Chapter 146: The Hands of a Master (3)
Chapter 146: The Hands of a Master (3)
“Hard work……really doesn’t betray you.”
Jo Minjoon had been savouring the lingering taste of the sushi for quite some time before finally speaking. Yamamoto smiled warmly.
“There’s an old saying about sushi. A mediocre man who has made sushi for fifty years will make better sushi than a genius who has made it for forty-nine. Of course, sayings like that are easy to repeat and difficult to prove. But I think there may be some truth to it. One year……no, even I am different from the person I was a month ago.”
“I think I understand. I may not have much experience, but I’m a chef too.”
The Jo Minjoon from before Grand Chef and the Jo Minjoon of today were completely different. Only half a year had passed, yet how much had his level risen in that time?
As he nodded to himself, Rachel spoke calmly.
“That’s how technique works. If your senses are especially sharp, you may begin progressing faster than other people, but eventually that advantage becomes less important. Experience accumulates according to how much sweat you shed, regardless of talent. If you’re talking about something like sushi, udon, or bread, where a craftsman handles the process from beginning to end, talent alone won’t create an overwhelming difference after decades of repetition.”
“When you say that’s true for technique……does that mean it’s different in other areas, Teacher?”
“Technique is like taking an already forged knife and sharpening it again and again. But things are different when you’re the one making the knife. To forge one, you need the creativity to imagine how to make it both beautiful and durable, and you need the ability to turn that imagination into reality. Experience alone can’t completely replace that. And as for your tongue……I hardly need to explain, do I?”
Rachel smiled softly.
Yamamoto, who had been listening to them, looked back and forth between the two.
“Are you perhaps master and disciple?”
“Yes. I only recently managed to make this boy my disciple.”
“How can you say you barely managed it? I would’ve become your disciple one way or another.”
“Hoho…… Hearing you say that makes me happy.”
“This is rather unusual. I could never speak with my own teacher so casually, much less sit at the same table with him. Perhaps because you’re from the West, the atmosphere between you is quite different.”
“I don’t think it’s because she’s Western. Teacher is simply a warm person. She treats me very well.”
At Jo Minjoon’s words, Rachel turned her head away in embarrassment.
Thinking about it, perhaps this was the first time he had said something like that directly in front of her. Maybe that was why warmth spread through her chest and she suddenly found it difficult to meet his eyes.
Because she had not been like this in the past.
Kaya might be a tomboy, but……
I was worse.
Rachel smiled bitterly.
Meanwhile, Yamamoto was already taking out the next piece of fish.
Jo Minjoon’s eyes lit up.
“That’s tuna belly.”
“Correct. And it isn’t prepared in the ordinary way. Can you tell what’s different?”
“Ah. You sliced it along the tendons, didn’t you? So that we won’t have to chew through them.”
“You noticed immediately.”
Yamamoto raised his knife.
Watching the sashimi blade pass through the belly meat was almost mesmerising. It moved as though cutting through water.
Jo Minjoon did not miss a single movement.
The shape of Yamamoto’s fingers as he formed the rice, the amount of wasabi he spread over the fish, even the degree to which the brush bent when he coated the tuna with soy sauce—Jo Minjoon engraved every detail into his memory.
[You have witnessed the technique of a sushi master at close range!]
[Your mastery of sushi preparation has increased!]
[Your understanding of cooking has increased!]
A technique capable of improving his skills simply by watching it.
Jo Minjoon stared at the tuna belly sushi placed before him.
[Tuna Belly Sushi]
Freshness: 98%
Origin: (Hidden because there are too many ingredients)
Quality: High
Cooking Score: 7/10
Seven points.
It was a good score, though not one that would normally make him marvel.
But Jo Minjoon could not dismiss the sushi in front of him so easily.
Sushi naturally had difficulty achieving high scores because of its simplicity. When he considered it properly, reaching seven points using essentially nothing more than rice, wasabi, seasoning, and raw fish was already remarkable.
The flavour itself was extraordinary.
