Chapter 104: Cooking Style (3)
Chapter 104: Cooking Style (3)
“Just because you have to cook for your family doesn’t mean you should forget about us. To survive this mission, you need to present not only a dish meant for your family, but one that can also receive an objectively high score.”
Jo Minjoon sighed inwardly.
This mission put him at the greatest disadvantage. Kaya and Anderson only needed to prepare food familiar to their families, but in Jo Minjoon’s case, that meant making a familiar Korean meal.
And satisfying the judges’ tastes at the same time…
Ultimately, it was not an easy mission. Of course, as food critics, they should be capable of overlooking their personal likes and dislikes towards ingredients such as tofu and rice cakes to a certain extent, but still…
This was a mission he had never expected.
Originally, this mission had not even existed.
Was this what they called the butterfly effect?
His presence alone had changed the course of the competition. It was something he could feel proud of, but it was not necessarily a welcome feeling.
“Kya, chee up!”
At the halting voice, Jo Minjoon turned his head and saw Gemma raising a half-clenched fist. Unfortunately, because she could only close her hand halfway, her middle finger stuck out more than the others.
But Kaya smiled brightly.
More brightly than ever.
There was not even a trace of embarrassment on her face over her disabled sister.
“I’ll make you something really delicious. Just trust me.”
“Ung, bilive!”
With Gemma cheering like that, the other families seemed to feel that they had to do the same.
Jo Ara shouted, “Oppa, you can do it!”
Anderson’s parents, Fabio and Amelia, stared blankly at each other.
Amelia spoke arrogantly. “What are you doing instead of cheering?”
“Wouldn’t encouragement from his mother give him more strength than encouragement from his father?”
“I married you because you looked so pitiful, but it’s troublesome if you act like this here too.”
“What? You were the one who confessed to me first. Twisting the truth like this while we’re being filmed is rather troublesome.”
“…Forget the cheering. Just be quiet.” Anderson spoke from below in an exhausted voice.
He had thought that while staying at the Grand Chef house, at least he would be free from his parents’ arguments.
Joseph grinned. “You two are exactly the same as ever. Fabio, Amelia. Your son has made it into the top three of this competition. What do you think?”
“I’m planning to make him move out if he fails to win.”
“Huh. And if he wins?”
“I’ll still make him move out, because then he’ll be capable of standing on his own. Whether I make it a pleasant independence or an unpleasant one is up to me.”
“What do you think, Anderson?”
“If both outcomes involve me moving out, do my thoughts even matter? Besides, I’m already independent.”
Amelia’s eyes sharpened.
Anderson visibly shrank and looked away before continuing in a much quieter voice. “And regardless of what my parents think, I’m going to prove myself through this competition. It’s not just because I want a good kind of independence. It’s because I want to stand on my own.”
“…Doesn’t that mean you want to become independent in the end?”
Anderson’s eyes trembled for a moment.
…Isn’t that the same thing?
His cheeks reddened in embarrassment. He coughed and turned away. “I need to design my recipe. Don’t bother me.”
“I’m sorry, Joseph. Our child is still a kid.”
At the word kid, Anderson’s eyebrows twitched, but he did not react. If he said anything, it was obvious he would only exhaust himself further.
In a sense, Amelia was a more difficult opponent to deal with than Kaya.
She was his mother, yet somehow more tiring than an enemy.
What a hard life he had.
“What kind of food would you like Jo Minjoon to make for you?”
Emily approached Lee Hyeseon and Jo Ara and asked.
The interpreter whispered the question into their ears, and Jo Ara opened her mouth. What came out was English, but her accent was so awkward that it made one wonder whether there was any reason for her to force herself to speak it.
“Honestly, I don’t mind. Uh, um… what was it? The field of food… Ah, not field, but respecting variety, what’s possible for my oppa and, um…”
“Just say it in Korean.” Jo Minjoon grinned.
Looking at Lee Hyeseon’s gentle but completely unsmiling eyes fixed on Jo Ara, he thought she might change her daughter’s private English tutor when they returned home.
Jo Ara answered in a dispirited voice, this time in Korean.
“Our family doesn’t really draw boundaries when it comes to food, so we’re fine with whatever he makes. Even if it isn’t something familiar, that’s okay too. Of course, I do think those French dishes that seem like they’re just showing off might be a bit much…”
“So she says. Minjoon, what do you think?”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Jo Minjoon answered briefly.
The only family left was Kaya’s.
Alan looked as though he wanted to ask something, but paused when his gaze fell on Gemma. Even remaining still seemed difficult for her. Her chin moved repeatedly, while her upper body swayed from side to side like a metronome.
Alan approached her and spoke gently.
“Do you like Kaya’s cooking?”
