Franchise (2)
Franchise (2)
"What's my husband been staring at so intently all this time?"
A-ra, who had been rolling around on the master bedroom floor playing with Kkomul and Pipsqueak, sprang up and came over to my side.
She must have been curious about what I was doing since I wasn't playing a game, just staring at the computer screen.
It wasn't exactly a secret, so I moved my face aside and showed A-ra.
The screen was covered in articles about starting a tempura specialty shop.
"Oh, are you really going to try starting a business this time?"
"Yes, I love Japanese-style tempura the most, you know."
"That's true. The shrimp tempura and squid... oyster mushroom tempura you made, Seong-hwan, were seriously delicious."
My tempura skills had been recognized by none other than A-ra, one of the Republic of Korea's foremost gourmands.
What would happen if I simplified tempura of this quality so that other people could fry it easily, and created a franchise out of it?
A tempura boom might rise again in the Republic of Korea.
It wouldn't beat chicken, but it could shine as a high-end Japanese dish.
"Noona, you said tomorrow is your day off, right?"
"Yeah. The shoot got canceled. But why?"
Our A-ra had a day off with perfect timing.
Smiling brightly, I went to an online shopping site and completed the payment for an expensive tempura machine.
After checking the notification from the banking app on my phone that money had been withdrawn, I smiled brightly.
A-ra tilted her head as if unsure what was going on and rubbed her cheek against my face.
"I have an open slot in my schedule tomorrow too, so I'm not going to school. Would you like to try some genuinely proper tempura tomorrow afternoon?"
"You're making it yourself, Seong-hwan? In that case, I could throw work aside and come home!"
"No, that's a little..."
A-ra, who had been in my arms while I gently stroked her hair, suddenly sprang up and dashed to the dressing room.
"Noona?"
"Seong-hwan! Hurry up and get dressed!"
I didn't know what it was about, but since I was a total A-ra devotee, I went to the dressing room and changed my clothes.
It was already late evening, and though summer was just around the corner, the weather was still a bit chilly, so I put on long sleeves.
This time, A-ra didn't nag me; pleased with my outfit, she grabbed my hand.
"Shall we go buy some ingredients!"
"Ah, now that I think about it, it'd be better to let them dry-age in the fridge."
Tempura tastes best when fried with as little moisture as possible.
That's why people use beer, which evaporates quickly, to make the batter, isn't it?
So if you trim the ingredients and store them in the fridge, the surface dries out slightly.
The quality might drop a little for other uses, but for tempura, it actually becomes a good thing.
***
"Whoa... what is this?"
"I was going to buy one anyway, so I took the chance and bought it."
The tempura machine I'd purchased yesterday was delivered the very next day.
Since it was a somewhat heavy item, I'd been worried about how to install it, but as it turned out, the delivery fee included professional installation.
Two technicians came and finished the installation for us.
After the technicians left, I gave it a clean wash with water and set it to drying mode.
And on the island table, several bottles of high-quality cooking oil were lined up.
Canola oil, grapeseed oil, sunflower seed oil, soybean oil....
And I also prepared a little avocado oil and virgin olive oil.
When frying tempura, it's better to use a blend of several types of oil rather than a single one.
That way, the distinct oily smell is a bit reduced and the greasy taste is lightly suppressed.
It's not my area of expertise, so I don't know exactly what the principle is.
"So I mix these appropriately until they fill the tempura machine..."
"But isn't that a lot of oil to use? It feels kind of wasteful."
"Well... oil used for frying seafood needs to be changed frequently."
Oil used for tempura oxidizes quickly.
Especially in that order: seafood, then meat, then vegetables.
Oil that fried seafood is almost impossible to reuse.
Conversely, oil that fried vegetables can be used to fry meat, and oil that fried meat can be used to fry seafood without much issue...
Since we'd prepared to have a seafood party today, we hadn't really bought any other ingredients.
"Then, shall we make the tempura batter first?"
"Seong-hwan, can you teach your noona too?"
"Of course."
Aside from A-ra, there wasn't really anyone else to teach.
At most, Hojun and Minji... no, maybe Jeong Hwan-yi and Lee Min-ho might be interested too.
I'd have to call those four separately and teach them later.
Today was a date for me and A-ra.
"First, put the tempura flour into a bowl..."
And then I slowly poured in the cold beer we'd bought at the mart.
After pouring with as little foam as possible, I added ice too to lower the temperature.
