Chapter 11: Grand Chef Preliminaries, and… (2)
Chapter 11: Grand Chef Preliminaries, and… (2)
It was a very basic question. However, it was enough to determine whether someone had genuine cooking experience.
An onion was essentially a vegetable with fibres running through it. If cut vertically, along the fibres, its structure remained intact. If cut horizontally, however, the fibres were severed. An onion with severed fibres was softer than one whose structure remained intact and also tasted less pungent.
Jo Minjoon gave a simple answer to the question. Emily nodded.
“That’s right. Then the next question. When cutting a bell pepper, do you slice it from the outside or the inside?”
“From the inside.”
This was one of the mistakes people most commonly made when handling bell peppers. Since cutting from the outside looked easier, many people did exactly that, but not only was the bell pepper harder to slice that way, its cells were also damaged, causing nutrients to escape with the juices. Cutting it from the inside was easier and preserved the nutrients better.
“Good. Then I’ll ask you something similar to the previous question. What’s the difference between slicing a bell pepper horizontally and vertically?”
“If you slice it vertically, comparatively more nutrients are destroyed. The taste remains closer to that of the pepper in its natural state, but it’s difficult to retain its distinctive aroma. If you slice it horizontally, the pepper becomes firmer, but you can perceive the aroma more clearly.”
He continued answering similar questions after that: the differences between cooking over low and high heat; how different types of flour affected dough; even the characteristics of various ingredients and how they interacted when spices and seasonings were combined.
Once all the questions were over, Alan, who had remained silent until then, finally spoke. His expression was as stern as ever, and his tone restrained.
“You passed the interview. Minjoon, prepare your signature dish. I’ll give you thirty minutes.”
“Yes. Understood.”
There were no congratulations or cheers. That was only natural. He had merely been allowed to take the first step. It was no more than being told that he was qualified to hold a frying pan and a knife.
Jo Minjoon gave a slight bow and left the interview room, heading towards the cooking stations. As though he had already heard the news that Minjoon had passed, a cameraman approached him and asked, “Congratulations. What kind of dish are you planning to make?”
“Roasted bream with pepper sauce.”
“Are you confident you can satisfy the judges’ standards?”
“Seven points. I’ll make it.”
The cameraman could not help being puzzled by the unexpected answer. Seven points? If Minjoon had said ten, he would have understood, but why seven? Was he admitting that he lacked confidence?
Yet Jo Minjoon’s expression was not gloomy in the slightest.
There was a reason he had answered so briefly. All television programmes were much the same, but audition shows in particular always had certain types of contestants who captured the audience’s attention. He did not want to speak at length only to have most of it cut during editing.
With the exception of basic ingredients such as garlic and onions, contestants had to bring their own main ingredients in an icebox. Jo Minjoon walked towards where the Dean family was waiting. Lucas handed him the icebox and said, “There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who know how to create flavour, and those who don’t. You belong to the former. I believe you’ll get a good result.”
“Thank you.”
Jo Minjoon accepted the icebox with a smile. The cameraman captured the moment between Jo Minjoon and Lucas—or rather, between Jo Minjoon and the Dean family. Even at a glance, it was obvious that they were not related by blood. So what was their relationship?
There was no need to be curious about that yet. Whether Jo Minjoon would even appear in the broadcast was entirely up to the judges. More precisely, it depended on how entertaining his segment turned out to be. His background would only be worth investigating if he became noteworthy.
Jo Minjoon returned to his cooking station. A fixed camera had been installed at the end of the counter, and each station also had its own cameraman assigned to it. Cooking under those circumstances felt somewhat awkward, but Jo Minjoon did not care. He had never been the sort of person who paid much attention to other people’s stares.
He took the ingredients out of the icebox.
Bream and saffron.
Those were the ingredients Jo Minjoon had prepared himself. Everything else could be selected from the ingredients provided by Grand Chef.
The system was particularly useful in situations like this. He could determine an ingredient’s quality without even touching it. As a result, every time Jo Minjoon reached out, he selected ingredients of the highest quality available.
The additional ingredients he chose were simple: pepper, garlic, scallions, thyme, basil, olive oil, grapeseed oil, butter, salt, white wine, and bell peppers.
What Jo Minjoon intended to make was a dish he had prepared many times before—perhaps more than a hundred times. Bream roasted using the arroser technique, paired with a spicy yet sweet pepper sauce. It was also one of the dishes he was most confident in making.
(Translator’s Note: Arroser —A French culinary verb meaning “to water” or “to baste”. In professional cooking, it refers to repeatedly spooning hot butter, oil, or other cooking fat over meat or fish while it cooks. The technique is strongly associated with classical French pan-cooking and helps brown the exterior while continuously bathing the food in hot fat.)
The first thing Jo Minjoon dealt with was the bell pepper. He lit the burner and placed the pepper directly over the flame, then poured a moderate amount of cooking oil into a frying pan.
After that, he began trimming the scallions. The speed and precision with which he sliced the white portions were anything but ordinary. Even Jo Minjoon himself was surprised.
Did my knife skills improve because my cooking level went up?
He did not have time to lose himself in thought. Jo Minjoon tossed the sliced scallions into the hot oil. A pleasant fragrance spread through the air with the sizzling sound.
He shifted his attention from the scallions to the bell pepper. The side exposed to the flame had already turned black, yet Jo Minjoon remained perfectly calm. It looked as though burning it had been his intention from the beginning. Charring scallions, peppers, or paprika imparted a smoky flavour while intensifying their natural aroma.
Because the scallions had been sliced thinly, they were thoroughly fried after only a minute. Jo Minjoon removed them from the pan and placed them on a kitchen towel to drain away the excess oil. In any case, the scallions would only be used as a garnish once the dish was finished. He still had plenty of time.
Before long, every side of the bell pepper had been charred. Jo Minjoon peeled away the blackened skin while rinsing it under cold water. Preparing the pepper this way gave it a deeper flavour than other cooking methods.
But that was not the end of it.
Jo Minjoon dried the bell pepper with a kitchen towel, then placed it in a bowl with garlic, thyme, basil, grapeseed oil, salt, and pepper. He began blending everything together with a hand blender.
This would become the sauce.
A delicately gleaming green sauce.
Once strained through a sieve and pressed through thoroughly, it became smooth and pure. He was not planning to make the bream stand out against the sauce. Rather, the sauce would envelop it completely.
With the sauce finished, only the bream remained.
Jo Minjoon poured olive oil into a frying pan and turned on the heat, then began preparing the fish. He lightly coated it with white wine before seasoning it with salt. Naturally, he used only a moderate amount, since the main seasoning would come from the sauce.
Jo Minjoon placed the bream into the hot oil. Once he felt that the skin had become crisp, he flipped the fish over so that the skin faced upwards, then added a knob of butter.
The butter melted almost instantly, mingling with the olive oil and the rendered fat from the fish. Jo Minjoon tilted the frying pan slightly and repeatedly spooned the hot fat over the bream’s skin.
The arroser technique.
When used for frying meat or fish, it was also known as basting.
By continuously spooning the hot fat over the fish, the exterior became crisp while the inside remained moist.
By the time the bream was nearly finished, he still had five minutes left.
Jo Minjoon slowly poured the pepper sauce onto the plate. It spread across the surface like a brushstroke, and he placed the bream on top of it. Finally, he arranged the fried scallions over the dish as a garnish.
[You completed the bream with pepper sauce!]
[As you attempted a difficult dish, you have been awarded an additional point!]
[Roasted Bream with Pepper Sauce]
Freshness: 89%
Origins: (Too many ingredients to determine)
Quality: High (Average ingredients)
Cooking Points: 7/10