Chapter 80: The Unfamiliar One (2)
Chapter 80: The Unfamiliar One (2)
The first ingredient Jo Minjoon considered choosing was octopus. Among Westerners, and sailors in particular, it had historically been infamous as the “devilfish”. It was not that octopus dishes did not exist around the Mediterranean—in countries such as Spain, France, and Italy—but even so, it remained an ingredient many Westerners avoided. In Korea, the closest equivalent might have been the way some people regarded jellyfish, and perhaps even that comparison did not go far enough.
(Translator’s Note: “Devilfish”— Devilfish was used in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century English-language popular writing for octopuses and other large cephalopods, reflecting older Western associations between tentacled sea creatures and monstrosity or danger.)
The only proper octopus dishes Jo Minjoon knew how to make were teriyaki-style octopus and octopus sushi. The problem was that both were too simple. With so little involved in the actual cooking process, it would be difficult to push either dish to a cooking score of 7.
Beef tripe was not much better. It was something he had eaten far more often than he had cooked, and the only methods that immediately came to mind were grilling or frying. Again, those techniques were too simple to guarantee a high score. He could pair the tripe with a purée or sauce, but he was not confident he could come up with something that would suit it well enough.
In the end, Jo Jo Minjoonse the truffle—or, more precisely, the box containing the white truffle. At least he knew considerably more ways to use it than he did octopus or beef tripe.
(Translator’s Note: White truffle —A highly prized subterranean fungus particularly associated with Piedmont in northern Italy, especially Alba. The species was scientifically described by Vittorio Pico in 1788. Because its volatile aroma deteriorates rapidly with heat, white truffle is normally shaved raw over finished food rather than cooked for long periods.)
Alan looked at the box and said, “Truffle… It looks like one of the easiest ingredients here, but it may actually be the hardest when it comes to bringing out the right aroma. What are you planning to make?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I’m about halfway there. I’ll decide once I know how much cooking time we have.”
“Then I’ll tell you immediately. One hour. And that doesn’t apply only to you, Minjoon. Everyone here has to finish their dish within that time.”
One hour.
Several of the recipes Jo Minjoon had been considering disappeared from his mind at once.
Alan simply stared at him. Only then did Jo Minjoon realise he was still standing there and returned to his place with a small, “Ah.”
Emily closed the lids of the remaining seven boxes. “Everyone turn around. I’m going to rearrange the boxes. Don’t look this way until I tell you to.”
The eight contestants all turned their backs. They could hear the boxes being lifted and set down again. Kaya concentrated on the sounds, trying to follow where each one moved—right, then left, then somewhere near the centre—but no matter how carefully she listened, there was no way to know for certain. Emily could simply have lifted a box and placed it back in the same position.
Kaya frowned.
As long as I don’t get that one.
She was confident she could handle most of the ingredients. She even had experience cooking octopus at the market. Whenever the vendors gave her ingredients that were about to spoil, she had not been in a position to throw them away, even if the ingredient looked like some kind of monster.
She had never handled truffle before, but she was confident that once she became familiar with its taste and aroma, she would be able to figure something out.
Sea anemone, however, was different.
This was the first time Kaya had ever seen one. Even if she wanted to test it by grilling or boiling it to see how the flavour changed, there was not enough of it to experiment freely.
One by one, the contestants chose their boxes. Kaya did the same. The one she picked felt unexpectedly heavy, though she could not tell whether that meant the ingredient itself was heavy or simply that the box was.
Once everyone returned to their stations, the judges smiled. Even at a glance, it was obvious they were looking forward to seeing the contestants’ reactions.
Joseph raised his voice dramatically.
“Everyone, open your boxes!”
There was no real need to panic, but his tone made them tense anyway. Kaya lifted the lid so quickly that her hands almost looked as though they were convulsing, as if the box might explode if she did not open it immediately.
The instant she saw what was inside, her face twisted. “…Oh, fuck.”
