Chapter 367: Lovers in Paris (3)
Kaya and Min-joon were in the kitchen that they had ever used before.
Despite that, they developed a new recipe in less than a few minutes.
They were lovers, but they had never teamed up for cooking on purpose.
However, their teaming up was perfect. Not only did they go hand in hand in the cooking order, but also even their cooking time was on time like an interlocking cogwheel. Even the scent of the bisque sauce that tickled the tip of the nose was fantastic.
From a common-sense point of view, it would be normal that even if Kaya and Min-joon had great skills, they would not be able to show their cooking skills properly in this situation.
‘Oh, maybe this is only part of what they have shown us now.’
Adrian’s eyes sparkled at that moment. No matter how closely he looked at them, he could see clearly that they were cooking casually without any nervousness rather than cooking desperately to impress the Paris branch staff.
“Are you going to wage a war of nerves with them now?”
Adrian asked Talis gently, but she didn’t answer. Or she couldn’t because it was too obvious that she would lose even if she waged a war of nerves with them.
‘This is a foul,’ she thought to herself.
One of them was a demi chef. And the other one was not a professional chef, but simply the winner of an amateur cooking competition. Then, how was it possible that they could show such an aura of a master chef who had pursued a cooking career for several decades?
Watching Kaya and Min-joon blankly, other pairs including Anderson and Janet started cooking. When they saw Min-joon and Kaya drawing such great attention from the staff here, they could not help but be stimulated strongly. They wanted to prove that Min-joon was the only guy from the main restaurant of Rose Island.
‘The two are changing the atmosphere of this branch.’
Touching his beard, Brandon felt there was some change in the atmosphere of the kitchen. He could clearly feel that everyone fixed their eyes on the kitchen where Min-joon and Kaya were cooking now. If they had charisma like this, it would be far from unreasonable to ask them to lead the kitchen staff. Certainly, they were way beyond the level of a demi chef, so it was very unlikely that they would be content with ending up being as demi chefs.
While Brandon was thinking about that, Min-joon and Kaya were almost done grilling the Magret de Canard. To make Magret de Canard, a syringe of foie gras pate was first pushed in the flesh before it was being marinated in a sauce made from onion jam, garlic, and olive oil. It was a steak made mainly from the skin in a frying pan after several slides were cut with a knife.
When parsley powder with bisque sauce fell over it, Brandon forgot his dignity as the head chef and approached the two, holding a fork.
“Can I taste it?”
“I felt you might also want to try it, so I’ve made enough. So, please try it.”
Brandon looked down at the plate. Duck breast roasted and sliced, the foie gras paté softened by the hot warmth and gravy of the duck breast melted slowly like sticky honey, and the yellow bisque sauce made from scallops and pumpkin on the side looked like mustard.
It was a dish whose recipe was so cool for the two to develop in such a short time. Brandon put it in his mouth with plenty of bisque sauce on the breast. At that moment, all eyes turned to Brandon’s expressions.
But Brandon didn’t make any change in his facial expressions. Without saying anything, he then ate the breast. So, when he ate five pieces of it, Adrian carefully opened his mouth.
“Chef Brandon. That’s mine…”
Brandon glared at him sharply, but Adrian couldn’t give in. His sense as a chef was telling him that he should taste it by all means!
Eventually, Brandon stepped back, clearing his throat.
“Well, I just feel like eating it because it tastes so good. Sorry.”
“No, that’s fine. Can I give you more?”
“Let me see…”
Brandon turned to the other chefs, standing next to him. He felt like they would not sit idle if he ate all the dishes reserved for them.
Eventually, when all the chefs ate Min-joon and Kaya’s Magret de Canard, they looked at other pairs cooking at the moment rather than expressing their feelings. They were the same demi chefs as Min-joon and Kaya anyway. The staff here seemed to be convinced that their dishes were as good as Min-joon and Kaya’s. But Anderson was groaning after checking their expectant looks.
‘Man, I screwed up!’
As things stand now, he would have to think hard about what kind of dish he would make. He already began to feel so nervous that he was sweating on his back. It was Chloe who wasn’t nervous at all. To put it precisely, she liked this kind of stiff atmosphere because she had never faced any serious situation like this while she was doing a cuisine show on TV.
“Are you okay, Chloe?”
“Uh? What do you mean?”
“What I mean is it’s been a while since we cooked like this. Aren’t you nervous?”
“Man, even if we lose, nothing wrong happens to us! We should happily walk the path we like, right? We don’t have to struggle.”
“You are right.”
