Chapter 531: Overcoming One’s Limit (5)
Kaya said with a sigh, “Gosh, I’m afraid I’m going to gain weight if I eat all this.”
“Don’t think about your weight when you are eating.”
“You know what? If you don’t, you will gain weight before you know it.”
While saying so, Kaya scooped the hemp cream soup again and put it in her mouth. Then she immediately made a strange expression as if she was melting into the taste. Although she was concerned about gaining weight, she seemed to have already forgotten her diet, given that she kept scooping the soup, overwhelmed by its taste.
‘She’s really enjoying it.’
While he was thinking so, Min-joon suddenly recalled a trivial fact. In other words, when Kaya ate food, she didn’t deal with it analytically. She just enjoyed the food before her eyes. She didn’t waste time thinking about it. Instead, she relied on her instinct and senses while eating.
Actually, he had been envious of it for a long time because he could not taste the food unless he used all his senses, fully focused. At the same time, he was envious of her. As far as enjoying food was concerned, he could do it like her. But he wondered how she could reach gastronomic level 10 without trying the food analytically.
‘Yeah, this is why she is different from me from the start.’
Kaya didn’t have to go through what he had to think about or the path he had to walk because she already knew the answer, she had a perfect gastronomic view from the start, and she instinctively knew about the composition of the taste and how their tongues affected their brains.
But Min-joon did not agonize over how to catch up with her capabilities like that. His goal wasn’t her anymore. His goal was similar yet different from hers at the same time.
‘She needs to be perfect.’
There was something he naturally guessed when he learned the conditions of a perfect gastronomic level. In other words, it was the difference between cooking levels 9 and 10.
In fact, just one level of difference was overwhelming and cruel.
‘I should make Chef Rachel’s level perfect.’
That was probably the only way for her to catch up with Daniel.
At that moment, a familiar person came to them. It was Justin. After briefly giving Min-joon a nod, he said in a polite voice, “This is the bread you can have with the dish. I’ve made this rye bread with apricots and figs. And finally, this is an English muffin.”
“How are you doing, Justin?”
“Oh, I’m doing well.”
As if he didn’t expect Min-joon to ask him such a personal question, Justin was surprised for a moment, then responded with a smile. According to the latest rumors, Justin finished working as a stage cook and got promoted to a full-time chef here. Perhaps that was why he came out here to cut the bread for them in person.
Some might downgrade Justin’s position, but they were wrong because Rachel took even cutting bread very seriously. Only when the chef met her standards for making bread in terms of its thickness, temperature, and others, could he serve the customers with the bread with the taste she intended.
Shortly after they were served bread, the next dish was served. It was a lettuce dish made of stone stones like dumplings, stuffed with foie gras and escargots. The lettuce was moist and sweet as if it was steamed, but the inside of the lettuce was completely different. Not only foie gras, which was cooked well over the fire to bring out the ultimate taste but also escargot, which tasted fat when they chewed it, seemed like one piece of meat from the beginning.
Of course, there were not only two ingredients inside the dish. Potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes made from confits with various herbs stimulated their appetite.
When Min-joon put the truffles served with lettuce in his mouth, he could feel all the scents overwhelmed by the scent of the truffles in real-time, so he had no choice but to exclaim admiration.
‘Gosh, there’s really nothing I have to find fault with.’
Come to think of it, it was natural that he could not. Actually, he couldn’t find any shortcomings when he stopped by Dave’s restaurant. Rachel was a few steps ahead of Dave as far as cooking was concerned. Even though she was absent from the cooking world for ten years, she was still as competent as before.
Min-joon could confirm the best of her skills once again when the gratin was served next. The gratin was filled with pumpkin zucchini, pumpkin gnocchi, crab meat, and a sauce made from a mixture of cream and masala. When he scooped the truffles that sprinkled over the brown-cooked cheese with a spoon and the stretched cheese touched his lips, he instinctively felt that his rating approach was wrong from the beginning because it was impossible that Rachel’s dishes could go wrong. She was not stupid enough to miss what was wrong when she found out her cooking was wrong.
For example, when he used to work for her, he once took a dish he just made to Rachel. It was perfect from his point of view, but she pointed out the problem of the dish that he failed to notice while making it.
‘But I should not act with reckless bravado.’
He knew that if he failed to find out the clue to perfect Rachel’s level, he was not the only one who would suffer. His failure would mean giving up his intent to bring hope to her. But he could not let it happen under any circumstances.
If he could not find any shortcomings in her dish, he would have to find a way to make it more beautiful, for no matter how beautiful a woman was, her looks would be completely different, depending on how she wore clothes.
So, he had to find the right clothes for her now.
‘Let me think about it systematically. Let me reflect on it slowly from start to finish. Let me check out how each of her dishes tastes in my mouth. Yeah, the composition of the ingredients is good. I feel the garnish is a little redundant, but she has done it on purpose. It’s just a matter of her choice. If so, what is the difference between her and Daniel?’
While he was lost in thoughts like that, they kept serving him and Kaya the dishes. While trying and checking all of them one by one, he tried to find out the gap between the two giant chefs’ cooking levels.
The lasagna grazed with langoustine juice using pork feet and langoustine as well as the stir-fried arugula was quite impressive. The different juices that burst in his mouth at every bite, had the most aggressive taste of all the dishes she served today.
All the dishes that came out after that was the same. The red mullet, deep-fried with almonds around it, was on the sliced lime and salad, topped with olive pickles. Since the almonds were finely ground like flour, it made him feel like he was eating almond-flavored flour. When that crispy skin blended with its moist skin, he even smiled, feeling proud that he once used to cook right next to her.
Right after that, a tenderloin steak with a bunch of sliced truffles followed by tartar made from rump was served. The caviar on top of the tartar was almost stuck into the perfectly minced beef, and the tastes were also tightly mixed, bringing out a mystical taste that was neither caviar nor tartar.
And the last dish before dessert was corn puree. He thought it was corn puree. However, a steamed oxtail was hidden right under the puree that was sprinkled with truffle powder.
When he bit the cow’s tail infused with the flavor and warmth of the corn, Min-joon could not help but be surprised. It was not uncommon to serve corn puree with beef, but the natural taste of the corn was really brought out as much as possible in this dish.
When one felt strawberry milk was more like strawberry than eating strawberries, this corn puree tasted more like corn than just corn. So much so that he felt like even the beef he was eating was actually corn. That was his impression.
“Yeah, this is it!”
Murmuring like that, he looked at Kaya. She immediately understood what he was trying to say.
“Oh, you have found the answer!”
The cooking score for the steamed oxtail with corn puree was 10. In fact, this wasn’t the only dish with a cooking score of 10. However, he felt his dish was the best among Rachel’s dishes today. Considering that the combination of corn puree and the steamed oxtail wasn’t original at all, such a score was pretty surprising. The moment he tried this, he had no choice but to realize how competent she was. When he ate other dishes that she served, he was just amazed to find how much she could bring out the flavor of foie gras and how well she used truffles.
However, the moment he was served this dish, he realized that what he admired until now was nothing.
“Wow, this is the best of her cooking!”
“Yeah, I think she poured her everything into this dish and pushed her skills to the limit.”
To examine that dish itself, it was not strange at all to say it was actually Daniel’s dish with a cooking score of 10.