Chương 54: The Fatal Crack in the Pastry

Time ticked away minute by minute, and the air in the kitchen grew tighter and tighter. Two hours of cooking time, for a dish as labor-intensive as Beef Wellington, meant every minute had to be budgeted to the second. One by one, the contestants finished and cooled their mushroom duxelles and moved on to the most critical stage: the wrap. This was a full examination of a cook's all-around ability—laying down the Parma ham, spreading the duxelles, encasing it all in pastry. Not a single step could go wrong.

Ethan's movements flowed like water. On a sheet of plastic wrap he laid the Parma ham in tight, overlapping rows like roof tiles, leaving not a single gap. Then he spread the cooled duxelles evenly over the ham, the thickness so precise it might have been measured with a ruler. Finally he set the seared, chilled, shape-set filet in the center and used the tension of the wrap to draw the whole roll tight into a plump, even cylinder. The entire process ran in one unbroken, satisfying rhythm.

"My god, look at Ethan—he's a machine," Owen couldn't help marveling from the spectators' area below.

"That wrapping technique is cleaner than the tutorial videos."

"He's good, all right." Even Jack had to admit it. He said nothing out loud, but the pressure was already crushing him. He watched Ethan slide the perfect roll into the fridge to set, then turned to his own work, his hands speeding up without his meaning them to. When it was Jack's turn to wrap, the trouble showed up fast. He'd laid down his ham and duxelles the same way, but as he rolled the beef—maybe out of haste, maybe out of overconfidence—he pulled the plastic wrap too tight.

There was a soft hiss, and the pastry he'd rolled himself, slightly uneven in thickness, split open along a hairline crack right where the strain was greatest.

"Damn it!" Jack swore under his breath, cold sweat beading on his forehead in an instant. The crack wasn't large, but during baking the high heat would push the juices out through it—ruining the crispness of the pastry and leaving an ugly scar on the finished dish. For a perfectionist like Vane, that was an unforgivable error. He scrambled to fix it, pinching the crack shut with his fingers, cutting a small scrap of excess pastry to patch over it. But the patch-job only made the seam more obvious.

Chris saw all of it clearly from the second floor. He didn't even need to call up the Data Eye to read Jack's spiking heart rate and the tremor he couldn't keep out of his hands. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story. Jack's stress tolerance... has exposed a fatal flaw again, Chris thought quietly. The man had good knife skills and a decent feel for meat, but his nerves were a ticking time bomb—one setback and he was liable to fall apart.

In a high-pressure environment like Burning Kitchen, that was scarier than any technical shortfall.

"Looks like he's in trouble." Sarah, who'd stayed up beside Chris, had noticed the situation below, a thread of worry in her voice.

"That crack... Vane's definitely going to see it."

"He rushed," Chris said evenly.

"From the moment he watched Ethan finish his wrap, his rhythm fell apart."

"So you think he can still get through?" Sarah asked.

"Don't know." Chris shook his head.

"Depends on how his beef comes out. If the doneness inside is perfect, Vane might give him a pass. But if the beef's a problem too, he's done." In sharp contrast to Jack's panic was Sarah. She didn't try to race anyone on speed or technique. She just worked through the steps she'd written down, one at a time, steady and sure. Her pastry was store-bought—not a point in her favor for creativity, but reliable in quality, even in thickness.

When she spread the duxelles she checked the depth again and again with her spatula, making sure every spot matched. When she wrapped, her hands were gentle and even, and the finished roll, though not as taut and proud as Ethan's, won on being whole, smooth, and free of any flaw. She'd chosen the most conservative path—and also the smartest: no flashy technique, just rock-solid fundamentals to make sure nothing went wrong at any stage, precise temperature control to bring the beef to a perfect pink.

In an elimination round, sometimes not making a mistake is a victory in itself. But there's always someone who becomes the cautionary tale.

"Oh, no! No, no, no!" From the far end of the kitchen came a low, despairing cry. Everyone turned toward the sound. A male contestant named Tom Harper was staring blankly at a heap of dough in front of him. He'd apparently tried to challenge himself with a handmade leavened pastry, but he clearly hadn't gotten a handle on the yeast's activity or the temperature of the dough. Now the mass had lost all its structure, slumping limp across the board like a puddle of mud no one could prop up.

Forget wrapping a beef in it—the dough couldn't even hold itself up. Tom's face went white in an instant. He clutched his head in both hands, eyes filling with despair. More than half the two hours were gone; remixing and proofing a new dough now was simply impossible. Which meant he'd all but been handed his death sentence ahead of time. The mood in the kitchen, after one mishap on the heels of another, grew heavier still.

The Beef Wellington was like a merciless examiner, dragging every weakness out under the spotlight without pity. Chris looked down at the people struggling below without a ripple of feeling. This was exactly why he'd chosen the dish—to leave no one's shortcomings anywhere to hide. In this hard fight that tested all-around skill, any flaw, any reliance on luck, would be magnified without limit. He turned his eyes back to Ethan.

The man had already taken his set roll out of the fridge and was brushing egg wash over the pastry, getting ready for the final decoration. His face still wore that unruffled expression, as if all the chaos around him had nothing to do with him. He was the only one on this "journey through hell" who was truly enjoying the challenge.