Anderson nodded briefly, seeing eye to eye. And he thought that he tended to take things too seriously and that he might be messed up because of that for now.
In that respect, he felt Chloe was in a better position than him, for she had been hungry for cooking, competing, and improving her cooking skills.
‘Yeah, I may fall behind them if I sit idle.’
Anderson’s eyes sparkled sharply. The dish he and Chloe were making was simple. Saint Jacques a Laurenge. It was a dish made with scallop. He didn’t know why Chloe was obsessed with making scallop dishes. Actually, she was giving new meaning to the scallop in her own way.
‘Min-joon once told me that my scallop dish definitely made a difference.’
If he was right, she wanted to show how much taste she could bring out. She wanted to prove it.
At first, she just wanted to stick to the basics and cook the traditional recipe, but she knew well that this wasn’t what the chefs here expected. Furthermore, after they witnessed the way Min-joon and Kaya cooked, she felt she could not be content with the traditional recipe.
Chloe and Anderson decided to add a Chinese touch to the French dish they were making now for a slight change in its taste.
Chinese spices of coriander and star anise. They were the two ingredients that Chloe and Anderson decided to add to the French dish.
Originally, Saint Jacques a Laurenge was a dish of onions, oranges, and sugar boiled in a pan to make sauce and then serve it with simple roasted scallop without adding any oil. In fact, that was the essence of the scallop dish. On the premise that scallops could be roasted well, it would be better to bring out its bland taste with the two Chinese spices instead of making the sauce colorful.
Nevertheless, the reason they could not be satisfied with simply roasting it showed that the chef’s blood was running through their body. Of course, they were not sure if they were being too greedy now.
In the case of Chloe and Anderson, there was nothing particular they needed to agree about.
Chloe would make the sauce while Anderson would roast scallops. Besides, all he had to do was roast scallops right before she made the sauce, so he was rather free, compared with her. So, he naturally looked around the kitchen staff quickly when he made eye contact with Brandon.
‘What a strange guy he is!’
Anderson could not really read Brandon’s mind. When he first saw Brandon, he thought this man was a violent and dirty cook, but the way he watched them cooking was serene enough to make him feel overwhelmed by his gravitas as the head chef of the Paris branch.
In some ways, he naturally felt so. This is Paris, the holy place of gourmets, where the Rose Island’s branch received three stars after beating its rivals in a sacred place, and he was its head chef. Perhaps, he was so competent that they could not even compare with him.
When Anderson thought about it, he was so frustrated about himself, wondering when he could ever catch up with that head chef. He quietly pondered over when he could really achieve that head chef’s cooking level and whether he was really ready for it. He felt more frustrated when he saw Min-joon. In fact, he could confirm again right here in the kitchen that he was worse than Min-joon.
Min-joon gained his wings. Watching him, Anderson had no choice but to ask himself if he had wings, too. If he had, how could he spread them? While he was pondering over it, he turned to Chloe. At that moment, Anderson could erase such idle thoughts from his mind.
Chloe was laughing.
“Why are you laughing like that?”
“I told you. I want to have fun out of this cooking because this is fun.”
“Are you really happy?”
“Do you think I’m pretending to have fun on purpose?”
She asked as if she was curious about his question. He couldn’t say anything, so he just looked at the scallops stacked on one side. Since he was cooking with her, he could not help but feel he was a snub. How could he be distracted while cooking? He was supposed to focus on cooking right now, but he found himself distracted on and off.
“Okay. Let me roast the scallops.”
“Okay. Good timing.”
The moment Chloe nodded, Anderson immediately put the scallops on the hot pan. Normally, he would put olive oil, white wine, and pepper to get rid of that fishy smell, but he didn’t have to because he would make sure the scent of the sauce would remove it. When the scallops were cooked in a good temperament properly, there would be no fishy smell from the scallops.
Was it because of that? Anderson’s handling of pans and cooking forks was more delicate than ever. At this moment, he didn’t want to bother with anything that wasn’t related to the dish. He wanted to prove that he was also a chef. He wanted to show them that he still had a pure heart of a rookie chef. But it wasn’t his heart that people noticed.
Adrian muttered as if groaning, “Chef Anderson is really great.”
But Adrian didn’t feel anything special about Chloe. Unlike Min-joon and Kaya, who quickly sorted out cooking in an organized way ranging from trimmed and exchanging ingredients, Chloe tended to cook quite slowly. So, Adrian felt like he was now seeing his wife cooking at home. There was no hurry or tension in her attitude. She was just cooking casually as if she was now preparing a meal that somebody could enjoy pleasantly and comfortably.
