“Why don’t you take a break?” Eva said in an anxious voice.
However, Dobby kept jotting down something on the notebook without even giving Eva a glance. Actually, his handwriting was illegible because he continuously wrote the names of new ingredients on the existing names, and sometimes he wrote the same sentence over and over again.
Obviously, he wrote it down not to visually organize the names but just jotted down his miscellaneous thoughts in his head without sorting them out. Even so, his writing was far from illegible. The thing was, he had been doing it for several hours, not just for a few minutes.
‘It looks like Dobby was shocked a lot.’
Honestly, Eva could understand why Dobby acted like that because she knew the reason. Perhaps Min-joon and Kaya’s fantastic performance in this contest had been quite a shock to him. He had seen a genius chef on par with him, but never one who had surpassed him.
‘Well, if I have to pick someone, Chef Rachel is the one who has surpassed him.’
In Rachel’s case, Dobby didn’t even stay with her for long. Above all, she had been investing more time and energy in cooking than him. No matter how much Rachel was shining in the restaurant world, he would not feel a sense of shame because he believed that over time, he would also cultivate cooking skills equal to hers.
However, Kaya and Min-joon were younger than Dobby, not to mention their cooking experiences. So, it wasn’t strange at all if Dobby felt it shameful that he was pushed aside by the pair in this contest.
Eva stared at Dobby’s back quietly. She had always seen him getting ahead of others comfortably. She sometimes clenched her fists at his arrogant attitude, but she felt a bit sorry for him now.
“Sorry.”
When she pulled herself together, she said it before she knew it.
Only then did Dobby, who didn’t show any special reaction to what she said, turned to her and replied, “Why are you suddenly saying sorry to me?”
“I don’t think Min-joon and Kaya are more competent than you. But their results in this contest are better than ours. And everyone agrees that it’s because their match is so great as to produce such great dishes. So, they are different from our pair.”
“Don’t tell me that. You’re already doing well for me.”
“Well, doing good for you is different from leading you. I admit it. You know what? It just makes me so pathetic when I recall that I was once very jealous that you became a sous chef.”
When she replied in a low voice, he realized that he wasn’t alone in the contest. He was here with Eva as a pair. Maybe Eva was more shocked because she was less competent than him. If she was thinking now that she didn’t help him as much as his long-time colleague and even her rival, she might have felt more hurt than him.
At last, Dobby stopped writing on the notepad.
With a sigh, he put down the pen and said to her, “You don’t want to see me so pathetic like this, right?”
“Well, it’s me who is more pathetic than you.”
“That’s enough. Let me get real. So, you had better get real, too. We are not done yet.”
Eva smiled gently at him.
Dobby grumbled, touching his forehead, “Well, we’ve been beaten several times by the Min-joon pair. Now, it’s time for us to show them we are not that weak.”
There was a high and rugged mountain that Dobby had never encountered before.
But if the place he wanted to go was beyond the mountain, he had no choice but to move. Dobby raised his head and looked at the mountain. He gave up the urge to get around the mountain cowardly. And he boldly took his step.
***
Maybe someone might say that the cooking theme of this final contest was pretty petty.
They might think the theme of the semi-finals would be more suitable for the finals.
Min-joon understood their feelings and even partially agreed with them.
When one talked about a signature dish, it might sound great to their ears, but it was only one dish at the end of the day, just one dish. So, the participants in the finals had to put everything on that one plate. Of course, depending on the type of dish, they could serve sauces on a different plate, but one couldn’t boast of the overwhelming splendor like a full course or one-course meal on one table.
To those who already saw the course meals constantly coming up or one full course meal on one table in the semi-finals, they might feel it unreasonable to select the winner, based on their signature dish alone.
Min-joon understood them, but at the same time, he supported the cooking theme of the finals.
Of course, he didn’t endorse the theme itself. He respected the judges’ decision to give the participants in the finals seven days to come up with a recipe.
‘One week is a really long time,’ Min-joon thought to himself.
Of course, he could make short work of it. When he was in Rose Island, it sometimes took him almost one month to come up with a new recipe and even less than a week to devise one.
After all, it was a matter of inspiration. And that was rather an opportunity for Min-joon. Normally, he would keep agonizing until he got inspired, but not this time. He was given two jars of inspiration constantly springing up. Namely, Kaya and his gastronomy level 9.
His conversations with Kaya always inspired him. Kaya had a big influence on him leveling up.
