Little Miss Devil: The President's Mischievous Wife

“Enough of that. You all should focus on what is in your hands right now.” Jun Simin looked around. “The thirty of you have managed to secure your spot to attend Silver Leaf, but that isn’t the end of it. All of you should work hard to be able to stay and move to senior year.”

“For your first day, I want you to see your skills in cutting and making stocks and soups. After this day ends, I want all of you to serve me two satisfying soups.

“Today, you have three activities to complete. That also means you have a chance to earn 30 points for this day. For our first activity, each of you has received fresh carrots, a large onion, leeks, celery, and other herbs and spices. Using all of it, you have ten minutes to show me each the types of cuts that you know, and the timer starts now!”

Instantly, all the thirty junior students moved and took out the said ingredients from their boxes, opening their knife sets and taking the appropriate knife to use for cutting.

Lu Xinyi had a sudden urge to cry as to how lucky she was that her Uncle He had given her a quick introduction on knife skills, herbs and spices, stocks, and basic sauces before leaving Grace Palace.

The three days she spent peeling and chopping vegetables had been worth it.

Taking her chef’s knife and paring knife from her own set, she started to work on her cuts.

The room was filled with chopping sounds and heavy breathing as the students tried to understand which of the cuts were deemed basics and not.

Aside from Ye Xieren who knows exactly what Jun Simin was talking about, only Lu Xinyi and Meng Jiao easily managed to cut the vegetables in appropriate sizes in different cuts.

Jun Simin had noted that of all the thirty students, the three of them knew how to hold a knife properly and safely, putting an advantage against their other classmates.

Working with a professional chef knife could be a daunting task, but if done properly and with a good technique, a cook could work with it for hours without fatigue. A lot of that has to do with the way one handled the knife and grip.

Having the right knife skills would not only make nice cuts but also improve the visual appeal and professionalism of the dishes. The sizes of an ingredient also affected the dish’s flavor. It could ruin or elevate the flavor depending on its usage.

By having uniform sizes, the ingredients would cook at the same time, without ruining the dish’s quality and flavor.

There were a couple different ways to grip the knife. One of them was with a thumb over the bolster [1] like what Ye Xieren was doing. It was okay—not common, but it’s acceptable.

Another way was to hold to handle with a fist like most people do. The other way was to pinch the blade with three fingers on the handle like how Lu Xinyi and Meng Jiao held their knives.

The three of them had a nice circular cutting motion with their knives, never leaving the chopping board as they worked. It seemed that they had good training before the official class started, but unlike Ye Xieren and Lu Xinyi, Meng Jiao’s cutting speed was a bit slower.

“You only have five minutes to finish your cutting,” Jun Simin reminded everyone.

The students increased their speed. Some peeled the carrots while the others chopped onions and leeks at the same time. With a time limit, Lu Xinyi had to make sure she would not make a single mistake on each cut she made.

Because her Uncle He had mastered the French cuisine, her last week on the Grace Palace were filled with taste-testing and learning the basic skills in cooking. While for other people, basics could be boring, Lu Xinyi was amazed by how a single ingredient or sauce could be used in several dishes that she didn’t know was possible.

He Haotian had taught her how to cut the basic cuts in cooking like Brunoise, Macedoine, Parmentier, Julienne, Batonnet, and Chiffonade. As his student, Lu Xinyi was subjected and assigned to peel and cut the vegetables in the kitchen for three painstaking days. It wasn’t easy to repeat each cut several times since her mentor was very picky and paid attention down to the smallest detail of her cuts.

Now, she was thankful that her hard work was paying off. She easily finished each cut with precise measurements and sizes. One after another, her knife made a precision cut to each vegetable she had chosen.

She then switched her chef’s knife in favor of a paring knife to make tourner cuts.

“Time’s up. Stop cutting!”

The whole class stopped working and stepped back to give way for Jun Simin to rate their work.

Jun Simin took a folder and checked each station. Picking up some vegetables to examine closely before writing down their scores on her record. When she arrived in front of Ye Xieren’s station, she wasn’t surprised to see his grinning face as he waited for his turn.

There were different slices of carrots and potatoes in his countertop. Each sorted from the smallest size to the bigger ones. Jun Simin could tell that Ye Xieren took the challenge as a piece of cake.

“Ahh… it seems this activity is too easy for you,” Jun Simin commented after trying to find mistakes in his work but had seen nothing.

“Child’s play,” Ye Xieren said with a confident smile. His attention then moved towards Lu Xinyi’s direction. If he lost to her this time, he would have to practice three hours tonight instead of two.

Less than perfection would not be tolerated for someone like him. Lu Xinyi had not only beaten him once but twice. This no-name prodigy had challenged his standing for junior year division.

Jun Simin moved on to another student and checked each of the cuts presented. Ye Xieren was started to get anxious as he waited for her to finish. His anxiety sat below his smile and subtle actions, watching every move of their proctor, hoping she’d move onto Lu Xinyi’s counter and start grading.

Waiting for her work to be graded, Lu Xinyi swallowed her in nervousness. How bad could the test be?

Her mouth ran dry, and her stomach turned in an unfriendly way. Lu Xinyi felt as if her brain were full of static, either firing off a million unhelpful thoughts at once or offering nothing at all.

What if she made a mistake and failed to notice it sooner? She couldn’t fail this first activity, she couldn’t afford to.

‘Impressive,’ Jun Siimin thought. She was impressed by how Ye Xieren and Lu Xinyi delivered their works although her facial expressions say otherwise. Her poker face was in place, making it hard for anyone to predict what her opinion about their works was.

In today’s activities, all wondered who’d make the cut?

Lu Xinyi presented four types of strip cuts (Pont-Neuf, Batonnet, Julienne, and Fine julienne), and five common cube cuts in the culinary world (Carré, Parmentier, Macédoine and Brunoise). Making these cuts should be easy for an experienced cook and could be done in a matter of minutes.

On the left side of Lu Xinyi’s counter, she found an uncooked mirepoix on a cutting board, with the addition of leeks.

Jun Simin pressed her lips together. How come Lu Xinyi knew about mirepoix? Did she learn this from her father?

Mirepoix was a popular long-standing cooking technique in French cuisine. It was a flavor base made from diced vegetables that were cooked, usually with fat, for a long time on a low heat without color or browning.

Vegetables were not sautéed, or otherwise hard-cooked, because the intention was to sweeten the ingredients rather than caramelize them. Mirepoix was also a base used for a wide variety of foreign (western) dishes.

During the entrance exams, Lu Xinyi presented to them her knowledge in traditional and local cuisine. So what she had performed today had surprised Jun Simin.

She also had some basils chopped in chiffonade cuts that kept the basil intact and didn’t bruise the leaves. Beside her mirepoix, Jun Simin spotted a bundle of herbs tied together with string. Her eyes slightly widened.

Wasn’t it a bouquet garni? [2]

Did Lu Xinyi just realize that this activity would greatly affect the second one so she planned ahead and made her own bouquet garni?

Jun Simin tried not to laugh at Lu Xinyi’s surprises. She couldn’t remember her Senior Lu doing such meticulous cuts. If she would be honest—while Lu Xinyi’s knife skills were the same as her father and Tian Lingyu, her cuts reminded Jun Simin of her another senior, He Haotian.

[1] Bolster is the space between the handle and the blade of the knife.

[2] bouquet garni is a bundle of herbs usually tied together with string and mainly used to prepare soup, stock, casseroles, and various stews.