“It’s me.”
“Ah, Min-joon!”
Michael smiled broadly as if he was so moved by Min-joon’s calling him because he found Min-joon uncomfortable to deal with in many ways.
Min-joon opened his mouth, clearing his throat.
“It looks like a normal grilled mackerel, but you said you undercooked it, right?
“Right. It may not seem like a big deal, but that one thing will decide everything. It’s a taste that you can’t find in sushi, tataki, or grilled meat. Or you may find the taste in all of them.”
“Hmm…”
Min-joon did not ask further because he didn’t want to put off eating by asking more questions.
‘Cooking score is 7.’
His dish was great. Even compared to the steamed mackerel that Francesca made, his dish was just simple. It was just grilled mackerel, pickled ginger, seasoned with soy sauce, and wasabi. It was a typical Japanese cuisine, which they could find easily in any restaurant.
Nevertheless, his cooking score was 7.
‘I wonder how it tastes…’
His heart pounded a little. Min-joon lifted up a piece of mackerel that was cut into thick pieces. Its blue shell was stained black, with greasy fishy oil on it.
Looking at its cross-section under it, it was cooked moderately up to the middle point, but it was almost sashimi from the middle. So it was more cooked than the original tataki.
In other words, it was cooked medium-rare, or more precisely, almost rare. Since Min-joon always preferred to eat fish completely grilled, this kind of cook was rather unfamiliar to him.
‘I wonder if he properly removed the fishy smell…’
Obviously, Michael used some lemon to get rid of the fishy smell. But Min-joon wondered if the strong smell of mackerel, which might have come back after it was grilled with low heat, bothered him. But the moment he grabbed a bite of the mackerel’s flesh with wasabi and soy sauce, he realized he didn’t have to worry about it. At that moment, the savory flavor of mackerel spread through his mouth, followed by the scent of the sea.
‘This is great…’
To be honest, Min-joon couldn’t help but admire it. It was delicious. If ordinary tataki brought out the explosive aroma of the sea, this grilled mackerel brought out the delicate aroma of the sea. It really didn’t tolerate the slightest error, so it struck the perfect balance.
Min-joon looked at Michael, who, in turn, also looked at him with his eyes twinkling. He found Michael rather uncomfortable to deal with, not to mention his cuisine.
But Min-joon felt he could not ignore Michael and his cuisine. At first glance, his dish looked nothing but ordinary grilled mackerel or tataki. If Min-joon hadn’t known about his future, he might not have shown so much interest in his dish.
But he knew. Even the system was whispering into his ear that the mackerel wasn’t quite as common as he thought. And such a whisper was right, as always.
Min-joon didn’t say anything. Then he turned back and looked at Kaya and Joseph. If he expressed his opinion on that dish now, the two could not feel an unexpected pleasure like him. So he could not do that mean thing.
Kaya and Joseph did not question why he was silent after trying Michael’s dish. Of course, they were curious, but they knew they could find the answer when they actually tried it.
‘Well, I’m really looking forward to his dish, too.’
Thinking like that, she stepped forward. When judging a chef’s skills, Min-joon’s judgment was always right, to her surprise. She didn’t know why. As a matter of fact, there was nobody who failed to live up to her expectations among those who Min-joon said had great cooking skills.
“Michael, Min-joon has lots of expectations of you,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ve felt it, too.”
“Honestly, your dish is pretty disappointing when I look at it quickly. Is it because you are smart? Your aesthetic sense is not good at all.”
She pointed her finger at the dish on the plate. Michael’s cooking looked sloppy and even shallow. For example, wasabi was scattered randomly on the corner of the soy sauce, and the soy sauce inside the wasabi looked quite thick because wasabi melted properly.
Grilled mackerel looked the worst. It seemed Michael didn’t know if this place was a cooking venue or a camping site, given the messy plating. Parts of the skin and flesh were crushed here and there because they were roughly removed from the grill, and the crumbled pieces of meat were placed on the plate disorderly.