When the temperature is low, protein activity decreases, so the tempura becomes very crispy.
It's a theory that could be dismissed, but adding ice definitely makes a difference.
"Is it okay to pour beer...? If something comes up where noona has to drive, it'd be a disaster."
"Alcohol evaporates faster than water and disappears, so it's fine."
"Ah, so because there's less water, it gets crispier?"
"As expected of my wife—teach her one thing and she knows two."
I stroked A-ra's cheek with one hand.
She let me stroke her cheek calmly, like a rabbit, then hopped over to the fridge and brought out various ingredients.
It was the whiteleg shrimp, tiger shrimp, and squid that I'd trimmed first yesterday.
Exactly A-ra's top picks.
"But if you're doing something like tempura as a specialty shop, do you charge per piece?"
"Yes, probably around a thousand won each, I think."
Even if I was thinking of trying a franchise, it was common to start with just one flagship store.
Of course, since I'm a student, I couldn't dedicate a lot of time to it, so I'd hire someone to run the shop on my behalf.
And I'd occasionally visit to cook for special events.
I already had someone in mind to run the shop on my behalf.
"A thousand won..."
"For now, I'm thinking of setting a minimum order of ten thousand won per person."
"Huh... then the store won't be table-style seating?"
"Table-style would be a bit difficult. It'll probably be counter-style."
The format I envisioned was several counters inside the shop.
About ten people could sit at each counter, and maybe three counters in total?
Tempura is best eaten immediately, so table-style was out of the question.
The moment you fry it and move it, it would get soggy.
With those thoughts, I dipped the shrimp and squid into the tempura batter and dropped them into the tempura machine.
The shrimp and squid began to fry with a bubbling foam and a crackling sound.
Toward the nicely cooking tempura pieces, I briskly sprinkled the batter left on my hand.
Doing this would create tempura flakes, and the rest could be used as agemono when we ate shime udon later.
"We have udon too?"
"Of course. Doesn't shrimp tempura make you think of udon?"
"Haa...I feel like it's going to be delicious..."
A-ra was drooling over the udon even before eating the tempura.
I smiled a little wryly.
"Oh... sorry, Seong-hwan."
"You don't have to apologize. Noona, you're just looking forward to the udon I'm planning to make, right?"
It did make me smile wryly that she was looking forward to the udon—closer to a dessert than a main dish—but A-ra was simply looking forward to my food.
If anything, I was grateful—it was absolutely not a bad thing.
"But once you try the shrimp tempura, you probably won't even think about udon, you know?"
"Gulp..."
A-ra, who had swallowed, began to make an expression full of anticipation.
Yeah, that expression.
The expression I saw the very first time I cooked for A-ra.
Hadn't I lived diligently until now just to see that expression?
To make A-ra, who was everything to me, happy.
"It's ready..."
I scooped out the shrimp, which were perfectly fried, and placed them on a sheet of paper.
The paper, too, was prepared using natural hanji paper that absorbed oil well and didn't use chemicals.
Hanji paper absorbs oil so well that it's far more convenient to use than something like A4 paper.
At times like this, the wisdom of our ancestors was truly remarkable.
"Noona, do you want a beer?"
"Yeah! Tempura calls for beer!"
I took out a cold beer from the freezer and handed it to A-ra.
But hadn't she been hesitant just moments ago, saying something might come up where she'd have to drive?
"I gave up! If something like that happens, I'll just call my manager!"
"Is... is that so? In that case..."
A-ra had refreshingly dumped all the burden onto her manager.
There was no one in this world who could stop A-ra, who had even popped open the beer can.
Other than me, probably no one could stop her.
"Seong-hwan! Next is the squid!"
"Try dipping it in this soy sauce. It'll be really delicious."
A-ra, saying she was excited, dipped the squid deep into the soy sauce and put it in her mouth.
Then she looked very surprised and stared at me intently.
"My husband remembered that his noona likes soy sauce with wasabi in it?"
"If I forgot that, I wouldn't be a husband."
I had put a generous amount of fresh wasabi, which A-ra liked, into that soy sauce.
And beside it, I'd set out a little Himalayan pink salt so she could try dipping it in salt too.
But it felt like Himalayan salt had a bit of sweetness to it...
Was this really a natural sweetness?
The savory depth also felt like a purely primal savory depth, making me wonder if it contained MSG.
MSG wasn't bad for the body, and I used a lot of it myself, but I wasn't sure how I felt about MSG even being in salt.