Chapter 29: Getting Help in the Face of Elimination (4)
Chapter 29: Getting Help in the Face of Elimination (4)
[White Grape Purée]
Freshness: 84%
Origins: (Too many ingredients to display)
Quality: Medium (Average ingredients)
Cooking Score: 7/10
It was not bad. Considering Jo Minjoon had made it, seven points was actually a very good score. Still, since Kaya had also helped with the dish, it felt somewhat ordinary. But the dish was not finished yet. The foie gras still had to be cooked.
Jo Minjoon tasted the purée. The distinctive sweetness and acidity of the white grapes spread across his tongue, followed by the deeper flavour of the demi-glace. It was rich without becoming excessive or cloying. He turned towards Kaya and asked, “Should we plate the purée first?”
“Yes. That would be better.”
Jo Minjoon selected a rectangular plate and arranged the purée in three small circles. He had not forgotten Alan’s criticism that his plating had been careless, so this time he wanted to show that he had taken the advice seriously. He placed three drops of purée in a staggered line, then used the back of a spoon to drag each one across the empty space of the plate. At a glance, they looked like three painted strokes, with the upper and lower lines extending towards the right and the middle one towards the left. Three pieces of foie gras, one for each judge, would fit neatly over them.
Jo Minjoon looked back at Kaya. Her eyes were more serious than he had ever seen them. “Kaya—”
“Time’s almost up! This is your final switch! Finish your dishes!”
Before Jo Minjoon could say anything else, the buzzer sounded along with Alan’s voice. Kaya stepped up to the worktop with a rigid expression and reached for the foie gras.
At first glance, the foie gras looked almost like chicken breast simmered in beer. Its yellowish-brown exterior was not nearly as smooth as Kaya had imagined. She lightly pressed the surface with her fingers and found it soft. When she sliced into it, the sensation did not change. The foie gras had thawed evenly all the way through, and the knife passed through it almost as smoothly as pudding.
Kaya cut it into thick, narrow rounds and placed them in the hot pan. Foie gras came from a duck or goose liver that had accumulated a large amount of fat, so as it cooked, it released enough of its own fat to cover the bottom of the pan. Once one side had browned sufficiently, Kaya flipped each piece and tilted the pan so that the foie gras slid to one side and the rendered fat gathered at the other. She then used a spoon to pour the hot fat repeatedly over the top. It was the arroser technique Jo Minjoon had explained.
The sight of the fat sizzling and bubbling around the foie gras was almost mesmerising. More striking, however, was the aroma. It was nothing like the unpleasant smell they had expected from liver. The scent was so rich and intense that the meat itself almost seemed like a spice. Jo Minjoon searched his memory for something comparable, but nothing came to mind. It was a flavour and aroma unlike anything he had experienced before.
Kaya placed the seared foie gras over the white grape purée, then finished the plate with thin slices of fresh white grape. At that exact moment, Jo Minjoon broke into a smile he could not suppress.
[Foie Gras Steak with White Grape Purée]
Freshness: 82%
Origins: (Too many ingredients to display)
Quality: Medium (Average ingredients)
Cooking Score: 8/10
Eight points. A dish he had helped create had reached eight points. That was a level good enough to be served in a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Jo Minjoon looked at Kaya, unable to hide his delight. Kaya frowned at him. “What? Why are you looking like that?”
“I think the dish came out really well.”
“What are you, Beethoven of food? You can tell without even tasting it?” Kaya grumbled, but she did not look displeased.
(Translator’s Note: Ludwig van Beethoven — 1770–1827 — German composer and pianist, one of the central figures of Western classical music. His works bridged the Classical and Romantic eras.)
She probably knew it too. The dish had succeeded. What kind of chef would she be if she could not tell whether her own food had been cooked properly?
The final buzzer sounded, and Joseph spoke in a quiet but weighty voice. “Time’s up. Everyone, step away from your worktops.”
Jo Minjoon glanced around. Most teams had managed to finish their dishes, except for one. Their foie gras had technically been fried, but calling it seared would have been generous. It was burnt. The contestants themselves seemed to have already lost hope, their faces dark as they stared at the plate. What could they possibly do with that? A three-point dish had no place being presented, even in an amateur competition.
Aside from Anderson’s team, most of the remaining dishes appeared to be around five points. Jo Minjoon had expected Anderson’s dish to score an eight, but surprisingly, it was only a seven.
They made foie gras steak too.
Strategically, however, that made sense. If the mission was specifically centred on foie gras, steak-style preparation was one of the safest choices. Pâté or mousse altered the ingredient too much to showcase its original flavour. Those preparations might have been suitable in a challenge where seasoning and transformation were the main focus, but they were not ideal for a foie gras-themed mission.
In fact, three of the five teams had chosen to prepare foie gras as a steak. Aside from Anderson’s team and Kaya’s, the third had been the one that burnt theirs.
The judges approached that team first. They looked down at the dish for a moment, then walked away without saying a word. The coldness of it sent a chill down Jo Minjoon’s spine.
The next table belonged to Anderson and Carlos. Their foie gras steak was served with a balsamic reduction that balanced sweetness and acidity, and the judges’ expressions were noticeably better as they tasted it.
“It’s good,” Alan said.
“Clean and refined,” Emily added.
Joseph looked at Anderson. “With this dish, we can tell that you were taught properly. Your fundamentals are solid.” Then he turned towards Carlos. “Carlos, it was good that you adapted yourself to Anderson’s recipe and cooking method. Still, I wonder whether enough of your own contribution appeared in the final dish. Even so, this was delicious, and I’ll accept that your restraint came from consideration for the team. Go to the second floor.”
