Chương 95: The Potato-Ice-Cream Gamble

Halfway through the time, the round entered its white-hot phase. Chris's first movement, "Rebirth by Fire"—the potato pavé—was building its final flavor in the oven, sending out wave after wave of tempting cream-and-garlic aroma. His second movement, "The Balance of Solitude"—the core elements of the Triple-Flavor Potato Gratin—was ready too. The potato slices, cooked low and slow, had perfectly absorbed the flavor of herbs and milk, their texture turned dense and soft.

The sauce mixed from sour cream, Parmesan, and a little lemon juice waited quietly off to the side for the final assembly. His movements flowed like a concerto practiced a thousand times—every turn, every seasoning, full of confidence and ease. In the stands, Sarah watched without blinking. She said quietly to Jack, "Chris looks… completely different. He doesn't seem nervous at all."

"It's not that he isn't nervous." Jack's eyes were locked tight on Chris's hands, and he said in a low voice, "He's turned all the nerves into focus. Look at his hands—steady as stone." Now Chris was about to begin the most daring and most crucial link in his whole menu—the third movement, "Sweetness of the Earth." He was going to make that unprecedented potato ice cream.

He put several already-steamed and peeled potatoes into a high-performance blender, added top-tier heavy cream and egg yolk, plus a little sugar and salt. The machine ran at high speed, whipping everything into an extremely fine, silky potato-cream base. Chris spooned up a bit and tasted it, nodding with satisfaction. The natural starchy sweetness of the potato fused perfectly with the richness of the cream and the lushness of the yolk. The flavor was strange, yet uncommonly harmonious.

Next was the most crucial step—flash-freezing with liquid nitrogen. He put on thick cryo-gloves and goggles and carefully poured the liquid nitrogen, fuming white, slowly into a stainless-steel bowl. Then he drizzled the prepared potato-cream base into the nitrogen a little at a time, whisking fast all the while. This process was meant to keep large ice crystals from forming during freezing, to achieve an ultra-silky texture.

But the instant the base touched the liquid nitrogen—at minus 321 degrees—something went wrong. The liquid, which should have turned smooth, somehow developed some extremely tiny, almost invisible grainy crystals! Chris's heart dropped hard. If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. What was going on? He stopped, spooned up a bit of the half-set ice cream, and put it in his mouth. He was finished. The texture of the ice cream was wrong.

It wasn't silky—it had a fine, gritty, sandy feel. As if… the starch had undergone an abnormal crystallization reaction at the extreme cold. His brain raced. He remembered now—in an earlier Dish Simulation, the system had given this dish a 72% success rate and noted in small red letters beside it: Warning: starch–low-temperature interaction is unstable; risk of crystallization. At the time, drunk on the thrill of innovation, he'd chosen to gamble. Now the system's cold warning had become a cruel reality.

"Oh my god, something's wrong over on Chris's side!" In the stands, Marcus was the first to notice, pointing at Chris's station and shouting in alarm. Everyone's eyes locked onto it. There stood Chris, motionless, his face a little pale. In the stainless-steel bowl before him sat that ice cream that clearly looked off. On the opposite station, Ethan's lamb had come out of the sous-vide bath and was getting its final caramelization in a screaming-hot pan. The lamb sizzled in the pan, aroma spilling out.

His garnishes and sauce were all done too, everything under his perfect control. The two men's states formed a stark contrast. One, advancing steadily, victory in hand. The other, hit by a sudden crisis, stalled out.

"He took too big a risk." At the monitors backstage, a producer shook his head.

"Making an experimental dish no one's ever done, in the grand final—that's just insane." In the stands, Sarah clenched her fists tight, her palms slick with sweat. Jack cursed under his breath: "This idiot—the final's for winning, not for running experiments!" Marco, in his corner, wore a faint, gloating smile. He wanted nothing more than for Chris to blow it all and humiliate himself in front of everyone. Only forty minutes were left. Chris felt his heart pounding wildly, his palms ice-cold. Give up?

Drop the third movement now and serve only two dishes—maybe he could save a little face, but the championship would be absolutely hopeless. Don't give up? The moment a judge tasted this gritty ice cream, it would be a fatal error. What now? He closed his eyes and forced himself calm. The programmer's mind began to turn in that moment. Where was the problem? Starch granules. Why were there starch granules?

Because there was too much free starch in the base; at extreme cold it couldn't fully fuse with the cream and yolk, so it crystallized out. The solution? A bold idea flashed through his mind. What if… what if, before freezing, he filtered out those free starch particles?

He needed an extremely fine filtering tool that would let only the cream, the yolk, and the potato-flavor molecules already fully dissolved in the liquid pass through, while catching every one of those suspended starch particles that could cause crystallization. He snapped his eyes open, swept his gaze over the station, and finally locked onto a roll of medical-grade ultrafine gauze. The production had prepared it for certain molecular-cuisine techniques; he'd never have guessed it would become his lifeline now.

But there wasn't enough time. Filtering took time, refreezing took time, and he still had to make the caramel potato crisps and the black-truffle honey to go with the ice cream, and finish plating the first two dishes. He glanced at the countdown. Only thirty-five minutes left. Thirty-five minutes to finish all of it—an all-but-impossible task. Chris clenched his jaw. Impossible? Then he'd make it possible.

He drew a deep breath, and the panic in his eyes drained away in an instant, replaced by the resolve of a man burning his boats. He threw out the bowl of failed ice cream and picked up a fresh potato. In these last thirty-five minutes, he would race the clock.