Chapter 27: Getting Help in the Face of Elimination (2)
Chapter 27: Getting Help in the Face of Elimination (2)
Seven points. That was the best score Jo Minjoon could get with what he had in mind right now. He did not know what would happen once he actually started cooking with Kaya, but first he needed to explain the plan to her.
“Let’s slice it into thick rounds, like tenderloin medallions, and roast it. We’ll use the arroser technique and keep basting it with the rendered fat. There’s no need to add olive oil because foie gras already contains plenty of fat.”
Jo Minjoon explained everything quickly. Kaya nodded, looking slightly overwhelmed, before asking, “What about the sauce?”
Jo Minjoon organised his thoughts. The most important quality in a sauce for foie gras was its ability to balance the ingredient’s intense fattiness. To do that, it needed both sweetness and acidity.
“I’m thinking of making a white grape sauce. We’ll reduce the grapes in vermouth and add a little demi-glace... But there are two options from there. Should we make the demi-glace ourselves?”
(Translator’s Note: Vermouth — An aromatised, fortified wine flavoured with herbs, spices, and other botanicals. The modern commercial style is strongly associated with Turin, Italy, where Antonio Benedetto Carpano produced his vermouth in 1786. The name derives ultimately from German Wermut, meaning wormwood. Sweet and dry varieties developed into important ingredients in both European cooking and cocktails.)
(Translator’s Note: Demi-glace — French, literally “half-glaze” — A concentrated brown sauce of classical French cuisine. Traditionally, it is based on espagnole sauce and brown stock that are reduced and carefully skimmed to produce a deep, concentrated flavour. Auguste Escoffier formally included sauce demi-glace in Le Guide Culinaire, first published in 1903, helping codify it within modern classical French cuisine.)
It was a delicate decision. Demi-glace was made by reducing brown sauce together with meat stock. It could technically be prepared in around thirty minutes, but as with any sauce based on stock, the longer it reduced, the deeper its flavour became. High-quality demi-glace in top restaurants could take hours to prepare, so time was undeniably important.
Should they try to make their own demi-glace within an hour—or, realistically, within about fifty minutes—or use a commercially prepared one? That was the problem. There was no guarantee that a hurried homemade sauce would actually taste better than a commercial product.
Kaya bit her lip, deep in thought. Even before she answered, Jo Minjoon had a vague idea of what she would say.
“Let’s make it ourselves.”
A smile appeared on Jo Minjoon’s face. Yes. That was what it meant to be a chef: to make every little thing you could with your own hands, to want your own hands to become another seasoning in the dish.
“You can leave the foie gras alone for now. I saw that it’s already thawed quite a bit. Let’s let it continue thawing in the refrigerator. We won’t need to touch it until the sauce is nearly finished and we’re getting ready to plate.”
“Okay. What about the garnish? How about slicing the remaining white grapes and putting them on top?”
“Sounds good.”
As he talked with Kaya, Jo Minjoon found it strangely surreal that they were having this conversation at all. Meeting someone famous from television would probably always feel a little strange, but cooking alongside them was different. Even among famous chefs, the more their skills and understanding developed, the more their individual styles tended to diverge.
Jo Minjoon and Kaya, however, did not feel that different from each other. Of course, both of them had only just begun walking the path towards becoming chefs, but their approaches to cooking were surprisingly similar.
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
What if I ended up working in the same kitchen as her someday...?
Now isn’t the time to think about that.
He could indulge in pointless fantasies after the challenge was over.
Jo Minjoon looked back at the mission conditions. “If they’re saying the switching itself is supposed to be difficult, then it probably will be. Who should start? Whoever goes second will end up handling the foie gras at the end, including the plating. We switch every five minutes, and we only have sixty minutes total.”
It would be better to roast the foie gras and plate it as late as possible. They also wanted to give the white grapes in the demi-glace sauce as much time as they could to cook down.
“I’ll do it,” Kaya said. She sounded determined to take responsibility for the final stage. “I’ll finish the dish. This is my problem, after all.”
“...You said you’ve never cooked foie gras before. Are you sure?”
“Neither have you. That means I have to try. And this is something I need to do. Like I said, it’s my problem. My mistake and my mission.”
“No. It’s a team mission.”
Jo Minjoon’s voice was firm.
Kaya looked at him in surprise. He sounded almost like a teacher reprimanding a student, and in truth, Jo Minjoon was thinking along those lines. He wanted Kaya to understand why she had ended up among the elimination candidates in the first place. He wanted her to understand what a team challenge actually meant and how she needed to behave in one.
