God of Cooking

“Ripe tomatoes...”

Min-joon looked into the tomato compartment and found the sweetest and driest ripe tomato. He also held a tomato in his hand, which had a bumpy shape like a flower. It was a beefsteak tomato with little seeds, which had a texture similar to meat. It was mainly used when the chefs made tomato salads, but what he was trying to make now wasn’t a salad.

‘Let me make a tomato dish that you have never heard about or tasted before in your life.’

He wanted to show what kind of dish he could make outside the framework of French cuisine. He wanted to prove that what they thought was the best actually showed how much they were trapped in a narrow-minded thinking.

Of course, they wouldn’t be able to try what Min-joon and Kaya were going to make today because their recipe was more complicated than they think. Their cooking required more care and attention than mere cooking skills.

“Did you pick all the ingredients?”

“Yes, let’s go to the kitchen.”

“Okay.”

As soon as the two came to the kitchen counter, they boiled buffalo milk in a pot over low heat and added thyme and rosemary to the milk itself so that the aroma of herbs filled the milk. That wasn’t all. Kaya put a little yogurt in the milk to give it acidity and then vegetable rennet, namely an enzyme that turned milk into cheese to make curd, a kind of cheese-like clot.

“We don’t need to worry about cooking time too much. Since the cooking process itself is so easy, we can do it quickly.”

“But don’t let your guard down. We have to get a good score by all means today to humiliate the tomato jerks.”

“So, have you decided to call them tomato jerks? Well, I’m sorry for tomatoes for no reason.”

“Don’t talk bullshit. Chop the tomatoes there quickly. You have to get the tartar texture right.”

“Okay.”

Min-joon took a relatively mature and dried tomato to extract the juice. And he began to crush the remaining tomato to a proper size. Tomato tartar, depending on what one heard, they might think it made no sense because tartar was usually made with meat. However, the texture of tomatoes, which turned dry through aging, was almost indistinguishable from meat unless carefully examined. That was exactly what Min-joon and Kaya aimed for.

‘Let me make them think it’s tomato, but it tastes completely different, but in the end, it tastes like a tomato.’

Min-joon used it often when making pomegranate desserts, namely a dish that belied its real taste.

The human sense was much more subtle than they thought. That was the case with the perfume cup, which was gaining popularity in recent years. The cup made people feel like they were eating the fruit juice just by giving off a specific fragrance of the fruit. And what Min-joon and Kaya were making now was in line with this same logic. The only difference was that people would get confused because of what they see, not smell.

Perhaps, the moment they see this dish, they would think it was just a normal tomato dish.

Even the moment they bit the tomato and put it in their mouths, they would surely believe that it was a tomato. And they were not wrong because the dish was mostly made of tomatoes.

However, as soon as they put the tomato in their mouths and chew it, they would begin to be curious because it would taste differently from the typical texture of tomatoes. Even if the judges trying this dish were the best chefs of France, it would be difficult for them to fully understand the subtle differences in an instant.

And the fact that they couldn’t understand the subtle differences would stimulate their appetite all the more, for people were usually crazy about the taste that was unimaginable and unpredictable, namely the kind of taste that was fresh and unknown.

“Min-joon, give me the tomato.”

“Alright.”

He immediately took out a beefsteak tomato. To exaggerate it a bit, the tomato had a tulip-like shape. What he did with the tomato was to cut its base and extract the juice from the inside. After pulling out all the seeds inside, he immediately started preparing things to put in it.

What he put in the tomato was a tomato chopped in two ways. One was an oven-dried tomato, and the other was a raw tomato, which was relatively juicy. He mixed it with chopped shallot, parmesan cheese, marjoram solution, and smoked olive oil. When seasoned with salt and pepper, the tartar ingredients to put in the tomatoes would be complete.

“Kaya.”

“Well... perfect. We’ve won!”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Kaya, who bit in her mouth the spoon he handed to her, muttered naturally.

Smiling at her, Min-joon began to concentrate on cooking again. Now they had to work on the menu seriously. She took out the seeds from several types of tomatoes, along with mint, basil, and chives to accompany the tomato dish. When she placed it alternately with buffalo curd, this time, he powdered black olive oil with liquid nitrogen and served it with sauces.

They were done cooking. They had about seven more minutes to cook, but they were done. The judges whispered among themselves as if they were surprised then approached the Min-joon and Kaya couple.

