cooking show

I watched iron chef this week which is a show i really love. Bobby Flay faced off against another chef, and the secret ingredient was canadian lobster. Throughout the competition they narrate what ingredients are being used, how they are going to use them and then they usually guess what type of food they are making. The contestants have to cook and plate 5 dishes within an hour. A big problem with the time component is making sure everything gets plated on time. The chef's scores are based on creativity, appearance and flavor. I learned from this show that it is important to be able to be quick thinking when making food, especially if you don't have certain ingredients near by. Improvization isn't always a bad thing and food can be made to taste better if you have a good idea of what tastes mix well together.

9/19 and 9/21 labs

This week in lab I made corn casserole, helped with the ceaser salads, made mashed potatos, rice and glazed carrots. Things are definetely getting easier compared to the first week of lab as far as knowing where everything is and preparing the food, however the workload i know will increase. I need to do a better job still of working faster since there is so much to do. I'm enjoying lab and learning how to make all these different kinds of food. The thing that is still challenging is not having all the ingredients and learning to adjust on the fly to make another variation without it effecting the overall quality of the food.

cooking show

I watched chopped on the food network the other day and it is one of my favorite shows. The contestants have a few specific ingredients they need to use for each round and the ingredients usually are things that don't normally pair together on a standard meal. It makes the contestents become creative when trying to think on the spot what to prepare. While the cooks are preparing the food the judges and narrator of the show go over the different types of flavors that each of the ingredients brings to the table and what different types of cooking methods would go well with the specific ingredients. Overall cooking just seems to be a fun and creative way to express yourself. I think incorporating different variations of normal food items would be a cool way to try new things.

9/14

Today in class I cooked the lasagna bolognese. It was a little easier this time around since I was familiar with making lasagna from the previous class. It seemed to take alot longer then the mexican lasagna from Monday's class because the ground beef wasn't thawed out. Other then that problem of the meat taking forever to cook, things seemed to go smoothly. I did a better job of locating utensils and ingredients but I still need to get a little better at it which I am sure will come in time. I'm definetely enjoying the class so far, and it is good experience learning how to cook different things.

Lab 9/12

I definetely learned alot this first day of lab. I didn't realize how tough time management would be in a 3 hour span, because three hours went by really quickly. I struggled a little bit in regards to where everything was located but now that I have had some experience in the kitchen, I think future labs will be a little easier. I made the mexican lasagna today which took a long time, but overall the food preparation wasn't that bad. I had to make a few adjustments to the recipe because certain items weren't available. I learned it is important to label everything and store food properly to meet sanitation requirements. For next lab and future labs I just need to keep getting familiar with the location of utensils and food items so that I don't have to waste too much time looking around or asking questions.