“Yea, I laik unni’s cookin most…”
Grace slowly stroked Gemma’s head as she answered.
Perhaps it was because she wore such an apologetic and sorrowful expression, but Grace’s face seemed marked by hardship and pain, as though they had been engraved into her skin. Even her smile looked strained and sad.
“Kaya treats Gemma very well. Ah, and me too, of course. She may look mean, but she’s actually a very warm and tender-hearted child. Everyone… I hope you won’t misunderstand Kaya.”
“We don’t misunderstand her. There probably isn’t anyone here who doesn’t know that Kaya has a warm heart.”
Anderson wore an expression that practically screamed, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Jo Minjoon grinned and poked him in the side.
Anderson looked over as if asking why he had done that, but Jo Minjoon merely pointed upwards.
Amelia and Fabio were staring down at Anderson with stern expressions.
Anderson sighed wearily. “…I want to run away from home.”
“But this isn’t your home.”
“Then away from my parents’ sight. How’s Korea? Is it a good place to live?”
“I don’t know. If you have the ability, wouldn’t anywhere be a decent place to live? Except maybe parts of Africa or the Middle East. Anyway, stop talking and work on your recipe.”
“Right.”
Anderson looked depressed as he continued writing things down in his notebook.
Jo Minjoon closed his eyes and concentrated.
The voices of the judges and families gradually faded away until, eventually, he could no longer hear anything at all.
His ability to concentrate had always been somewhat better than that of his classmates. It did not happen often, but once, he had memorised a hundred English words in five minutes.
Of course, he had forgotten most of them after the test.
I need to decide on the style first.
Honestly, he felt somewhat uncomfortable making a course meal.
How many Korean families actually ate like that?
And there was no need to limit the comparison to Korea. Even in American households, people placed dishes such as macaroni and cheese or pancakes in the middle of the table and shared them.
But if he went with a familiar Asian home-style meal instead, he remembered the previous vegetarian mission.
Even if the judges tried their best to remain objective, they were still people accustomed to Western cuisine. Inevitably, they would feel a certain unconscious distance from Asian food.
Even so, an Asian formal meal suited this situation best.
But preparing an enormous spread in only two hours would be unreasonable…
No. Would it really be unreasonable?
Jo Minjoon looked down at his hands.
He had grown too.
When he had first entered Grand Chef, he had relied partly on the power of the system. But now, when it came to flavour, he was confident enough to say that he would not fall behind.
No matter how one looked at it, he was in the top three.
Simply knowing the answer did not mean everyone was capable of solving the problem.
He tried not to be conscious of it, but he still carried a sense of inferiority.
Compared with others, he was walking a path while already knowing the answer.
Because that advantage had simply been given to him, he tried not to think about it. Yet every time someone praised his absolute sense of taste or his ability to design recipes, instead of feeling pleased, the weight inside him only grew heavier.
And now, he wanted to escape from that burden.
He wanted recognition as a chef who genuinely possessed skill.
He did not need recognition from the system or the judges.
He needed his family’s recognition.
The recognition he had never once received even after turning thirty.
If I’m going with Korean cuisine, then I’ll make it as luxurious as possible.
Some people might hear “Korean cuisine” and think of something simple or unsophisticated.
But royal court cuisine was different.
Of course, going too heavily in that direction would weaken the feeling of cooking for his own family. He planned to compensate by finding a middle ground between ordinary home cooking and royal court cuisine.
Jo Minjoon mixed, dismantled and reconstructed recipes in his head.
At times like this, he could feel just how much his abilities had improved.
The system evaluated the recipes, but Jo Minjoon himself was the one who designed them.
And he had become noticeably more accustomed to doing so.
For one thing, there were almost no cases where a recipe he designed turned out to be an outright failure. The lowest score among the ones he had recently conceived was six.
Even coming up with an eight-point recipe was not especially difficult.
The problem was that it usually took a considerable amount of time.
The score was determined by a combination of time, effort, technique and creativity. Naturally, the longer a dish took and the more effort required, the easier it was to receive a high score.
But there were not many dishes he could prepare alongside several others, complete within two hours, and still have them all reach eight points.
The first thing Jo Minjoon thought of was a king’s table.
A royal meal.
If he wanted to make something that unmistakably felt Korean, what could be more appropriate?
But realistically, he could not do it.
For a single person to prepare twelve dishes in two hours was simply impossible.
No, making twelve side dishes alone might barely be feasible.
But the number twelve in a twelve-dish royal table excluded the rice, soup and steamed dishes.
(Translator’s Note: Twelve-Dish Table Setting —An exceptionally elaborate Korean table arrangement traditionally associated with royal dining. The twelve cheop refer to designated side dishes and do not include staples such as rice, soup and kimchi, meaning the complete meal contains substantially more than twelve individual dishes.)
