Chapter 30: A well made dish and good food (1)

It would be cruelty for the losers, but at least, Grand Chef treated it’s winners really well. Right now, it was the same on using fresh ingredients. All the participants, excluding the disqualified ones, could use fresh ingredients without restrictions.

A pantry that had almost all of the ingredients excluding foie gras and shark fin. The ingredients warehouse was no different to heaven for those who liked to cook.

It was an obvious thing for the participants to grab the knife a couple of times in a day. They made experiments without holding back, and those experiments were eaten by the broadcasting crew, but were mostly eaten by themselves.

And that was the reason Chloe wanted to cry.

“What can I do. I think I got fatter.”

Chloe said that while grabbing her belly fat. Jo Minjoon looked at her as if he couldn’t understand her. Because in his eyes, she just looked slim. Because of her lightly tanned skin, her body seemed as resilient as a black person.

However, Jo Minjoon didn’t particularly point that out. Because he knew well that whenever you talked about weight with a girl, there would be nothing to gain with that. But Marco didn’t seem to be like him. He looked at Chloe with a dumbfounded expression.

“You….. got fatter?”

Chloe looked back at Marco and put an awkward face. Marco’s barrel like body that was seated on a sofa, made it look like it was a bath chair. To complain about her weight next to him. It was at that moment. Next to them a grumbling voice could be heard.

“If she says that she got fatter, then she did. Does she have to get as fat as you to say that she gained weight?”

It was Kaya. She opened her mouth with her usual cold expression. Only, she wasn’t looking at Marco but was looking at her handphone screen. Seeing that her eyes twitched at times, she was probably reading comments about her. Chloe sat in the sofa’s arm and started to massage Kaya.

“Why don’t you stop reading the comments? That’s not good for your mental health.”

“It’s okay. This much bad mouthing is something I use to hear all the time.”

Jo Minjoon looked at Kaya and let out a sigh. Even after the first episode ended, she didn’t check the comments about her like that. No, even if she did check, she did it with a lighter expression. However, she wasn’t like that right now. To be precise, it was after yesterday’s second episode got broadcasted.

Grand Chef episode 2 was about the qualifying processes in other regions. Probably, it was going to be like that until episode 3. The important thing was the protagonist of episode 2. Just like Kaya became the main character in episode 1, episode 2 protagonist was Anderson.

And that was a method to originate fervor between the viewers. Kaya Lotus, who comes from the ghetto, and Anderson Rousseau, who grew from an elite chefs house. The colour of the two participants were clearly different.

It was the start of war. Kaya’s fans bad mouthed Anderson, and it was the same otherwise. In the end, both of the participants ended up getting hurt, but fandom tended to flow to the extreme.

Jo Minjoon just looked at Kaya. She was still young, but she was already grown up. They say that you won’t get any business in front of ill natured comments, but Jo Minjoon believed that Kaya would accept that naturally. However he didn’t like that she kept on looking at the comments. Jo Minjoon said. It was a magic word that could make every one to get up.

“Let’s eat lunch.”

“…..lunch? It isn’t even 11:30? It hasn’t even been 3 hours since I had breakfast.”

“If you keep cooking then you will get hungry. And Chloe, you are still slim. So there’s no need to be like that. Let’s go.”

Jo Minjoon talked like that and slightly glanced at Kaya. Kaya didn’t seem to catch because she was busy looking at the smart phone, but Marco and Chloe understood Jo Minjoon’s gaze. In the end, Marco let out a sigh and got that heavy body up from the sofa.

“What are we going to eat?”

–

The reason Marco, Chloe and Jo Minjoon got close was simple. Team mission. After that day, those three were always together. And it wasn’t like that just for their team. Most of the participants tended to get along with the others they were together with on that day.

However, Kaya was an exception among those. She couldn’t help but be it. Because she ended up cooking a dish that wasn’t favorable for the team on a team mission. And even people that weren’t with her on the same team couldn’t help but find it burdensome. In the end, Kaya became no different than a loner.

The reason Kaya grouped with Jo Minjoon’s team was unexpectedly not beacuse of Jo Minjoon, but because of Chloe. Jo Minjoon was worried about Kaya’s pride and couldn’t even get near her, but Chloe approached her with her unique bright attitude. She got rejected and approached her. Got rejected once more and approached her once again.

‘Chloe’s personality is really good.’

It was to the point that she made you think that. Chloe was steady. She seemed like someone who couldn’t just leave alone someone who had just gotten hurt. Perhaps, it could be consideration because she teamed up with Jo Minjoon.

The result of that repeating many times is what you see right now. A lunch that was being cooked by people holding a pan like a family. Jo Minjoon rather enjoyed this situation.

Those four were standing in the kitchen and each making a dish. It was a method that was copied from the course cooking sloppily. Jo Minjoon made aglio e olio, Chloe made potato soup, Kaya was in charge of grilled scallops. And it was souffle for Marco.

Aglio e olio was a simple dish and varied depending on the chef. Olive oil acted instead of the sauce, so the noodles texture, salt seasoning and the strength of the aroma was clearly differentiated. It was a dish that wasn’t roughly made unlike with tomato sauce.

