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.