What looked at first like a thick, round sausage was lying inside the box.
It was not a sausage.
It was a bull penis.
Kaya picked it up and stared at it as though she were holding a cockroach. The surface was slick with oil, and when she brought it closer to smell it, a strong, distinctive offal-like odour reached her nose.
Chloe, on the other hand, had drawn shark fin—an ingredient almost completely lacking in flavour or aroma compared with Kaya’s. In one sense, that made it an even more troublesome ingredient. Shark fin was valued largely for its texture, which meant the actual flavour had to come from the sauce. To make it genuinely delicious required a high level of skill.
Chloe wore a complicated expression. She had eaten shark fin before, but it had never been an ingredient she particularly liked. She generally avoided eating large fish because of concerns about mercury and because she preferred healthier choices. More importantly, if the ingredient itself had almost no flavour and all the taste had to come from the sauce, she could not help wondering what the point of eating it was in the first place. Unsurprisingly, she had little experience handling shark fin.
The sea anemone Kaya had been desperately hoping to avoid went to Anderson.
He did not look especially nervous.
Anderson had been taught all kinds of cuisine by his parents, and he was not inexperienced enough to lose his composure over something like sea anemone.
Hugo received the calf brain. Joanne got deer liver. Ivanna drew the beef tripe, while Sasha got the octopus.
None of them looked particularly pleased.
Alan looked over their expressions and said dryly, “Just looking at your faces, I can practically feel your confidence and ambition.”
Sighs sounded from all around the kitchen.
Joseph smiled like a kindly grandfather from the house next door. “Some of you may think this mission is excessive. A few of these ingredients may even disgust you, and you may wonder whether there is any reason to cook them at all. But that is exactly why this mission will reveal your abilities more clearly than ever. You have very little time to understand and analyse an ingredient you’ve never handled and may not even be familiar with. Those who can’t do that are the ones who will be eliminated today.”
“There is no fixed number of eliminations,” Alan added. “I promise you this: if everyone makes something that meets our standard, then no one will be eliminated. Of course, if anyone falls below that standard, that will be a different matter.”
No one looked reassured by the promise that there might be no eliminations.
It did not seem as though the judges genuinely expected that outcome either.
With eight contestants remaining, surely at least one of them would make a mistake or fail to show enough skill.
Unless some kind of miracle happened.
“We’ll give you ten minutes to design your recipe,” Alan said. “Use those ten minutes to decide exactly what you’re going to make.”
Jo Minjoon had thought this many times before, but ten minutes was absurdly short for designing a recipe. Even professional chefs would struggle to create a mission-worthy dish from scratch in that amount of time. These contestants were still technically amateurs. Of course, Anderson, Kaya, and Chloe all had high cooking levels, but cooking skill and experience were not the same thing.
Jo Minjoon slowly ran through possible recipes in his head.
The most basic option was to use the truffle as a garnish. Honestly, that was also the easiest method.
He cut off a tiny piece of the truffle and tasted it first. He needed to understand the flavour before deciding how to use it.
Truthfully, he did not find it particularly delicious.
It tasted like earth mixed with something faintly acidic, an aroma so penetrating that it seemed to open his nasal passages. People said that once you ate enough truffle, you began to understand its appeal, but at least for now, Jo Minjoon could not find anything especially charming about it.
Since I can’t really cook it, I’ll have to preserve the aroma as it is…
The truffle inside his box was white, not black.
That distinction mattered.
Unlike black truffle, white truffle was generally used raw so that its aroma would not be lost. Heating it too much would destroy much of its fragrance. That difference was one reason white truffles were especially prized in Italian preparations, while black truffles were more commonly incorporated into cooked French dishes.
Most of the recipes Jo Minjoon considered were therefore Italian.
The most obvious choice was to shave the truffle over an oil-based pasta. He could also use it with meat, where balancing the aroma of the truffle against the meat would not be particularly difficult. Another possibility was shaving it over a well-made omelette.