Tuna belly was already one of the softest and fattiest parts of a fish famous for its rich oiliness. With the tendons carefully dealt with, the texture became even more delicate, and each time he chewed, the fat released from the tuna seeped deeply into the grains of rice.
Naturally, Yamamoto did not stop there.
Silver-skinned Pacific saury sushi followed, then eel rested in soy-based stock, flounder, rockfish, octopus, and several other varieties. Piece after piece appeared before them.
(Translator’s Note: Pacific saury —A North Pacific fish strongly associated with autumn in Japan. It is traditionally grilled but may also be served raw when sufficiently fresh.)
None surpassed a cooking score of 8.
And because Jo Minjoon’s Tasting Level was 8, he could understand every recipe.
But……
Sushi isn’t about the recipe.
How the rice was shaped. How the knife was raised. How the blade followed the grain of the fish.
Even if Jo Minjoon understood every movement in his head, it was meaningless if his hands could not reproduce them.
Still, simply absorbing Yamamoto’s know-how had enormous value.
“How is it?”
“……I want them.”
Yamamoto raised an eyebrow.
“Your hands. I want to be able to shape sushi like that.”
Jo Minjoon’s eyes burned with desire as he stared at Yamamoto’s hands.
Meeting that gaze sent a slight chill down Yamamoto’s spine.
They say every genius has a little madness in him…… This young man has a dangerous side too.
Thinking about it, though, Yamamoto could understand.
The more sensitive someone’s palate was, the greater the value they would naturally place on cooking. Perhaps, in Jo Minjoon’s eyes, the hands shaping sushi in front of him looked like jewels.
That thought made Yamamoto strangely pleased.
However one interpreted it, Jo Minjoon was saying that he coveted his skill.
Yamamoto smiled confidently.
“I want your tongue too, but there’s no way I’ll ever get that. Your problem is simpler. You only need to work hard.”
“Thank you. But after eating sushi this good, I can’t help feeling restless. It’s unfair. This is really unfair.”
“If I’ve spent my entire life concentrating on one thing, then I ought to be able to produce at least this much.”
Spending an entire lifetime on a single craft.
There was something undeniably impressive about those words.
If someone truly devoted themselves to only one thing, then at least within sushi, perhaps no one else could ever catch them. Even if Jo Minjoon became an excellent chef, as someone trained broadly in Western cuisine, there was no guarantee he could ever make sushi better than a craftsman who had spent decades doing nothing else.
But Jo Minjoon was not the kind of person who could devote his entire life to only one thing.
There were too many ingredients and too many cooking methods in the world for that. He wanted to touch all of them, use all of them, and ultimately create the most perfect dish each could become.
Perhaps every chef dreamed of something similar.
But Jo Minjoon was more desperate for that dream than most.
Maybe it was because this reality—having returned to the past—already felt like a dream that had miraculously come true once.
And because one impossible dream had happened, some part of him believed another might as well.
Jo Minjoon turned towards Rachel.
“Teacher. There’s something I’ve always wondered about. Restaurants make all kinds of dishes, and the menu changes periodically. If you keep changing things like that, doesn’t it make it impossible to dig deeply into any single dish?”
“Of course.”
Rachel answered calmly.
Jo Minjoon had expected some sort of explanation or solution, so her immediate agreement left him perplexed.
Rachel smiled brightly.
“Minjoon, a complete dish doesn’t require one complete chef. Chef Yamamoto is different. From beginning to end, the sushi passes through his own hands, so when it comes to sushi, he himself has to be complete.”
“……And we don’t?”
“No. We divide the work. The jobs. A restaurant is like a country. As long as everyone performs the role assigned to them properly, the final dish can still be flawless. Think of other restaurants. Bread is made by the pâtissier. Depending on the restaurant, noodles may be made elsewhere or by a specialist. The essence of a Western kitchen is the way the experience of many different people comes together on a single plate.”
“Then what are we supposed to keep sharpening?”
Jo Minjoon frowned.
It was something he had never properly confronted because the question had always been vague.
