Bon Appétit, Your Majesty Episode 8 Recap

Who's in the cast:
Lim Yoon-a as Yeon Ji-young
Lee Chae-min as Yi Heon (King)
Choi Guy-hwa as Grand Prince Jesan
Kang Han-na as Kang Mok-ju
Oh Eui-sik as Im Song-jae
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

At Huijeongdang, the palace hall chosen for Joseon's cooking contest with the Ming, King Yi Heon apologizes for arriving late and opens the cook-off. The first theme is muyuk, built from the characters for nonexistent and meat: a meat dish nobody has seen before. Cooking for the Ming in this round is Ya Feixiu, niece and apprentice of the Sichuan master chef Tang Bailong. She soaks diced chicken in salt, vinegar and honey to tenderize it. Yeon Ji-young, the king's chief royal cook, starts on her planned spicy galbijjim, Korean braised short ribs, with diced chicken on the side.

The chili powder disappears

The ribs are seasoned and the griddle is hot when Ji-young calls for gochugaru, the Korean chili powder she made for this contest. She asks Shim Mak-jin where it is, and he hedges: Min Gae-deok is still fetching it from Saongwon, the office that supplies the royal kitchen. Gae-deok returns empty-handed with bad news. Every grain of the chili powder and all the gochujang, the chili paste, have vanished, though someone insists they were there just last night. The cooks panic, and one suggests simply braising the ribs in soy sauce. Ji-young points out that soy-braised ribs are hardly a dish the world has never seen.

So she reinvents the dish on the spot. She sends for the wild grape wine brewed with rice that Saongwon keeps in store and announces beef bourguignon. Chef Eom Bong-sik coats the griddle with pig fat to stand in for bacon. Chef Maeng Man-su chops pyogo mushrooms, radish and pumpkin as a Joseon mirepoix, the French base that usually calls for onions, carrots and celery. Seo Gil-geum, the kitchen maid, drains the meat. Among those watching is the king's uncle, whose name card reads Grand Prince Jesan, Superintendent of Saongwon.

Ji-young pours all the wine over the ribs, to gasps from the onlookers. She adds a bundle of herbs she calls a Joseon bouquet garni, which her cooks promptly mishear. The stew needs half a sijin, about an hour. Asked what to call a dish that is half galbijjim and half French technique, she settles on a mouthful: beef bourguignon galbijjim braised in wild grape rice wine. Nobody else can pronounce it.

On the dais, Chief State Councilor Han Min-seong is named on screen as doubts surface that the Joseon cooks can match the Ming. The interpreter relays that the Ming side thinks Joseon was no match to begin with. The Joseon side answers that a dish is judged by its taste, not its smell, and calls their cooks guksamussang, talents without equal. One official grumbles that she is being reckless with scarce ingredients.

At the station, Ji-young has Chef Eom steam the pumpkin and Chef Maeng fetch young greens; milk is passed over and the pumpkin becomes a purée. Then a familiar spicy smell drifts over from the Ming station, and Ji-young freezes. It is not the pepper the Ming normally use, and she tells herself it cannot be what she thinks. Meanwhile the Ming's third chef, Kong Wenli, a descendant of Confucius, announces Qufu Family Liquor to go with Feixiu's dish. Ji-young flambés her ribs and finishes the plate with puffed rice for crunch, a cucumber flower, the pumpkin purée and the greens.

Layu and a stolen secret

Each side is to rate the other nation's dish out of ten, starting with Joseon's. The meat melts on the tongue, and through his interpreter Yu Kun, the Ming envoy, praises its sweet, fruity aroma. Asked why the wine itself cannot be tasted, Ji-young explains how the alcohol cooks off, and the flambé sets off another round of mishearings. The envoy then objects that it is still galbijjim. Ji-young answers that it is a French country dish that will not exist for a few hundred years. For her, too, it is a dish just out of reach: French mothers cook it for their families, and each time she makes it she imagines it made by her late mother.

Feixiu presents her dish next. She calls it gyejeong, chicken with nuts, and Ji-young recognizes it with a jolt as Kung Pao chicken, a Sichuan dish she knows from a later dynasty. It is spicy, sweet and nutty, and the chicken is perfectly moist. The Joseon side calls it a version of chicken gangjeong, fried glazed chicken. The Ming side answers that it is seasoned with layu, a red chili oil Feixiu invented, and calls her the pride of the Ming. Ji-young has no doubt the oil was made with Joseon gochu, the chili peppers she has been counting on.

