Gwen’s eyes twinkled. She already burned her bridge. She had only a cliff behind her. She thought she could barely breathe after managing to climb the cliff, but if she had to step back, she would have no choice but to throw her body down that cliff.
So she had to strive to win by all means.
Hugo thought likewise, albeit for a different reason. While he was staying at the Grand Chef House, he had to constantly hear other participants talking about how great Min-joon and Kaya were. In some respects, it was natural that they gossiped about the two because the two’s achievements, which were incomparably more valuable than winning the Grand Chef, were so brilliant to them whose goal was to win the competition.
He really wanted to be successful enough to congratulate his friends for their brilliant achievements, but the reality was so cruel to him. He just felt so shabby and jealous.
He muttered with a bitter expression, ‘I don’t want to be jealous of you, guys.’
So he had to win this competition for the sake of himself. He had to climb to the top, so he would not have to feel jealous. He had to win not just for his pride but to save his friendship with them.
Ironically on that day when Min-joon announced two of the participants would be eliminated, Hugo heard that he was one of the two after he was done cooking for an hour.
There was a saying that even monkeys fell from trees. It meant that even if one was the top in the field, one couldn’t be a perfect master in it, with the caveat that one should be vigilant instead of being complacent. Ordinary people usually think they completely understand the meaning of that saying.
But at this moment, Min-joon had no choice but to realize the other meaning of that proverb. The monkey fell from the tree. Maybe the monkey would sink into the lake, or the monkey might fall while running. But people don’t mention it because it was nothing strange.
People didn’t expect monkeys to swim. Nor did they thought that monkeys were great runners. Like monkeys, even humans could fall even if they stay alert. But it was a different story if the target that the moment turned to. The monkey’s specialty was to climb trees. Just as one couldn’t expect a bird to be unable to fly, one couldn’t expect a monkey to be unable to climb a tree.
But something unexpected happened when one didn’t expect it at all. Since that monkey thought he could climb the tree well, he had no choice but to fall from the tree sometimes.
A monkey would let down his guard when climbing trees. In other words, monkeys tend to let down their guards only when climbing trees. Therefore, the only thing that could make a monkey careless and get hurt was a tree.
Hugo was most confident in Mediterranean cuisine.
The theme of the new cooking mission was $10. In other words, if a person assumed the he or she was running a restaurant, what was the best dish that person could make with $10 ingredients?
So Hugo chose paella, a typical Spanish dish.
As a matter of fact, Min-joon quite often tried the paella Hugo made for him. So he knew what kind of paella Hugo usually made. He made the dish by bringing out the different taste of each seafood or meat mixed in it while he didn’t miss the subtle scent of saffron as the base.
How to make it was simple. The most common recipe for paella was to first fluff rice in water before frying dried rice with garlic and red pepper powder in olive oil. After that, the chef would add spices such as saffron, basil, and bay leaves and boil them for a while then fry the seafood or meat that the chef had already seasoned with the vegetables.
It was easy to explain the recipe, but it wasn’t really that easy to cook it well. More precisely, it was troublesome rather than difficult. It usually took a lot of time to prepare all the ingredients one by one, and one had to make enough for at least two people when one wanted to make it, so it was far from easy to make it for one’s self.
However, even that was as difficult as the one Hugo tried to make now.
There were five ingredients that Hugo decided to add additionally. Beef, chicken, mussels, squid, and shrimp. In general, people prefer only seafood or meat in paella, but it was not uncommon to mix both ingredients.
But the problem was that Hugo chose to marinate each ingredient with a different spice.
To be honest, it wasn’t an easy challenge even for Min-joon. Of course, he could try it, but it would be only after making hundreds of failures first that he could bring out the perfect balance of all the tastes. Fortunately, Min-joon could rely on the system to verify his cooking level based on the recipe in advance, but Hugo didn’t have that system.
Of course, Hugo didn’t decide to choose that recipe recklessly. He already knew how to calculate each ingredient of this dish. To be honest, this was a recipe he saved for this competition for a long time. Originally he wanted to show it at the finals, but given that the theme of the finals was a full course in general, there was little possibility that he could present this dish at the finals.
So Hugo thought he would rather disclose his hidden card than keep it forever. With that calculation in mind, he decided to go ahead with this dish. He wasn’t scared. He already did all the calculations about how he could bring out the best possible taste of the five ingredients while thinking about how the ingredients would affect each other when they were roasted together on the pan.
He was confident of his calculations, but it was not his calculations that caused him trouble.
It was a basic mistake. He became more and more busy preparing and frying all the ingredients. It was almost at the end of the cooking that he realized he made a mistake. While boiling down the ingredients, he realized that he didn’t control the heat properly. It was only when the burnt smell touched the tip of his nose that he found it out.
Because of the nature of fried rice, the burnt area already spread to other parts of the dish. Even if he separated the burnt part, it was inevitable that the dish would keep the burnt smell.
The burnt smell was not terrible enough to make the judges unable to try it, but it was enough to break the overall balance of the ingredients.
Hugo’s face began to harden from the moment he realized his mistake. The moment he smelled the burnt smell, he immediately realized that he ruined the dish. So much so that he stopped doing it to make it over again. Since he didn’t expect this kind of situation at all, he didn’t store any ingredients just in case.
He knew he was finished.
It was at that moment he was faced with the dilemma. He couldn’t decide if he should give up now or continue to cook. He would be irresponsible either way. If this place had been his restaurant, he would have thrown the ruined dish into the trash and made one again. Even if he served the customer later than expected, he could avoid serving the ruined one anyway.
But this was a competition place, and he had a time constraint.
After all, he managed to finish cooking, driven by inertia. Then he even decorated the food on the plate. When it was his turn to submit it to the judges, he really could not bring himself to walk to them.
“Hugo, please come forward with your dish,” Min-joon said in a low voice.
He already knew why Hugo couldn’t come out. But he could not let Hugo just hesitate to step forward. At Min-joon’s repeated urging, Hugo couldn’t step forward.
As a participant, he had to follow the judges’ instructions. Even if he ruined his dish, he might have to explain to the judges why he failed. Even if his dish was burnt, the judges might appreciate the taste of the dish itself and give him another chance to compete at the finals.
Only then did Hugo realize that he was a chef rather than a participant.
He just threw the ruined paella into the trash can. Someone’s suppressed groan echoed through the competition venue. It was natural that the cameraman right next to him was surprised, and even Martin made a slightly blank expression on his face.
Hugo put his hands together and bowed his head.
“I’m sorry. This is not the kind of dish I can serve you.”
When he said that, the judges were speechless. This was Hugo’s last pride. He could not give them the dish that even he himself didn’t want to try. Even if he was eliminated here as a participant, he needed to survive as a chef. He didn’t come here to survive a little longer than others at this Grand Chef competition. He came here to prove to the judges including Min-joon that he was really a professional chef.
