AOC M2024

Today was our last day in this M-term, and it's fair to say there were mixed feelings about the end of the experience. Our meal today was sushi with a choice of filling. I chose to make Philly rolls while others made more complicated ones such as a shaggy dog. Regardless of the filling, everybody started by washing their rice. The process of cleaning the rice was very tedious because we had to repeat the same steps 4 times. Our rice had to sit for about an hour, so in the meantime, we made our vinegar mixture, which contained sugar, mirin, and vinegar. After our rice was done drying, we moved on to the next step,p which watoso cook the rice. My group cooked it for about 30 minutes and then let it rest for another 30. The next step was to gather our materials for our final step, which was an assembly of the sushi. For my sushi, I started with a nori base and a layer of rice on top. I added tuna, cream cheese, and avocado. Overall today was a great day to end on and one of my favorit...

  Today was Wednesday March 19th, and today we cooked stirfry. The first thing we did in the morning was go over to the Bissonnet campus to meet up and cook with chef Jessica, our expert helping us with this course. She taught us the different types of ways to cut vegetables those being Chiffonade: Finely sliced  Julienne: Matchstick shaped cuts Diagonals: Elongated shaped slices of cylindrical vegetables or fruits Dicing: Cut an item into even cubes Mince: Cut an item into very small pieces  We then made a soy sauce based sauce, sauteed the veggies with the sauce, cooked our meat and or tofu, and then combined the three in our pan.

 Today was day 9 of Art Of Cooking, and we made pasta.    Two groups made a marinara sauce, and the other two groups made an alfredo sauce with Chicken.   We started of by making the dough for the pasta, and that consisted of combining flour and 3 eggs into the flour making a small circle in the flour before adding the eggs and then using a fork to stir the egg yolks together, Then using your hands you start shaping the dough into a ball making it into a dough like consistency.  After the dough was finished, we wrapped it into saran wrap and let it sit for 30 minutes while we started on the pasta sauce which two groups made marinara that had different kinds of spices like garlic, oregano, salt, pepper basil and tomatoes and onions and we combined that into a pot and let it simmer to cook.   While some people were making the sauce for the pasta, other students were making the pasta shapes and they were cutting them out into either spaghetti or fett...

Today, we made quiche and fruit tart. We first started off by doing the dough. Everything had to be mixed in cold, and we let it rest for a few minutes. After we started doing the filling for the fruit tart, we brought the milk, vanilla, and sugar to boil, and then we combined the rest of the ingredients, which were egg yolks, cornstarch, and butter. The mixture turned into a thick consistency, and we covered it with a plastic wrap and let it cool while we took a break. After we had rolled out the dough, we had to put the dough in the mold for the quiche and fruit tart, Each one took about 30 minutes to cook in the oven. Meanwhile, the dough was in the oven, we worked on our filling for the quiche. We had a few ingredients that we could choose from, like potatoes, spinach, onion, and different types of cheese. We put everything back in the oven until it was fully cooked. We had a few fruit options for the tart, such as strawberry, blackberry, blueberry, etc. Overall, everyone had so mu...

      Today, we made pancakes, cinnamon rolls, and egg dishes. In the morning, we started at the MDC campus, where we prepared everything we needed to bring to the Bissonet campus. Ms. Z also handed out our recipes for the day. Before we left, Aidric and Gray gave the class a presentation about a pasta dish that is traditional in the Puglia region in Italy. We arrived at the Bissonet campus around 9:45 and met up with Chef Jessica. We then split into our groups, and three groups made cinnamon rolls while one group made chocolate chip pancakes. The group that I was in made cinnamon rolls, and it was a fairly simple process. We started by making the dough, and then we let it rise for a few minutes while we made the filling. After the filling was made, we rolled out the dough and then spread it out and made the dough into a log, and cut it into cinnamon roll shapes. After that, we had to let the cinnamon rolls rise again before baking them. While the cinnamon rolls were baki...

  On Art of Cooking Day 6, we made some delicious cupcakes! We started off the day by heading over to the Bissonet Campus to start baking. Once we got there, half of the group started on their cupcake batter, and the other half worked on the icing for their cupcakes. Each group had the choice to choose which cupcake flavor and icing flavor they wanted and my group decided on chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting! We started on our batter which consisted of flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking powder, baking soda, salt, eggs, granulated sugar, brown sugar, vegetable oil, vanilla, and buttermilk.  Other groups decided to make red velvet cupcakes and confetti cupcakes. While our cupcakes baked, we began with the cream cheese frosting which consisted of butter, cream cheese, vanilla, salt, and powdered sugar. Before icing our cupcakes we took a break for lunch. Since today was a baking day, everyone brought a dish and we shared potluck style. We took turns describi...

  Today was the fifth day of the Art of Cooking, meaning we are making dumplings! The types of dumplings we made were pork, chicken, shrimp, and tofu. We started the day by cleaning the room that we were going to cook in. After that, we began to make our dumpling wrappers. The first steps we took in making our wrappers were weighing the amount of flour and water and then combining the two ingredients until it formed a shaggy dough. After the shaggy dough was created we transferred it onto a floured table reading the dough until it was smooth. We transferred the dough back into a bowl allowing it to rest for an hour while we started making the filling. Each of the groups chose to make one of the types of filling previously mentioned.  For each filling the groups began to chop the vegetables which were the following shiitake mushrooms, Chinese cabbage, and garlic in addition to regular garlic.  One of the most important steps in preparing the vegetables would be the small s...

 Today, we made grilled pizzas. This was a new experience for myself, and many others in this course. The first part of today consisted of making the Tomato Sauce. The chef working with us only required us to use tomato paste and sauce. My group used onion, garlic, basil, and Italian seasoning to add flavor to the sauce. While the sauce chilled, we made pizza dough. We had already made some yesterday, but this recipe doubled the yeast. We added flour, salt, and water too. Our original dough had stiffened, so we used the new dough instead. We all could make two personal pizzas. Each person rolled two dough balls into circles and oiled one side. The oiled side would face down on the grill. The grill had needed to be cleaned earlier due to lots of rust, and grease on it. After placing each pizza on the grill with nothing on it and flipping it, the sauce, and toppings were added. I added sauce, mozzarella, basil, bell pepper, mushroom, and onion. My pizza was fantastic and the best foo...

  Howdy from the Art of Cooking classroom! Today was an excellent day of making none other than empanadas and Shirley Temples! On the docket originally were churros as well, but the group had so devotedly allocated a larger amount of time to carefully crafting the meal, that there was not enough time to make the churros. However, the day was incredibly successful as all groups were able to navigate dietary restrictions, creating vegetarian empanadas, which turned out beautifully. With that, we also discovered our abilities to both create and clean messes, which both contributed to the fun we had this day. Overall, Art of Cooking had a spectacular time making this fun, delicious food, and we can’t wait to see you all tomorrow to make bread and orange muffins! 

                                                                             Art of Cooking Blog Day 2  Today, we had guest chef Ms. Eckert for today's cooking class, who guided us in making delicious grilled cheese and cranberry orange muffins. We went to the Bissonet Campus at roughly 9:30. As soon as we got there, we started our bread, which was a mixture of flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. After mixing it, we let it rise for an hour. Afterward, we started on the muffin, first making crumble and then zesting oranges and mixing wet and dry ingredients to combine. After preparing our muffins, we popped them in the oven for roughly 30 minutes. As they cooked, we put our bread into bread loaf pans and let it rise for another hour. As it grew, we started makin...