Food Wars, My Dishes Don't Just Shine

To be precise, these kinds of home-style dishes are his forte.

On one hand, I cook this a lot on a regular basis, and on the other hand, Leonora Nakiri loves it, she absolutely adores it. After eating so much high-end cuisine, you always crave something more ordinary.

At the Nakiri family.

In addition to serving as Alice Nakiri's teacher, he is also the Nakiri family's personal chef, and his years of experience have given him a new understanding of home-style cooking.

And because the types of home-cooked dishes are fixed, he will modify the dishes so that Nakiri Leonora and Nakiri Alice can eat different flavors every day.

These improvements do not damage the dishes themselves, but they give them flavors and textures that they don't usually have, bringing a novel experience every time you taste them.

Meanwhile, Bai Yuan's skills have steadily improved with each innovative dish.

"I see. There's nothing I can do about it. Bring it on, whatever version of braised pork you make, I'll take it."

Bai Yuan is skilled at making all kinds of home-style dishes and has spent time studying them, which is something Lanxi Jon didn't expect. He thought Bai Yuan was only good at high-end cuisine.

But thinking about it carefully, it makes sense. After all, Shirai spent so much time in Denmark, without joining any organization, and was mostly cooking for the Nakiri family...

Being good at home-style cooking seems reasonable.

He is truly an all-around genius.

He is not only very skilled at high-end cuisine, but also at making ordinary dishes. I really don't know what his weakness is.

Lancy Jon couldn't help but sigh, but he had no reason to complain, after all, he had chosen this theme, and it was the culinary theme he was best at.

If he can't even beat Bai Yuan in his specialty, cooking, then he'll accept it. A lack of raw skill can't be compensated for by clever tricks.

"Let's have lunch first. Erina, you guys don't need to stand at the door anymore, go get some chairs and sit down."

Seeing the high-spirited Lancy Jon, Bai Yuan helplessly pushed away the food in front of him, his meaning couldn't be clearer.

"That's right, haha, let's eat first, haha!"

Upon hearing Bai Yuan's words, Lancy Jon realized what was happening, chuckled awkwardly, then sat back down and began to eat heartily.

"Teacher Bai Yuan, who is this...?"

At the doorway, Erina Nakiri stepped forward with a puzzled look in her eyes, scrutinizing Lancy Jon. However, she quickly realized her mistake and awkwardly scratched her head.

As a junior, looking at an elder with such eyes is, in every sense, impolite.

If she hadn't been extremely curious about this guy and felt like she'd seen him somewhere before, she would never have done something so rude.

"You must be the eldest granddaughter of the Nakiri family. You look just like Senzaemon. I even held you when you were little. I wonder if you remember me."

Upon hearing Erina Nakiri's words, Lancy Jon also turned his gaze to her, and then vaguely recognized some familiar faces.

"Do you know my grandfather?"

Upon hearing Lanxi Jon's words, Erina Nakiri paused for a moment, especially after learning that he had held her when she was a child, and her expression became awkward.

If the other party wasn't lying, then her inexplicable sense of familiarity with him could be explained. However, it was so awkward to say these things in front of Teacher Bai Yuan!

“We’re old friends, but we haven’t seen each other much in the past ten years or so, since we live quite far apart. I was planning to stay with him for a while after I retired.”

Looking at Erina Nakiri's familiar face, Lancy Jon felt a pang of nostalgia. These old guys had a good relationship and used to joke about having their offspring together. But later, feeling that arranged marriages were bad, they tacitly stopped mentioning it.

Of course, although we have a good personal relationship, if we actually meet, there will inevitably be a lot of banter, after all, that's how we've been doing all these years.

"It's both unexpected and reasonable. Both of them are giants in the culinary world, so it's quite normal for them to know each other."

Bai Yuan was somewhat surprised by what Lancy Jon said, not expecting that the other party knew Nakiri Senzaemon, even though the two were worlds apart.

But thinking about it carefully, it makes sense. The two are of similar age and are both culinary masters, so they must have had a lot of interactions.

"A titan of the culinary world..."

As Bai Yuan finished speaking, everyone present was shocked, including Erina Nakiri. They had thought he was just an ordinary old man, but they hadn't expected him to be so capable!

"Why are you so surprised? He's a judge for the school exchange competition, just not in charge of our region."

Seeing the surprised expressions on Erina Nakiri's and the others' faces, Bai Yuan couldn't help but retort, "Aren't all the old men we meet here highly skilled in cooking?!"

If your cooking skills aren't good enough, you wouldn't even be allowed in here.

"Although I had some guesses, I was still shocked when I actually heard it."

Yoshino Yuuki revealed their true thoughts. In fact, when they saw Shiroyuki personally receiving them, they already knew that his identity was not simple.

In fact, an ordinary chef probably wouldn't even be qualified to challenge Bai Yuan, let alone become his brother. This also shows that he is no ordinary person.

"I never expected him to be such a remarkable person."

"Anyway, let's eat first."

As they chatted amongst themselves, everyone took their seats and began to enjoy the exquisite cuisine before them.

Most of the dishes were made by Alice Nakiri and Lia, while Shirabuchi was only responsible for a small portion, and that small portion of the dishes visibly disappeared.

Only after this small portion of the dishes disappeared could the other dishes come into the view of the other people and be consumed by them.

This time, however, the speed was noticeably slower than at the beginning, and by the end, quite a bit was left over.

It's not fair to say that Alice Nakiri and Lia's cooking is bad; after all, they are top-tier chefs.

