Chapter 30: A Well-Made Dish and Good Food (1)
Chapter 30: A Well-Made Dish and Good Food (1)
It might have been cruel to the losers, but Grand Chef treated its winners extremely well. The same was true when it came to ingredients. Except for the contestants who had been eliminated, everyone was free to use fresh ingredients without restriction.
The pantry contained nearly everything imaginable apart from delicacies such as foie gras and shark fin. To anyone who loved cooking, the ingredient storeroom was practically heaven.
Naturally, the contestants found themselves picking up their knives several times a day. They experimented without holding back, and although the broadcasting crew sometimes ate what they made, most of it ended up being consumed by the contestants themselves.
And that was precisely why Chloe looked as though she wanted to cry.
“What am I supposed to do? I think I’ve gained weight.”
Chloe pinched the flesh around her stomach as she spoke. Jo Minjoon looked at her as though he could not understand what she was talking about. To his eyes, she still looked slim. Her lightly tanned skin made her body look firm and resilient, almost like that of a Black woman.
Jo Minjoon did not point that out, however. He knew perfectly well that there was nothing to gain from discussing a woman’s weight with her.
Marco apparently did not share that wisdom. He stared at Chloe with a dumbfounded expression.
“You... gained weight?”
Chloe looked back at Marco and immediately grew awkward. Marco’s barrel-like body filled so much of the sofa that, with him sitting there, it almost looked like a bath chair. Complaining about her weight in front of him suddenly seemed rather inappropriate.
At that moment, a grumbling voice came from beside them.
“If she says she gained weight, then she gained weight. Does she have to get as fat as you before she’s allowed to say it?”
It was Kaya.
She spoke with her usual cold expression, though she was not looking at Marco. Her eyes remained fixed on the screen of her mobile phone. The occasional twitch of her brow made it obvious that she was probably reading comments about herself.
Chloe perched on the arm of the sofa and began massaging Kaya’s shoulders.
“Why don’t you stop reading the comments? That can’t be good for your mental health.”
“It’s fine. I’m used to people saying worse things than this.”
Jo Minjoon looked at Kaya and sighed.
After the first episode aired, she had not spent so much time reading comments about herself. Or perhaps she had, but back then she had at least looked more relaxed while doing it. Now she was different. More precisely, she had been different ever since the second episode aired the previous day.
Episode two of Grand Chef focused on the qualifying rounds from other regions, and episode three would probably continue in the same fashion. The important part was who had become the central figure of the second episode.
Just as Kaya had been the main focus of episode one, episode two centred on Anderson.
And that was exactly the sort of editing designed to stir up rivalry among the viewers.
Kaya Lotus, the girl from the ghetto.
Anderson Rousseau, the son of an elite culinary family.
Their backgrounds could hardly have been more different.
It was the beginning of a war. Kaya’s fans insulted Anderson, and Anderson’s fans did the same to Kaya. In the end, both contestants were the ones who suffered, but fandoms had a tendency to become extreme.
Jo Minjoon quietly watched Kaya. She was still young, but in some ways she had already been forced to grow up. People said that no one could remain unaffected by malicious comments forever, yet Jo Minjoon believed Kaya would eventually learn to endure them naturally.
Even so, he disliked watching her read them over and over again.
So Jo Minjoon spoke the one phrase capable of getting everyone in the room to move.
“Let’s have lunch.”
“...Lunch?” Chloe stared at him. “It’s not even eleven-thirty. It hasn’t even been three hours since breakfast.”
“If we keep cooking, we’ll get hungry anyway. And Chloe, you’re still slim, so stop worrying about it. Let’s go.”
As he spoke, Jo Minjoon glanced subtly towards Kaya.
Kaya did not notice because she was still absorbed in her phone, but Marco and Chloe understood immediately. Marco eventually sighed and hauled his heavy body off the sofa.
“What are we eating?”
The reason Marco, Chloe, and Jo Minjoon had grown close was simple: the team challenge.
