But what about Gwen?
“You have to love cooking more than money, success, and happiness. Only then will you be able to win this competition.”
Min-joon knew the way he spoke to her was a bit buttery.
But he continued, not caring about it, “I’m cheering for you. I’m not cheering for you because I want you to win. I hope you can like cooking, so ..”
He wanted to tell her cooking should be the reason she could live for, but he felt this sounded too cheesy, so he didn’t say it.
Did she understand him?
She looked at him with a perplexed expression. She felt strange. It seemed that she found him the most comfortable among the judges, but it was a different story when she reflected on what he just told her.
‘Does he hate me?’
She felt hurt when she thought so, but it seemed that he didn’t hate her. If he had hated her, he would not have said he was cheering for her.
Actually, his criticism of her was nothing compared to his venomous comments on other chefs earlier. At least, she didn’t hear him giving him painful feedback such as ‘I can’t count on someone like you who cooks as selfish as you as a chef.’ ‘You said that you didn’t make it well because you didn’t have enough time. Do you think your excuses make any sense?’ ‘Didn’t you say you wanted to be a chef? But what is this? Did you just say that to promote yourself?’
What Min-joon pointed out was Gwen herself, but her attitude toward cooking. In other words, he advised her to love cooking. When she heard that, she was so embarrassed because she felt he took a peek at her innermost feelings. Even though she said she liked cooking, she simply thought cooking was the last thing that she could turn to.
In other words, she was more interested in the benefits of cooking than cooking itself. She expected to change her life through cooking, but she had never seriously thought about what kind of cuisine she would cook and how she would impress her guests.
Min-joon was right. She was a failure as a chef. She could not imagine seeing such a person succeed as a chef. If Tom Brady had hated American football, would he have been a football legend today?
At first, she was upset with what he said, but she soon understood him. She was discouraged, and she felt worn out. And finally, she felt determined. She opened her mouth, looking at him who was about to turn as if he was done talking to her.
“Can I just like cooking?”
“Pardon?”
“I mean, if I just like cooking, can I win?”
She knew she asked a pretty childish question, which made her blush. But he didn’t blame her for asking such a silly question. Rather, his expression was so serious that she even felt embarrassed.
He said quietly, “At least I can help you.”
“Are you going to help me?”
“But I have no intention of helping someone who doesn’t even like cooking. So tell me when you’re sure you can like cooking. Tell me when you think you like cooking naturally.”
He gave her a piece of his mind, then he said coldly but kindly, “I’ll help you then.”
She didn’t even think about how he could help her. She just stared blankly at him. She felt like she was encouraged a lot, but she didn’t know why exactly. He only said he could help her. That was all. Nonetheless, she felt she was empowered.
She could know why a little later.
‘Yeah, this is the first time somebody offered to help me…’
That was true. It was the first time that somebody reached out to her. Although there were people who sympathized with her, none of them helped her. A drug addict was not the subject of sympathy in this country because there were so many. Mostly, they just passed by with negative prejudices when they saw such addicts.
Her suffering was a trivial tragedy that nobody cared about. They didn’t have to pay attention to her because there were too many people like her in this country.
But Min-joon was different from them. He cared for her.
‘Oh my God…’
She felt like she was moved to tears. But she calmed down, biting her lips. She felt she was the most shallow participant among others here, so she didn’t want to be a sight anymore.
Like Min-joon said, she immediately went back to her seat. Fortunately, other judges didn’t call her. They quietly called the next participant.
“Peter, it’s your turn.”
It was Kaya who called him. She looked at him with an interesting expression. She had no bad feelings toward him. She knew the one who had bad feelings about somebody else was a loser. And it was Kaya who gave him a resounding defeat in the past.
Peter was ready to show her something that could surprise her.
‘You seem to have bad feelings about me…’
Thinking like that, she looked at the mackerel that he just put on the table. She didn’t have to think long after finding out how he cooked the mackerel, which was soaked in red spices.
Min-joon looked at the system window right next to the mackerel.
[Tanduri Mackerel]
Freshness: 95%
Origin: (It is hidden because there are several ingredients)
Quality: High
Cooking Score: 7/10
‘He chose good fresh mackerel.’
In fact, the participants often used fresh mackerel, but its quality was not as good as he expected. Some of them picked mackerel without telling good from bad ones in the pantry because they thought the mackerel there was all of the same quality. Some of the participants trimmed the mackerel wrong.
Either way, Peter’s score on the system showed that Peter was flawless from start to finish, such as the selection of mackerel, handling of mackerel, and its cooking process.
‘Alright. Let me see how well you cooked it.’
If somebody asked Min-joon if he really liked Peter, he would probably answer no. To be honest, Peter wasn’t that easy to like. Min-joon was not the type of hippie who said everybody was worth loving.
But if he was asked when he disliked Peter, his answer was no. To him, Peter was someone that made him feel sorry. Min-joon thought Peter was a man who didn’t watch what he said, someone with no excellent cooking talent. He was a man that needed Min-joon’s sympathy.
More precisely, he was the type of man that Min-joon ignored.
What Peter chose was none other than tandoori.
“It’s provocative,” Hugo muttered in a low voice.
Most people who watched Season 3 of Grand Chef, including the judges, knew what that meant. When they were cooking as a team mission, it was Peter who completely ruined the tandoori chicken breast, so he got blamed for that a lot. People criticized him, saying he had a bad personality and mediocre cooking skills. It was at that moment that their perceptions of Peter spread widely.
“So, you want to save the mistake you made with Tandoori with the same tandoori cooking?”
Kaya asked. As a judge, the way she asked him was rather rough, but nobody pointed it out because that was her typical way of asking.
Peter replied quietly, “I wasn’t good enough back then.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But just because I was not good back then doesn’t mean I’m not good enough now and in the future,” he said, looking at her.
Kaya was a little surprised at his stare. She thought he had quite a bit of resentment and hatred toward her, but he didn’t. There was some sort of yearning in his eyes, which she could not express properly.
“I don’t need to talk a lot. Just try it. I’m waiting for your evaluation.”
“Okay.”
Kaya was the first to try it. She was the one who confronted Peter because of tandoori chicken in the past when they were in the same team at the Grand Chef, so it seemed that she felt a sense of responsibility for his challenge.
Peter’s tandoori mackerel retained only its peeled flesh, with its head and tail cut off. The short, thin cut in the center allowed its fishy oil to come out appropriately, and its skin looked slightly burnt because it was baked with the sauce.
‘Yeah, it’s important that this dish tastes burnt.’
As a cook, this was the most confusing moment because it was not easy to tell whether it was the color of the skin, or if the sauce or the skin was burnt, or if the sauce just discolored properly. Compared to tandoori chicken breast, the difficulty of cooking tandoori mackerel was much higher. Could Peter, who couldn’t even cook chicken breasts properly, cook tandoori mackerel?
‘Well, let me check it out by trying it.’
In her expectation and disbelief, Kaya cut the mackerel with a fork and knife. The skin was crispy, and the flesh was torn softly and elastically, like pork that had been roasted for a long time in the oven. Just a mere touch alone made her feel better.
And when she put a piece of tandoori mackerel in her mouth. Kaya realized he came up with a great tandoori mackerel.
‘Wow!’