Chapter 105 - Cooking Style (3)

“But even if it’s a meal for your family, don’t forget about us. Although it’s for your family, you must make dishes that are objectively advanced in order for you to remain in the competition.”

Cho Min Joon sighed. This mission was to his disadvantage. Kaya and Anderson could easily make home dishes that would suit his family, but Cho Min Joon had to make Korean dishes.

At the same time, if he wanted to satisfy the judges as well… It wasn’t an easy mission at all. Since they were food critics, he could ignore the likes and dislikes toward ingredients such as tofu and rice cakes, but still…

He didn’t see this mission coming. He didn’t remember it. Was it called the butterfly effect? The fact that his presence changed the flow of the missions… It made him feel proud yet disappointed.

“Good luck, Kaya!”

When he turned his head to the voice, Gemma was shaking her fist in the air. Since her fist couldn’t be completely clenched, it didn’t look normal… But Kaya smiled brightly. She didn’t seem to be embarrassed by her little sister at all.

“I’ll make you something delicious. Believe in me.”

“I believe in you!”

After hearing Gemma, the other family felt like they had to cheer as well. When Cho Ah Ra shouted, “Good luck, Min Joon!”, Anderson’s parents, Fabio and Amelia looked at each other. Amelia spoke in a proud voice, “What are you doing? Cheer for him.”

“Wouldn’t you cheering for him give Anderson more motivation?”

“I married you because I pitied the way you put yourself down, but this isn’t the time or place.”

“What? You’re the one who confessed first. You can’t say stuff like this on TV.”

“… Forget the cheer. Just be quiet.”

Anderson spoke in a tired voice from below. He thought he could avoid the couple fights at least within the Grand Chef house.

Joseph smirked.

“You’re still the same as always, Fabio and Amelia. Your son is in the semi-finals. What do you think?”

“If he doesn’t win, we’ll kick him out of the house.”

“Ha, then what if he wins?”

“Then we’ll still kick him out. He’ll be able to make a living then. It’s a matter of how well he’ll be able to support himself once we kick him out.”

“What do you think about this, Anderson?”

“If I’ll be kicked out no matter what, does my opinion really matter? I might as well just move out now.”

Amelia’s eyes turned sharp. Anderson turned away. He then continued in a low voice, “And no matter what my parents think, I’m going to win this thing and prove myself. That’s not so that I can move out. It’s so I can stand on my own two feet.”

“… Isnt’ that the same thing?”

Anderson’s eyes shook for a moment. Anderson wondered, ‘is it?’ He then coughed and looked away.

“I’m sorry, Joseph. Our boy is still young.”

Anderson’s eyebrows spasmed when he was called a kid, but he didn’t react. Answering her would only make things more tiring. Amelia was even harder to deal with than Kaya. A very tiring mother. What a difficult life he was living.

“What knid of food do you want Min Joon to make?”

Emily approached Lee Hye Sun and Cho Ah Ra and asked. The interpreter whispered in their ears, and Cho Ah Ra responded. She spoke in English, but it was very lacking, “To be honest, it doesn’t matter. Hm… How do you say it? Food’s territory… Oh, not territory. My brother is good at making a variety of food, and… Hm…”

“Just speak in Korean.”

Cho Min Joon said with a smirk. Seeing from the way Lee Hye Sun looked at Cho Ah Ra like a typical Korean mom, Cho Min Joon realized she was going to get a new English tutor as soon as they got back home. Cho Ah Ra spoke in a dispirited voice. This time, in Korean.

“There’s no nationality in our household, so it doesn’t matter what he makes. It doesn’t matter if it’s not typical home food, but French food might be a little too much for us…”

“Did you hear that, Min Joon? What do you think?”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Cho Min Joon have a short answer. Only Kaya’s family remained. Allan approached to ask a question, but paused to look at Gemma. She was shaking back and forth as if it was difficult to even stay still. Allan approached and asked in a soft voice, “Do you like Kaya’s cooking?”

“I-I love my sister’s food the most…”

Grace patted Gemma’s head as she responded. She gave her so many sad and pitiful looks that Grace’s face was filled with pain and worry. Even her smile looked sad.

“Kaya is very good to Gemma. Oh, she’s good to me, too. She might look rough around the edges, but she’s a kind girl. I wish people would stop misunderstanding her.”

“They don’t. Everyone knows Kaya’s a warm girl at heart.”

Anderson gave a look that said, ‘I don’t see it.’ Cho Min Joon smirked and jabbed Anderson on his side. Anderson glared back, and Cho Min Joon pointed upward with his finger in response. Amelia and Fabio were watching with strict looks on their faces. Anderson spoke in a tired voice, “… I want to run away from home.”

“You’re not home right now though.”

“I just want to get away from them. How’s Korea? Is it nice to live in?”

“I’m not sure. If you’re skilled, you could probably live anywhere. Except for Africa and the Middle East. Let’s stop talking and work on our recipes.”

“Okay.”

Anderson showed a sad look on his face as he continued to jot down notes on his notepad. Cho Min Joon closed his eyes and focused his thoughts. The sound of the judges and his family began to quiet down before it grew silent completely. His ability to focus had been outstanding ever since he was a student. There was a time when he memorized 500 English words in just 5 minutes. But of course, he forgot them all as soon as the exam was over.

‘I need to decide on the category first.’

