Mo Bai didn't care whether they understood or not; he returned to the cooking station with a bamboo basket full of ingredients.
"Carrots, potatoes, old ginger, eggs, salted eggs, tofu, yellow croaker, shrimp paste, and crabs?" Sena Hiromi looked at the ingredients Mo Bai took out of the bamboo basket with a somewhat dazed expression.
"What dish is he planning to make? Head Chef Dōjima, do you know?" Inside the viewing room, Sakuma Tokihiko wiped sweat from his forehead. He felt even more nervous than the chefs standing at the cooking stations.
Dōjima Gin also shook his head. Even he, known as "Tōtsuki's most outstanding genius," couldn't make heads or tails of making a single dish out of these ingredients.
"Old Bai, the opponent has fallen into complete chaos," Little Bai continued reporting the battle results.
"Chaos is right. Although this is one dish, it doesn't mean everything goes into one pot." Mo Bai revealed a scheming smile.
After prying open the crab's navel flap with a small knife, he directly lifted the carapace, then peeled away the sponge-like gills until clean.
Repeating this several times, Mo Bai obtained over a dozen preliminarily cleaned crabs.
"Little Bai, it's your turn to take the stage." Mo Bai pulled out the rectangular kitchen knife tucked behind his waist.
"Watch me blind their dog eyes!" Little Bai expressed that he was already thirsting for action.
As the saying goes, if a competition isn't for showing off, it's meaningless!
A cold light broke through the air. Hearing the crisp sound of soft shells cracking, individual cells of crab meat were cut out from the whole crab.
"That knife skill!" Sena Hiromi forgot he was at the commentary desk and suddenly stood up, nearly falling to the ground.
Chapelle's paralyzed face similarly couldn't hide his shock.
Their abnormal states attracted the attention of others at the judges' table. The other judges looked towards Mo Bai and were instantly dumbfounded. Such a commotion at the judges' table naturally attracted the attention of the assessment chefs... The venue fell into a dead silence.
The assessment chefs pressed down on their own hands, frantically warning themselves not to court death.
After all, a chef only has one dominant hand.
Dōjima Gin was also full of shock.
"Head Chef Dōjima?" Sakuma Tokihiko, whose profession wasn't a chef, didn't quite understand why his superior, who had always been as steady as a mountain in his eyes, would show such a drastic change in expression.
Anyone who has eaten crab knows how thin and brittle the soft shells separating the meat cells inside a crab are. The difficulty of using a kitchen knife to split this layer of soft shell into two sheets speaks for itself. Moreover, the raw crystalline crab meat also obstructs the chef's line of sight.
What made their scalps tingle was that every single crab cell extracted from so many crabs was perfectly intact, with not a trace of soft shell fragments on the cutting board.
Once Little Bai's god-tier skill was unleashed, it shocked the entire house.
"Manager Tokihiko, go find me a computer." Dōjima Gin sat back down on the sofa.
Sakuma Tokihiko quickly brought a laptop.
"Mo Bai? I wondered why the name sounded so familiar, so it was him." Dōjima Gin revealed a smile of delight at finding a worthy prey. "The Shining Magician."
Sakuma Tokihiko looked with a bewildered face at the golden light bursting from the cuisine in the online video, his mental activity summarized in one sentence. "This isn't scientific!"
His worldview of over forty years was destroyed in a single day.
"The Far East culinary world has truly given birth to an incredible monster," Dōjima Gin lamented.
Inside the venue, Mo Bai dismantled the meat from the crab cells one by one.
Immediately after, he began dismantling the crab legs and pincers.
Due to the previous shock of witnessing Mo Bai dismantle the crab cells, seeing Mo Bai extract a complete crab leg with a single stroke of the knife left the crowd at the judges' table with numb expressions.
"Eh? This ingredient combination is?" In the center of the seventh row of the judges' table, a middle-aged man with a slightly chubby body and a pleasant face opened his small eyes wide.
"Chef Zhang Yu, do you know what dish this chef is making?" The sharp-eared and sharp-eyed Sena Hiromi heard it clearly, and the judges turned their heads in unison.
The middle-aged man addressed as Chef Zhang Yu unhurriedly cupped his hands to those around him before speaking. "I can barely make it out. His ingredients are similar to a Hua nation dish: Sai Pang Xie (Imitation Crab)."
"More accurately, it's three types of Sai Pang Xie. Potatoes with carrots and ginger, eggs with salted egg yolks and tofu, and yellow croaker with eggs." Of course, the small-eyed Zhang Yu didn't say these words aloud. "Pairing three types of Sai Pang Xie with actual crab meat—is he trying to pass off the fake as real?"
The simpler the dish, the better it reflects the chef's standard; Sai Pang Xie is naturally no exception.
There are almost no hotels in the vast land of Hua nation that dare to use Sai Pang Xie as a signature dish, nor are there any that dare to guarantee they can pass off the fake as real. Yet now, Mo Bai has brought out three types in an assessment.
"To have such confidence at such a young age, interesting." A sharp light flashed in Zhang Yu's small eyes.
"The little chef is mixing batter, is he trying to make tempura?" A foreign chef next to him spoke in half-baked Japanese.
"Tempura your head! Have you ever seen tempura made with minced crab meat?" Zhang Yu's expression twitched, and he explained to the foreign chef with a bit of annoyance. "No, that should be a crab cake."
Mixing with these foreign chefs often made his stomach hurt.
"Hmm?! He's actually frying crab cakes while simultaneously starting the pots to make Sai Pang Xie!? Is he not afraid of overcooking?" The intermediate judges felt like they were being shown up again.
===
"Completed." Habitually covering the plate with a lid, Mo Bai wiped a handful of sweat. Finishing three dishes of Sai Pang Xie synchronously while the crab cakes cooled to the appropriate temperature was still a bit tight for him time-wise.
"I wonder if it can glow this time?" Mo Bai, carrying the dish towards the judges' table, held a faint expectation.
"Dish name: Rampant Tyranny." Placing the dinner plate in front of Judge Zhang Yu, Mo Bai lifted the lid.
A fleeting golden light illuminated the snow-white and golden-yellow scene on the porcelain plate.
"What happened?"
"Did the lights just flicker?"
The judges looked up, searching for the source of the light that had vanished without a trace.
"It... it glowed?" Zhang Yu's mouth hung slightly open, while his hand holding the chopsticks gripped them tightly into a fist.
Looking at the plate again, three distinct combinations of white and golden yellow occupied their own sides. In the central porcelain white bowl was the golden and crispy fried crab cake, while the edge of the porcelain plate was decorated with radish flowers and green leaves taken from some potted plants.
The plating was very exquisite.
"How do I eat this?" Facing pairs of eyes glowing with green light beside him, Zhang Yu was burning with anxiety to taste it, but the remaining reason in his heart told him that for this kind of dish, which one can see but might not get another chance to eat, he must choose the best way to consume it.
"Eat it however you like." Mo Bai made a gesture of invitation.
"Then I won't stand on ceremony." Zhang Yu took the lead in aiming his chopsticks at the slightly darker portion.
Just as the dense texture of the potato was conveyed from his taste buds, the next moment, Zhang Yu's expression jumped violently.
The flavor, accompanied by the fresh sweetness of carrots, the slight spiciness of ginger, and the sourness of vinegar, instantly transformed into the freshness of crab.
"He actually did it!" Zhang Yu rejoiced and moved his chopsticks again and again.
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