Originally, Chloe should have been standing in his place. With nothing more than her gentle smile and soft manner, Chloe could probably have calmed Kaya down. She might even have taught Kaya what being part of a team meant without needing to say it directly.
Jo Minjoon knew he could not do that.
What he could do instead of offering Chloe’s warmth was force Kaya to confront the lesson with words.
Fortunately, she seemed to understand what he was trying to tell her. Kaya hesitated for a moment before finally nodding.
“Okay. I’ll remember.”
“Good.”
Jo Minjoon smiled and looked at the clock. They had already spent thirteen of their twenty minutes planning the menu. Only seven minutes remained, far too little time to do much else.
An awkward silence settled between them.
Kaya was the first to break it. She asked something she had apparently wanted to know for a while.
“Why are you so nice to me?”
“I don’t think I am.”
“You are. Why? During the catfish challenge, you asked me to trade dishes with you. Then in the interview, you said I was going to win. Fine, maybe ‘nice’ isn’t exactly the right word, but you’re definitely favourable towards me. Why? Maybe...”
Kaya glanced towards the camera.
With her left hand, she covered the microphone clipped to her clothes. With her right, she reached over and covered Jo Minjoon’s microphone as well.
Jo Minjoon was too bewildered to react immediately.
Kaya looked at him with an unusually serious expression.
“Do you like me?”
The reason Jo Minjoon did not answer immediately was not because she had guessed correctly. He simply had never imagined Kaya herself would ask him that question. He had already denied it during the interview as well.
“Not at all.”
“Hmm... Really?”
Kaya narrowed her eyes and studied him for a while. Then she smiled.
“Then keep not liking me.”
“I know you’re going to look at me strangely for asking this, but why?”
“Because I’m basically white trash. You don’t understand what it means for a white girl to grow up poor, and there’s nothing good you’d gain from understanding it either.”
“...Sorry, but I already like you.”
Kaya frowned.
Jo Minjoon felt as though he had landed a clean blow and continued with a smile.
“Not as a woman. As a chef.”
“But why? Have I shown you anything that special?”
“You showed me your potential. And your talent. I was jealous of it, and because I was jealous, I wanted to catch up with you. It’s like watching television and finding yourself rooting for one of the contestants. Maybe I’m cheering for you the way a viewer of Grand Chef would.”
“...But you aren’t a viewer. You’re a contestant.”
Jo Minjoon shrugged.
“Doesn’t Messi sometimes cheer for Ronaldo?”
Kaya did not answer. She simply stared at him, visibly shaken.
She genuinely could not understand this man named Jo Minjoon. Why was he more confident in her than she was in herself? Why did he believe in her so strongly?
She could not know.
It was only because Jo Minjoon already knew the future in which Kaya became the winner. And Kaya’s imagination was not broad enough to consider something that improbable.
Jo Minjoon glanced down at her hand.
“Why don’t you let go? The camera is still recording. Do you want to get edited like that again?”
He sighed and pointed towards the cameraman.
The cameraman had been grinning for some time, clearly pleased with the scene he had captured.
Kaya immediately released Jo Minjoon’s microphone, then raised both hands in surrender.
“Sorry. I thought if I covered the microphones, it wouldn’t be recorded.”
“Yeah...”
Jo Minjoon looked towards the cameraman and frowned.
There was clearly a microphone mounted on the camera itself.
“Can that thing record sound?”
Instead of answering, the cameraman merely smiled.
Jo Minjoon muttered under his breath, “We’re screwed.”
Kaya stared stiffly at the cameraman. She had apparently assumed that covering the contestants’ microphones would keep their conversation off the broadcast.
“...They’re going to air this, aren’t they?”
“If they don’t, the producer would have to be incompetent.”
And Martin was anything but incompetent.
Kaya’s face twisted in annoyance.
“I’m telling you now, this—”
“Your menu-planning time is over! Participants, go and collect your ingredients!”
Jo Minjoon glanced towards the judges. “That’s our cue. I’ll go.”
He left Kaya behind and started walking. She looked as though she still wanted to say something, but he ignored it. Whatever it was, hearing it would probably only make things more complicated.
It was better not to think about anything unnecessary while cooking.
As Jo Minjoon walked away, he muttered to himself,
Looks like she still hasn’t understood what being a team means.