The judges give their verdicts. Yu Kun prefers Feixiu's chicken, finding Joseon's claim of novelty hard to believe and its backstory too personal. Yi Heon replies that the bourguignon was cooked in a way nobody had seen, while the Ming dish is a kind of gangjeong. Scores of seven and four go up. Just as the king is about to announce the result, Ji-young interrupts and asks to taste the Ming dish, because she needs to check an ingredient.

Yu Kun protests, but Tang Bailong hands Ji-young a spoonful himself, over his niece's objections. A cook-off comes down to taste, he says, and he is curious about the Joseon dish too. Yi Heon and the envoy both let the cooks taste each other's food. Tang finds the bourguignon perfectly balanced. Ji-young finds what she feared. The layu is made from her gochugaru, the chili she and the cooks picked and dried in the sun.

Feixiu insists she came by it fairly, trading Ming huajiao, Sichuan pepper, for it. Her uncle asks whether she knew it was the chief royal cook's secret weapon, and she hesitates. That is enough for Tang. He tells her she did what a cook must never do, shaming the Ming and the contest, and he concedes the round. Yu Kun is furious, and from the Joseon dais comes a pointed reminder that even the most skilled cook needs basic decency first.

Grand Prince Jesan's excuse

Feixiu refuses to take the blame and says she got the chili from Saongwon, from Grand Prince Jesan himself, the Joseon contact she traded with last episode. Yi Heon turns on his uncle and asks whether he gave away the chief royal cook's ingredient without permission. Jesan calmly explains that he needed none, since as Superintendent of Saongwon he clears everything stored for the royal kitchen. He heard the cook was using an unapproved red powder and red paste, so he had it all thrown out for the health of the royal family. "You could say I did. I let her take it," he admits, since Ming huajiao seemed a good trade. He even tells Ji-young it is a shame she did not warn him.

The Ming side argues that Feixiu is blameless and the scores should stand. Tang still orders his niece to admit defeat if she has any pride left, telling her she is unfit to be a master cook. Ji-young steps in and takes part of the blame. She was hurt to lose the chili she worked so hard to make, she says. But she failed to guard a precious ingredient, because she did not understand how things work here. Tang thanks her and still insists the Ming have lost.

The court splits. One camp argues that both cooks have a point and that neither verdict would satisfy their pride. Another insists the scores must be read out, since a round cannot be scrapped. Yi Heon voids the result and declares the round drawn. When Yu Kun objects that the Ming won, the king offers a concession in the Ming's favor in return.

The terms follow. The Ming are recorded as slightly ahead for inventing layu, and the round is a tie by the grace of the King of Joseon. If all three rounds end level, the Ming win. Ji-young realizes with dismay what that means. The second round is set for the same hour the next day.

Before the crowd disperses, Feixiu asks to apologize to Ji-young. She says the round taught her how a cook should treat ingredients, and Ji-young answers that she has learned to guard hers better. Through the interpreter, Feixiu warns that she will learn even more tomorrow, watching her uncle. "I have nothing more to learn, because I'll win tomorrow," Ji-young says.

A new plan for round two

Back in the royal kitchen, the confidence is gone. The cooks fume that the superintendent gave away chili they picked until their fingers bled, and without it the spicy duck laziji they rehearsed for round two is impossible. Dongpo pork is floated to trample on Ming pride, and a clam and lotus root soup, one of the Ming's great dishes, comes up too. Ji-young keeps the dried duck and turns it into Peking duck, the imperial dish she says once broke the ice at a US-China summit in the 1970s. None of the cooks has heard of it. The trick, she explains, is blowing air under the skin to separate it from the meat, then roasting the bird hanging up.

On the Ming side, the cooks admit Joseon was better than they expected. The chief royal cook impressed them most. Tang's team assures him everything is ready for tomorrow.

That night, Jesan is strolling under a bright moon, chatting about the day's food, when the king summons him. Yi Heon demands to know why he threw out the cook's ingredient when he knew about the contest. Jesan apologizes for his carelessness but repeats that he acted for the royal family and never imagined it would affect the result. Asked whether he really disposed of all the chili, he admits he gave some to the Ming cook and kept the rest in storage. Yi Heon sends Im Song-jae, his Chief Royal Secretary, to bring it from Jesan's residence back to Ji-young.

In the inner court, a royal elder hears about the tie and the Ming condition. She concludes the cook must have lost. Told that Jesan handed the ingredient to the Ming, she doubts it was a mistake and wonders what he stands to gain.