Bai Yuan's cooking was just so delicious that he didn't want to waste a single shred of vegetables!

I used all the sauce from the braised pork to mix with rice, which is why I left the other dishes uneaten; I simply didn't have any extra room in my stomach.

Everyone acted normally in response.

Such things have happened quite often in daily life. In order to prevent everyone from wasting food, Bai Yuan always controls the amount of food he cooks.

This allows everyone to try other people's cooking, and afterwards, they can give brief feedback, pointing out areas for improvement, thus achieving the goal of improvement.

Today, because of Lanxi Jon's arrival, Bai Yuan made extra dishes on a whim, which is why there were more dishes than could be finished.

Although everyone was still a little hungry, looking at the food in front of them, they didn't have the idea of ​​eating until their stomachs were bloated.

After they had eaten and drunk their fill, Erina Nakiri and the others went to clean up the dishes, while Alice Nakiri and Lia, who had been in charge of cooking, lay on the sofa and watched TV.

Bai Yuan sat at the dining table with a plate of peanuts and ice-cold beer in front of him, chatting casually with Lancy Jon about what had happened recently.

About half an hour later.

With a dozen or so empty beer cans in front of him, Lancy Jon patted his stomach and stood up, then looked intently at Bai Yuan.

"How should I put it? I'm in good shape right now."

"Fight."

Meeting Lancy Jon's gaze, Bai Yuan clearly knew what he wanted, so he softly uttered the words, his eyes blazing with fighting spirit.

For him, cooking competitions have little to do with the chef's level; they are more about the clash of ideas.

The outcome of the competition had little impact on Bai Yuan. He was more concerned with whether he could learn something from cooking, and even the smallest improvement was still progress.

Soon, the two arrived at the neatly prepared kitchen, where all the ingredients needed for the meal had already been prepared by Xiao Zhou half an hour after the meal.

It's time to cook.

"So I'll be in the east section of the kitchen, and you'll be in the west section. Taking this center line as an example, we won't interfere with each other during the game."

Although it was just a simple home-cooked meal, Lancy Jon still adopted the attitude of a professional competitor, and you could feel the seriousness in her eyes when she spoke.

"I have no problem."

Looking at the range Lancy Jon had drawn, it was indeed a perfect balance, with both players having enough room to showcase their abilities.

At the kitchen doorway, the women put down what they were doing and peered through the door frame at the performance inside.

Chapter 428 The Essence of Meat? The Difference Between Steaming and Boiling!

"Teacher Bai Yuan is moving!"

Seeing Bai Yuan begin to act, Yoshino Yuuki, who was peeking out from outside the kitchen, called out softly, her eyes gleaming with excitement.

Upon hearing her voice, the others also turned their gazes toward her. At that moment, a piece of high-quality pork belly was placed on the cutting board in front of Bai Yuan.

"The spine and belly area are both unacceptable; since it's a competition, we need to be strict..."

Looking at the pork belly on the cutting board, Bai Yuan's hand moved over it, and then he cut off the tenderloin and belly parts of the pork belly.

These two parts are slightly inferior in taste. They are fine for home-cooked braised pork, but using them in a competition will affect the final grade of the dish.

It must be the middle piece, and only the middle piece, a proper three-layered, multi-colored piece.

If the quality were even better, it would be five-layered or seven-layered pork belly, but that's not available here right now, so we can only use three-layered pork belly to cook braised pork.

Although the ingredients were somewhat subpar, the deliciousness of the dish depended more on the chef's culinary skills.

Bai Yuanchao put clean water into the pot, added scallions, ginger, star anise, and a piece of cinnamon, then put in the pork belly, covered the pot to remove the fishy smell and set the shape.

"It seems like a fairly standard approach."

Watching Bai Yuan's skillful movements, Lancy Jon was not in a hurry. He raised his hand to cut the short ribs into pieces and added onions, celery, carrots and a few bay leaves to the bowl.

Sichuan peppercorns, fresh thyme, a touch of salt to enhance the base flavor, and most importantly, dry red wine—Lancy Jon took a deep breath, and a satisfied expression appeared on his face after smelling the fragrance.

Because it's a dish made at home, and she doesn't have much professional equipment or time to prepare, Lancy Jon decided to make a home-style version of braised short ribs in red wine.

As for whether this will affect the taste, the answer is undoubtedly yes.

But Lancy Jon had no choice but to do that, since he had to finish the dish before he could give it a score; no matter how delicious it was, it would only get zero points if it was cooked after the allotted time.

Competing and cooking in a restaurant are two different concepts.

In a restaurant, you can prepare dishes a day or two in advance to satisfy customers, but the theme of a competition is random, so you can only prepare after the competition starts.

This means that many dishes that take a long time to prepare cannot be completed during the competition.

For example, the most classic Fujian dish, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, requires at least seven days to prepare according to traditional methods, but a competition won't give you seven days to prepare.

This is also why these elaborate dishes are rarely seen in official competitions.

Thus, simplified cooking naturally emerged.

Even when a skilled chef creates a simplified version of a dish, the taste will not be significantly different from the original, and in some aspects, it may even be superior.

High-caliber chefs like Lancy Jon can certainly achieve this as well.

"Add a little honey to soften the meat..."

The hotel version of beef stew with red wine requires the beef to be marinated for at least a day, but since it was a home-cooked meal, Lancy Jon added a little honey to it.

After all, the main reason for marinating with red wine is to soften the fibrous tissue and remove the fishy smell...