Chapter 583 Snack Coupons
"The theme of the second round is - street food."
The female host said, "I know that you are all chefs in top restaurants. Many of your restaurants have successfully achieved stars. The guests you receive every day are either celebrities, rich people, celebrities, or even royal families.
“But this time you need to challenge more popular street food.
"Every city has its own street food, which is like a city's business card. Integration carries the local culture, connects people in the whole city together, and heals their tired hearts and stomachs.
"Street food is the most equal and inclusive food, and in this round we also return the power of judgment to the public."
"The 500 hungry public judges each hold 5 snack coupons in their hands. They will use the snack coupons to buy the food they like, and they will advance if they get 100 votes."
"What are you laughing at?" Sun Mei asked Ma Lu.
"Do you know what I did before I opened a restaurant?"
"You are so young, you should be a college student."
"That's true, but between being a student and running a restaurant, I also ran a food stall for a while." Ma Lu said, "It's right in front of the school."
Sun Mei was indeed a little surprised, because Ma Lu's cooking skills are very strong. A chef of this level can easily earn a monthly salary of 30,000 to 40,000 yuan by just finding a big hotel, and he will not be reduced to setting up a stall at all. the point.
In addition, Sun Mei once again saw Ma Lu's strong psychological quality, and he actually went back to his alma mater to set up a stall.
This guy's face is unusually thick.
There was no time to talk more, the second round had already begun.
This time, the contestants selected ingredients faster than in the previous round, just like collecting food during the epidemic.
This is because each public judge only has 5 votes in hand, and 100 votes are needed to advance. In other words, in the most optimistic case, only 25 people can advance in this round.
And because those who are eliminated will also share some of their votes, there will actually be fewer people who can advance.
In addition, many people can see that the person who cooks the meal first in this round will have a considerable advantage.
Because there were no other competitors at that time, and the 500 public judges all had snack coupons in their hands.
The host used the word "hungry" when introducing them before, indicating that they probably did not have breakfast.
At this time, most people will tend to buy a piece of food first, no matter it is good or bad, eat it and wait for the next one.
Therefore, being the first to win becomes particularly important in this round of competition, and this is also a major feature of street food.
Many office workers buy food on their way to or from get off work. If the chef can't cook it fast enough, they will go to other stalls that can cook it faster.
Some contestants noticed this and took a few large trays of eggs and fried them on the iron plate. The aroma of fried eggs spread out.
Indeed, some people could not help but swallow their saliva, but no one came to buy his fried eggs.
The reason is simple. Although the public reviewers are ordinary people, they are not office workers who are in a hurry to get to work.
Everyone who has been selected to watch this MasterChef competition must still want to see and eat some delicacies that are different from those in daily life.
It's not unbearable to be hungry for a while for this reason.
Not just fried eggs, but other people who want to take shortcuts, the sales of noodles and ordinary meat skewers are only in single digits.
This has also made more and more contestants realize that in addition to speed, creativity and taste cannot be beaten. In the end, the first sales volume was the stir-fried tom yam cooked by a Thai contestant.
Traditional Thai Tom Yum Goong requires the use of stock, but the cooking time of the stock takes too long.
So the Thai contestant abandoned the stock and directly stir-fried shrimps, squid and scallops with lemongrass, chili, lime leaves, lime juice, onions, tomatoes, coconut milk, ginger slices and other condiments.
The Tom Yum Goong is also very delicious, and seafood is obviously much more attractive to diners than omelettes and pancakes.
In addition, he filled the plate very full, putting three or four kilograms of seafood in one pot, but only divided it into four plates.
As soon as it came out of the pot, more than a dozen diners gathered around and took out their snack coupons.
The Thai chef grinned when he saw this, took four coupons, and immediately started cooking the next pot.
Kawano Zhengming, who was hesitant and indecisive in the last round, was also uncharacteristic of himself in this round and became the fastest to complete the homework.
He chose tempura, one of Japan's four major cuisines and one of the most common street snacks in Japan.
In addition to the traditional shrimp, fish, shellfish, perilla and sea urchin tempura, Kawano Zhengming also tried tempura such as coconut meat, flowers, Wuzhishan wild vegetables, sweet potato leaves, mint leaves, etc.
Coupled with his melancholic temperament that resembles Joe Odagiri, he immediately attracted the attention of a large number of female fans.
With many years of experience in sea fishing, he selects the freshest ingredients, coats them with just the right amount of flour, and strictly controls the oil temperature and frying time.
The cooked tempura was crispy and delicious, and the combination of meat and vegetables could effectively relieve the greasy feeling of fried food, and soon the business was booming.
Sun Mei originally planned to make fried beef, but when she was halfway through the preparation, she suddenly remembered something.
The preliminary round of the Asian region of the MasterChef Competition was held in Sanya, so the public judges invited were all locals.
This is both a good and a bad thing.
The good thing is that Sun Mei, who is also a Chinese, will know their tastes and dietary preferences better. The bad thing is that domestic snacks may not be as tempting to them as foreign snacks.
It's not because domestic snacks are not delicious, but people naturally like to try new things. Especially when they come to the MasterChef competition, they will naturally be more inclined to eat something they have never eaten before.
So now the best-selling snacks are basically foreign snacks.
Sun Mei has been studying in Europe these years, and she has also eaten a lot of European snacks.
With her cooking skills, there is no difficulty in replicating these snacks. But Sun Mei didn't do this because she just glanced and saw that almost all the other contestants chose snacks from their own countries.
Moreover, the female host also said before that every city has its own street food, which is like the city’s business card.
European snacks are not suitable for her anymore.
But this doesn't bother Sun Mei.
China has a land area of 9.6 million square kilometers, ranking third in the world, and it is a multi-ethnic country. In addition to the national snacks that everyone is familiar with, there are also many regional snacks that are not so famous.
For example, the spicy pot she is making now is a snack of the Xibe people. The method is a bit like stuffing meat with green peppers.
In addition, Sun Mei also prepared Halihai from the Tu ethnic group and bamboo tube chicken from the Hani ethnic group.
(End of chapter)