Bon Appétit, Your Majesty Episode 7 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Lim Yoon-a as Yeon Ji-young
Lee Chae-min as Yi Heon (King)
Lee Joo-ahn as Gong-gil
Oh Eui-sik as Im Song-jae
Choi Guy-hwa as Grand Prince Jesan
Kang Han-na as Kang Mok-ju
Seo Yi-sook as Grand Queen Dowager In-ju
Jang Gwang as Chang-seon
Kim Kwang-kyu as Eom Bong-sik
Hong Jin-gi as Maeng Man-su
Kim Hyun-mok as Min Gae-deok
Jo Jae-yoon as Tang Bailong
Moon Seung-you as Ya Feixiu

In the royal kitchen, Yeon Ji-young, the king's chief royal cook, unveils her design for a cast-iron pot nobody has seen. She plans the cook-off against the Ming chefs backward from the final round, so the pot is for round three, the ginseng soup. Her pick is ogolgye samgyetang, a Silkie chicken stuffed with ginseng and herbs and simmered whole. The dish does not exist yet, and the cooks mishear its name as something with chicken tongues.

A cook asks what happens if they cannot get the pot. Ji-young says only one man in Joseon can make it. The first-round dish takes shape too: galbijjim, braised short ribs, in a sauce of gochugaru, the Korean chili powder, and gochujang, the chili paste. For the soup, she explains that at twice normal air pressure water boils at 120°C instead of 100°C, so a tough bird turns tender enough to eat the bones.

Ji-young goes looking for an inventor

At Gangnyeongjeon, the king's quarters, Ji-young asks Yi Heon for Jang Yeong-sil, the inventor of the sundial and the water clock. He served the late king and is long gone, and Gungisi, the Government Arsenal, only makes weapons. Chang-seon, the chief eunuch, suggests Jang Chun-saeng, Jang Yeong-sil's descendant. He was dismissed from Gungisi last summer after an explosion and is now back home. Yi Heon offers to go himself, but the Ming envoys are at Taepyeonggwan, the official reception hall. He lets her go, as long as she does not travel alone.

Her escort is Gong-gil, the king's jester. Watching them leave, Yi Heon asks Shin Su-hyeok, his guard captain, "Do they not look like they are married?" On the road, Ji-young presses Gong-gil about the Mangunrok, the old book that brought her to Joseon. Gong-gil teases that the king is fond of her. She insists she is leaving once the competition ends.

Then Yi Heon turns up in commoner's clothes with Su-hyeok, citing the old rule that men and women over seven must be watched. One companion points out that Ji-young is dressed as a man, and another objects, but Yi Heon says a king should walk this road himself. Before long his legs ache. Ji-young makes him promise not to announce he is king. If the inventor refuses, he says, he will torture him.

Back at the palace, the court hears the king is ill and morning assembly is off, and the ministers doubt it. Grand Prince Jesan, the king's uncle, learns that the king has left with the cook to find a strange object. An ally he calls Lord Sung suggests waiting until the envoys go home. Jesan says the competition's outcome will spark their revolt. He summons the trained men of the Mount Guwol base and names their target: the chief royal cook.

A cannon full of rice puffs

At the end of Naesan Valley, a sign on Chun-saeng's gate warns visitors off. Someone shoves it open, a fuse catches, and a cannon showers them in puffed rice. Chun-saeng is thrilled his machine works, and Ji-young calls it molecular gastronomy, though bland. When the king nearly gives himself away, a companion passes him off as Im Song-jae, the Chief Royal Secretary. Chun-saeng sneers at him as the chaehong inspector who rounds up women for the king.

Ji-young introduces herself as the chief royal cook, and Chun-saeng sees through her disguise. Threats fly until he reaches for the cannon's handle and the group retreats, with Ji-young suggesting sugar for the next batch. Outside, Yi Heon wants him tortured while his companions bicker over whether the cannon was a bluff.

She goes back in alone. The sugar works, Chun-saeng admits, but he built the machine to double rice for hungry people, and sugar is too expensive. Ji-young says a Joseon win would bring cheap Ming sugarcane. He asks why she travels with such a treacherous man. Shown the design, he grasps it fast: trapped steam, a weighted valve, malleable iron so the seams hold. Still he refuses, because high-ups discard people once used, and invoking Jang Yeong-sil, whom he calls his uncle, changes nothing.

Yi Heon proposes hauling him to the government office. Gong-gil warns that a pot made under threat may fail in use, so the man's heart must be won. Ji-young agrees. She remembers that when the king forced her to cook, she thought only of escape. Yi Heon threatens Chun-saeng's hands and three generations of his family if the pot fails, is talked down, and orders ideas by nightfall.

The palace takes notice

At Jahongwon, the palace office she runs, the king's consort Kang Mok-ju is furious the king has left with the cook. Her inspector court lady, Chu-wol, reports that Gong-gil's older sister was Ok-dan, a girl who once stayed at Jahongwon, so his presence must be tied to her death. Mok-ju orders more digging. Grand Queen Dowager In-ju hears of the trip too. The king is impulsive, they agree, but he would not leave for nothing with the Ming envoy in the capital. The suggestion that he has feelings for the cook is cut off.

In the royal kitchen, an ogolgye from an ordinary cauldron tastes merely fine, proving Ji-young's point. The gochugaru and gochujang go to the grain storage at Saongwon, the office that supplies the royal kitchen. Eom Bong-sik, Chef Eom to the kitchen, is pulled away because Chef Maeng Man-su is drilling Seo Gil-geum, Ji-young's assistant, in knife work and scolding every cut. The cooks are baffled, since he used to be kind to her.

Among the Ming chefs, Tang Bailong, the Sichuan master chef, and Kong Wenli agree that their pride rides on the contest. A cook's virtue, they say, must come before his skill. Ya Feixiu brings Sichuan's finest huajiao pepper to a Joseon contact and asks for something in return.