He didn’t feel comfortable making a course meal. How many Korean families actually ate that way at home? Not even America had that kind of food culture at home.

But he felt like if he made Korean food, he would get disqualified again. No matter how hard the judges tried, they weren’t familiar with Asian food, so they couldn’t help but create a distance from it.

But what fit the situation best was Asian food. He couldn’t do anything extravagant in 2 hours though…

‘Or can I?’

Cho Min Joon looked down at his hands. He had grown as well. When he first came on Grand Chef, he relied on his system half the time, but now, he was able to do a lot of things all on his own. There were just 3 contestants remaining. Just because he knew the answer didn’t mean he could actually get the highest score.

He tried not to think about it, but he felt a sense of inferiority complex. Unlike others, he already knew the answer. He was determined to use it since it was a power he was given, but every time someone praised him for having the perfect palate, he felt more burdened than happy.

He wanted to get away from the burden. He wanted to be acknowledged as a skilled chef. He didn’t need the acknowledgment of a system or the judges. He needed to be acknowledged by his family. The acknowledgment he never received even until he was 30.

‘If I make Korean food, I have to make it as fancy as possible.’

Since it was Korean food, it could easily seem simple, but royal food was different, but if he made all of his dishes fancy, it could look like he was serving his family. He intended to find a middle ground behind a regular meal and a royal meal.

Cho Min Joon went through recipes in his head. At times like these, he realized he had become more skilled. It was the system that evaluated his recipes, but the one who was making them up was Cho Min Joon. He felt himself becoming more familiar with it, and the recipes he came up with were all decent. The lowest score was a 6, and that was quite good.

It wasn’t hard to come up with an 8-point recipe, but that took a long time. After all, the standard of cooking scores depended on the time spent, skill, originality, and much more. The longer it took, the better the score.

There weren’t many 8-point dishes that could be completed in 2 hours. What Cho Min Joon thought of first was a royal table. The table of a king. That was the most ideal Korean meal, but he couldn’t do that. It was impossible for one person to make a 12-dish meal in 2 hours.

No, if he was only making the side dishes, that could’ve been possible, but the 21 dishes didn’t include rice, soup, and steamed dishes. In that sense, he needed another person to make all that in 2 hours. Unless all the materials were prepared ahead of time, it was impossible.

So Cho Min Joon thought about a 5-dish meal. Since vegetable dishes didn’t take so long, he thought 5 dishes were manageable, but he didn’t intend on only making Korean dishes. Like Cho Ah Ra said, they didn’t only eat Korean food at home. What was important was the vibe. The vibe of a Korean meal. As long as he kept that in mind, it didn’t matter if he added Japanese or Chinese dishes.

Normally, he would’ve been the fastest one to come up with recipes, but not this time. He couldn’t. If it was that easy to come up with a 5-dish meal that would obtain the highest cooking score, he would’ve been a judge already.

Lee Hye Sun watched Cho Min Joon in silence. This was her son, but she had never seen him so serious before. Rather than him never having been focused, it was probably her who didn’t pay attention, but she felt weird.

‘… Does he like this path that much?’

She felt sad. Not because her son decided to become a chef, which required a lot of sweat and tears. It was because when he made the decision, he didn’t rely on his parents, but rather approached it in a secretive and cautious way. That could’ve meant that Cho Min Joon had matured… But when parents saw their children grow up, they felt proud and sad at the same time.

While she watched Cho Min Joon nervously, the judges announced the start of the mission. Lee Hye Sun and Cho Ah Ra continued to watch Cho Min Joon cook. He picked out the ingredients so quickly that they worried that he was being careless, and when he used the knife, they were in awe.

He was completely different from when he was in Korea. He was stable and very fast. When they saw him on TV, they thought they sped up the video when he was chopping with a knife, but that wasn’t true. Cho Min Joon was so skilled now, and it could be clearly measured by his knife skills.

“Mom, when did Min Joon practice all that?”

“Good question.”

Cho Min Joon couldn’t hear them. They were speaking quietly, and Cho Min Joon was very focused on his cooking.

A 5-dish meal. It normally included rice, soup, stew, kimchi, etc… in the most complicated form possible, but Cho Min Joon didn’t care about that. After all, he didn’t even remember what kind of dishes were usually included. He didn’t need to remember either. No one here would criticize him for not following tradition.

Cho Min Joon was making a total of 8 dishes. Rice, beef soup made with cilantro, pepper paste stew, marinated grilled beef slices, chicken legs made with homemade masala, grilled mackerel with chili sauce, pak choi, and vegetable glass noodles. It wasn’t a typical Korean meal, but it was more about the harmony of flavors than the form.

The formation score was 9, and the average cooking score was 7.3. It wasn’t perfect, but he did the best he could. He also put his heart into it. As soon as Joseph’s voice rang, Cho Min Joon stood up straighter than he ever had.

“That was a long mission. It’s possible that this competition could become the first step in your careers, but for the person who wins this thing it could become 5 or even 10 footsteps.”

Emily continued,

“No matter what happens today, you’ll become great chefs, and the reason is simple. Rather than evaluating your dishes, I’m looking forward to simply enjoying them. Chefs that make a food critic excited. There aren’t many chefs that I look forward to.”

Cho Min Joon looked up for a second. He saw his mother and sister smile with nervousness. The final elevator to the finals was coming up. 1, 2, 3.

“We’ll begin the evaluations.”

And then the doors opened.