Once all of those were included, it would be nearly impossible unless he had two bodies.
Perhaps if every ingredient had already been prepared…
But he only had four burners to begin with.
That was why Jo Minjoon settled on a five-dish table setting.
(Translator’s Note: Five-Dish Table Setting — A traditional Korean bansang arrangement centred on rice and soup with five counted side dishes. Staples such as rice, soup, kimchi and certain additional dishes are not necessarily included in the number of cheop.)
Vegetable side dishes generally did not take as much time, so he thought it might be achievable.
Nor did he intend to make every single dish purely Korean.
Just as Jo Ara had said, being Korean did not mean their family always ate Korean food at home.
The most important thing was the feeling.
The feeling of eating a Korean meal.
As long as he focused on that, he did not think it mattered whether Japanese or Chinese dishes appeared among them.
Normally, he should have been able to organise a recipe faster than anyone else, but today he could not.
That was unavoidable.
If designing a complete five-dish table while accounting for both cooking scores and composition scores were easy, he would not be here as a contestant.
He would be sitting among the judges.
Lee Hyeseon watched Jo Minjoon.
Although he was her son, this was the first time she had seen him concentrate like this.
It was not that she had never seen him focus on anything besides cooking. Rather, she simply had not often been beside him during moments like this.
Even so, seeing him now gave her a strange feeling.
…Do you really love this path that much?
A bitter feeling rose within her.
It was not because her son had chosen to become a chef, one of the most demanding professions.
It was because even while making that decision, Jo Minjoon had remained considerate and cautious towards his parents instead of depending on them.
Perhaps that meant he had grown up.
But parents always waited for the day their children grew up, and when that day finally came, they shed tears where no one could see.
Lee Hyeseon continued watching Jo Minjoon with a nervous heart.
Then the judges announced the beginning of the mission.
Lee Hyeseon and Jo Ara watched Jo Minjoon cook.
They were already impressed by how quickly he gathered his ingredients compared with the others, but they were truly startled once he picked up his knife.
He was clearly different from when he had been in Korea.
He was steadier, faster.
When they watched him use a knife on the broadcast, they had occasionally wondered whether the footage had been sped up.
But it had not.
Just as knife work was one of the easiest ways to judge a cook’s skill, the two of them could clearly see how much Jo Minjoon had improved.
“Mum, when did Oppa even practise enough to get that good?”
“I… don’t know.”
Their voices did not reach Jo Minjoon.
Part of that was because they were not speaking loudly, but more than anything, Jo Minjoon became extraordinarily focused whenever he cooked.
A five-dish table.
Ordinarily, such a meal required a complicated combination of rice, soup, stew, kimchi, pickled vegetables, seasoned vegetables and more.
But Jo Minjoon did not concern himself with that.
In the first place, he did not even remember the precise composition of a traditional five-dish setting.
There had never been any reason to memorise it. Nobody had ever expected him to prepare one.
Jo Minjoon made eight items.
Fine white rice.
Beef and radish soup prepared in a Taiwanese style with Japanese parsley and other spices.
Gochujang stew.
Grilled neobiani with a soy sauce and honey glaze.
(Translator’s Note: Neobiani — A traditional Korean dish of broad, thin slices of beef marinated in a soy-based seasoning and grilled. It is particularly associated with Korean royal court cuisine and is commonly regarded as one of the predecessors of modern bulgogi)
Chicken legs simmered in homemade masala with root vegetables.
Fried scombroid fish with homemade chilli sauce.
Stir-fried bok choy.
And vegetable japchae.
Strictly speaking, only the neobiani could really be called the main dish.
But what mattered was how the flavours worked together.
The composition score was good.
Nine points.
The average cooking score was 7.3.
It was not perfect, but he had done everything he could and poured his heart into it.
Because of that, when Joseph’s voice rang out, Jo Minjoon was able to stand more firmly than ever before.
“It’s been a long journey. Perhaps this competition itself will only be the first step in your lives, but for whoever survives until the very end, it may not be just one step. It could be five steps, or even ten.”
Emily continued. “Regardless of today’s results, all of you are capable of becoming excellent chefs. And the reason is simple. Rather than thinking about evaluating your dishes, my mind is filled with thoughts of wanting to enjoy them and taste them. A chef who makes an food critic look forward to their food… there aren’t many chefs capable of making me feel that way.”
Jo Minjoon looked upwards silently for a moment.
He saw the nervous smiles on his mother’s and sister’s faces.
The final lift towards his destination was approaching.
One.
Two.
Three.
“We will now begin the evaluation.”
And then, the doors opened.