Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Block 1: Days 2 to 6

The past few days at school have been so much fun. Since Friday, we've spent most of our time in the kitchen. Finally. Before Friday, we were mostly in the classroom, watching videos on safety, knife skills, and vegetables. Not especially exciting.

We first went to the kitchen on Thursday, and we segmented some oranges and grapefruits. On Friday, we spent the day cutting vegetables like onions, carrots, celery, peppers, garlic, green onions, and asparagus. We did different cuts, but mostly we practiced the dice and the julienne. It might not have been quite as interesting had we not been asked by the dean of the culinary department for those vegetables to take with him on a job over the weekend. It was definitely good motivation to do the cuts properly.

Yesterday, we made stocks - beef, chicken, and fish. We work in groups of two, and each group made a small pot of each stock. Afterward, they all get combined together and saved for later use. For example, today we made soups using the beef and chicken stocks. Each group made tomato vegetable soup, cream of mushroom, and split yellow pea soup. We were allowed to take a small bowl of the soup we made, and the rest was packaged up to be sold in the market.

I love the market. The stuff culinary and pastry students make in class gets sold in the market, so there are plenty of different items, like soups, sauces, bread, desserts, packaged meals, butchered meats, and all at very reasonable prices. I visit it every day to see what's available and to see what I might be making in future blocks. It's great.

I'm definitely having a lot of fun at school. The day passes by so quickly and I'm sad when class is over. Getting up at 5:30 isn't even so bad because it's awesome to wake up being really excited about the day ahead. I can't wait to see what we learn next.

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