Elsewhere, Kang Mok-ju, the king's long-serving consort, summons Chef Maeng to remind him of their agreement: Joseon must lose tomorrow. When Maeng mentions the profit a win could bring Joseon, she asks since when he cares about the state. Then she notes that his mother lives in Jecheon County.

Peking duck and a cut hand

The second round opens at Huijeongdang with the theme jiyeok, knowing and changing: each side must cook the other's cuisine. The Ming station unveils a lotus flower so huge and yellow that the Joseon onlookers gasp. It is a golden lotus, called the Emperor's lotus for its color. Ji-young's team hangs its ducks to roast. The Ming side sneers that Northern Capital roast duck is beyond even their top cooks, and Yi Heon replies that a dish made by his cook will be no ordinary duck. The cooks baste the skin with hot oil until it glows gold.

Then comes the knife work, slicing skin and meat thin and even before the sauce. Chef Eom hacks straight through the bones. Chef Maeng is next, and as he works, Mok-ju's threat replays in his head, with a warning that his mother's safety is at stake. Moments later his hand is bleeding.

The cooks rush to stop the blood, telling him it is not like him to slip. Ji-young tries to take over, but her own hand is still injured, and the others tell her she cannot cut with it. Across the hall, the Ming side scoffs that Joseon's cooks lack basic skills. The Joseon side retorts that a little blood is a good omen for the duck.

Gil-geum asks to try. A flashback shows Chef Maeng asking her, as Maid Seo, to take over the knife work and offering to teach her because she has talent. Now, told to stay calm and use no force, she lifts the skin away without a tear and scrapes it clean. Her legs are shaking afterward, and Chef Maeng thanks her.

Asked why Gil-geum's hands were such a mess yesterday, Chef Maeng apologizes and says Joseon will lose because of him. He should withdraw from the contest but cannot. He refuses to say who is threatening him and denies that it is Kang Mok-ju.

Tang Bailong's temple table

The Ming serve first: golden lotus leaf wraps filled with Joseon vegetables and grains, with braised lotus root in five colors. The judges are entranced. Tang explains that it is temple food, and each color carries a virtue. Red comes from omija berries, yellow from gardenia, green from mulberry leaves, black from soy sauce, and white from lotus root pickled in vinegar.

A flashback to ten years earlier shows Tang collapsed at a temple, where a monk revives him with mallow soup. He spent about five years in Joseon learning from temples. When someone asks why he hid that he speaks the Joseon language, the interpreter relays that he never hid it and was simply never asked. Ji-young admits to herself that he fixed the chili mess with real grace, but she does not want to lose either.

Then the Joseon cooks present their Peking duck. The skin is eaten sprinkled with sugar, and the rolls are dipped in majiang, a sesame sauce. The tasters find it crisp and clean, with no gamey smell, and nothing like the roast duck of the imperial court. The secret sweetness in the skin, Ji-young explains, is pumpkin, a technique nobody at the table has heard of. One taster marvels at how juicy the meat is and says she cooks with the skill of a gwinyeo, the female ghost the king once took her for. The tasting ends, and Yi Heon prepares to announce the scores for round two.

Thoughts

The first round is the best kitchen sequence the show has staged so far, because the problem is so simple. Ji-young loses her key ingredient, and instead of bluffing she cooks the one dish that is truly hers: a bourguignon tied to her late mother. Yu Kun dismissing that as too personal is exactly the wrong verdict, which makes it satisfying to watch it get overturned. Tang Bailong is the surprise. A rival who hands Ji-young the spoon that exposes his own niece, then turns out to have learned his craft from a Joseon monk, is far more interesting than a villain.

Jesan's excuse is airtight on paper and obviously rotten, and the king clearly knows it. Throwing out an unapproved ingredient for the royal family's health while selling it to the Ming is a neat trick. The inner court asks the right question: what does he gain? Meanwhile the tie has quietly turned the contest against Joseon. With three draws now a Ming win, Ji-young has to take a round outright.

Maeng's cut is the episode's real gut punch. The timing makes it hard to read as an accident. Teaching Gil-geum before the contest looks like his way of losing on Mok-ju's orders without sinking his own kitchen. Her nervous, perfect skinning of the duck is a lovely payoff for the girl with the extraordinary nose. With the pressure cooker still missing the lid it lost in the previous episode, I am nervous about round three.

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