Kaya was a strange woman. She was a complicated and twisted woman with half-baked confidence, half-baked self-esteem, and a sense of half-baked inferiority. She knew she was good at cooking and that she had cooking talent, but that was not verified by anybody. While she fiercely believed that she wasn’t insignificant, she thought deep down that she was not important at the same time.
But if that were the case, if she had had such a twisted personality alone, Min-joon wouldn’t have admired her that much. Of course, the fact that he knew her potential affected the way he approached her, but the main reason why he really liked her was because he was impressed by his close observation of her activities right next to her.
She was making a beautiful struggle to succeed. She struggled desperately toward the world. Sometimes her desperate efforts hurt people around her, but she had never paid attention to anything like a pride test with somebody, for she realized that because she sank in the swamp with somebody, she could not help him or her get out of it.
“Alright…”
Min-joon nodded briefly. He didn’t have to talk about Kaya before the camera. He was just content with keeping his deep impressions and feelings about her to himself.
Soon, the cooking mission began.
It was a feast of amateur chefs with different backgrounds.
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‘Man, I can’t help but let out a sigh.’
Min-joon didn’t have high expectations of the participants because the majority of the participants were amateur chefs except for Hugo. However, some teams showed really exceptional performance. He even strongly felt to go and cheer for them.
Surprisingly, it was Hugo’s team that showed the best teamwork. With Hugo as the head chef, his team members respected his instructions one by one. He also respected them. He was not here as their superior. So he was not particularly overbearing toward them. Of course, sometimes he needed to be stern to them, but when he participated in the Grand Chef Season 3 with Min-joon, he had no problem with dealing with his team members at all. And he was just as kind and considerate of his team members like before.
Michael’s team was surprisingly good. And it was entirely Michael who deserved the credit for that. He clearly defined his team members’ roles in a way that none of them could have imagined. He didn’t serve as their head chef like Hugo.
Michael paid all his attention to calculating. For example, he calculated the time the pan was heating up, the time the oil was heating up, the time they boiled the water and the time they trimmed the ingredients, the time they roasted the meat, and the time required for preheating.
He calculated all of them. In fact, such calculation was not theoretically impossible. Since he understood everything through science rather than his senses, calculating the correlation between heat and time was a piece of cake.
Of course, Michael had room for improvement. No matter how good he was at calculating, he couldn’t even take into account the numerous variables that he faced while cooking. And he had to adjust his team members’ roles a bit whenever he found their errors. So Min-joon felt he was leading them as a half-baked head chef.
On the other hand, Gwen’s team was more precarious than he expected.
Teamwork was the most difficult task for amateur chefs. Faced with such a formidable task, Gwen and her team members chose the safest path. In other words, they decided to make their own cooking, but when somebody needed help, those who could afford to do so would chip in.
They were given one hour of cooking. It was pretty long. If Min-joon was given one hour, he was confident he could easily make a five-course dish within the given time. Of course, he would have to sacrifice the quality of taste to some extent because he wouldn’t have enough time to marinate or ripen the ingredients. Nonetheless, one hour was enough for him to make an excellent dish.
‘Come to think of it, I’ve changed a lot.’
In the past, he even thought it was difficult for a team to make a full-course dish within one hour, but now, he didn’t think it was difficult to do it alone. He thought it was frustrating that his progress was slow every day, but looking back, he really made great progress.
And that opportunity would be given to Gwen as well. If she didn’t die, someday she would also realize how much she made progress.
Min-joon looked at Gwen silently. What she was in charge of was dessert. To the best of his knowledge, her baking level was not that high, so he wondered what kind of dessert she would make, But what she came up with was more modern than he thought.
‘It’s fried cream.’
It wasn’t a terribly fresh idea. Deep-fried cream has recently become popular among people to some extent. As someone said that it would be delicious even if one fried shoes, people always wanted to fry anything at least once. In fact, in England, a bizarre dish of oreo wrapped in bacon and deep-fried has become popular, and sooner or later, something like fried milk would become popular among people.
The process of making fried cream wasn’t that difficult. First, take out the avocado and mix it with moderately solidified whipped cream. Then sprinkle sugar on it, mix it, then put it in the freezer. She probably didn’t put it on for very long because she might want to quickly freeze it due to time constraints, even though she would normally freeze it in the refrigerator for a long time. She didn’t have to freeze it. All she needed was to make it just solidified enough so that its shape didn’t get crushed when frying.
Min-joon suddenly thought about it. In other words, If he made fried cream for dessert, what kind of dessert would he make? Would a person try to finish it using just one avocado like that? Nope. He would have tried to get away from the idea that it had to be sweet. He would have thought of a dessert that was not sweet. It felt kind of contradictory, but he had always loved such contradictions.
How about pouring some clam broth in it? How would it taste if he could bring out the savory taste of the clam stock in whipped cream? Its taste would clearly surprise those who eat it. But He immediately shook his head. If he poured the clam broth in it, the whipped cream would melt right away.
‘Then, would it be okay if I concentrated it with sugar and poured it almost like syrup?’
No, it wasn’t the answer, either. Because he added sugar to the clam broth, he could probably control its sweetness unless he put sugar to the cream separately, but its taste would change a lot from what he originally intended. What he wanted was the fresh and spicy taste of clam broth. If it had a concentrated and heavy taste, he wouldn’t be able to bring out its sharp taste, no matter how much he diluted it with cream.
‘If it’s puree, it might be a little different.’
The problem was that when he made puree, the texture of the clams would still be there, even though it was just a little bit. It would be okay for other desserts, but the remaining texture of the clams was a minus, not a plus as far as the dessert was concerned. At the end of a long meal, the customers were probably reluctant to move their jaw joints again to chew something. In such a situation, no one would want something like a chewy dessert. That was why soft tiramisu and soufflé were popular as desserts.
‘What if I overcome the limitations to the clam when making puree, then filter it again several times with a sieve or cotton cloth?’
But it was still not the answer he looked for. What he wanted to bring out was the taste of the clam broth, not the taste of clam. He frowned as he thought that the flavor of the clam was still there in the cream. Of course, there was a possibility that he could make it, but its taste would be far from suitable for dessert.
“What are you doing?”
Watching him with a blank expression, Kaya asked him curiously. Startled, he looked at her quickly. He then smiled embarrassedly and said, “Well, I thought Gwen could improve her fried cream.”
“Any idea?”
“I was wondering what it would be like to bring out the flavor of the clam stock in the cream.
Hey, don’t make such an expression! It can be really delicious.”
“Well, aside from the difficulty of combining the two, I don’t think it will taste like a dessert at all.”
“I agree. They like the fresh and sharp taste at the start of their meal, not at the end.”
Was there really no way to use a dish with a sharp and spicy taste as a dessert? Should he just discard his serious thoughts about it as a delusion? People once thought mobile phones could be possible only in the era of science fiction, but today, everybody was carrying mobile phones. So he thought somebody could translate his delusion into action.
‘Well, I think this seems to be the key to sensual cuisine.’
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