Pot Pie and Mac N Cheese

I know. I know. I've missed a couple of days. Sorry. Where did we leave off? Oh yes, so my Sanitation mid-term is 300/1000 of my total points for the class. Including my 5 point bonus for winning the review, I came away with a grade of 305. Nice! We're continuing to talk about the effects of heat being applied to food in Basic Cookery. We've talked about cooking vegetables and seasonings vs flavorings. When we talked about different cooking methods - braising, baking, grilling, barbecuing, etc - Chef Porter went on a 30 minute tear about barbecue brisket and made fun of the kid from North Carolina and "his version of barbecue" (she's gaining ground on Miss Jane for favorite instructor).

FUN FACTS!!!: (1) We all know about the "4 flavors" - salt, sweet, bitter, sour - and most everyone is aware of the "5th flavor" - umami (steak, mushrooms, soy sauce, it's that earthy, meaty, savory flavor). APPARENTLY, "they" are about to announce, or have just discovered, or whatever, that the "6th flavor" is fat. Mmmmmmmm..... Which makes sense, because fat doesn't really have any of those other flavors on its own - although a lot of the time, it's associated with delicious pork.













That's my new delicious bacon wallet. (2) Aroma comprises approximately 60% of flavor. How bout that? Think about when you get a cold and you can't smell and food has no flavor. Huh? Am I right? I know.

I've got a mid-term in Basic Cookery next week which promises to be slightly more challenging than the sanitation mid-term. So I'll need to do some studying for that.

I was at Uchi again today from 9-530. It was a long, tiring, great day. I made more yucca and sweet potato chips. I cut more kabochas. I boiled, shocked and shelled more quail eggs. I peeled roasted golden beets. I VERY thinly sliced about 18 bunches of negi (green onion). I diced tof-ew. I julienned nori for some sort of garnish. I cleaned a paint can full of scallops. I julienned sundried tomatoes. I made gremolata which started out as "zest 3 lemons, mince a bunch of parsley and micro-brunoise 4 cloves of garlic". I ended up zesting 15 lemons to come out to the right flavor. However, that was no big deal, since I'm a zesting champ from the Yuzukocho on Wednesday. Overall, it was a lot of fun.

Family meal was great today. Apparently someone made a pot pie yesterday, so they re-heated that and it was delicious. The dude also made mac n cheese with poblanos, panko crust and BACON! BOOM! Also, I overheard the executive pastry chef and one of the other stages (like mirages) talking about MW2 and he got my gamertag (longhornluke). So we should be throwing down on some 360 pretty soon, which is cool. That's about it for now. Adios.