God of Cooking

Kaya looked quite satisfied. To be honest, she didn’t expect much change in Min-joon. She hated the way he was too kind to everybody around him. Of course, it didn’t mean that he was hypocritical. He was literally too considerate. He could not see people getting hurt. So he couldn’t even imagine that he would hurt anyone even if it was necessary.

“Some meat tastes good when it rots, and some meat needs to be pounded with a knife for a taste. But no matter what it is, it’s just frustrating to see him petting it every day.”

But he was different now. Min-joon no longer wanted to look like an angel to everyone. It was not clear what changed his mind. Maybe he was fed up with something like ‘good man syndrome,’ or he was not happy about those chefs who turned away from their responsibility as a chef because they were blinded by the success they could achieve as a chef.

The thing was, Min-joon was different from before. For example, he would not have expressed his dissatisfaction in the past, but he was now actively expressing it. Kaya liked his change like that.

After checking out all the participants, Min-joon stood on the podium with a rather uncomfortable expression on his face. Among the participants, there were more chefs who were competent than those who were not. But some of them who didn’t care at all about the customers bothered him a lot, against whom he took punitive action. Those who left the venue with gloomy expressions after they had their entry numbers forfeited by Min-joon numbered almost ten.

With a bright smile, Kaya asked, “Wow, you’re being pretty hard on them. I didn’t think you would kick them out.”

“I don’t want to waste time here. I don’t want to try their dishes anyway because what they have made is so poor that I can’t call it food. How can I try it? If they want us to try their dishes, they are betraying us.”

“You’ve already made them regret coming here. How can you expect them to be considerate of you? How can you rationalize yourself?”

“Because I’m old enough,” Min-joon shrugged with a grin.

It was true he grew older, but his career in the kitchen taught him some of the virtues of discipline. He learned that if he always treated junior chefs kindly, he would not control the kitchen work as he intended. Now he could fully understand why some hot-tempered head chefs who often appeared on TV had to be so mean to their junior chefs.

“You’ve got a lot on your shoulders, Min-joon!” Joseph said, smiling at him.

Min-joon felt a bit awkward when he looked at him proudly as if looking at his son.

Kaya cast a mischievous glance at him, and he turned his eyes away from her.

The participants were almost done making their dishes for evaluation.

Joseph asked, “Is there any chef you are looking forward to?”

“Well, I wonder if Michael Ohr might come up with a great dish.”

“His dish doesn’t look that special. Isn’t it just an ordinary Tataki?”

“It looks like it’s more cooked than Tataki. I already told him it’s not tataki.”

“Um… is he going to bring out the taste of the raw tataki by slightly cooking its inside as well as outside?”

“I’m curious about that. I wonder how you can bring out the taste.”

Min-joon looked at him calmly. Joseph glanced at Kaya.

When Joseph asked who she expected would be the winner, she said, “Peter.”

“Is it because of your fond memories of him?”

“What are you talking about? I’m just curious about what has made him participate in this competition,” she said with a smile, shaking her head.

Of course, her relationship with him could never be called good. But that didn’t mean she wanted to treat Peter unfairly.

She was going to praise and encourage him if he made a great dish. In any case, that would verify that he bet everything on cooking. However, what if he didn’t come up with any good dish and tried to mock her and Min-joon?

At that moment, Min-joon calmly announced that the time was up.

“Raise your hands, everyone. The time is up.”

Even when he said that, some of the participants couldn’t easily take their hands off the plates because they wanted to put finishing touches once more.

Watching them quietly, Min-joon found himself feeling strange. Now he was in a position to tell them to start or stop cooking. His announcement to them was as authoritative as their head chefs.

‘That’s why the position is important.’

He now understood June’s feelings and Janet’s.

“Which one do you want to try first?’

“Well, how about Francesca over there? I’m curious about her cooking skills, too,” Kaya replied.

Francesca was a single mother. Aside from her interest in cooking, she was a woman who bet everything on cooking to turn a new leaf into her ruined life. More precisely, it was correct to say that she was not cooking to come back successfully, but she just felt that cooking was the only field she could succeed in at all.

Just like the people around her felt sympathetic about her, Kaya also felt sorry for her. At the same time, Kaya was cheering for her deep down. Of course, she didn’t mean to just give good grades to all the dishes she made.

Min-joon okayed Kaya’s suggestion right away.

“Francesca, come forward. Bring your dishes.”

Francesca put the plates down on their table nervously.

“Sure. I made it with couscous.”

Watching her quietly, he asked in a low voice, “Do you know that it looks normal?”

Francesca bit her lips. As a spectator, he might have felt sorry for her dish, but as a judge, he could not. It was not because he got carried away with the power of a judge. It was because of the responsibility that came with his position as a judge.

A judge was supposed to evaluate the candidate. So he had to look at the candidate’s strengths as well as his or her weakness. His main job was not to downgrade the candidate but to help him or her know their place correctly. If the judge was there only to flatter and praise the candidate, he was no more than a judge.

Francesca said, “Well, I have never made unusual dishes.”

“I’m not saying you should not make ordinary dishes,” he said softly. “If you make your ordinary dish extraordinary, you have a chance of winning. Then, what do you think? Do you think your cuisine has something different from others?”

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t know about other chefs’ cuisine, and to be honest, I don’t know exactly how good my dish is.”

She was obviously not confident at all. But he didn’t blame her for that. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t confident either when he first participated in the Grand Chef competition. So it would be ridiculous for him to blame her now.

He said, “You have to be bolder. Francesca, I know you have a reason to win. but your winning has nothing to do with your reason to win. Someone who is well qualified, not desperate like you, is supposed to win this competition. People say winning the Grand Chef is a miracle, but you can never get that miracle by luck. And the one who needs it the most won’t get it, either. In that respect…”

He picked up a spoon and continued, “Now, this first mission is almost like the finals.”

“I see…” Francesca nodded.

Min-joon put her couscous and mackerel in his mouth. Peeled and steamed with soy sauce and hoisin sauce, the mackerel had a firm texture for a steamed one. It looked like she steamed it after slightly roasting it first. The couscous itself tasted very ordinary. The grains of rice were only changed to couscous, but compared to the fried rice they commonly ate at home, it didn’t feel much different.

He said, nodding at her, “It’s delicious. It reminds me a lot of my childhood.”

Her cooking score was 6. The fact that she got a 6-point dish with such an ordinary dish meant that at least she did the best she could with this recipe. Her sense of cooking was not bad. She didn’t know much about cooking, so he couldn’t cook luxurious dishes, but she was more than qualified as a chef.

But Min-joon did not mention it to her. If he praised her now, she might start to become overconfident. She needed to feel that she was inferior to others, so she could grow more.

Kaya and Joseph also said the same thing as Min-joon. She didn’t make a great dish that exceeded their expectations, but it didn’t betray their expectations. Since the main competition was around the corner, her dish was good enough to make her advance to the next rounds.

It was time for the judges to choose the next candidate for evaluation. That was the judges’ prerogatives. No matter how quickly they sampled the candidates’ dishes, they would inevitably get to try their dishes that got already cold. So, the judges tended to treat the kind of dishes first made by the most likely winners.

So Min-joon called Michael Ohr as the next candidate.

“Oh? Did you call my name?”

As if he didn’t expect the judges would call his name, Michael pointed his finger at himself, with his eyes open wide. Then he brought his dishes with a bright smile.

He said, “Calling my name right now means you have great expectations of my dish, right? In other words, you think my dishes might taste the most delicious. Who called me?”