‘Let me stay calm. I don’t have to be surprised. It’s natural they feel dumbfounded like this,’ Min-joon thought to himself. He looked at the judges in a leisurely manner. Their incredulous reaction was not surprising to him at all because he already expected it.
“I can’t believe this taste…” Norris tried to say something then focused on tasting it, frowning hard. He couldn’t figure out what kind of taste it was. He wondered if this was the original taste of tomatoes. He even pondered over whether the taste of tomatoes could be so varied like this. Min-joon did not want them to be in a rush to evaluate his dish. Sometimes their silence could show more clearly what they were thinking.
At that moment, lots of spectators in the venue gathered around the silent judges and looked at the dish more closely. They reacted like that of a typical ordinary man who saw his dish first.
‘What the heck is this? Just tomatoes, cheese, and sauce. That’s it? Is this a dish? This one seems to be full of the chef’s pretentiousness. It’s almost abstract, like modern art.’
Even if lots of people felt like that after seeing the plate, Min-joon didn’t grumble at all.
Actually, his dish didn’t look like a good one at all on the surface, but that was what he and Kaya aimed for while making this dish.
When he made the tomato dish with Kaya, he had two purposes in mind. First of all, he wanted to let those without any knowledge of cooking just take the dish as just ordinary. At the same time, he wanted to make those well versed in cooking, curious about how he made the dish. Right now, the judges were also wondering how he created a variety of flavors with tomato tartar.
‘What’s invisible is more fascinating than what’s visible.’
Who could enjoy watching magic with its trick open to the public? There were only two moments where they could have fun in magic, namely when they see a miracle beyond their understanding and when they understand the secret of that miracle.
The moment the judges taste the Min-joon and Kaya pair’s dish, those with a high level of gastronomy like the judges here would see something like a miracle and discover its secret.
Min-joon and Kaya thought so. But the problem wasn’t that easy as they thought because the judges remained speechless for some time.
‘What are they doing now?’
At that moment, Min-joon was puzzled. Granted that they were duly surprised, their silence lasted unusually long. They even seemed to have forgotten to evaluate the dish.
Min-joon could not understand why they kept silent unusually long. He wondered if they tasted something wrong on the plate because they didn’t give any comment. Of course, if they had found something wrong with it, they must have commented on it by now. But he didn’t have to worry because the cooking score on the system was 9, as he expected first.
Sometimes the judges made eye contact with Min-joon or Kaya by chance. But even at that moment, they hesitated to give any feedback. As if one of them wanted to speak first, they just seemed to check each other’s expressions.
Min-joon tried to understand them, but they had a clear reason to do so.
‘How come this dish is so difficult to grade?’ One of the judges thought to himself.
Cooking was an art. That was a household word in their daily lives. Indeed, what Min-joon and Kaya cooked now was like a work of art. It wasn’t because it was delicious, nor was it because of its complex taste. They could not understand it properly even though it really tasted delicious, but they really couldn’t understand how it could taste so delicious and how they could bring out such taste. That was why they could not understand.
None of the judges couldn’t easily say what he or she felt. They felt like they were gradually falling into the swamp of taste. They couldn’t enjoy this dish now because it was devouring them. More precisely, they were getting carried away with the pair’s gastronomic view that made this dish possible.
So, when Norris first opened his mouth finally, the other judges even looked at him rather sadly.
Yes, Norris could dare to comment. He could explain what they could not notice in this dish.
But when Norris said something unexpected, they just let out a sigh, shaking their heads.
“Can you give me a little more?” Norris said.
Only then did the judges realize that they had already emptied the plates on the table. Although they tried to enjoy the flavors of different herbs and tomatoes inside, it was quite unusual that they emptied everything on the plates because Min-joon served a lot on each plate.
Anyway, Min-joon gave Norris some extra tomato tartar he made, in case of an unexpected situation like this. Norris once again put it in his mouth. This time, he tried it without putting in any other tomato stuffing or herbs.
‘Man, I’m so jealous…’
Norris felt jealous about his ability to come up with a recipe like this, and America with chefs like him. Even after eating it again, he still found it hard to describe its taste. As far as its taste was concerned, he could feel it enough, but what puzzled him was how Min-joon could come up with this kind of dish. Typically chefs could easily figure out the clue of a recipe when they tasted some clothes’ dishes, but he couldn’t this time.
“I think Cho Reggiano must be something like this,” said Norris.
Min-joon nodded quietly. When it came to highlighting the different flavors of a single ingredient, there wasn’t much difference between Cho Reggiano and this tomato tartar.
“If I had cooked it alone, I probably wouldn’t have made it. Kaya is faster and more accurate when it comes to devising this kind of recipe,” he said.
