The chef competition is a hurdle that Long Xiangtian must go through. Only by passing this hurdle perfectly can he lay a solid foundation for the future development of the restaurant.
Liu Mei also knew that this competition was very important to her, so she tried her best to help Long Xiangtian.
Unfortunately, the last dish has now been decided to be Maoxuewang, but there are still two dishes she needs to prepare before that.
The idea of coming up with this Maoxuewang dish still relies on Liu Mei, but I can no longer rely on him for these two dishes. After all, he is only suitable for making Sichuan cuisine.
The fat man also gave Long Xiangtian a lot of suggestions, but Long Xiangtian did not adopt them. He felt that the fat man's suggestions were relatively one-sided this time.
Because this is no longer the chef competition from more than a decade ago.
Long Xiangtian challenged old opponents whom he had met more than ten years ago, as well as some newcomers who had emerged in the past decade.
It is not easy to win this game, so Long Xiangtian must also use his trump card.
First of all, the three dishes cannot be similar in form, so Long Xiangtian decided to make one dish with soup and one stir-fry.
The remaining dish of Maoxuewang tastes similar to hotpot.
Once this point is confirmed, Long Xiangtian’s next tasks will be much easier.
Although Long Xiangtian didn't have much memory left from his lifetime, he still calmed down and thought carefully about what dishes he was good at cooking.
It is true that Long Xiangtian had already achieved the position of the head of the state banquet during his lifetime.
The dishes he prepared must have all been exquisite, but Long Xiangtian doesn’t have much memory left, so he can’t remember much.
First, he had to search for a dish with soup, which was not an easy task for him!
Long Xiangtian wanted to cook a dish that could highlight the taste of the dish but not his own technical skills.
This way, you won't have that many choices left.
Then he looked at it and decided to use Wensi tofu as his soup.
You see, he had indeed cooked this dish before he died, so he had a relatively broad understanding of it.
However, this dish requires great knife skills, so if your knife skills are not strong enough, mistakes will definitely occur under such tight time constraints.
What he needed to do now was to see if his knife skills had deteriorated, so he asked the fat man to prepare a lot of tofu for him, which was the material for making Wensi tofu.
This tofu is different from ordinary tofu. This kind of tofu is very soft and juicy, so it can be broken with a touch.
It is because of this characteristic that this dish is more difficult to prepare.
And he decided to make this dish just because he wanted to challenge himself. He would just try it now. If he really can't do it, he can just change to another dish.
After all, this dish can get extremely high on-site scores in terms of taste and practical difficulty.
I believe people today will look at him with admiration for being able to cook such dishes.
If you want to get praise from others, you must cook in advance and put in enough effort.
Long Xiangtian paid a huge price to be able to make this dish. He didn't know how many pieces of tofu he had experimented with.
He started from the most basic cutting and practiced his knife skills, and finally he was able to make silken tofu expertly.
He hadn't cooked this dish for a long time, and he had no idea if he could reach his previous level.
You can only draw conclusions after you have actually experimented on your own.
Whether it will be successful depends on his experiment this time. If it fails, Long Xiangtian can only change the category of dishes.
But now it seems that Long Xiangtian is confident that at least the third dish will get a high score. With this stabilizing factor, the other dishes are not particularly important.
For high-level people like them, the winner is actually determined by one dish.
The focus was only on the third dish. If he wanted to get a high score, he must not make any mistakes on the third dish!
Although the first two dishes are not particularly important, he still tried his best to recreate the Wensi tofu of the past.
He had already brought the tofu that he had asked the fat man to prepare for him, so he began to sharpen the knife, because only if the knife was sharp enough could he show his skills.
He first dipped the knife in water, then cut the tofu a few times, and then dipped it in water again. The purpose of doing this was to prevent the tofu that had already been cut from breaking directly on the knife because it was too thin.
Repeat these steps until all the cross sections of a block of tofu have been cut.
Then the next step is to change direction and cut all the cross sections into thin wires.
This step is very important, but also very difficult. If you are not careful, all your efforts will be wasted.
Because the final product should be shaped like a chrysanthemum, it cannot be broken in the middle when it is finally presented. It is okay if it is on the edges, but the middle must not be broken.
Add the broth that has been stewed previously, and this Wensi tofu dish is considered a success.
Long Xiangtian hesitated to cut the meat because he was afraid to do so. After all, this was related to whether he could cook the dish well.
Under the gaze of others, Long Xiangtian finally made his first move.
Long Xiangtian found that he actually had a very high level of skill. After all, after the first cut, Long Xiangtian felt that he was going to succeed, and the next few cuts were still as smooth as the first one.
From this point of view, Wensi tofu is not particularly difficult to make.
For the current Long Xiangtian, what he needs more is to give himself confidence and get back to his former state and be able to reproduce the state of the past.
It was not an easy thing for him. Now it seems that he has at least regained a little bit of his past feeling and can pick up the kitchen knife again.
It takes a lot of determination for Long Xiangtian to muster up the courage to do something that challenges his limits.
Liu Mei knew the psychological pressure that Long Xiangtian was under, because he was also under extremely high psychological pressure when he was the head chef.
After all, every dish I make requires perfection and there cannot be any mistakes. Once there is any mistake, the people who remember me will catch me and use it against me.
And your own chef must rely on continuous improvement to keep his job.
Right now, Long Xiangtian is practicing how to make Wensi tofu. Many famous chefs have signed up to participate in the chef competition.
The fat man continued to inquire how many people would participate in the competition.
They don’t know whether there are any strong new contestants in this chef competition, but one thing is certain: although the catering industry has stagnated in the past decade or so.
However, there are still many experts in the catering industry who are constantly improving. This alone can make Long Xiangtian feel more stressed, because what awaits her is by no means easy.