Now that he was facing it directly, it seemed much larger and more complicated than he had imagined.
He looked towards Rachel almost thirstily.
Rachel spoke.
“It changes depending on your position, but I’ll explain from the perspective of a head chef, because eventually that’s what you’ll become. There are two major things. First, leading the kitchen. The equipment, the heat, the number of people working—everything has to move inside your head.”
“And the second……?”
“Imagination.”
Rachel’s eyes became sharp and clear as she looked directly at Jo Minjoon.
They shone so intensely that it almost seemed like a glare.
“Imagine it. Imagine the path your kitchen will take. The connections between all those people, their effort, their experience, their imagination. In the end……the path you imagined will be distilled into a recipe. Take the excitement and emotion you felt while eating this sushi and drag it out of yourself. Feel it, then express it. A recipe isn’t just ingredients combined with cooking techniques. Only when you shape the inspiration you’re feeling right now into something real does that recipe become completely yours.”
Jo Minjoon’s gaze went distant.
Dozens—hundreds—of thoughts flashed through his head.
Then he abruptly stood.
“I……need some air.”
Rachel did not stop him.
As she watched Jo Minjoon leave, Yamamoto spoke.
“You’re a good teacher.”
“……I’m a greedy one. I act composed, but perhaps I’m even more impatient than that boy.”
“Why are you in such a hurry?”
“I want him to grow even one day faster. It’s ridiculous. I’ve only just given birth to the child, yet I already want to prepare for his wedding.”
Rachel smiled bitterly.
Yamamoto looked at her for a moment, then slowly returned his knife to its holder.
“Is there a parent anywhere in the world who isn’t greedy when it comes to their own child?”
“Yes. So if I’m going to be greedy, I intend to fill everything that child can hold.”
“With that tongue of his, I doubt the size of what he wants will be ordinary.”
Rachel said nothing.
She simply placed a piece of ginger into her mouth.
The sweet and sour flavour, fresh yet slightly sharp with the roughness of a root vegetable, slowly passed down her throat.
Then she spoke in a relieved voice.
“Fortunately, what I can give that child isn’t ordinary either.”
The moment Jo Minjoon stepped outside, he drew in a deep breath.
The smell of earth mixed with the air entered his nose, while inside his head, thoughts began spinning as rapidly as a computer.
Sushi. Sushi. Dishes that use the principles of sushi.
He could not defeat Yamamoto by making ordinary sushi.
But he did not want to simply abandon everything he had learned because sushi itself offered so little room for alteration.
So dozens, then hundreds, of ingredients began colliding and combining inside his head.
“Seven points. Six. Eight…… No. No, that’s not it. A recipe at this level won’t do.”
The cameramen waiting outside exchanged strange looks as they filmed Jo Minjoon muttering to himself.
But Jo Minjoon was completely unaware of the cameras or the staff surrounding him.
If the camera could have recorded the inside of his mind instead of his face, the footage might have been extraordinary.
Three or four recipes were created and discarded before he could even finish a single breath. The appearance and flavour of each imagined dish were vivid enough that he almost felt he could taste them merely by thinking about them.
In fact, saliva was already gathering in his mouth.
“Ideal knife work. Shaping. That alone isn’t enough. Should I use fire? No. It still won’t become complete. Then……”
His endless muttering stopped.
But that did not mean Jo Minjoon had returned to his senses.
His gaze remained fixed on empty air, and his lips slowly parted.
There was a reason.
Windows were appearing and disappearing one after another before his eyes.
Nearly ten minutes passed before the wheel inside his mind finally stopped turning.
The haze in Jo Minjoon’s eyes gradually disappeared, replaced by light.
The cameramen filming him felt something strange at that moment.
For an instant, they genuinely thought Jo Minjoon was seeing something they could not.
And they were right.
Because in front of Jo Minjoon, windows visible only to him had appeared.
[The estimated Cooking Score is 9!]
[You have independently devised a recipe with an estimated Cooking Score of 9!]
[Your mastery of recipe composition has greatly increased!]