Chapter 177: The Person Who Showed Up on a Truck (3)
Chapter 177: The Person Who Showed Up on a Truck (3)
There was a reason Jo Minjoon answered so firmly. It was not that he disliked molecular gastronomy. On the contrary, he was very interested in it.
However……
“I still have a long way to go with traditional cooking. I want to try molecular gastronomy once I’ve gained a little more confidence.”
If traditional cooking was the foundation, then molecular gastronomy was something closer to art. Jo Minjoon personally believed that, rather than focusing on something so technical, he still needed to concentrate on mastering the basics. He glanced at the other demi chefs before continuing.
“The three of them are all more skilled and experienced than I am, so wouldn’t molecular gastronomy be a better fit for one of them?”
After listening to what Jo Minjoon had to say, Rafael slowly made eye contact with the other three. They coughed awkwardly and avoided his gaze. Rafael sighed.
“In the end, I’m still being rejected.”
Rachel smiled bitterly. “No matter what, I trust that all of you will learn it sincerely. For the next ten days, we’ll be teaching you molecular gastronomy. At the end of those ten days, each of you will need to come up with a molecular gastronomy dish. Of course, no ice cream.”
“……Are you perhaps going to use the results of those dishes to determine our sections?”
“Yes. The people who eat your food will vote. Based on the results, I’ll give you the opportunity to choose your sections. Second place will choose first, third place will choose second, and, of course, fourth place won’t have a choice.”
Jo Minjoon tilted his head. Something was odd.
“……First place doesn’t get to choose? Then what happens to first place……?”
Rafael answered instead. “Molecular gastronomy, of course.”
*
“……Bleh. Disgusting.”
Ella stuck out her tongue like a dog, her entire face twisted in disgust. Javier looked crestfallen as he asked eagerly, “Is it really that bad? Try one more bite. It might taste different this time!”
Ella clamped her mouth shut and glared at Javier while vigorously shaking her head from side to side.
Janet glared at Javier as well. “I told you it wouldn’t work on Ella. Pasta made from espresso. Did you really think a child would like that?”
“What’s wrong with espresso pasta? She enjoyed the asparagus sherbet the sous chef made.”
“The cherry sauce added sweetness to that dish. And the ingredients harmonised well together too.”
“Sob, sob. The internet said it was a good recipe.”
“Maybe for adults. A child is only going to find it bitter. More importantly, your pasta tastes terrible even to me. Are you doing this on purpose so you don’t end up in first place?”
“……You figured me out?”
Janet’s eyes turned cold.
Javier quickly added, “Joking. Just joking.”
“……All right, Ella. You can get rid of that plate. Will you try this instead?”
Janet pushed forward the dish she had made. At a glance, it looked like an ordinary plate of barbecued pork ribs. But on closer inspection, there was not a single burnt spot anywhere on the meat.
Javier looked displeased, as though he thought she was cheating.
“Hey. Sous vide is cheating. All that takes is time. Aren’t you taking this competition a little too seriously?”
“Who said I made this for the competition? I just……”
Janet looked towards Ella. The girl tried her hardest to tear apart the pork rib with her fork, but eventually gave up and picked it up with her hands instead. Janet wiped the sauce from the corner of Ella’s mouth with a napkin and smiled, a smile she never showed the other members of the kitchen family.
“Is it good?”
“Yes. It’s as good as the bread my mum makes for me!”
“Then I suppose it really is good.”
Ella nodded enthusiastically and took another bite. Janet quietly muttered to herself, “If I had a child, I’d always feed them delicious food like this.”
“You can start having one now. Ah, you’d need a boyfriend first.”
Janet did not respond. She seemed perfectly content simply watching Ella enjoy the food.
Jo Minjoon, watching from a distance, whispered to Lisa, “Lisa, Janet might take your place as the person who loves Ella the most.”
“I’m glad. It means Ella will have someone to look after her even if I die.”
“Ay. Why would you say something like that?”
“You never know what might happen.”
Lisa shrugged. Since she did not appear to be joking, it was probably something she had thought about often.
Jo Minjoon looked towards Ella before lowering his voice. “I promise. If anything ever happens to you, Lisa, I’ll take care of Ella. So please stop worrying. And don’t say things like that again. Especially in front of Ella.”
“……I understand. But I’m very grateful. Hearing you say that.”
“Cough.”
A sudden cough came from behind them. It was Rafael. He looked towards Jo Minjoon and asked, “Minjoon. Isn’t it about time you settled on a direction? For the dish you’ll be submitting. Have you decided what technique you’re going to use?”
“No. Honestly, the easiest molecular gastronomy technique to use seems to be something like sous vide…… but I don’t think it would be appropriate for this challenge.”
“Outside the challenge, what’s your favourite technique?”
Rafael looked at Minjoon with curiosity.
The first person in history to possess absolute taste.
How would that title manifest itself in his abilities as a chef?
Jo Minjoon sank deep into thought. His gaze drifted towards an empty space in front of him, his eyes unfocused. He was not looking at the system window. He was simply thinking.
Rafael personally liked that look of Minjoon’s. It was the sort of strange, absent-minded gaze that made it seem as though he had slipped entirely into his own world. Chefs were artists. And like artists, they needed that kind of peculiarity if they wanted to succeed.
These days, the culinary world is full of stubborn, inflexible fools.
Of course, that had value too. The world needed chefs who preserved the flavours of tradition. But Rafael was the sort of person who preferred twisting and changing the old rather than protecting it. To put it another way, rather than digging one well deeper than anyone else, he preferred digging several reasonably deep wells and connecting them together.
