Chapter 23: Three Dishes and One Meal (2)
Chapter 23: Three Dishes and One Meal (2)
The first thing Jo Minjoon reached for was the cooking oil. He poured a generous amount into a pot and turned on the heat. Oil did not come up to temperature instantly, so it had to be heated in advance. The same was true of water. Jo Minjoon placed another pot beside it, added some kelp, and turned on the burner.
There were four gas burners on the worktop. Jo Minjoon was using two of them, while the other two belonged to Chloe. Marco did not need a burner at all.
While the water and oil were heating, Jo Minjoon quickly began preparing the soft tofu. He could make the soy-based sauce and prepare the vegetables later without falling behind. It would have been different if he were dealing with an ingredient that needed time to ferment, but with soft tofu, preserving its clean flavour was more important.
He did not cut the tofu into large pieces. An appetiser should not be too substantial. More precisely, too large a portion would disrupt the balance of the entire course.
People often looked at the portion sizes served in restaurants and hesitated to spend money on them. Jo Minjoon could understand why. Restaurant prices could be as much as five times the normal cost, yet the amount of food on the plate might be no larger than a fist—or sometimes even a thumb. It was hardly unusual for customers to complain, Aren’t they being too stingy with the ingredients?
But restaurants did not serve small portions merely to save on ingredient costs. Regret—that lingering feeling of wanting just a little more—was part of the flavour itself. If too much of the same food was served, or if someone ate the same dish repeatedly, it became difficult to preserve the impression made by the first bite. Small portions were meant to leave customers with that sense of lingering satisfaction.
I’ll make them bite-sized.
The knife slid gently through the tofu. The flavour, and the regret of having only one bite, would end at exactly the right point. There were even restaurants that served steaks already cut into bite-sized pieces.
Jo Minjoon laid the sliced tofu on a cotton cloth. Leaving moisture in tofu that was about to be fried was a serious mistake, and when the tofu was coated, the remaining moisture also increased the chance of it breaking. Removing as much water as possible was essential.
At the same time, it was a troublesome process. If the cloth was too dry, the surface of the tofu would stick to it. If it was too wet, it would not absorb enough moisture. The best method was to use a cloth that was neither too dry nor too damp, just as he was doing now. That way, the soft tofu would remain intact while the excess moisture was drawn out.
Jo Minjoon covered the tofu with a kitchen towel. After taking a breath, he glanced around. Marco had been working on his biscuit dough for a while, while Chloe was placing the sliced scallops into a steamer.
He wanted to look over at Kaya’s worktop, but deliberately restrained himself. This was not the time to pay attention to someone else’s cooking. Jo Minjoon instead reached for the soy sauce.
Strictly speaking, soft fried tofu was a Japanese dish: agedashi tofu. What Jo Minjoon was making now was a modified version of agedashi tofu. Calling it an improvement would have been a little embarrassing, since he was simply using the original dish as a base and changing the sauce slightly.
(Translator’s Note: Agedashi tofu — A Japanese dish of tofu lightly coated in starch and deep-fried, then served in a warm dashi-based broth, commonly with grated daikon and spring onion. Fried and seasoned tofu preparations were well established during Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868), when tofu cuisine expanded considerably; the famous tofu cookbook Tōfu Hyakuchin was published in 1782.)
Jo Minjoon turned off the heat beneath the boiling water and added katsuobushi. Up to that point, there was nothing unusual about the sauce. Straining the stock through a sieve and adding a spoonful of soy sauce was standard as well. His own change came afterwards: lime juice.
(Translator’s Note: Katsuobushi — Dried and smoked skipjack tuna processed into hard blocks and shaved into flakes, particularly for making Japanese dashi. More sophisticated smoking, drying, and mould-curing methods developed during the Edo period (1603–1868), and techniques resembling modern karebushi became established by the later Edo period.)
It was not much, barely enough to fill a spoon, but that small amount of lime juice would brighten the sour note of the agedashi tofu.
After that, everything depended on execution.
Jo Minjoon stared intently at the soft tofu. The cotton cloth and kitchen towel were already damp, which meant the excess moisture had been drawn out. He poured starch onto a tray and carefully placed the tofu on top. It was a delicate process. The slightest excess pressure could make the tofu collapse completely.
Fortunately, he managed to set it down without breaking it, but it was still too early to relax. Holding his breath, Jo Minjoon gently rolled a dice-sized piece of soft tofu through the starch. If he left it sitting for even a little too long, the combination of the remaining moisture and the sticky starch could cause it to tear apart.
Was it luck, or was it the delicacy of his hands? Either way, the tofu held together and came away safely coated in starch.
