Absinthe

The following day's morning classes were equally fun and interesting. We continued our classes on marketing with a few more case studies on food products. Our food science classes in the afternoon were even more fascinating as we moved on to studying about the taste receptors in our mouth.

Instead of joining the kitchen for dinner service, we stayed at Chef Maxwell's R&D kitchen. We were joined by Tita Gay Abundance, a team of makeup artists, and a team of photographers. I thought it was only an interview, but it ended up being a photo shoot as well. The whole session took up our class time with Chef Maxwell. It was almost 9 PM when we finished and Chef Maxwell bid us goodbye.

Jiwoo took a couple of shots for his IG account during the photo shoot. He tagged me on all of them, and my phone was once again filled with thousands and thousands of notifications.

The rest of the week flew by just as fast. That Thursday evening, though, Chef Maxwell surprised us with something that almost made us go crazy.

"As I mentioned last Monday, I will be testing how your palates have improved. That test will be tomorrow."

The four of us exchanged nervous looks.

"I have prepared here four different flavor pastes. You are to taste them, guess their ingredients, and replicate the flavors you detect by preparing your own dish to be presented to me tomorrow.

"Now, please come over here and choose which flavor paste you will be replicating."

We went to Chef Maxwell's table and chose our own flavor pastes at random. We headed back to our stations after that and listened to Chef Maxwell explain that we were to spend today's class trying to figure out the flavor paste and designing our menu for tomorrow.

I looked around and saw Nico, Vivi, and Jiwoo already tasting their pastes and jotting down some notes. I hastily unscrewed the cap and had a taste.

Shit. I was in big trouble. I couldn't really discern what the taste was. It tasted like smoked salmon, but it was very, very subtle, almost as if there was no salmon in it. But if it wasn't salmon, then why did I taste something fishy?

I looked around again and saw that my classmates were just as flustered as I was.

"The flavors incorporated into your flavor pastes are the standard ones in haute cuisine. They are not the typical flavors used in cooking. However, all of them can be found in the pantry. You should spend the rest of your day trying out different ingredients from there to see if you can replicate the tastes."

I took out different fish fillets from the pantry as well as the smoking machine. Looking at the time, I figured that smoking all the fishes would be useless. I decided to choose those with the least flavor and removed the strong ones like tuna, mackerel, and red snapper.

I laid out small cuts of the fillets and proceeded to smoke them. After about 30 minutes, I tasted them and found their smoke taste to be of a totally different flavor profile.

How could I be so thick? Of course Chef Maxwell would incorporate a special flavor into the smoke! I was not used to smoked foods both in the Philippines and in Korea, so I had totally forgotten about smoke flavors.

I dashed back into the kitchen to find Jiwoo choosing fruits from the produce stand.

"Fruits?" I asked.

"Uh-huh," he answered without looking at me.

I proceeded to get the smoking flavors and picked applewood, pecan, cherry, maple, and alder. All the other types of wood there—hickory, oak, mesquite, walnut, and blackberry—are known to provide intense flavors to barbecued meats.

"You got smoky flavors?" Jiwoo asked.

"Yeah. I just can't get the taste right."

test, isn't it?" I could tell

even for someone like me who's been eating gourmet dishes for a

you," he said. "I guess it's really advantageous to be that

"What?"

said dismissively as he headed back to his station, leaving me

was noisy with all the sounds of

the smoke—it was tarragon. And it was not your typical smoking technique, which was cold smoking a fillet of sole fish and incorporating

was an indefinite number of other flavors that I needed to correctly identify and recreate. It looked like the others were nowhere near

have no plans of going," he

Maxwell had gone,

pretty sure mine is based on pork belly and apples. I'm just

apricots," Vivi commented. "I can taste the uneven caramelization from roasting. But

we can continue trying out the rest of the flavors at home," Nico

for ingredients? The

I said. "I was barely able to identify that stupid smoked fish taste. Who would have

Vivi and Nico laughed.

tell that yours was pretty

Nico asked

shook his head. "I

bro. Good luck to all of us!" Nico said. "Come

It gave me a bad feeling, to be honest. I was not sure why, but I was afraid that Jiwoo would

bought tons of ingredients to test out at home. He dropped us back at the parking

seemingly hundreds of attempts, I was able to fully replicate the flavors I had identified. The recipe I came up with was for grilled lemon sole with oysters. That was the primary flavor, and then I added leeks, cucumbers, shallots, spring onions,

Then I saw the kitchen, and I almost cried—it was so messy that it looked like I had cooked

leave it, apologize to the house cleaners tomorrow, and give them a generous tip. I

day. I made myself some coffee and took a shower. It was only 5:30 when I left the

to the locker rooms and found Jiwoo lying there, on the floor. He was still wearing an apron

leaned down and prodded his

stirred and opened his eyes. It took a while for him to adjust, but once he

he said, wiping some dried saliva off the sides of his mouth. He proceeded to take off his apron and his shirt in front of me. I knew I should be subtle and look away, but the pervert in me

body was positively

over nipples. Faye and Derrick used to call it my Nipple Feng Shui. I'm particular about the placement of the nipple in relation to a person's chest—I easily get turned off if someone's nipples are too centered, too much to the left, too high, too wide, too

it when I say that Jiwoo's are the most perfect nipples I've

his well-sculpted chest. His abs are not rock-hard,

glorious. And it

I asked, pointing at it. "It looks like

in the mirror," Jiwoo

"Bright!" I said.