“Well, I didn’t expect it,” Daisy said.
Deborah, who was lost in thoughts, turned to her side, stunned.
Smiling at her, Daisy gave her a cup of coffee.
Deborah smiled awkwardly and took it.
“What do you mean? You mean I asked to get tested first?”
“I know you don’t like to volunteer first in a situation like this.”
“Well, you can’t do only what you like,” Deborah replied with a smile.
She drank the latte coffee with a straw. It tasted like bananas.
“Are you sure you can do it well?”
“I wouldn’t have volunteered first if I hadn’t been confident.”
“Oh, I guess you already have a good recipe in your mind!”
Instead of replying to her, she smiled again. She then put her lips to the straw.
Every chef at Rose Island was pretty busy last year, but she was especially so.
“I wanted to fight and overcome my inferiority complex by all means,” Deborah said.
Daisy nodded at her words silently because she knew why Deborah agonized and struggled until now. She also knew how serious Deborah’s resolution was this time.
“Do you know what I did every morning when I woke up?”
“What did you do?”
“I just had to give up,” Deborah muttered cynically. “I had to give up every morning. I had to give up the best of my potential, my dream, ambition, pride, and happiness. Even though I wasn’t unfortunate, I buried myself in misfortune. In other words, I was living alive in a gravestone.”
Even though it was all behind her now, she seemed to find it difficult even to recall those days, given the traces of deep despair in her voice.
“So I’ve given up the job of giving up now.”
“Oh, you mean you stopped giving up.”
It was a funny expression. Daisy nodded with a smile as if Deborah’s expression was interesting.
“You know what? They take it for granted that June or Dave will win this competition. They say the championship is reserved for either of them. But I don’t want to be treated as an extra participant in this competition.”
“I feel the same. Who would be happy with that?”
“So, I intend to take it from them,” she said in a firm voice as if she was really serious. “I don’t want to wait to see them claim all the credit. How about you? Are you going to watch them as a bystander?”
“Hey, I’m of the same mind!” Daisy said with a meaningful smile. “When I have a jewel in front of me, how can I not stretch out my hand?”
“Then you understand my feelings, right?”
“Everyone will understand you. I’m here to praise you since you have decided to get tested first. Volunteering first must be the most difficult decision, but you have made it. Good job!”
“Hey, don’t talk as if you’re my older sister.”
Deborah grumbled, but she didn’t feel bad.
Daisy glanced back at the kitchen in the auditorium. Deborah was already preparing to cook the dishes that required a long time, such as ripening or sous vide.
Daisy asked, watching Deborah’s kitchen staff moving busily, “What is your course? What’s the point of your course?”
“Well, my point is…”
***
Time had passed. When the D-day came to have Deborah’s dishes tested, other chefs seemed more nervous than her. It was natural that they showed such a reaction because the ball got rolling. When the ball kept rolling and reached them, they had no choice but to feel nervous since they had to accept the ball anyway.
But Deborah was calm. Her preparation was far from perfect. But she had prepared everything she could. She had been really doing her best to prepare for this competition. She went the extra mile further cultivating her cooking skills day by day, so she even felt each day was so short.
Someone might say she was stupid, suggesting that no matter how hard she struggled, she would not be able to narrow the gap between her and the two most promising winners within a year. They might ask her why she was struggling when she knew such an insurmountable gap?
But Deborah thought that if she didn’t struggle to challenge them, she would just end up staying where she was for the rest of her life. So, it didn’t matter to her whether she could achieve something today or not. What mattered to her was that she made the effort to challenge something, and she moved a few more steps than before to achieve it.
Deborah looked at the chefs working for her sharply. It wasn’t just for Min-joon and Rachel that they had to make the dishes for right now. They also had to make dishes to serve the head chefs.
At that moment, June muttered, watching Deborah’s kitchen staff getting busy preparing the dishes for dozens of people here.
“Deborah is doing much better than I think”
“Yeah, I guess so. She looks much more stable than before.”
“Well, we can find out how much she has improved by checking her dishes.”
June could feel Debroah’s improvement just by watching her manage her kitchen staff. Deborah was not the old Deborah anymore. But what about her cooking? Cooking wasn’t something that a chef could change overnight just because he or she wanted to change it. Of course, chefs could make use of their accumulated experiences to come up with a new recipe, but they couldn’t make something they have never experienced.
It didn’t take long for the amuse-bouche to be placed on the table first.
The amuse-bouche prepared by Deborah was on a plate like a wooden chopping board. It was a macaron. Of course, it was quite far from the general sweet macaron.
Deborah explained to them in her calm voice.
“I’ve made this macaron meringue by mixing beet juice. And the cream inside is mackerel pate. The one on top is pickled cucumber.”
“Macaroon on mackerel pate…”
It was an interesting combination. Min-joon looked at Rachel at the moment. The two judges picked up the macaron and tasted it. He clenched his fist, groaning with pleasure.
It was a taste that he could not find in Deborah’s cooking before. More precisely, the Deborah that he used to know couldn’t bring out such taste. As far as he knew, she was passive and diffident in everything. If so, how could she have brought out this taste? It looked as if every element of the macaron was begging for the judges’ attention.
In fact, Min-joon didn’t expect a lot when he saw her dish. It wasn’t because he underestimated Deborah’s cooking skills. Macaroon, pate, and pickles. It was a simple combination. Of course, amuse-bouche was more desirable to maximize the taste of one or two things rather than mixing most of the flavors, so most people were usually interested in the taste of amuse-bouche alone.
But Deborah’s amuse-bouche was different. Her macaron was different. She was different.
With the gentle scent of the beet smelling from the bottom, the taste of the mackerel pate strongly stimulated his tongue. She made the meringue so perfect that whenever she chewed the macaron, the mackerel pate permeated into its cracked texture, exuding a ridiculous richness along with the freshness of the pickles.
He wondered if he could taste the same when he ate it with a big lettuce wrap. It was obviously big enough for just one bite, but he felt he was taking a mouthful of it.
‘Man, she is a tough competitor…’
It was not only Deborah who would share her feelings. Many of the head chefs here must have participated in this competition with the same mindset that she had. At that moment, the burden of evaluating them fairly weighed him down. So, he smiled secretly because this competition was going to be fun.
Of course, it was not Min-joon alone who felt so. All the head chefs who tasted the beet macaron and the mackerel pate had no choice but to be surprised deep down because they were familiar with her cooking. But this was not a matter of her cooking level. Since they were well aware of the characteristics of her cooking, they clearly knew how far she could go in innovating or improving her dishes. In other words, they knew her limits.
However, they could not find her limits in this dish because her cooking was different. Of course, she lost her original cooking style. She just gave up her stubbornness. She used to be stuck in her own world where she insisted on cooking or bringing out the taste in her own way, but she now gave up that stubbornness that remained in her unconsciousness.
As chefs, they knew better than anyone else how hard it was for a chef to give up his or her stubbornness. That was why they were even more surprised. They never thought that she could grow so big and so fast like now because they always remembered her as a chef who was childish and stubborn.
But Deborah’s change wasn’t found in the amuse-bouche alone. Next came another amuse-bouche. It was a dish with artichoke balut, walnut foam, and walnut powder. It was a dish that clearly showed how she changed her cooking style. It looked simple, but at the same time, it clearly showed the best of what she wanted to bring out from the dish.