Protein in all the colors of the rainbow: Cooking aboard Serenity

So...
this topic came up as a side topic on the "Short Fic About Mal's Parents" thread in the Fanfic section, so I decided to divert it into its own thread.

Bytemite wrote:I also think that Mal's cooking abilities extends to making almost drinkable black coffee, and heating up canned food. Not quite as bad as Simon making everything somehow taste foul and spoiled, but Mal's cooking is probably a very bland experience, nutrients and not much else. Just kind of as a nod to many western story protagonists and also migrant workers that Mal's story was drawn from.
And I think Inara can technically cook, but she tends to use weird spices and no one on the ship actually likes her cooking.

So, who cooks aboard Serenity?
Who's good at it? Who's no good at all?
We've seen the protein packets and the frequent mentions of molded protein, and we've seen River rip the labels off of Blue Sun canned goods. What kind of food do they have? What kind of cooking are they able to do?
Your thoughts on cooking aboard Serenity.

In contrast to Bytemite's headcanon (as quoted above), in my headcanon, Mal can cook. The ranch he grew up on produced most of what they ate themselves, and he grew up around people who knew how to cook and preserve food. Not fancy food, but good. The resources available to him in space are limited, so you won't find him canning applesauce or baking biscuits aboard Serenity -- but these are things I am certain he can do (my headcanon, of course) -- rather well, in fact. Aboard ship, he makes good coffee (or substitute coffee- they can't always afford the real thing) and is capable of turning out a pretty decent meal for a crowd. Again, not fancy, but respectable home cookin'.

I absolutely agree that Inara uses weird spices when she cooks, but I think that what she makes is good, though it's exotic.

However, Zoe is a better cook. (I think that the Wife Soup in War Stories was really good.) It's simply that Zoe rarely takes the time or trouble to cook, and when she does, there's very little for her to cook with, so her latent talent doesn't shine.

Simon can't cook at all. He's a very focused man, and cooking is not one of the things he focuses on. I think that pretty early on, they learned to write Simon out of the cook rotation, because nobody wanted to eat it, when he did cook.

Jayne is a dump-and-boil cook. The food he makes will fill your belly, and it won't kill you, and that's about all that can be said for it.

Book was a talented cook. Almost to chef standards. People got excited when it was Book's cook day, because it was always good, even when they were scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Wash--I don't know if he could cook. I'm guessing, not so much. He might have been responsible for that stuff that turned River's stomach, that Jayne said smelled like crotch.

I think Kaylee's cooking is perfectly adequate but nothing special. She'd rather play with machines than invent tasty recipes.

Can River cook? Goodness, I don't know. I'm sure she wasn't taught to cook when she was young -- neither Simon nor River were taught how to cook by their parents, who didn't know how to cook either. But I'm guessing River could learn anything she put her mind to. The question is, would cooking be something she'd put her mind to? And if she didn't put her mind to it, I think River's cook day would result in something pretty weird.

One of the quirks of cooking aboard ship in my headcanon is that Serenity only has a cooktop and a microwave oven (or their 26th c equivalents). No oven. They can't bake and roast. I stayed in a furnished cabin on vacation one time, that only had a cooktop, and was surprised at how many of my usual dishes I couldn't make, because there was no oven. So I decided to write that limitation into my stories.

In my headcanon, Wash can cook, though he mostly fries everything (he was a teenage fry cook for his first job), and he tends to overcook everything on the crispy side. Zoe, Mal, and Jayne can sear meat or fish over a fire and the canned food thing I mentioned, that's about it - Their skill set is geared more towards survival than any sort of craftmanship or artistry, so they're much better at actually HUNTING or fishing for food than they are with preparing it. Wash likes wife soup more because Zoe is doing something nice for him more than it's really any good. Jayne is worse than Zoe or Mal because he's unhygienic and burns things black. Simon and River are TERRIBLE COOKS, Simon because of lack of interest and River because her mind's a little off, can't watch the stove or time, and mixes up stuff that's not very edible to begin with. Do not eat anything they make, and you probably want to avoid anything Jayne makes too.

Mal had been thinking about getting a bona-fide ship's cook for a while, before Book came aboard, which tells me that most of the people on the ship ranged from bad to tolerable cooks. Inara is an okay cook, with a little practice she could even be professional, but I kinda don't like her becoming the ship's cook, so I have them secretly not like her cooking because she makes it too fancy for their liking. Kaylee has a similar amount of skill to Inara, but she uses spices they like a bit better and is also more used to and more creative with molded protein (chocolate cake anyone?). So when Book wasn't around, Kaylee was the favourite cook. Book, however, is better than anyone on the ship at cooking. They were very happy to have him.

If Kaylee and Inara collaborate, sometimes they can come up with something really good, because they both compensate for their respective cooking weaknesses. But Inara doesn't really like cooking either, because she feels it's too domestic and sends Mal the wrong idea. So Inara only rarely ever cooked anyway, and I also don't see that changing.

I think Serenity has both a stovetop and an oven, otherwise I can't imagine how Kaylee made her chocolate cake. But I like the idea of there being limitations. I make the stove top and oven really broken down so that it all has to be babied along, and usually it's too much effort to do something more than the very most basic meal.

Oh, I love it! Yeah, I can see what you're saying, fer sure.

Bytemite wrote:I think Serenity has both a stovetop and an oven, otherwise I can't imagine how Kaylee made her chocolate cake. But I like the idea of there being limitations. I make the stove top and oven really broken down so that it all has to be babied along, and usually it's too much effort to do something more than the very most basic meal.

My theory on this point is that Kaylee made the chocolate cake in the microwave oven. It wasn't really very good, but eating anything that even resembled a chocolate cake was such a rarity that they all were completely gung-ho about it. Kaylee's chocolate cakes are pretty chewy, because that's what happens when you try to bake a cake in a microwave oven.

Huh. That hadn't even occurred to me. I guess if she used a mold or could form it into disks, she could cook it layer by layer in the microwave. But then by baking it in a microwave the texture would pretty much be like eating a sponge with fake chocolate sauce on it.

Bytemite wrote:like eating a sponge with fake chocolate sauce on it.

Yup.
Plus, I figure all their cooking pans and baking dishes are made out of a material that is both microwave and conventional oven compatible. She might have used any old skillet or pot to get the round layers.

I've made stuff with really old tofu that ended up like a sponge. Fresher tofu works better.

I was thinking about this again after reading your shadow series, and maybe Mal knows recipes, but has bad luck putting the recipes into practice. So he just tends to make simple stuff unless he can direct better cooks. like 2x2 and snow cream.