Chapter 511: Choters (3)
Min-joon laughed awkwardly at her words. He couldn’t get a sense of how to answer her question. If he said he already did, she would definitely blame him for such a shabby proposal. If he said he didn’t, she would blame him for paying lip service thoughtlessly. In other words, he would be blamed either way.
“It depends on how you think about it.”
“You’re narrow-minded!!”
“Let’s talk about cooking.” Min-joon slightly changed the topic.
She already read his mind, but she didn’t find fault with him because she felt she should be faithful to her work now.
He gently opened his mouth.
“How are you going to explain about the cooking?”
“I’m going to talk about the sabayon mainly. In fact, there are many people who are unfamiliar with it. I think I have to mention sabayon’s unique sweet taste, and its peculiar aroma produced through white wine and other ingredients. Especially this one.”
She picked up the spoon. Looking at the cute pieces of morel mushrooms on the spoon, she said, “I would like to mention that the size of this mushroom is exquisitely making this dish delicious. If it was a little bigger or smaller, I would say its average score would drop by 1 point.”
“Yeah, when it comes to cooking, everything is determined by something trivial.”
No matter how delicious a steak is, if it is so big for one’s mouth, can customers enjoy it?
Only when the chef is considerate of customers and takes care of every little detail, does his dish become perfect.
“Maybe you had better mention this, too.”
The fun of Choters Guide was that Kaya and Min-joon took care of every little detail of the dish in question. They were going to not only evaluate a dish and rate it, but also explain what kind of uniqueness the dish had, or why they gave it a particular score. And that was why they couldn’t evaluate too many restaurants at once. Given that most of the restaurants offer a full-course, it was pretty tough for them to visit a restaurant per day. Since they were not extraordinary gluttons, it would make them sick someday if they keep doing it every day.
After testing the Amuse-bouche, they were served another dish in no time. Min-joon momentarily thought it was soup, but he soon found out that it was not.
The manager opened his mouth and explained the dish.
“After laying the sea urchin roe on the bottom, I sprinkled cauliflower mousse on top, and then I put lobster jelly on top and caviar again. It would be even more delicious if you have it with the crispy seaweed waffles here.”
It was an unexpected combination. Min-joon narrowed his eyes. Its cooking score was 8 points. He thought that given such a surprising recipe idea, it should be at least 9. Was it because the chef didn’t heat it enough except for jelly and mousse? While thinking about it, Min-joon raised a spoon.
“Oh!”
As soon as he put it in his mouth, he uttered an exclamation right away. When he broke the brownish layer of lobster jelly and scooped out a pure white cream-like mixture of sea urchin and cauliflower mousse, the harmony, and smoothness of its color was quite beautiful.
However, its beauty couldn’t even be beyond description when he chewed it.
‘Jamie is doing great!’
In fact, it was a little embarra.s.sing that he would dare to evaluate Jamie, his senior chef.
At first glance, Jamie was cooking level 9 when Min-joon saw him a little while ago. So, when it came to cooking skills, Jamie was clearly ahead of Min-joon.
Then, why did Min-joon feel Jamie’s dishes were clearly lacking in something?”
“Well, he should have not laid sea urchin roe on the bottom, but mixed them with cauliflower mousse instead.”
“Mixing?”
“Yeah, if he had done so, the scents of sea urchin and cauliflower would have been stronger than ever before. But he put them separately, so he could not have their taste mixed properly with a good balance.”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” said Kaya, nodding right away.
When she checked it after she heard his explanation, she also found that the balance of taste tended to change easily depending on how she moved the spoon, so much so that she could not properly control the amount of sea urchin and cauliflower mousse on the spoon.
Watching Kaya and Min-joon quietly, June’s eyes were twinkling as if she was deeply touched. She wondered how they could immediately find out the shortcomings of the dish by tasting it in that short moment. She had never thought Min-joon was an ordinary sous chef, but she once again realized how sensitive his sense of cooking was.
If he used his excellent sense of cooking to discover something that the chefs at restaurants could not notice, this Choters Guide project would hit a jackpot.
‘Well, Chapters Guide may be more useful than a simple guide for customers.’
The moment June thought about it, she had gooseb.u.mps.
