Foundations class Jan 29th

This week in foundations we learned that cooking a perfect medium rare steak is harder than I expected. Still getting the hang of my knife skills as well. Carrots are not my friend. We also learned how to cook meat sous vide. Sous vide is cooking a meat in a vacuumed sealed bag. You set the temperature you want and it will heat it up to that temperature and hold it until you need to serve it.

New Orleans

This christmas my family and I traveled to New Orleans. The trip was awesome and the food was amazing. New Orlean's has such a wide variety of foods to eat.

4th dish of the assignment

Today for my fourth dish out of the roasted chicken that I cooked earlier, I made my version of southwestern shepherd's pie. I love to cook foods with a little spice in it. For my ingredients I used chorizo and chicken for the meat. And for the vegetables I love onions and bell peppers, so i put in 1 yellow and 1 red bell pepper, 1 red onion, and 6 cloves of garlic. I cooked the chorizo first, then when that was done I added the vegetables. When I cook chorizo I always sautee my vegetables right after because chorizo drippings are delicious! I added cumin, salt, pepper, and a little oregano to the vegetables when I sauteed them. After that is all done, I added the chicken, finely diced, with a little bit of oil and sauteed until slightly brown. I combined all of these in a bowl and set aside. I used yukon gold potatoes for my mash. I cooked them until fork tender and strained. I put them back in the pot and added about a cup of half&half, 3 cloves of garlic minced, 4 tablespoons of cream cheese, half a cup of aged cheddar, and cilantro minced. In a casserole pan I spread the meat and vegetable mixture out evenly. On top of that I put the potatoes and then I usually take a fork and make peaks. Last but not least I melted some butter down and lightly spread that over the top in a nice even coat. I cooked it at 400 for about 30 to 35 minutes. I was really pleased by the out come and I definitly think I will try this dish again.

3rd dish of the assignment

For my third dish I made my version of chicken salad. I fried up some smoked bacon. Then I diced up a granny smith apple and a sweet yellow onion. I sauteed them in the bacon drippings until they were caramelized. After that I diced up one of the chicken breasts. I put all of that in a bowl and add mayonnaise, salt, pepper, cilantro, lime zest, lime juice, and diced bacon. I served it on a cabata roll with some sliced granny smith apples, smoked gouda, and salt&pepper kettle chips.

2nd dish of the assignment

As for my second dish, I had some leftover rice pilaf so I used the giblets of the chicken (hearts, livers, and gizzards) and made a cajun dirty rice.

This week our class assignment was to roast a whole bone in chicken and see how far we could make it last, as from how many different meals we could make out of it. Sounds easy, but I am finding it harder than I would think. There are a lot of choices you could use but I want to come up with dishes that are out of the ordinary. The 1st dish was obviously roasted chicken, and I also made rice pilaf with roasted root vegetables.