My experience in Culinary Arts at BATC certainly has gotten better everyday that I come. I have learned new things and I get to work with new ingredients. Last week we even catered lunch for about 425 people. For about the last two and a half weeks Curry and I have been working on the salad bar and making different kinds of salads. In one week I had made 3 different kinds of salads: a macaroni salad, potato salad, and another pasta salad with broccoli and cauliflower. Last week for the catered group Curry and I had made coleslaw. We did such a good job on the coleslaw that one customer had asked for the recipe and another customer who normally does not eat it, cleared it off his plate. With making salads we would have to make our own dressings as well. With the macaroni and potato salad the main ingredient to make the dressing stay emulsified was mayonaise. For the pasta salad that had the broccoli and cauliflower the dressing was partially emuslified because the main ingredient for the dressing was red wine vinegar. A temporary emulsion is whn two liquids always seperate after being shaken or beaten together. Any of the vinaigarettes are temporary emulsion dressings. Any of the creamy dressings that have mayo, and egg yolks in the ingredients are a permanent emulsion dressing.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Yesterday there was a food show down in Layton that I had the oppurtunity to go to. I have never been to a food show before. I was unsure at first at what to expect and I knew very little of what was going on. I did know that there were going to be vendors from different companies that were advertising their products in hopes that restuarant owners will buy their products. My favorite booth would have to be the produce booth because it had a huge variety of vegetables and fruit. There were vegetables and fruits that I recognized but there were also those that I did not recognize at all. I could actually identify fennel and that was because I had worked with it just a few weeks ago. One of the vendors had fried calamari. I have never tried calamari before mainly because whenever I see calamari, you see the actual octopus and to be honest that grosses me out. But I tried the fried calamari and it wasnt even that bad. It tasted like fish. I have decided that the next time I see calamari (that isn't fried) that I will try it. Because for all I know I will probably like, but if I don't then that will be ok. I think that when I really decided what I am going to do after I am done with the Culinary Arts program at BATC then I will know for sure what I will need and have plenty of questions when I go to more food shows. If you start your own resturant or bakery or anything that has to preparing foods, going to food shows will definitely be benificial to yourself and to the vendors as well.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Culinary Arts
On May 29th I had started the Culinary Arts Program at Bridgerland Applied Technology College with two other people. This blog is specifically for that program and what I have learned and things that I have observed while taking the class. Because I have started this blog a few days late this post will cover the last five days I have gone to school and what we have done or I have observered.
May 29, 2012
The first day of school. Our first assignment was to cut five pounds of onions. Surprisingly I only teared up once while cutting the onions and that was near the beginning of chopping the onions. The point of cutting the onions was making sure that we are cutting with uniformity. In fact that whole week we had practiced uniformity with other fruits and vegetables.
John then introduced us to the root vegetable Fennel. The picture below is the vegetable fennel. Because none of us knew what fennel we had to do a little research on fennel and find a recipe and cook fennel.
While researching fennel, I have learned that fennel is not anise. They are in the same family but they are not the same vegetable. It takes 6 to 8 months to grow. Fennel seeds, bulb, and leaves can be cooked. Fennel leaves are tasty in salads. It can either be eaten raw or can be cooked. I actually am glad that we were able to research fennel because then I was able to learn more about a vegetable that I did not know what it was but if I work with it in the future then I know what it is and understand a little bit about what it can do.
That day I came to understand that if you do not know what an ingredient or a product is, that do some research. When you do some research find out the best way to use the ingredient so then you understand how to use it.
May 29, 2012
The first day of school. Our first assignment was to cut five pounds of onions. Surprisingly I only teared up once while cutting the onions and that was near the beginning of chopping the onions. The point of cutting the onions was making sure that we are cutting with uniformity. In fact that whole week we had practiced uniformity with other fruits and vegetables.
John then introduced us to the root vegetable Fennel. The picture below is the vegetable fennel. Because none of us knew what fennel we had to do a little research on fennel and find a recipe and cook fennel.
While researching fennel, I have learned that fennel is not anise. They are in the same family but they are not the same vegetable. It takes 6 to 8 months to grow. Fennel seeds, bulb, and leaves can be cooked. Fennel leaves are tasty in salads. It can either be eaten raw or can be cooked. I actually am glad that we were able to research fennel because then I was able to learn more about a vegetable that I did not know what it was but if I work with it in the future then I know what it is and understand a little bit about what it can do.
That day I came to understand that if you do not know what an ingredient or a product is, that do some research. When you do some research find out the best way to use the ingredient so then you understand how to use it.
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