Michael said with a giggle, “Well, I didn’t pay attention to plating because I used to serve my customers with grilled mackerel with this kind of plating.”
“You don’t have to pay attention to good plating?”
“Nope, because all of them liked it after eating.”
As a matter of fact, those who actually tasted it showed fantastic responses after trying his mackerel dish. And that was why he didn’t pay much attention to the plating of his dishes. He found their unexpected surprise after trying his dishes was quite fun.
“If you’re thinking about opening a restaurant, you’d be in trouble without good plating of your dishes.”
“Well, I’m not really thinking about something grand like a restaurant.”
Kaya’s eyes narrowed. She felt good about his confidence and relaxed attitude. All the participants needed to be alert and nervous here as if they were new recruits in the army. But Kaya didn’t like his relaxed attitude. Other participants were desperately trying to put out their best dishes today, but obviously, he acted as if he didn’t care about them at all. It was natural that Kaya felt bad about his arrogant looks.
‘Well, I’m going to give you zero points if your dish is not good.’
Grumbling deep down, she dipped the mackerel in soy sauce and put it in her mouth.
At that moment, she could understand why Min-joon was silent.
‘Gosh, this is really fantastic…’
She felt shocked, but she had to admit that his mackerel dish was so delicate and delicious that it could be confused with Min-joon’s. If Min-joon made a mackerel dish in a complicated way, Michael was the opposite. He chose simplicity in cooking and that over simplicity at that.
If Min-joon had made the same mackerel dish, he would have improved the wasabi sauce somehow in a different way. He would have made it even better than this.
However, it was rather unfair to expect someone like Michael who participated in the Grand Chef for the first time to come up with the same recipe as Min-joon’s, for Min-joon was not an ordinary chef, but one of the top-class chefs in the world.
“As for this recipe, I think it took you some time to come up with it.”
“Well, not necessarily. I did some sampling about when people liked the taste of the sea in fish the most, and how the Maillard reaction worked on fish. I thought I didn’t have to waste time too much if I found it out. After that, it’s just literally a matter of calculating the cooking time.”
Michael kindly explained his way of cooking in detail.
Kaya smiled with a weird smile, thinking, ‘Stop talking bullshit!’
That was why she didn’t like someone like him who was highly educated because they tried to brag about something whenever they had a chance to do so.
Kaya was about to say something when she heard Joseph clearing his throat behind her. Since Min-joon and Kaya showed unusual reactions, he seemed to try Michael’s mackerel dish as soon as possible. Giving up her idle thoughts reluctantly, she stepped aside.
Joseph tried the mackerel right away without saying much to Michael and exclaimed, “Oh, oh!”
“Wow, how can you bring out such a fantastic taste with this ugly plating? What an irony!”
“Well, I’m cooking because of that reaction like yours. Does it taste good, friend?”
“Yeah, very good. I didn’t even think I would enjoy this taste from mackerel. Actually, it’s a taste I’ve always felt, but this kind of taste is the first I enjoyed. I really don’t know how to describe it.”
Joseph praised Michael’s dish by making a big fuss about it. Watching Joseph, Min-joon thought that Joseph was a very pure person. He was the master chef in this field, and everyone respected and admired him. Even though he could be conceited and arrogant, he was humble and looked pure like a child in this situation, even though he was a judge.
Joseph just liked and loved food. In fact, from his point of view as a judge, Michael’s dish was not that great, but he was delighted and happy just to see the great potential in Michael’s dish.
Perhaps the way Min-joon looked at cooking was partly influenced by Joseph. When he worked as a chef in Korea, Min-joon didn’t find as much enthusiasm or love in other chefs than Joseph. Of course, it didn’t mean that they liked to cook. They became chefs because they had the right aptitude for the field and chose cooking as their career. But they were more interested in what they could get as chefs than cuisine itself, such as their stable future and social prestige, etc.
In that respect, Joseph’s innocence was really cool in Min-joon’s eyes. The most important of his ‘cogwheels’ was none other than his cuisine because everything would stop the moment it came off.
‘How many are there who can like cooking as much as Joseph?’
