In fact, Kaya’s daily life was always connected with cooking. Of course, she didn’t spend her time cooking regularly like Min-joon, who used to cook as if he was doing homework. Nonetheless, she spent as much time on cooking as him, given how often she thought about cooking everyday.
That was why she was now imitating Min-joon, trying to develop her own recipe in the empty kitchen late at night.
‘I wish I had done a little better…’
She knew how meaningless it was to make assumptions about something, but she could not stop being obsessed with such thoughts. Perhaps it distressed her all the more that she might have caused trouble to Min-joon, for she wanted to help him, not stand in his way.
But she felt instinctively that her cooking skills were not inferior to his overwhelmingly. In fact, she got ahead of him in terms of cooking senses and ideas. Their typical conversation about cooking until now proved it.
If that was the case, why didn’t she make colorful achievements as Min-joon did? Was it because she was less lucky than him?
She had to admit honestly that she was not as desperate as him when it came to cooking. In fact, Min-joon tried to improve his cooking skills desperately day by day as if he was chased by somebody. Sometimes she felt it a pity that he led such a tense life without taking a break. She believed that it would be meaningless if he achieved a stressful success, not a joyful success, at the end of the day. But she didn’t realize that she tended to stay away from the kind of tough challenge that Min-joon gladly took every day.
‘I have to work harder even from now on.’
Lost in such thoughts, she pulled sous vide-cooked beef out of a pot. Then she cut the flesh as thin as paper, then put it on top of the oysters that she lightly boiled. She served it with celery jelly and a powdered sauce made from a mixture of wasabi and mandarin oranges.
She was not always happy while she was next to Min-joon. Just like his cooking resembled hers, her cooking slowly resembled his. She came to make his cooking hers.
The molecular cooking that she made so easily proved that she spent lots of time initiating his cooking before she knew it. She picked an oyster shell, then put jelly and powdered sauce, beef and oysters all at once into her mouth. And she made a happy expression because it tasted so delicious.
‘I think I have to add this to the menu of Irregular Lab.’
Thinking like that, she smiled.
Some people even suggested to Min-Joon and Kaya, publisher of Choters Guide, that they should visit Wasabi for a cooking contest with the chefs there. But this wasn’t a question of whether they were better or worse than the Wasabi chefs, for what was needed was the absolute skills, not their relative skills
‘I wish I had something like Cho Reggiano…’
If that was the case, people would have trusted her as much as Min-joon. So, she looked for such a fantastic recipe idea desperately.
“Well, I should not waste time lamenting my misfortune like this…”
She pulled herself together and scanned the ingredients. She had to put together the pieces of her inspiration in one way or another. During the process, she pondered what her own cooking was.
Min-joon calculated the magnification of taste, so he could find out and magnify the taste that people usually felt was the same. Then, what about Kaya? Was it the smoke taste only that she could bring out the best? Was it really the best taste she could show to others?
Even if the smoke taste was her only strength, she could not afford to stay content with it. She had to make and show more. She had to show people that she was not a chef that they could make light of.
She kept thinking about it all night. In the meantime, she didn’t stop moving her hands in the kitchen. She came up with hundreds of recipes but failed in dozens of recipes. But her failure didn’t make her give up because she thought she could not succeed in every recipe.
What mattered to her was just one big success like Min-joon. She needed to develop something like Cho Reggiano, Min-joon’s signature dessert that drew everybody’s admiration. She needed to make a dish that could make her happy immensely.
But the results of her attempt to make one like Cho Reggiano on that day ended up being a failure. She failed again the next day. She repeated failures everyday, with bags under her eyes, her cheeks skinny, and tears welled up in her eyes. She was consumed with more worries, anxiety, and restlessness day by day, but after all, she could make a happy smile after overcoming the trials and errors for some time.
“It’s delicious.”
It was a great success.
In some respects, the dish she made was a bit like Cho Reggiano. She cooked six kinds of meat this time with sous vide, then served them with parsley air and onion jam, apple chutney, and yellow and red paprika jelly.
