Re: Torvallis! runs up to Malva in the inn, excitedly shaking a potion vial

[Malva]

"I usually try to get things in as small of pieces as is practical, in order to for them to react in an efficient amount of time. As you improve as an alchemist, you're going to get into some potions that take a fairly long time to do. This one takes about a half hour, and you probably won't be doing any that take much longer with what I'm teaching you today, but I've done some that take a full hour, and full hours are hard to come by around here.
That, and sometimes you do have two ingredients reacting at once, and you want them to react at the same rate. And sometimes you need a solution near your solvent's boiling temperature for a reaction, and if the reaction takes too long you risk boiling off your solvent.
As for why I don't grate it, that's quite difficult to do where this [ingredient] is so thin; I'd just rather not run the risk of grating my hand."

[Torvallis!]

"Ahhhhh! Now, on that note . . ."

Torvallis! takes a wooden spike out of their bag. Folding the [ingredient] onto the spike, they then hold their knife blade-edge against the table at an angle and start moving the ingredient against and up-and-down the knife. Pushing the ingredient further down the spike, using their thumb, as it shreds. It's not quite as fast as simply cutting into ribbons.

"Same thing you do to shred vegetables. Big radishes are nice to do this way, first you roll them while cutting off a thin sheet, then fold that sheet onto a spike and do this.

So there we go, shredded [ingredient], will this work well for this potion? It sounded like it would in this particular case"

[Malva]

"Huh..." Malva mumbles, trying to relate to T!'s advanced cooking techniques.
"Next we simply pour in [Ingredient 4] and then bring it to a boil"

[Torvallis!]

"Y'know, I hadn't previously realized how close cooking techniques are to alchemy techniques sometimes. I've been focussed on the properties of the materials I'm dealing with, and less on the how they're prepared.

I suppose there's a lot more cleaning of the tools . . . for example I wouldn't want to use the same spike between some fireflower and any dried weed now, would I?"

Torvallis! slowly adds the [ingredient 4] and coaxes the fire beneath the cauldron.

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