Ever since that day, the three of them had spent most of their time together. They were not unique in that regard. Many of the contestants had naturally become closer to the teammates they had worked with during the course challenge.
Kaya, however, was an exception.
It was unavoidable. She had deliberately cooked a dish that did not suit the course during a team challenge. Even contestants who had not been on her team found her difficult to approach afterwards. In the end, Kaya had become little different from an outcast.
Surprisingly, the reason Kaya had begun spending time with Jo Minjoon’s group was not Jo Minjoon himself, but Chloe.
Jo Minjoon had been worried about Kaya’s pride and had not dared approach her too openly, but Chloe simply went to her with her usual bright attitude. Kaya rejected her, and Chloe came back. Kaya rejected her again, and Chloe approached her again.
Chloe really does have a good personality.
It was enough to make Jo Minjoon think that sincerely. Chloe was persistent in an oddly gentle way. She seemed incapable of leaving someone alone after seeing them hurt. Perhaps some of it came from the fact that she had previously teamed up with Jo Minjoon, but whatever the reason, she never stopped trying.
The result of all those repeated attempts was the scene in front of him now: four people standing around a kitchen, each holding a pan and preparing lunch together almost like a family.
Jo Minjoon rather liked it.
The four of them were each making one dish, loosely imitating the structure of their earlier course challenge. Jo Minjoon was preparing aglio e olio, Chloe was making potato soup, Kaya was responsible for grilled scallops, and Marco was making soufflé.
(Translator’s Note: Aglio e olio —Most commonly encountered as spaghetti aglio e olio, a traditional southern Italian pasta preparation particularly associated with Naples and Campania. Its core ingredients are spaghetti, garlic, olive oil, and often chilli. Because it uses very few ingredients, the dish depends heavily on correct pasta texture, seasoning, garlic preparation, and emulsification of the oil.)
Aglio e olio was an extremely simple dish, which meant the result varied greatly depending on the cook. Since olive oil effectively served as the sauce, every detail became obvious: the texture of the noodles, the amount of salt, the intensity of the garlic aroma. It was not the sort of dish that could be made carelessly and hidden beneath a tomato sauce.
At the same time, it was an approachable dish for beginners because the ingredients were so inexpensive and simple: olive oil, garlic, chilli, and spaghetti. That was one reason many Koreans trying pasta for the first time started with aglio e olio. When learning an unfamiliar dish, it was only natural to choose cheap ingredients when failure remained a possibility.
Pasta was also how Jo Minjoon had first begun to understand cooking seriously. More specifically, it had started with aglio e olio.
And it had been a useful lesson. The simplicity of the dish forced him to think analytically about the inherent flavour of olive oil, the aroma of garlic, the heat of chilli, and the way those elements combined.
Jo Minjoon added salt and olive oil to the boiling water. The salt seasoned the pasta, while the olive oil was intended to keep the strands from sticking together. Then he took out the spaghetti.
For most Koreans, spaghetti was the first shape that came to mind when they thought of pasta.
It was also particularly suitable for aglio e olio. If he used a broad, flat noodle such as fettuccine, the oil could feel excessively heavy. Pasta shapes existed in different forms for a reason.
(Translator’s Note: Fettuccine —Long, flat ribbon pasta traditionally associated with Rome and central Italy.)
Jo Minjoon lowered the spaghetti into the boiling water. Watching the strands spread out like flower petals lifted his mood slightly. He left the pot to boil and turned his attention to the garlic.
One of the biggest differences when Koreans made aglio e olio was the amount of garlic they used.
When it came to a love of garlic, Korea could compete with almost any country. But traditional aglio e olio did not call for an enormous amount. Roughly one clove per person was enough.
Koreans, on the other hand, sometimes used not merely one clove but nearly an entire bulb.
They were accustomed to stronger flavours. Korean cuisine itself tended to favour bold seasoning, so restrained garlic could easily seem bland.
