Universe Infinite Canteen

(Correction: The last round should have seven contestants, which has been revised, sorry)

The four judges were in a stalemate for a moment, and finally Chef Gaggan Anand took the plate first.

He stretched out his tongue and licked it.

There was no way, since he was a judge, he had to fulfill his duties as a judge.

He licked from top to bottom, and the first thing he licked was the fluffy brown shell of the coconut.

As a result, he felt as if something was pricking his tongue, and the roughness was just like the real coconut shell.

Gaggan Anand couldn't help but exclaimed in surprise.

When he licked the coconut meat, it immediately switched to a tender, smooth and soft touch, with a faint coconut fragrance, and finally the coconut juice inside, which was sweet and refreshing.

Gaggan Anand then tasted the coconut leaves and coconut husks, and the tastes were different.

Unconsciously, he had licked the coconut on the plate clean, but he was still not satisfied, so he licked the words written with coconut powder under the plate.

With him taking the lead, the other three judges could only lick it.

Soon, someone discovered that licking from the top down and licking from the bottom up actually tasted different. Even though they were both coconut shells, the tastes were slightly different in different places.

In the end, all four judges licked everything on their plates without exception.

You should know that most of them only ate one or two bites of the other dishes before, and only Sun Mei's modified noodles were relatively novel, so they tried a few more bites.

This was certainly related to the fact that there was only sauce on Malu's plate, but it also takes courage to lick the plate clean in public.

Without any words, the four judges have proved their praise for this dish with their actions.

"A masterpiece that is comparable to "The Ends of the World"!" commented Olette Huppert.

"I think this dish is better than "The End of the World". Even if we don't consider that "The End of the World" has a longer preparation time, this "Coconut" uses simpler colors but completes a richer taste experience, which is more difficult to cook."

Yoneda Hajime said, "Yes, this dish has surpassed "The End of the World" in terms of technique."

"Indeed," Gaggan Anand asked Malu, "Is this your improvisation?"

"It is indeed the first time I have made this dish."

"It is really a terrifying talent."

Following Malu on stage was Kawano Masaaki, who made a caviar and coconut French toast.

The so-called French toast generally refers to toast wrapped in egg liquid and milk and then fried. Kawano Masaaki removed the milk and added coconut milk instead.

Let the toast have a sweet coconut flavor, put caviar and water celery seedlings on the top, and let the saltiness of the caviar neutralize the sweetness of the toast to achieve a balance.

Qi Shanzhu was the last to go on stage. She was very nervous because Malu and Kawano Zhengming, who were in front of her, were very strong and received praise from the judges.

As a comparison, the shortcomings of her dishes would be magnified.

Sure enough, after tasting her soybean paste and coconut Mont Blanc, the four judges only asked two questions and let her go back.

So far, the first round of the competition has ended.

The staff opened the ballot box and began to calculate the scores of the seven contestants.

The most relaxed one among them was Malu, with his hands in his pockets, and Sun Mei was biting her nails.

She was not worried about the score, but she couldn't figure out how Malu could improvise such a difficult dish in such a short time.

As for the rest of the people, except Luo Junkang who was still expressionless, everyone else's face showed a trace of anxiety to a certain extent.

Fortunately, the host did not let their audience wait too long and announced the score on the spot.

Ma Lu got a perfect score of 5 points, Sun Mei got 4 points, Kawano Zhengming also got 4 points, tied for second place, Luo Junkang and Fan Yixin got 3.25 points and 3.5 points respectively, and Qi Shanzhu only got 3 points.

Just when Qi Shanzhu thought she would be eliminated and was going to accept it calmly, she heard Di Supara's score again - 2.25 points.

Di Supara's face changed suddenly, although he and Luo Junkang and Fan Yixin had a collision in this round, the three of them made coconut rice together.

But Di Supara didn't think he would lose to the other two. Not long ago, when he was interviewed by the female host, he said that his score would be around 4 points.

Unexpectedly, he only got 2.25 points.

Olette Huppert explained, "Your mango and coconut sticky rice is indeed very authentic, but you made a fatal mistake."

"In order to save time, you should have used a pressure cooker to press the sticky rice, so that you can finish this dish that usually takes an hour and a half to finish in less than half an hour."

"But this will make the taste of the sticky rice worse, not so full and elastic." Rocky Chen added.

"We can understand that this is your strategy, to compress the time of the first round as much as possible to prepare for the later, but unfortunately, the other five chefs performed very well in this round, so..."

Supara's expression was gray. He obviously knew that the two judges were telling the truth, so he could only swallow the bitter fruit.

There was no time to feel sad about Supara's departure. The second round of the competition had already started again, and the timer on the table started moving again.

The remaining six contestants also devoted themselves to cooking again.

The second dish Fan Yixin chose was Laksa, a noodle dish originating from Malaysia. It is also very popular in Singapore and has gradually evolved into a national delicacy of Singapore.

Fan Yixin replaced the common prawns in Laksa with Hainan small blue dragon, and used lobster shells and clams as the soup base.

Then she crushed tomatoes, chili peppers, lemongrass, shallots, ginger, and the Malacan she brought with her, and fried them, and then added a lot of coconut milk to make the Laksa sauce.

After surviving the first round, Luo Junkang also recovered some vitality. This time, he moved quickly and chose a grouper.

Next, he showed his knife skills, sliced ​​the fish into the shape of a peony, soaked it in salt water with onions and ginger to remove the fishy smell, increase the firmness, and coated it with starch and fried it in a pan.

…………

Thirty minutes later, Qi Shanzhu took the lead in taking a picture of the timer. It was not because she didn't want to be more meticulous, but mainly because she spent too much time in the first round, and there were only 41 minutes left on the timer.

The second round took another 31 minutes, leaving only 10 minutes. Regardless of whether she could pass this round, she would basically be eliminated in the next round.

Soon after Ki Sun-joo, the other five chefs also finished cooking.

Ki Sun-joo was the first to come up this time. She made fried dumplings.

The staff placed the plates in front of the four judges. Ki Sun-joo, who was standing by, crossed her fingers and put them in front of her face. She was so nervous that she almost dared not look at the podium.

After eating, Mita Hajime spoke first, "Interesting, you actually thought of using red snapper to make dumpling skins, wrapping tofu inside, and... fennel?"

"Yes, but it's pickled. I brought it here specially this time." Ki Sun-joo nodded.

"What's the sauce underneath?" Olette Huppert asked curiously.

"Coconut milk mixed with Korean vinegar and chili sauce."

"It's a bit complicated, but the sour taste goes well with red snapper, including tofu, and fennel. You seem to be particularly good at matching and balancing complex flavors."

Gaggan Anand also said.