In that sense, Rafael liked Jo Minjoon very much. After spending the past few days with him, Rafael could feel it. Jo Minjoon and he were the same kind of people. Put kindly, they were both geniuses who existed outside the boundaries of ordinary thought. Put less kindly, they were both showing signs of becoming eccentric lunatics.
Someone like him could never be satisfied with traditional cooking alone. If there are more ways to cook, he’ll want to make every one of them his, if only to satisfy that hunger……
Although Jo Minjoon did not want to pursue molecular gastronomy right now, that was only because he still had so much to learn about traditional cooking. Once he understood the variety of possibilities molecular gastronomy offered, Jo Minjoon would be seduced by its charms just as Rafael had been. Rafael was certain of it.
Jo Minjoon remained lost in thought for nearly five minutes. Normally, he would never spend that long contemplating a simple question someone had asked him, but when it came to cooking, he occasionally became like this. Perhaps it could be called losing track of time. Rafael even considered that tendency a positive trait.
At last, Jo Minjoon spoke.
“The taste of the ingredients.”
“Taste?”
“Not just with molecular gastronomy. That’s the kind of cooking I like in general. I want every ingredient to be able to reveal the flavour it possesses instead of hiding it. Usually, a dish has one main element, and the other ingredients or herbs act as supporting players that add to its flavour…… but I prefer dishes where every ingredient can play the leading role without interfering with the others, where they actually help each other and are perfect as they are. Am I talking nonsense?”
“No, not at all. Keep going.”
“The most fascinating thing about molecular gastronomy is that you can take a liquid sauce and turn it into a dry powder, a jelly, or even a syrup. I think that’s what I like most about it. Some people might think the only thing that changes is the texture, but that isn’t true. Depending on how something touches your tongue and what texture it has, the way you perceive its flavour can change completely. It’s like how the same actor can play completely different characters in different films…… Even though it’s the same person, they bring out an entirely different flavour. That…… that’s really beautiful to me.”
Perhaps even imagining it was enough to move him, because Jo Minjoon’s voice trembled slightly as he finished speaking.
Rafael stared at him blankly.
Jo Minjoon truly was not particularly interested in molecular gastronomy. No, more precisely, he simply had no intention of taking it up right now.
But the fact that he could still become this excited just talking about it showed how overflowing his feelings towards cooking—and food itself—really were.
What surprised Rafael most was that, when thinking about methods of changing a sauce from one physical state to another, Jo Minjoon had focused on flavour rather than texture.
“Ta…… taste, huh?”
“Is that strange?”
“It isn’t a sin for a chef to be strange. If anything, you need to be strange enough that people wonder whether you might be a little crazy if you want to create dishes that surprise them. Maybe that wouldn’t matter at a family restaurant, but what people expect from a place like this isn’t just good flavour. It has to be fun too.”
That was Rafael’s iron rule when it came to cooking.
Go beyond flavour and make the cooking itself enjoyable.
No matter how delicious something was, if it was boring, people would not seek it out again. Just as no matter how spectacular the effects in a film were, if the film itself was not entertaining, no one would want to watch it twice.
Rafael continued, “Of course, flavour is still the foundation of everything. But I’m surprised. You’re barely twenty-one…… It’s difficult to reach that kind of insight at your age. The influence texture has on flavour…… did you hear that from someone else?”
“I’m…… not really sure. I just thought of it.”
There were many people who had influenced Jo Minjoon’s cooking. Kaya had unquestionably influenced him the most, but it would have been a lie to say everything he did resembled her cooking.
Rafael spoke again. “Since things have turned out this way, try your hardest to take first place. Learning molecular gastronomy doesn’t mean you’ll only improve your molecular gastronomy skills. You don’t need to worry about your traditional cooking getting worse.”
“Do you really believe I don’t need to worry about that?”
Rafael’s gaze wavered. His reply was considerably less confident.
“……I think so?”
*
Since Kaya arrived, there had been a slight change in Jo Minjoon’s daily routine. Normally, this late at night, he would already be lying in bed. Instead, he was running along Santa Monica Beach.
Of course, exercise was not really the point. Night-time was the only opportunity he had to spend with Kaya, and this was the best way to make the most of their evenings together.
Not long after Minjoon started running, a woman naturally fell into step beside him.
It was Kaya.
Jo Minjoon glanced at her. Beneath the streetlights and moonlight, he could clearly see the outline of her body beneath her tight workout clothes. He frowned.
“Hey, why are you dressed like that?”
“What?”
“It shows your figure too much. There are a lot of people around here.”
“It’s normal to wear something like this when you work out.”
“It’s not normal.”
“……You never said anything to Chloe.”
Jo Minjoon could only open and close his mouth.
More than what Kaya had actually said, it was hearing Chloe’s name that made his heart sink. Kaya still did not know that Chloe had confessed to him.
He looked away and grumbled, “At least wear a vest over it next time.”
“Why are you nagging so much when no one’s even paying attention to us? It’ll just mean more laundry for me. If you sweat in something and don’t wash it straight away, it’ll start smelling.”
“Now that you mention it, who does your laundry? Do you do it yourself? Or does your agent do it for you?”
“I can’t stand the thought of someone else touching my underwear. It’s too embarrassing. Don’t you think so?”
“……I don’t know. Not really?”
“Learn to be embarrassed. Even around me. If you ever make me do your laundry in the future, I’ll kill you.”
She spoke about them living together so casually that Jo Minjoon did not realise what was strange about it for a moment.
He slowed to a walk and looked at Kaya. Kaya tried hard not to meet his eyes before grumbling, “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
“Nothing. I’m just curious.”
“About what?”
Jo Minjoon smiled mischievously.
“What the person who’ll be doing my laundry in the future looks like.”