Chương 88: A Bowl of Noodles, Late at Night

"A bowl of noodles?" Vane's frown deepened.

"In a round deciding who gets into the championship final, you plan to boil a bowl of noodles?"

"Yes, Chef. A bowl of chicken-broth noodles." Chris didn't stop his hands; he was rinsing the blanched chicken and pork bones clean, getting ready to make the broth. Vane stared at him for a while, as if trying to find some trace of a joke on his face. But all he saw was absolute focus.

"You'd better know what you're doing, Chris. If this bowl of noodles can't stun me, you go home today." Vane dropped the line and turned toward Ethan's station. Chris paid no mind to the doubt around him. Right now his head held only every detail of this bowl of noodles. The dish looked simple, but to take the most humble food to its limit took more technical backbone than making a French grand dish. The first thing he had to solve was the broth.

A traditional top-tier stock needed a low flame and slow simmering for a dozen-some hours to fully release the flavor compounds in the bones while keeping the liquid clear. But he only had a hundred and twenty minutes. Chris took out the pressure cooker. Last night, during his stress training, he'd also used Dish Simulation in his head to test the data on making stock in a pressure cooker.

He put the rinsed chicken and pork bones into the cooker, added a handful of dried scallops for depth, and dropped in a few slices of ginger and lengths of scallion. The key was control of heat and pressure. He set the cooker on the burner and brought it up to pressure over high heat. Chef's Intuition switched on. He listened to the sound of the cooker's pressure valve, judging the pressure inside. When the pressure peaked, he immediately turned the flame to its lowest, holding that critical pressure point.

Under extremely high pressure, the water temperature could climb past 250°F, and the flavor compounds in the bones would be forcibly extracted—drastically cutting the time it took to make the stock. Next was the char siu. Chris picked up the pork belly and rolled it tight into a cylinder with kitchen twine. That would keep the meat in shape during the slow braise, and make for a more handsome slice. He heated a frying pan, no oil, and set the pork roll straight in to sear.

The pork skin met the high heat with a violent sizzle, the fat rendering out. He patiently seared every side of the roll to a golden crisp, locking the juices inside. Then he mixed a braising liquid of soy sauce, mirin, sake, and a little rock sugar, set the seared roll into it, and brought it to a low, slow simmer. That would take about sixty minutes. The meat handled, he started on the noodles. Chris tipped the high-gluten flour onto the board and dug a well in the center.

He didn't add water—he bound the dough with eggs and a little lye water. The lye gave the noodles more bite and a special wheaten fragrance. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He kneaded the dough hard. This was pure manual labor. He pressed his body weight down onto it, folding and pressing over and over. Sweat ran down his forehead.

In his mind rose the scene from his past life: after working late into the night, waiting at that steam-wreathed noodle stall on the corner. Back then, a bowl of hot noodles was the one comfort in his cold life. He wanted to knead that sense of comfort—with the highest technique he now commanded—entirely into this ball of dough. The dough kneaded, he wrapped it in plastic wrap and set it aside to rest. Half the time had passed. Chris turned and glanced at the other two.

Ethan was working on his duck breast with total concentration. He'd sealed the breast in a vacuum bag, pulled the air, and dropped it into a temperature-controlled water bath. He was doing his specialty—sous-vide. On the other side, he was reducing a rich sauce from black truffle and duck bones. His movements were still machine-precise, not one wasted motion. Sarah was rolling out noodles hard on her board. A big slab of beef braised in her pot, giving off a rich smell of tomato and spices.

That was her grandmother's recipe. Flour dusted her face, and a stubborn, unwilling-to-lose set burned in her eyes. Everyone was making their final sprint in their own way. Chris pulled his eyes back and started on the most delicate component of this bowl—the soft-boiled egg. A perfect soft-boiled egg: the white had to be fully set yet silky, and the yolk had to be a flowing, custard paste. That took absolutely precise temperature control. Chris didn't use the temperature-controlled water bath.

He took an ordinary soup pot, filled it with water, and stuck a thermometer in. He turned on the heat, his eyes locked dead on the thermometer's reading. When the water reached 145°F, he turned the flame to a bare simmer and carefully lowered two room-temperature eggs into the water. For the next five and a half minutes, he had to keep the water at exactly 145°F—not a degree higher, not a degree lower.

One hand worked a slotted spoon, gently stirring the current so the eggs heated evenly; the other stayed ready to adjust the flame at any moment. It was the limit test of heat control. The instant five and a half minutes were up, he scooped the eggs out and dropped them into the prepared ice water. The contraction would make the shells peel off more easily and instantly halt the cooking inside. He cracked the shell. The pale, tender egg wobbled in his hand like pudding.

He set the eggs to soak in the char siu braising liquid, taking on color and flavor. The last thirty minutes. Chris killed the heat under the pressure cooker and released the pressure by hand. The instant he opened the lid, a meat-and-bone aroma rich to the extreme shot up to the ceiling, even overpowering the black-truffle smell from Ethan's side. He filtered the broth through an extremely fine sieve. The bone broth, cloudy before, had—after the pressure and a rest—come out filtered to a clear golden color.

A thin, glistening layer of chicken fat floated on the surface. He took a taste. Umami. Umami at its limit. It needed no MSG at all—it was purely the flavor the ingredients themselves released at their breaking point. In the last ten minutes, Chris rolled and cut the noodles. The water came to a boil, the noodles went in. Lye-water noodles cooked fast—a minute and a half was all they needed. He took out a plain white deep bowl.

He lifted the noodles out and coiled them neatly in the bottom of the bowl, the way you'd comb hair into shape. He fished out the slow-braised char siu and cut the twine off. One slice down—the outer ring a deep-brown sauce-glazed skin, the meat in the center a perfect pink, the fat crystal-clear. He cut two thick slices of char siu and laid them over the noodles. He cut the marinated soft-boiled eggs in half. The golden yolk flowed out slow as lava. He set the two egg halves beside the char siu.

Last, he scattered a small handful of finely sliced scallion and a few kernels of sweet corn. The final ten seconds of the countdown. Chris lifted the pot of golden, clear broth and poured it slowly down the wall of the bowl. The broth rose over the noodles, steam climbing, throwing the mingled aroma of scallion, corn, char siu, and chicken broth up into the air.

"Time! Hands off!" Chris set the pot down and stepped back. He looked at the bowl of noodles in front of him. No ornate plating, no expensive ingredients. But it was the fusion of his two lives. He raised his head, ready to meet the final judgment.