Oil pasta… or maybe a gratin with macaroni or gnocchi.
Considering the one-hour limit, the second option seemed better.
Making an oil pasta in a full hour would be inefficient. Even if he worked slowly, it was something he could finish in twenty minutes. The judges would almost certainly deduct points for failing to use the allotted time properly.
If he made gnocchi, however, another problem appeared.
Could he make it by hand within the time limit?
He would have to boil the potatoes, cool them, mix them with flour and egg, then form the dough. That process alone could easily consume most of the hour.
Jo Minjoon’s gaze sharpened.
He had to choose.
Use commercial gnocchi and accept the drop in quality, or take the risk and make it from scratch?
Cream cheese sauce.
He briefly considered tomato sauce, but a cream-based sauce using Gorgonzola seemed better if he wanted to avoid clashing with the truffle’s aroma. Gorgonzola and truffle were not a bad pairing. More importantly, the estimated cooking score appearing in his mind was considerably higher with that combination.
(Translator’s Note: Gorgonzola — A blue-veined cow’s-milk cheese originating in northern Italy and named after the town of Gorgonzola near Milan. Blue cheeses from the region have medieval roots, and Gorgonzola developed into one of Italy’s best-known protected cheeses.)
At that moment, Alan spoke. “Your planning time is over. Everyone, start cooking!”
The kitchen immediately filled with the sounds of contestants rushing to collect ingredients.
Jo Minjoon, however, first put a pot of water on the heat.
If he delayed boiling the potatoes even slightly, it would be no different from accepting failure from the beginning.
He cut the potatoes in half and dropped them into the pot once the water came to a boil. He had deliberately chosen small potatoes so they would cook faster.
Now all he could do was let the heat do its work.
The rest of his ingredients were simple: cream, butter, onions, Gorgonzola, fresh mozzarella, salt, and pepper.
Jo Minjoon finely chopped the onions and removed as much moisture from them as possible. Then he mixed whipping cream and regular cream in a one-to-one ratio. He melted butter in a pan and fried the onions until they turned a deep yellow, then added the cream mixture and Gorgonzola.
While he waited for the sauce to come to a simmer and the cheese to melt, Jo Minjoon checked the potatoes. They had been small to begin with, and cutting them in half had reduced the cooking time even further. They were already done.
He placed a bowl over ice water and transferred the potatoes into it to cool them as quickly as possible.
There was still some time before the cream sauce thickened and the Gorgonzola fully melted, so Jo Minjoon glanced towards Kaya.
It looked as though she was planning to stew her ingredient.
Honestly, though, he had no desire to eat it no matter how she prepared it.
Even if the system gave the dish a perfect score of 10, he did not think he would be able to bring himself to taste it.
Perhaps calf brain would have been easier.
But that—As a fellow man—no, as a fellow male—it somehow felt almost sinful to eat.
I might actually throw up if I tried it.
Jo Minjoon gave a bitter laugh and shook his head. For once, he was acutely aware of just how much the nature of an ingredient could affect a person before they even tasted it.
At that moment, the judges approached.
Joseph asked, “What are you making?”
“Potato gnocchi gratin with a cream cheese sauce. I’m planning to shave the truffle over the finished gratin.”
“The strong aroma of the cheese could overpower the truffle. Have you considered that?”
“The proportions will be impor—” Jo Minjoon stopped mid-sentence.
Bang! Bang!
The sound rang repeatedly through the kitchen.
Every time it did, Jo Minjoon flinched.
Kaya was holding the bull penis down and bringing her knife down against it with frightening force.
Quite apart from how bloody and brutal the sight looked, there was something about it that made any man watching instinctively shudder.
The judges turned as well.
Emily had an oddly amused expression, while both Joseph and Alan had gone slightly pale.
Kaya seemed to notice everyone staring. She turned her head, looked at them, and grinned.
It was the smile of a devil.
“This is fun. I think I might get addicted to it.”