Jo Minjoon finally exhaled and looked towards the bubbling oil. The pieces of soft tofu floating in it looked strangely cute. He wondered whether this was the sort of feeling people had when looking at a newborn baby.
As soon as the coating turned white, Jo Minjoon quickly lifted the tofu out of the oil.
“Minjoon! You’re doing okay, right?”
“Don’t worry. It’s perfect.”
Jo Minjoon answered Marco simply. The sight of the pale fried coating pleased him. While the excess oil drained from the tofu, he prepared the vegetables. First came the radish. He grated it and mixed it into the soy-based sauce, then sliced the spring onions. That was all.
With his own preparation temporarily finished, Jo Minjoon quietly watched Marco and Chloe. He wanted to help them, but the rules did not allow it, so he suppressed the urge and simply observed them instead. Come to think of it, it had been a long time since he had watched someone else cook like this. Back when he had been the youngest employee in a restaurant kitchen, he had usually spent his time in a corner cutting ingredients. He had rarely had the opportunity to stand and watch someone properly handle a pan.
Marco put the biscuit dough into the oven and began preparing the yoghurt ice cream that would go on top. To be honest, watching the entire baking process was not especially interesting, so Jo Minjoon soon turned his attention to Chloe instead.
She was tossing scallops, vegetables, and a red sauce together in a wok. Flames leapt up from time to time. Nine dishes were being cooked across the three worktops, yet the aroma from Chloe’s pan-fried scallops was particularly strong.
That might actually score an 8.
It was not an unreasonable thought. At least in terms of appearance and aroma, the dish seemed nearly perfect.
A little later, Jo Minjoon discovered that he had been right. He stared at Chloe’s dish with open admiration.
[Pan-Fried Scallops]
Freshness: 92%
Origins: (Too many ingredients to determine)
Quality: High (Average ingredients)
Cooking Score: 8/10
It was the first 8-point dish he had seen since Kaya’s grilled eel. Jo Minjoon felt his mouth begin to water. Sounds of admiration could even be heard from the participants watching from the second floor. Standing right beside Chloe, he could tell even more clearly that this was no ordinary dish.
“Don’t you need to taste it?”
“I don’t... Do you want some?” Chloe asked, looking at him teasingly.
Jo Minjoon did not even register that she was making fun of him. He simply nodded. That was how tempting the dish looked.
Using chopsticks, Chloe placed a scallop and a piece of bok choy onto a metal spoon, then held it out to him.
Even its appearance was flawless. The scallop, fried in red chilli oil, had been scored with fine knife cuts, while the vivid green of the bok choy softened the aggressive red colour of the scallop.
The flavour was just as impressive once it entered his mouth. Oyster sauce and chilli oil had seeped into the cuts in the scallop, giving it a rich, intense taste. Jo Minjoon normally did not like combinations that were both salty and sweet, yet even he could not help being impressed. The scent of the sea still remained in the scallop, but in exactly the right amount. There was no unpleasant fishiness, only a clean, beautiful depth of flavour.
The bok choy had not been added merely for decoration either. Its leaves felt soft against the tongue, while each bite into the crisp stalk released a clean, refreshing juice that washed through his mouth. With just a single leaf of bok choy, the strong flavour of the pan-fried scallop was eased and balanced.
Jo Minjoon was genuinely amazed, and precisely because of that, he was also surprised. It made sense that Chloe might lose to Kaya, but in Jo Minjoon’s memories, by the time Grand Chef had been narrowed down to around ten contestants and the likely winner had begun to seem obvious, Chloe had not been among them.
What happened to her...?
It was not something he needed to think about now. Even if he did, he would not find an answer, so Jo Minjoon turned back towards his own soft tofu. By now, the excess oil should have drained away, and their allotted time was almost over. He needed to start transferring the tofu into the sauce.
As he finished assembling the soft fried tofu—or, more precisely, the agedashi tofu—Jo Minjoon felt something he could not quite identify. At first, he thought it might simply be because of the scallop he had just eaten, but it was not.
Then the source of that feeling appeared in front of him.
[Agedashi Tofu]
Freshness: 90%
Origins: (Too many ingredients to determine)
Quality: High (Average ingredients)
Cooking Score: 7/10
Seven points. Normally, he would have considered that good enough. It was a reasonably safe score.
Yet when he looked at the number now, he did not feel as satisfied as usual. He remembered Kaya’s eel, and he remembered the scallop he had just eaten.
Jo Minjoon lifted a spoon and put a piece of soft fried tofu into his mouth. It was good. The sensation as it touched his tongue, the rich flavour of the fried coating, and beyond that, the mild taste of the tofu itself—all of it was good.
And yet he was not satisfied.
Was there something lacking in the flavour, or was it simply because he could see the score in front of him?
If he could not see the score, would he have been satisfied?