles anxiously, not preparing anything else while they changed their colour slowly. As she leaned over to take the wok off the plate, a few droplets of the oil in the wok hit her hand. She let out a sharp hiss of pain, rubbing the hand on her robes.

She shoved the noodles out of the wok and added more oil. Mindful to not get any more of it on her hands, she slid the garlic and meat strips into the wok and turned up the heat once more. Soon, the chicken turned brown, and Kiri began poking the strips around so they wouldn't burn. With her other hand, she grabbed, in turn, each of the pots containing the other ingredients and threw them into the wok with the meat strips and the garlic. The smell was incredibly seductive already, and Kiri's stomach grumbled treacherously. She could only hope no one could hear it over the hiss of the frying food in the wok.

To make room for the sauce, she pushed the meat and vegetables to the side, then added the oyster and the soy sauce. Then she threw some more salt and pepper onto it - taking about as much as the Slytherin boy, who was working on his own dish with confidence. Kiri figured he knew what he was doing.
The noodles came in, and so did the green onions (who added considerably to the mouth-watering smell), and then... she was done! Kiri heaved the wok off the heat with two hands and pushed some of the food on a plate. It didn't actually look bad! Making sure no one was watching, she sneaked off a piece of chicken with her fingers and tasted it. Her eyes widened in surprise. It was good! She wiped her oily fingers on her robes, then leaned back impatiently. When would they get to eat it?!

Rachel was bored. After yet another glance at the clock, she saw to her dismay that only seven and a half minutes had passed which meant that - she quickly did the calculations in her head - the fifth year had to wait another seventeen and a half minutes before she could move on with her spaghetti. Of course, she was too thick to actually read ALL the instructions closely since if she had she would have seen that in the meantime she could have been cooking the actual pasta.

Folding her hands over her chest, she leaned on her table and observed the room; letting her eyes linger over the various foods that other people were making. After she'd had enough of that, she turned to observe the going on in her own table. Everyone were in different stages apparently - and she saw that she was in fact one of the furthest along! Yay!!

Slowly moving her eyes over the various people working on their meatballs, she froze as she recognised the person standing right across from her - and what she saw was NOT good. Swiveling as fast as she could, she turned back to face the class - her heart racing a mile a minute as if she'd just run a marathon or played eight straight hours of grueling Quidditch.

Reid... Reid... NO - DON'T think about him Rachel!! She couldn't believe her luck - the past few days she had been doing her best to avoid the gorgeous guy and now due to this stupid COOKING class, they were working on the same table. Closing her eyes, she told herself to breathe - in, and out. In, and out.

Getiing up from his seat as they were given the opportunity to cook, George looked around and went around picking up the ingredients he needed, glancing over at Alice, who also didn't have a partner, he waved her over to a workspace and put his ingredients down "Alice, shall we do what we usually do?" he asked her before grinning and looking at the workspace

Mmm...Briyani. A delicious rice dish. Alice looked down on her mouthwatering recipe paper. Mhmm. As her mother was an Asian, she got the opportunity to taste this rice so many times. It was always delicious. She somehow recalled and managed to list out the ingredients and methods before start the work. Hoping that it would work. Dun Dun Dun!!

Alice looked at George, nodded her head to do this thing together, but seperate items. "Ofcourse we can. I'm gonna do this rice item," she giggled and looked down at the table. It was full of ingredients and wow. There were lotta work to do still. Okay..first step..

She put the apron on before wash the rice, soaked and kept it aside. It could be like that for another half an hour. She made all the necessary stuffs to get the boneless meat and made them marignate it in ginger garlic paste for 1 hour.

Meanwhile she waved her wand to chop the Onions in lengthwise evenly, well..very finely and fried it on lil oil and mashed it gently by using her hand. Aww..i need to clean my hand now. She used her wand again to clean her hand. Who likes the stickyness? Ewww..

Now the main part. Alice was so sincere, not wanting to miss any of the method. She wanted to make a delicious dish after all, without any flaws. Okay, she needed tobe focussed. Now..Now..what? The remaining ingredients. She quickly went through the recipe methods. Okay..she took a large bowl and put curd, 3/4 part of crushed fried onion, Red chilly powder, Green chilly paste, Cinnamon, Cardamom, Shahi Geera, Cloves, Coriander leaves, Mint leaves and saffron water and Green chilies(lengthwise slited) She mixed them well and added the marinated muttons with them in the bowl, left them as it was for another half an hour. She looked around to see what others were doing. A wide grin spreaded on her face as she looked at George. He seemed busy with cooking. A 11 year old boy. She giggled and continued her cooking.

The waiting time was killing. She had to wait for another few minutes before the mutton pieces get marinated well with other ingredients. Now ..ah..time...for ..the next step. She brushed aside her hair by her arms. Cooking Basmati rice was not a simple one. Her mother told her. It needed lotta experience and patience. Let's see what Alice was upto. She half cooked the rice as per the given method and drained the remaining water before added all the ingredients including mutton pieces she started cooking them in a pan, covered in low flame. She knew it would take another half and hour to cook well.

Aha! After the stipulated time, she could smell the mouthwatering aroma. The aroma was good. So tempting. Alice could feel her stomach rumbled postively. Haha. Finally she removed the pan from the flame, and finally garnished it with spring onions and corriandor leaves.

Yay! She clapped her hands together excitedly and looking at George, beamingly.

As Alice agreed to his request, George grinned and started to space out his ingredients and equipment. He put the yoghurt into the bowl first and then carefully placed the chicken in as soon as the yoghurt was sorted. He them put in one clove of garlic and half an onion. After adding the teaspoon of paprika and then adding the freshly chopped ginger, he put some salt in and finally added some pepper. "Professor, this will have to marinate for a few hours, can I use this spell my mum taught me?" George asked, knowing the professor was kind, he cast the spell on the bowl anyway, muttering it quietly, since he was concentrating it was easier to cast spells.

Heating the oil as he always did, he took the rest of the onions and garlic and put them into the pan. Flipping them every ten seconds or so, he counted the amount of time. Taking them out of the pan after exactly a minute, he put them to the side "Use them later" he mumbled before looking over at Alice and smiling.

He mixed the coriander with the chili, cumin, cardamom seeds, poppy seeds and tumeric before adding the casserole to it. Frying this mixture for four minutes, he then added the chiken and poured water over it so it was covered. He added the remaining marinade and then nodded, feeling pleased with himself.

Then he added onions and garlic with the bay leaf.and stirred it once. "I'm done Alice, I just gotta wait for it now, and I can use your rice, right?" George smiled before turning down the flame to simmer and watching her.

"Smart idea!" Becca whispered back with a smile. "I haven't had lasagna in a while." Looking at the recipe Becca read " Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Then we need to taste it and adjust the seasoning, adding more salt, if necessary. Would you like to reduce the heat Daniel?"