Fortunately, Jo Minjoon remembered that he was cooking abroad.
He sliced exactly three cloves.
Before the spaghetti had finished cooking, Jo Minjoon heated a pan and poured in a generous amount of olive oil. He added the garlic and began cooking it gently.
By then, the noodles had reached the perfect al dente stage. If pasta doneness were compared with steak, it would have been something like medium rare.
(Translator’s Note: Al dente — Italian for “to the tooth” — Describes pasta or other starches cooked until tender while retaining a slight firmness when bitten. It is a fundamental concept in modern Italian pasta cooking rather than a particular pasta variety or recipe.)
Jo Minjoon drained the noodles through a sieve, reserving some of the pasta water. He added a spoonful of that water to the pan. It contributed a little seasoning, but more importantly, the starch helped the olive oil cling more evenly to the noodles. Sometimes additional pasta water was unnecessary, but only when enough moisture already remained on the noodles themselves.
Once some of the liquid had reduced, he added a bright red peperoncino chilli. Some cooks fried the chilli together with the garlic from the beginning, but Jo Minjoon did not particularly like the flavour that produced. He preferred adding it later, while tossing it together with the noodles, so the chilli retained more of its own character.
(Translator’s Note: Peperoncino —The Italian term for chilli pepper, particularly the small hot varieties used dried or fresh in Italian cuisine. Chilli peppers originated in the Americas and entered European cooking after the Columbian Exchange beginning in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They became especially important in southern Italian regional cuisines, including Calabria and Campania.)
At that point, the dish was nearly finished.
“I’m almost done. What about you?”
“The scallops are nearly finished too,” Kaya answered. “I’m going to finish them with a torch, so the timing doesn’t really matter.”
Jo Minjoon called out again. “Chloe?”
“I’ll finish at about the same time as you. Your aglio e olio needs to cool slightly anyway, so the timing should work.”
He did not bother asking Marco. Marco had already prepared the meringue mixture for the soufflé, so all he had to do was put it into the oven at the right moment.
Marco, however, had clearly been waiting to be asked as well. When no question came, his face fell and he lowered his head.
Naturally, Jo Minjoon did not see any of that.
He turned off the burner beneath the pan and gave it one final toss. The glossy strands of pasta looked appetising.
Jo Minjoon divided the noodles among four plates and sprinkled parsley over them. People often thought dried parsley existed only for decoration, but it actually had a surprisingly distinct herbal aroma. For Jo Minjoon, aglio e olio felt incomplete without it.
He did not add Parmesan cheese directly.
Whether cheese belonged in aglio e olio was debated even overseas. To Jo Minjoon, it was similar to the Korean argument over whether instant ramyeon should contain an egg.
So he simply placed the Parmesan in a separate bowl and let everyone decide for themselves.
Jo Minjoon looked at the finished aglio e olio.
Unfortunately, its cooking score was only 6.
He sighed.
Without using a particularly distinctive recipe, reaching 7 points remained difficult. Lately, he had been thinking more often about the importance of cooking skill itself, especially after seeing a seven-point recipe become an eight-point dish when Kaya cooked it.
Of course, there was little point envying a level of skill he did not yet possess.
“I’m done.”
“Me too.”
Chloe laughed and carried over the entire pot of potato soup.
To someone unfamiliar with Western dining customs, putting the pot directly on the table might have looked strange. In many Western households, however, placing a serving dish or pot in the centre and letting everyone help themselves was perfectly ordinary. In the United States, even pasta was often served family-style with tongs.
Jo Minjoon looked at the soup.
Then his expression stiffened.
The cooking score had appeared.
But the number made no sense.
Either something was wrong with the system, or there was something about the dish he did not understand.
Chloe tilted her head.
“What? Why are you looking at it like that?”
“No... It’s nothing.”
Jo Minjoon gave an awkward smile, but the question remained hanging in front of his eyes.
Chloe’s potato soup was only 6 points.