And his culinary world was rooted in Kaya from the beginning, so it was natural that each and every word of Kaya’s was the source of a constant nutrient for him.
His gastronomy level 9 also helped him a lot. After reaching it, he began to find what he had not seen until then. And the stuff that looked original to him became great ingredients for him.
“A dish with no main ingredients…”
However, sometimes, no matter how much inspiration he had, it was meaningless when he was caught up in a fragment of shallow inspiration. A few days ago, the keyword that came to his mind while he was conversing with Kaya was such an example. ‘A dish with no main ingredients.’ That keyword got stuck in the minds of the two.
Come to think of it, he didn’t come up with other inspirations well, and even if he did, he didn’t want to pay attention to that inspiration, for this was the recipe idea that the pair felt most attracted to.
“Chef, wouldn’t it be better to just refine what you made last time? I wonder if it was pilaf ravioli. It was really delicious,” said one of the cooks at the Paris branch of Rose Island.
“No. I’m going to show a signature dish that can shock everybody at the venue.”
“Why are you stubborn?”
“Well, because I want to…”
During the Paris cooking contest, the chefs in the Paris branch learned a new fact about the Min-joon pair. He was usually checking, measuring, and calculating in cooking, but at the most important moments, he always followed his mood, which was also the same with Kaya.
Honestly, it seemed to them that what the pair chose as the theme was not appealing at all.
A dish without main ingredients? Of course, there were such dishes as fried rice and stew. In other words, it was good for home cooking, but it was not suitable for a dish to be presented at the cooking contest.
Of course, Min-joon and Kaya knew it. And they didn’t intend to make simple home food.
They devised the concept and recipe, but they felt rather vague about its specific details.
“Hey, isn’t it because you have so many main ingredients or no main ingredients at all?”
“That’s a very philosophical question.”
“It’s a philosophical question, but answer it non-philosophically. I hate philosophy.”
“Uh, honestly, this is a very difficult problem. Okay, let’s get started. We are going to make French cuisine now, and we want to give the impression that there is no main ingredient, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then, let’s think about why and how you get the impression that there must be a main ingredient when you eat French cuisine.”
“Because it’s simple.”
Kaya was good at answering questions, although she found it difficult to sort out her thoughts. He asked again, looking at her, “Simple?”
“As you know, French dishes are like that. They just cook the main ingredients in their own recipe and then serve it with sauce. That’s it.”
“And the main ingredient is always meat.”
“That’s right. No matter how expensive and valuable ingredients they use, they think the meat is the main no matter how small it is in the dish.”
“So, do you want to think outside the box right now?”
“Hey, it’s me who is asking!”
Min-joon and Kaya got engaged in a heated discussion like that.
After all, Adrian, a chef at the Paris branch, stopped commenting and left.
Min-joon muttered in a low voice, “There shouldn’t be any main ingredient.”
“So?”
“Let me take a hamburger as an example. The identity of a hamburger is determined by one patty, right? It doesn’t matter what kind of cheese or bread is served with the burger. What matters is whether the burger has chicken patty or beef patty in it. .”
“Right.”
“Now, we’re thinking of removing the meat patty from this hamburger. But you know. “A hamburger without patties is actually an unfinished product.”
“It’s terrible just to think about it. So, what’s the alternative?”
“You can’t remove the meat patty. But at the same time, you can’t just have the meat patty as the main ingredient. We can think of the alternative in two ways. Reduce the amount of the meat patty or increase other ingredients .”
“Well, it’s not our style to reduce it.”
“More precisely, it’s not a modern culinary style.”
When the quality of meat was poor due to the distribution process or slaughter problems, they tended to put more emphasis on the taste of the sauce. But in modern times, when they supply quality meat stably, people tend to think it was a sophisticated and luxurious dish to bring out the taste of the meat itself best.
Min-joon and Kaya totally agreed with that opinion. They didn’t have to kill an existing good taste in order to bring out another taste because they thought it was a chef’s job to bring out all the tastes and harmonize them perfectly.
So, Min-joon said in a low voice, “You make a patty in a way that they don’t feel it’s a patty.”
“How?”
“Let’s crush the patty. The taste will remain the same, but you can’t see it. In that case, the real taste comes from other ingredients, not the patty.”
With his eyes sparkling, he said, “Let’s make a patty hamburger without patties.”
Kaya was silent for a moment. However, it didn’t take long for her to smile in satisfaction.
She nodded, crossing her arms.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Their most unique challenge began in Min-joon and Kaya’s cooking experiences.