He didn’t mention it to praise Kaya for no reason. As he said, he could make this dish because of her help. When he came up with a recipe concept, she thought hard about it and analyzed the ingredients that could translate his concept into action. After that, they worked on how to bring out the right balance of the detailed tastes.
He was not good at understanding and analyzing the differences between the ingredients. While trying to improve his cooking level by imitating Kaya, his level already went up to 9, but it was incomparable to her cooking level 10 from the beginning.
For Min-joon, borrowing Kaya’s senses of taste was more fun than he thought. If he was given the choice between the system and Kaya, he might most likely choose her even if he didn’t feel attached to her. She was like a genius standing above a genius. He was so excited to step into the world where she was standing even by borrowing her senses of taste.
“How on earth did you come up with the idea of bringing out this kind of taste with tomatoes?”
“I want to show you how to use tomatoes.”
When he said that, the judges cleared their throats. They felt a prick in their conscience even though they were not the protesters who threw tomatoes at the American chefs including Kaya who was hit by a tomato.
Min-joon opened his mouth with a smile.
“Oh, you don’t have to feel sorry like that. As I said before, you have done nothing wrong. The men that I would like to show this tomato dish to are the protesters. More precisely, that protester who threw tomatoes at her.”
“I heard the police are investigating the protest now, so don’t worry too much.”
“I’m not concerned about whether he’s going to jail or whether he’ll cause trouble in society.
But I was annoyed by the fact that he used cooking ingredients like tomatoes as a sign of hatred towards other people…”
He stopped talking at that moment then continued with an awkward smile.
“Well, come to think of it, I don’t think I’m qualified to say this right now. After all, I wanted to blame them by making use of tomatoes to make this dish, and in that respect, it’s not strange at all if you pointed out that I also used tomatoes as a sign of hatred.”
“Well, I think it’s a dish that’s too transcendental to think that you have used it as a sign of hatred.”
“Is this dish transcendent?”
“Yes, it transcended the cuisine of the present era. We asked you to make free your dishes from the influence of French cuisine, but you made a dish that transcended the national boundaries of all the countries of the world as far as cooking was concerned. I thought that I sized up your cooking skills, but you made me discover your new potential this time,” said Norris, shaking his head as if he really couldn’t understand the pair.
This time, Bastien continued, “I just don’t know how you expressed this. I thought you put tomatoes in it, but this is not an ordinary tomato.”
“No, it’s not. I put half of it with semi-dried tomatoes and the other half with raw tomatoes. And I put in other herbs and seasonings, too. Oh, a little bit of shallots, too.”
“Oh, I see! So, the reason you put in not only semi-dried tomatoes but also raw tomatoes, was because you wanted to highlight the meaty texture of semi-dried tomatoes with the differences in the texture of fresh and dried tomatoes?”
“Yes, that’s the answer.”
When Min-joon smiled, nodding at him, Bastien began to stop talking any further.
When he found the answer to one question, he began to put together the pieces to find all the answers to his questions until now, such as how he came up with a recipe idea, how he could bring out this taste, and why he felt the taste of tomatoes was somewhat different.
And at the same time, he felt he had goosebumps.
‘This is not a dish that a chef in his twenties can make.’
No matter how talented Min-joon was, he really could not believe it. He could be even compared to the genius chef Daniel. Bastien had once met Daniel and saw clearly how he cooked. But could Min-joon make the kind of dishes at his age that Daniel could cook?
‘Well, compared with the past, this is a better time for chefs to grow up, given the same talent.’
Today’s world was the era of the internet, namely the global age.
As a result, a chef could learn all kinds of recipes if he wanted to. Actually, several chefs were taking the initiative to present their signature dishes and recipes.
In the past, they could find it in the news media reports if they were lucky, or go to the restaurant in question if they wanted to find it out if anybody made attempts to make fresh dishes in the restaurants in other countries.
But how about now? Even without checking out the news or booking a flight reservation, anybody could easily check out people’s comments on any new or original dishes and recipes on the internet.
Maybe it was natural in some way that Min-joon and Kaya grew faster, compared to Chef Daniel. ‘Then, can he reach a higher level than Daniel over time?’
Bastien now clearly felt the fantastic taste of tomatoes that already went over his throat and reached his stomach. It was a dish that transcended the ages, which he enjoyed with a great thrill.
Not only Bastien, but all the other judges there realized it. They now knew the dish before them had a much grander potential than they thought.
‘So, this is a dish he made to show to those idiot protesters?’
Min-joon expressed his anger in this dish so magnificently, which made the judges speechless in front of several hundreds of spectators in the stand and other chefs biting their lips, the cameramen and the camera lens and the empty plates.