Of course, it was a really comfortable dish to challenge in making because the ingredients used were only olive oil, garlic, cayenne pepper and spaghetti noodles. The reason koreans made aglio e olio first and the most was because of that reason. While making a dish you weren’t accustomed to, it was natural to think about using cheaper ingredients thinking that you could fail the dish.

It was also through cooking pasta that Jo Minjoon earnestly got the hang of cooking. Precisely speaking, it was through aglio e olio. And that was quite a good lesson. Because you could approach more analytically about the inherent flavor of the oil, and the aroma of the garlic, cayenne pepper and etc.

Jo Minjoon poured oil and salt in the boiling water. The salt was to season the noodles, and the olive oil was for the noodles to not get sticky. And then, took out the spaghetti noodles. Normally for koreans, when they thought about pasta, they would think about spaghetti.

And it was also the most suitable noodle to make aglio e olio. If you used a flat and long noodle like fettuccine, then the greasy flavor of the oil was felt strongly. There weren’t different kind of pastas for no reason.

Jo Minjoon put in the spaghetti in the boiling water. His mood got better while looking at the noodles spread like a petal. He put aside the boiling pot and took out some garlic.

When koreans made aglio e olio, the biggest difference was the amount of garlic used. If you took into account the love for garlic, then Korea was a country that didn’t get pushed back by any other country. However, it wasn’t the traditional way to cook aglio e olio. For aglio e olio, it was 1 clove of garlic per person. But there were many cases where koreans used not one clove, but the whole garlic.

It was because they couldn’t enjoy boring flavors. Because korean cuisine was characterized for its strong flavor. And fortunately, Jo Minjoon considered that he was overseas. The garlic cloves he sliced were exactly three.

Even before the spaghetti got properly cooked, Jo Minjoon heated the pan and poured a good amount of olive oil. And then, put the garlic and pepper and started to cook it. And at that moment, the noodles were cooked perfectly to the al dente state. If it was compared to meat, then it would be medium rare.

Jo Minjoon used a sieve to throw the water and separate the noodle. Then took a spoonful of the used water and mixed it. If you poured the used water like this, it seasoned it a bit, but it also enabled the oil to mix well with the noodles. There were times that you didn’t put in water, but that was because the noodles were watery enough.

When the water boiled down a bit, he put in a bright red peperoncino pepper. Based on the person they would fry garlic together with pepper, but Jo Minjoon didn’t like that flavor. It was a good method to save the flavor if you fried the noodles at the same time.

At this point it was almost completed. Jo Minjoon opened his mouth.

“I’m almost done, what about you?”

“The scallops are also almost done. But i’m going to finish cooking it with a torch so it doesn’t matter.”

Kaya’s voice could be heard. Jo Minjoon opened his mouth once again.

“Chloe, and you?”

“I’m going to finish at the same time you complete your dish. Even so, you need to cool down aglio e olio. I think that it would be fine to eat it at that time.”

He didn’t particularly ask Marco. The meringue dough that was going to be used for the souffle was already made beforehand, so if you put it in the oven at the right time, then it was over. However, Marco was preparing in case he also got a question, but seeing that nothing was heard, he put a long face and hanged his head down.

Of course, it was a situation Jo Minjoon couldn’t see. He turned off the burner’s fire that was burning weakly, and shook the pan once. The slippery noodles seemed quite delicious.

He started serving the noodles in four dishes, and sprinkled parsley powder. People used to simply think that parsley powder was used for decoration, but unexpectedly, parsley powder was an herb that had a thick aroma. It was also a herb that couldn’t be out of aglio e olio.

He didn’t put parmesan cheese. Putting cheese in aglio e olio was a debatable problem even overseas. Compared to Korea, it was similar to putting egg in ramen or not. That’s why he put the parmesan cheese in a separate bowl.

Jo Minjoon looked at the aglio e olio. Unfortunately, the cooking score was 6. He let out a sigh. It was difficult to get 7 points without using a special recipe. Nowadays, he started to get more thoughts about cooking skills. It was because the 7 points recipe, when cooked by Kaya, became an 8 points dish.

Of course, it was meaningless to envy a skill he didn’t have yet. Jo Minjoon opened his mouth.

“I’m done.”

“Me too.”

Chloe laughed and brought the whole pot. It would be quite a weird sight for those who didn’t know much about western culture. Because they don’t allow many hands going for one dish because it’s unhygienic.

But putting the pot in the middle and serving themselves was quite common for westerners. At least, the United States was like that. There were many cases where they served the spaghetti with tongs.

Jo Minjoon looked at the soup. And at that moment, he couldn’t help but get perplexed. The cooking score was being shown. But the score was weird. Maybe there was a mistake with the system, or even if there wasn’t a problem, it was a score that didn’t convince him. Chloe tilted her head and asked puzzled.

“What, why are you looking like that?”

“No….It’s nothing much.”

Jo Minjoon smiled awkwardly and replied. However, there were still many doubts left in front of his eyes.

Chloe’s potato soup was 6 points.

< A well made dish and good food (1) > End

Translator’s note: Regular chapter! Thanks for reading and your support!

Regulars being on: Tue, thurs, sat and sun

Translator : Subak

Proofreader : Maled