One of my favorite food/cooking exo-fics is actually not really focused on cooking as a whole? But it’s an embellishment that made the story feel super real, and really touched ME and how I like to view food/cooking as a love language. That story is In the territory of the dragon king, by curledupkitten (https://archiveofourown.org/works/2160063/chapters/4722243) which is pretty much a fandom staple. It has the following lines:

"Let me watch the eggs. You always make the edges all weird and crunchy." / “You're hurt. And I like the edges crunchy." / “No you don't. You're just used to eating your mistakes." — Which is an exchange between Chanyeol and Baekhyun, and it’s followed later by an exchange between Kyungsoo and Baekhyun (the romantic couple of the story): "I can teach you the trick. . .for getting the eggs perfect, without the edges." / “If you can teach me to do it before the next time Chanyeollie drops by for breakfast," Baekhyun says, "you can stay forever." It’s actually this detail that I think really locked me in? Feeding someone is loving someone, in a lot of ways—it costs money, time, energy, and it’s not lasting in the sense that a single meal will last someone a lifetime. It’s one of those effervescent qualities of love. Cooking though helps marry the effervescence of the meals—the not lasting quality of them—and makes it something that lasts. In this particular story, Baekhyun eventually gets to the point where he’s able to make the perfect eggs. He has whatever technique Kyungsoo taught him learned and absorbed and applied. It’s the same way that, when I worked brunch at the restaurant, I made omelettes the way my dad taught me to make them (which, funnily enough is the “standard” training procedure for our sister restaurant, which is where my dad worked when he was in college—so he just passed that down to me). Cooking has a lot of tricks, and absorbing those tricks—remembering them—is just a very tangible way of someone lingering with you. My best friend checks that her pasta’s cooked using the way I taught her (checking the middle for a pale center). My mom roasts vegetables and glazes them with my recipe.

But also, I just generally love meals and cooking as a writing device to show depth in characters or in scenes. I have a few dining scenes in my WIPs—most of which you’ve read—that have purposes ulterior to just waxing about food. Situations like having Jongdae indulge on stuffed quail and a full-glass of wine vs. Baekhyun with a single filet of fish and a hardly filled glass of wine, or having Kyungsoo cook a meal intuitively, but having Minseok require a recipe. It’s an easy way of adding details that a lot of readers are going to pick up subconsciously even if they don’t take the time to really unravel the choices made in each scene because cooking/eating has so much weight in our lives. I suppose, it’s one of those actions that is just so integral to our daily life, it becomes pretty lackluster in many ways. It doesn’t feel like it should be the focus of a story. It doesn’t feel like its an aspect of plot. It doesn’t feel revealing of the characters, and yet—I think a good cooking/eating scene is all of those things. I think it achieves a lot, despite it mostly being used for filler from experience OTL. It’s the perfect sort of filler you can have, though, if you really pay it mind and give it time.