It resembled Cho Reggiano in that she used six types of meat, namely, cotecino, which was sausage made from pork, ox head, ox tongue, brisket, pork cheek meat, and oxtail. In the case of oxtail and cow head, she boiled them at 63°C for 36 hours, she boiled pork cheeks, ox tongue, and meat at 63°C for 24 hours, and finally, she boiled cotecino at 63°C for 16 hours.
Although the cooking time of each ingredient was different, she could not say she tried to bring out a different taste based on the difference in cooking time because she didn’t use the same ingredients. The difference in cooking time was simply based on the nature of the ingredients.
The parsley air, which she made with a little salt, sugar, and tangerines, contained the unique flavor of parsley as well as the freshness of tangerines. On top of red pepper jelly and yellow pepper jelly laid out like the French flag was seasoned with onion jam, along with the meat and apple chutney
She put all kinds of meat in her mouth, one by one, along with jelly and air, and chutney and jam. And every time she did, she groaned. Right now, she could be confident that she could not make a better recipe than the one she developed. Just like Min-joon could not come up with a better recipe after Cho Reggiano, this was truly a miracle-like gift to her.
When she thought as far as that, she could not stand still. She sprang to her feet and opened the door with light steps like a child running to grab a Christmas present. Then she threw herself over the bed like a wrestler, where Min-joon was asleep.
“Ouch!”
“Hey! I’ve made it!”
“Gasp… gasp…”
“What the heck? What’s wrong with you?”
Even though she asked with a confused expression, he couldn’t answer properly, just looking at her blankly with a distressed face. Since she climbed on his stomach suddenly, he could hardly breathe at the moment. He was sleeping well until she suddenly broke in and woke him up.
But she said calmly as if nothing happened, “Well, I’ve made it! I’ve finally come up with a recipe that I really like. Wake up! It’s a jackpot!”
“Jackpot? Oops… Don’t you know you are still climbing on my stomach?”
“Oh, sorry.”
She coolly showed her palm and got off from him and stood up. She then pulled his arm with a smile.
“Wake up anyway. I’ve made the dish already. Quick! Hurry up!”
“What the hell are you doing in the middle of the night?”
“You have been doing it like this!”
When she retorted like that, he couldn’t even make any excuses and wiggled inside the blanket. As a matter of fact, he woke her up numerous times for the reason that he came up with great recipes that he liked.
But he really didn’t want to get up now. So, he sneakily pulled up the blanket and even tried to pull her inside the blanket for more sleep.
But she narrowed her eyes and shouted, “Wake up right now, or I’ll punch you!”
“Okay…”
When she showed her fist, he had no choice but to give up. Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he managed to get up from the bed. She dragged him and headed for the kitchen.
“You’ll be surprised if you try it!”
“So, how long does it take to create a new dish?”
“Just one minute.”
“One minute?”
He could not understand what the heck she was talking about. He looked at her with a perplexed expression, but she was not cracking a joke because one minute was enough for her to make it. And soon he could find out the reason.
“Man, every ingredient here has a long expiration date!” he muttered in a disappointed voice. Jelly, chutney, and jam were all ingredients that chefs could make in advance and use for a long time. Sous vide was a different story, but it would not be difficult to use as long as the chef received pre-orders and made the dish right away when the customers wanted. But what really mattered was the taste.
Min-joon slowly picked a fork and knife, cut the jelly, and put it in his mouth with an ox tongue.
At that moment, he stopped chewing it right away.
‘What is this?’
He looked at her blankly, as if he still could not believe the taste that he just felt in his mouth. He became sober in an instant. He could see her freckles and black eyebrows clearly. He saw her cooking and the dish she made today. His chin slowly began to move again. Then, the juice of the ox tongue began to overflow in his mouth little by little. He began to clearly feel the condensed sweetness of the apple chutney that kept coming out through the juice, as well as the sourness of the onion jam and the taste of vinegar and sugar in the red pepper and yellow pepper.
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