Going to the second floor meant they had passed. Carlos cheered, while Anderson smiled in relief, and their judging ended there.
That was the last time the judges looked pleased for a while. At the next two tables, their criticism was merciless.
Alan stared down at one plate. “What did you make?”
“I tried to make foie gras pâté with baguette.”
“Pâté? This is pâté?” Alan’s expression hardened. “Damn it, Louis. You should’ve just called it mousse. I’d be less angry. Look at the texture. Pâté should be denser than cream, with some of the body and firmness you’d expect from sausage. But this? I’d rather eat mustard.”
“...I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? Don’t apologise to me. Apologise to the dish. God. That goose probably never imagined the whole purpose of its life was to end up as this miserable paste.”
The contestants could say nothing.
The next table fared no better. Emily took one bite of a foie gras canapé and sighed. “Did you make pâté?”
(Translator’s Note: Canapé — A small savoury appetiser consisting of a base such as bread, toast, pastry, or a cracker topped with a savoury preparation. The culinary term comes from the French word canapé, “sofa”, because the topping was humorously imagined as sitting on the bread like a person on a couch. Canapés became established in French-style hors-d’œuvre service by the nineteenth century.)
The contestants hesitated. They had clearly remembered Alan’s criticism of the previous dish and were now reluctant even to name their own. Their foie gras looked oily and loose enough that they themselves seemed uncertain what to call it.
Emily stared at them sharply. “You can’t even say the name of your own dish. It seems you don’t believe it deserves to be evaluated either. Do you agree?”
Neither participant answered.
Leaving them behind, the judges finally approached Kaya and Jo Minjoon. Jo Minjoon swallowed. He already knew the dish had turned out well, but after hearing the criticism thrown at everyone else, he could not help becoming nervous. Kaya was the same. Her hands were trembling slightly.
Joseph looked down at the plate. “What did you make?”
“Foie gras steak,” Jo Minjoon answered. “We served it with white grape purée and garnished it with sliced white grapes.”
The judges slowly cut into the foie gras. The moment they tasted it, none of them could completely hide their surprise. Small sounds of admiration escaped them.
It was an extraordinarily polished and harmonious flavour. The foie gras had been cooked so well that it was difficult to believe it had started frozen. Both the browned exterior and the tender centre were saturated with a rich, velvety fattiness, yet the white grape purée kept that richness under control.
White grape purée on its own was fundamentally sweet, bright, and clean. At first glance, it might have seemed too delicate to accompany something as heavy as foie gras, but the demi-glace solved that problem. It acted as a bridge between the purée and the foie gras, adding enough depth and savoury richness that the two no longer felt separate. The grape’s aroma lifted the foie gras, while the demi-glace prevented the fruit and liver from clashing.
The flavour had clearly been thought through. It was almost unbelievable that neither Jo Minjoon nor Kaya had ever cooked foie gras before.
“This... is incredible,” Alan said before he even seemed to realise the words had left his mouth.
Emily smiled broadly. “It’s really delicious. Personally, I think this may be the best dish I’ve eaten in this competition so far. The purée is excellent, the foie gras is excellent, and neither overwhelms the other. You’ve made something that is very difficult to improve upon. Thank you.”
Even though she tried to restrain herself, the smile remained on her face. The cameraman filmed Kaya and Jo Minjoon as they struggled to keep their expressions calm, grinning as though he thought they made an entertaining pair.
Joseph smiled gently at Kaya. “Kaya, we refused to eat your dish in the previous mission. It was actually a good dish if we ignored the fact that it was supposed to belong to a course. Do you understand now why we wouldn’t eat it?”
“...Would anyone say no in a situation like this?”
Kaya answered sharply. She did not explicitly say that she had reflected on what happened, but the fact that she understood the reason was clear enough.
“Kaya, you are an extremely talented chef,” Joseph said. “But no chef cooks alone. Trust your teammates the way you did today, and learn to support them as well. If you can do that, your cooking will shine even more brightly.”
Kaya seemed too embarrassed to respond. She merely tapped her heel against the floor.
Joseph then turned to Jo Minjoon. “I heard that you were the one who came up with the sauce. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“You said you had never eaten foie gras before. Then how did you come up with a sauce that suited it this well?”
It was a sharp question, but fortunately, Jo Minjoon had already prepared an answer.
“I saw a picture once. Foie gras served with white grape purée.”
“So you’re saying you recreated the flavour based on a picture alone?”
“Yes.”
Jo Minjoon answered briefly.
Joseph stared at him in frustration. What exactly was this young man? Recreating a flavour from an image? Of course, a photograph could provide inspiration, but the combination itself was far too deliberate to dismiss so easily. There was the demi-glace linking the foie gras and grape purée together, not to mention the choice to cook the foie gras using the arroser method.
And Jo Minjoon claimed he had devised the entire recipe himself.
Was it coincidence, or talent?
In truth, Joseph no longer felt entirely confident that he knew how to judge this contestant. Jo Minjoon was peculiar. And he was a peculiar chef.
“...Excellent. You have real talent, Minjoon.”
In the end, that was all Joseph could say.
Jo Minjoon smiled. “Thank you.”
After finishing their evaluation, the judges stepped aside to exchange opinions. The discussion did not take long. Even after it was clearly over, Alan glanced towards Kaya and Jo Minjoon.
“What are you two still doing here?”
“...What?”
Alan laughed.
“Go to the second floor!”