“Are you done already?”

“Yeah.”

“You must remember why your score was reduced last time, right?”

“Yes. One of the reasons was that we didn’t make the best of the given time. Well, we admit it last time. At that time, we were given a lot of time, but at the same time, we had to understand escargot first, so we had no choice but to come up with a recipe that we could work on quickly.”

“So, you mean this dish is different from before?”

“Well, it doesn’t mean we haven’t made good use of the given time. We have made the dish so perfect and fast that we didn’t have to use all the given time...”

When Min-joon said that, Sophie swallowed, watching their tomato dish.

She couldn’t completely check how the pair cooked because she was busy checking other participants’ cooking from a distance, but she remembered that they made dishes using tomatoes.

‘I wonder if they can compare with other participants by making a tomato dish without any meat?’

Thinking like that, Sophie looked around.

It was only the Min-joon and Kaya pair who looked so relaxed and composed. Other participants were eager to create something special. Of course, the pair’s tomatoes-based dish was inferior to other participants’ dishes, but it was true that their dish was far from colorful, compared with other participants’ dishes using meat.

Moreover, the only main ingredient Min-joon and Kaya used now was tomatoes. Could they express a variety of tastes with just that? Besides, they suddenly improvised the recipe here in this venue.

It was at that moment that Cho Reggiano came to Sophie’s mind. The dish showed several tastes of the same ingredients simply by using the difference in the aging period and the recipe of Parmigiano-Reggiano. And that was the reason why many chefs around the world recognized his talent when they mention the chef named Min-joon. Understanding the taste meant that Min-joon’s concept of cooking was so complex that ordinary chefs could not even think of comparing theirs with it.

‘Maybe he has made something like Cho Reggiano with these tomatoes.’

She was not sure, but what if he really made the tomato dish like that?’

“Sophie.”

“Oh, pardon?”

“Why are you staring into the tomato like that? Do you want to eat it even now?”

“Haha, it looked a little attractive.”

What Sophie said wasn’t just empty words. Were they supposed to learn plating like that at Rose Island?

It didn’t require any sophisticated plating technique, but this tomato tartar had a more luxurious and elegant atmosphere than any other tomato dish because of the arrangement of tomato sauce, herbs, olive powder, and curd alone. Sophie felt like she was now inside a high-end restaurant by standing beside the dish. She felt Min-joon didn’t have to learn pIating technique anymore at Rose Island.

After that, the judges kept asking Min-joon what kind of concept he relied on for the dish, but he or Kaya didn’t even give them any hint. Why? It was because this was a dish that would maximize their appetite when they ate it without even knowing how it would taste.

Was it because of that? Shortly afterward, when their given time was over, the judges whispered among themselves then one of them announced in a rather relaxed voice.

“Normally, we would have started evaluating your dishes in the due order, but today we’re going to start off with the dish you guys finished making first. Min-joon and Kaya, please come to the front with your dish.”

It was too obvious why they made such an announcement, but Min-joon didn’t feel bad because after all, it showed how anxious they were to try this tomato dish.

Min-joon and Kaya looked at each other.

“You don’t have any regrets, right?”

“You and I never make any dish we regret later, right?”

“You bet.”

Min-joon smiled at her then pushed the cart with the tomato dish to the judges.

With their eyes sparkling, the judges opened their mouths.

“Now, can you explain to us about this dish? What kind of dish did you make?”

“I don’t want to describe this dish in words. Please feel it with your tongue first. It will show you more clearly and accurately how it tastes and why we have made it than me explaining it to you for hours.”

“You’re really stubborn. Okay, let me try it first then.”

The judges lifted forks. Watching them lifting the forks, he gently clenched his fist.

At this moment, he was more confident and proud than any other day in this contest. His cooking score was 9. Considering that he made a 10-point dish before, it might look a bit strange that he was so confident. But he was convinced.

He made the dish with the impure intention of taking revenge on the French protesters who threw tomatoes at the American chefs participating in this contest, but it was also a dish he made with pure enjoyment.

It was really interesting that this dish that he made out of anger had a more fresh and original taste than any other dish he made all his life.

He carefully looked at the judges’ tongues, teeth, moving jaws, and trembling eyebrows when they were trying the dish.

He stole a glance at their confused expressions at the moment.