Chương 84: A Mystery Ingredient I'd Never Seen

Day two of Hell Week. The mood in the studio was even heavier than the day before. The four stations looked emptier now. Exhaustion was written on every face, but their eyes stayed locked dead on the judges' table ahead. Vane stood at the front, a huge black box beside him.

"Yesterday, we tested your fundamentals," Vane said loudly.

"You proved you could follow a recipe and make a dish well. But a true top-tier chef can't just copy homework. Today, we test your adaptability and your creativity." He stepped to the black box and pulled the cloth off in one motion. The box was packed with crushed ice. Dead center in the ice lay a huge, gray-purple thing. It had many thick tentacles, and the tentacles were crowded with row upon row of suckers. A whole, unprocessed raw octopus. The four of them sucked in a breath at once. Octopus.

This had to be the nightmare ingredient for most American chefs. Not only was it hard to handle, the cooking window was razor-thin. Undercook it and it carried a heavy ocean-funk reek; overcook it and the flesh turned instantly to rubber bands you couldn't chew through. Worse still, octopus had no so-called "standard preparation." Mediterraneans liked it grilled, Asians liked it boiled, South Americans liked it as a cold salad.

Every culture had its own way of handling it, which also meant there was no ready-made template to fall back on for this dish.

"Sixty minutes." Vane held up a finger.

"Use this octopus to make a dish that stuns me. You must clean the guts, remove the beak, and remove the eyes yourselves. Time starts now!" Chris rushed to the ingredient table at once, grabbed an octopus, and dropped it into his own basin. The octopus was ice-cold in his hands, slick to the touch. His mind spun fast.

"Initiate Dish Simulation. Ingredient: octopus." The system panel flickered, then threw up a line of red text. [Warning: Insufficient data on unknown ingredient. Lacking muscle-fiber density and water-content data for this octopus variety; cannot provide a precise cooking curve. Estimated failure rate: 70%.] Chris's heart sank. Faced with this nonstandard ingredient, one that varied wildly from specimen to specimen, the system had simply walked off the job. He could only rely on himself.

While scrubbing the slime off the octopus hard with coarse salt, he searched the knowledge from the Ingredient Theory Manual in his head. Cephalopod muscle was made of dense collagen. To make it tender, there were only two extremes: either flash-cook it at high heat for a very short time, or slow-cook it at low heat for a very long time. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Sixty minutes. The time was painfully awkward.

If he only flash-fried it over high heat, an octopus this big would be impossible to chew. If he braised it slow, sixty minutes was nowhere near enough to break the collagen down fully. Chris turned and glanced at the others' progress. Ethan was cutting the octopus into segments, sealing them into vacuum bags, then pouring in olive oil and herbs. He was going to use a sous-vide machine. It was the safest method—precise control of the water temperature, the best possible guarantee of tender flesh.

Sarah had dropped her whole octopus into a big pot of boiling water. She'd added scallion, ginger, garlic, and cooking wine. She meant to blanch it in the most traditional Asian way, then pair it with a bold sauce. Simple, but high-risk—one minute too much or too little on the blanch was fatal. Jack had cut off the tentacles and tossed them straight onto a red-hot charcoal grill. He wanted the high heat of the coals to drive the aroma out of the octopus directly. Had Jack lost his mind? Chris frowned.

With octopus this high in water, straight onto the coals, the outside would char while the inside was still raw. No time to worry about anyone else. Chris had to decide on his own plan immediately. He looked at the cleaned octopus in the sink, and a thought flashed through his mind. Slow-braised in red wine. It was the traditional Mediterranean method. The tannins in red wine helped soften octopus flesh. But sixty minutes absolutely wasn't enough to braise it tender. Unless… Chris's eyes lit up.

He could do the initial red-wine braise in a pressure cooker, forcibly cutting the softening time. Then take the braised octopus out, slice it thin, and sear it fast over extremely high heat to form a fragrant, charred crust. The base note of the red-wine braise, plus the char of the high-heat sear. A marriage of French technique and Mediterranean flavor. Chef's Intuition gave a sudden jump. Chris felt a rush of excitement well up in his gut. His instinct told him the plan was risky, but it would absolutely work.

He went into motion at once. He cut open the octopus's head, scooped out the guts, dug out the eyes and the beak. His movements were brisk, without a trace of hesitation. Then he took out the pressure cooker, poured in oil, and added chunks of onion, carrot, and lengths of celery, frying them off. Once the aroma came up, he put the whole octopus in, poured in most of a bottle of cheap but tannin-heavy red wine, and added bay leaves, thyme, and a few black peppercorns. Lid on. Up to pressure.

Fifteen minutes had already passed. Chris stared at the pressure valve on the cooker, silently calculating the time in his head. He needed to set aside at least fifteen minutes for the final sear, the sauce, and the plating. Which meant the pressure cooker had thirty minutes, at most. Thirty minutes—could the acidity of the red wine fully soften an octopus this big? He didn't know. This wasn't just a test of technique; it was a gamble. While the braise ran, Chris started on the garnishes.

He chose small potatoes, boiled them, smashed them flat, and set them aside to pan-fry golden in butter. He also made a simple lime-cilantro sauce to balance the heaviness of the red wine. Time slipped by, second by second. Every kind of smell filled the studio. The scallion and ginger from Sarah's pot, the herbs from Ethan's sous-vide, and the scorched reek coming from Jack's side. Chris glanced over at Jack. Thick smoke rose from Jack's grill.

The tentacles had contracted violently in the high heat and curled into a clump. Some spots were already grilled pitch-black; others were still weeping water. Jack worked the tongs, flipping the octopus desperately, sweat dripping off his chin. He cursed under his breath without stopping. He'd completely lost control. Chris pulled his eyes back and looked at the timer. Twenty minutes left. No more waiting. He killed the heat under the pressure cooker and released the pressure by hand.

White steam burst out, carrying a rich red-wine aroma. He lifted the lid. The octopus had been dyed a deep purple-red. Chris tonged the octopus out and set it on the cutting board. He picked up a knife, cut off a small piece from the thickest part of a tentacle, and put it in his mouth. He chewed hard, twice. His heart sank halfway. There was still an obvious chew to it. The outer layer had softened, but the core muscle fibers were still firm. Thirty minutes of pressure braising still wasn't enough.

If he sent it out like this, Vane would absolutely smash the plate in his face. He had to find a way to save it.