Not even knowing that she had a dangerous smile on her lips, she kept watching him endlessly.
‘If he can be a guide not for customers, but chefs want to see and look for…’
Maybe that’s the way for Min-joon to become the ‘best chef’ he had in mind, she thought.
Did he know that June seemed to have found the answer that he had been looking for?
He was still paying attention only to the plate that he emptied about by half. Perhaps it’s because he was so sincere and focused that June even felt the way he grabbed the spoon looked holy.
In fact, Min-joon was carefully inspecting each and every one of Jamie’s dishes, as if he were facing a sacrifice offered to G.o.d. Kaya pouted while watching him.
‘You are going too far.’
She knew his overpowering attention was his charm, but she suddenly felt she was doing something wrong, thinking about herself who was just trying the dish as served to her.
Of course, she was not the type of woman who was affected by such feelings because she had her own style. She finally picked up the spoon, then mixed the remaining sea urchin roe and cauliflower mousse properly and put it in her mouth, along with lobster jelly and caviar.
‘Yeah, this is exactly…’
Like Min-joon said, she found it tasted much better when she mixed sea urchin roe with mousse moderately with the spoon. She thought if Min-joon hadn’t been here, she would not have been able to grasp it, not to mention trying to grasp it from the beginning.
Honestly, Kaya couldn’t be confident. Aside from cooking skills, she was not always on the same page as Min-joon as far as cooking method was concerned. He was always full of desire to make his dish even a little more delicious and more perfect. But she was different. She just felt the taste of a dish as it was, and she didn’t want to improve it because it was not her dish.
Of course, she didn’t want to judge whether he or she was wrong on that because she respected the way he approached a dish, too. But she thought their difference in cooking style was really amazing. As a couple, they really looked alike, but their cooking style was so different.
But at the end of the day they found more in common, as always.
[Sea urchin roe and cauliflower mousse with lobster jelly and caviar]
Cooking: 8
Fun: 8
Flavor: 7
Interestingly enough, the scores Min-joon and Kaya gave for this dish were exactly the same again. While confirming their ratings were the same, Min-joon and Kaya could not help but realize that one’s cooking level might be much more objective than they thought.
Of course, the two had lots in common as far as their cooking philosophy was concerned, but it didn’t mean that their opinion on cooking was consensus enough to produce the same scores every time. Taking that into account, it was really amazing that the two gave the same scores to Jamie’s dish this time.
However, such a coincidence did not happen when they rated the next dish. What came out next was aged yellowtail sas.h.i.+mi, crispy cereal, and gooseberries in a gazpacho made of green vegetables. Gazpacho topped with thinly cut jalapeno peppers. Their cooking score was 7 points. But when it came to the scores for the dish’s taste and fun, the two differed, at last.
Min-joon said first, “Well, as far as its fun is concerned, I can give it an average score no matter what. When it comes to taste, I don’t think it tastes good, honestly.”
“Are you sure? For me it’s quite fresh that he has made this texture and taste by mixing cereal and yellowtail sas.h.i.+mi.”
When he said that, she appealed, frowning.
He opened his mouth, shaking his head, “It’s not fresh at all. The reason you’re feeling this fresh is because you still remember its taste a few years ago when it caught big in restaurants. Maybe you’ve never really tasted it at a restaurant you visited recently.”
“If it was popular several years ago, isn’t it still a good recipe?”
“Yeah. It was a few years ago. But this recipe is not particularly attractive except for its freshness. The combination of cereal and yellowtail sas.h.i.+mi is interesting because you can enjoy chewing the texture of the sas.h.i.+mi that always feels soft. When you smell the scent of grain there, you feel more satisfied with its taste. But that’s it. To enjoy the most basic taste of sas.h.i.+mi, you need to be able to feel its chewing texture in its softness.”
“That’s right, but you don’t have to taste sas.h.i.+mi only like that.”
“Well, it’s like you are saying that a bird doesn’t necessarily have to fly in the sky. It’s a bird when the bird even flits on the ground without flying in the sky, but the best moment is when it’s flying, right? It’s good to show the various tastes of the ingredient, but such a variety doesn’t mean anything if it can’t impress one’s tastes as much as ordinary sus.h.i.+.”
“I know what you mean, but honestly I am not persuaded.”