Dongnae pajeon on a rainy day

Rain catches the travelers, and Su-hyeok insists on standing guard in it. One of them wishes aloud for pajeon, scallion pancakes, with makgeolli, rice wine. Chun-saeng's accent places him in Dongnae, at Busan Port, and Ji-young has an idea. They hurry to buy ingredients before the rain stops.

Inside, a hungry Chun-saeng chews bland rice puffs. Outside his gate, Ji-young fries Dongnae pajeon in thick batter while Su-hyeok and Gong-gil fan the smell toward his house. She offers him the Chief Royal Secretary's rainy-day pajeon. A companion coaxes him over, and he eats like a starving man.

The taste takes him back to a village feast from his childhood, and Ji-young says her father is from Busan too. Then she makes her pitch. People remember Jang Yeong-sil whenever they tell the time or read the stars. She admits she is not from this era and says feeding people makes her happy. She wants to show the Ming the taste of Joseon and win the sugarcane so everyone can eat his rice puffs. Chun-saeng says, "I will make it," though not for her: he has missed the taste of home all his life. She promises to teach him caramel rice puffs.

Leaving Gong-gil to help at the forge, Yi Heon and Ji-young head to Danyang. There they find wild ginseng, and the king claims it: "Everything on this land belongs to me." Chun-saeng expects the pot by the next day.

Warnings in the night

Feixiu shows her seniors a red oil none of them knows, her secret weapon for the first round, and will not say where it came from. A warning about unfamiliar ingredients is cut short, because she is trusted. Elsewhere, Yu Kun, the Ming envoy, meets a Joseon ally, who switches to Chinese and promises that the Ming cooks will win. The contest may not even happen, the ally hints, since the chief royal cook is outside the palace, where dangerous things happen. Yu Kun says his cooks may be disappointed.

That night, the cooks wonder whether Ji-young will be back. Asked to go easier on Gil-geum, Chef Maeng says she should leave if she is no help. Leaving the palace, he and a colleague are stopped by a masked man with long gray hair. The stranger hands them a paper for their king and warns that the chief royal cook is in danger.

They glimpse a dagger and wonder whether he belongs to the envoy's party, though he speaks Korean. The paper looks blank, and they pass it to Chang-seon. Its warning says people are targeting the cook and she may not last another day. Asked how far Chun-saeng lives, Chang-seon answers that a fast horse arrives by dawn, and horses are readied.

Assassins in Naesan Valley

At dawn on competition day, the pot passes its test, and the king and Ji-young return for it. In the woods, the assassins are ordered to kill only the girl. Chun-saeng presents the pot just as his alarm bells start ringing far too fast. In the scramble, someone addresses Yi Heon as the king in front of the inventor.

On a signal the gate is flung open, and the fight spills into the yard. Gong-gil is told to take Ji-young out the back, and Chun-saeng keeps the lid and swears to bring it in time. Su-hyeok holds off the attackers, and Gong-gil splits off to draw them away, leaving the king and Ji-young alone.

When the assassins catch up, Yi Heon fights them off despite a bleeding shoulder, and Ji-young faints. Song-jae arrives with men, apologizing for being late. The attackers moved like soldiers and killed themselves when caught, which points to troops sent by traitors.

Ji-young wakes asking for the pressure cooker. Yi Heon says she cannot compete with an injured hand. She insists she can, and trusts Chun-saeng to bring the missing lid. Elsewhere, someone behind the attack calls the assassins pathetic fools and vows the competition will not go the king's way.

At Huijeongdang, the competition hall, Gil-geum watches for Ji-young. Through his interpreter, Yu Kun complains that neither king nor cook has appeared, and Chang-seon is sent to say the king will be late. On the road, a queasy ride ends in thanks and apologies.

At the thirteenth hour, Yu Kun calls the delay rude for a land famed for courtesy and suggests the pair have run away. The competition opens, and the kitchen staff turn helplessly to Chef Eom. Then one of the Ming chefs refuses to start before the fifteenth hour, calling it his nation's mercy, and Yu Kun gives way. The fifteenth hour comes with no sign of her, and one voice in the Joseon camp says it might be better if she stays away. Then the king's party walks in. Ji-young, her hand injured but ready, wonders whether it is time to show them what she can do.

Thoughts

The pajeon sequence is the show doing what it does best. Ji-young wins Chun-saeng over with a smell on the wind and a taste from his childhood, while the king's every instinct points to torture. Gong-gil's warning about forced work quietly describes Ji-young's own first weeks in the palace, too. The running joke of Yi Heon posing as Song-jae and being called a treacherous man behind his back never gets old. And walking the whole way on sore legs because he cannot stand seeing her travel with another man says more than any confession would.

The danger is spreading in several directions at once. Jesan wants the competition as the spark for a revolt. Mok-ju now knows Gong-gil is Ok-dan's brother, and Feixiu turns up with a red oil right after sniffing out the Joseon seasoning last episode. The chili Ji-young's first round depends on sits in the Saongwon storage, and Jesan is that office's superintendent, which makes me nervous. The gray-haired masked messenger is the best mystery of the hour: a stranger who warns the palace in good Korean while carrying a dagger.

Chef Maeng's harshness with Gil-geum reads differently after Mok-ju told him last episode that Joseon must lose. Pushing her out of the kitchen could be plain cruelty, or a clumsy way to keep her clear of whatever he has been ordered to do. With a lidless pot, an injured hand and an inventor still on the road, the first round has every reason to go wrong.

Previous: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty Episode 6 Recap. Up next: Bon Appétit, Your Majesty Episode 8 Recap. See every episode in the Bon Appétit, Your Majesty episode guide.