Week 12: Cooking Pasta | Cooking Eggs

Day 1 this week was our Pasta Palooza Prep Day! We began with picking our Sweet Endings event, which is (drum roll, please).... PIE! The only recipe we were given is below:

The pie dough recipe is relatively basic. We are considering doing a fruit pie, OR a heavy chocolate pie! With this recipe, we have lots of options which is good.

The rest of the day was primarily prepping for our pasta event. We had one "aha" moment, when we forgot to put an egg in the mushroom mixture, making it crumbly and hard to stay together. It turns out, every ingredient has a purpose! Who knew.

 Chef also wanted us to know the importance of covering dough to ensure that it does not dry out.

Here, the boys were stuffing the mushrooms WITHOUT egg. They had a hard time because it was such a bad consistency! Once we added egg, they were much easier to work with.

 ALSO on this first day, we learned how to roll the dough to the right thickness and cut it for each type of pasta. Mikki took over ours, and we made little individual strips so that the lasagna would be easy to roll up and already cut and ready to serve.

Above is Chef's demonstration on how to properly roll the dough. When you crank it through the machine, you have to be careful to not rip it, but also be aware that it will get longer as you increase the thickness number. When cutting, it is typical to make the noodle around a foot or less long in strips.

LASTLY, Chef showed us some fun things to do with the noodles we made!

To the left is an example that Chef showed us. We put a flattened basil leaf in the middle of two squares, then carefully put it through the machine. This would be a great way to make lasagna, so the top was pretty and had a great flavor when cooked!







 




Day 2 was our PASTA PALOOZA EVENT! I am happy to say that it went incredibly well, from preparation to cooking to tasting to the decorations.

Our group, or "mob". We got a great response from our guests with our theme and costumes. They loved the creativity and historical representation with Naples and the mafia!

We had to add some questionable items to the decor. As we explained to our guests, "a man earlier had a mushroom allergy". Everyone seemed to enjoy the aesthetic!

Once our lasagna was rolled and cooked, we wanted to make sure that it stayed warm. Our "aha" moment was putting a pan with boiling water on the stove, then taking two small bowls on the water and placing our lasagna pan over the top! The lasagna stayed hot until the end which was great, and a huge improvement from our last events.

Here is our covered and not-covered lasagna! We had one guest tell us that it was his favorite dish of the day. Guests were pleased that it stayed warm, thanks to our cooking method and stove-top setup. The extra cheese on top of the lasagna added a nice aesthetically pleasing touch.

 To the left is our final lasagna and mushroom on a plate, as well as our sign! The decorations went well with the food, and even the class "Italy" theme. Not only did people like the costumes, but we managed to stay in character as well.




In week 11, we learned the importance of measuring out all ingredients and laying them out BEFORE starting a mixture. We did this same thing with the filling for the lasagna and it ended up being a great idea. This way, once the cheeses were mixed, we were able to eye-ball if there were too many onions, mushrooms, or other ingredients.

Week 11: Cooking Potatoes | Cooking Grains and Legumes

Our group waiting for the potatoes to be done. They ended up taking much longer than expected! Luckily we had whipped potatoes though, which had simple steps after the boiling.

What a week! Our first day was our SURPRISE event day! (Chef, you are officially responsible for half of my weekly anxiety) The day actually ran relatively smoothly, which was a relief. Our group got "whipped potatoes", which go through a Tamis to get the right texture. I had no idea that you
could use a drum-sieve to get that texture; up until that point, I had assumed that you had to mash them to the right consistency. We put all of our dishes together and got to sample each one. I believe that the Latke (potato pancakes) were my favorite, second to ours of course. Also, salt is a potato's best friend.

Here are the many different kinds of potatoes that we made! There were different types, from Latkes to scalloped potatoes to those weird cookie looking potatoes on the left. What was great about this assignment was that each was made from the same kind of potato, yet there were so many different flavors and textures!

 We also made an easy-to-understand version of the recipe, as shown below.

We have found this year that planning is our friend. Our first step for the potato project was to write out the instructions in an easy-to-follow fashion. This made everything after go much faster.

On the second day this week, we learned how to create pasta dough. It takes at least a day for dough to set so that it is the right consistency (or doughy-ness), which is why we prepared ours today. This way, we can set up our lasagna on prep day instead of doing EVERYTHING on event day! We learned that making dough is an exact science. You have to make sure that everything is prepared....

Here is our layout for the dough. Chef's approval was needed, and given! It was nice to have everything out before starting.

Above and to the left are steps in the dough making process! Above is chef's layout of the dough ingredients, so that nothing goes un-mixed. The other step was mixing in the wet ingredients into the dry, in the middle, and slowly stirring it to get the dry into the wet, like sand on a beach! 

then you combine all of the wet ingredients, all of the dry, and mix them together! Not everything is super complicated after all (;

We also got our requisitions back for the pasta event! (as shown below)

The few mistakes on our requisition were as follows: 1. We need to homemake our tomato sauce, so we found a new recipe to do just that. 2. Instead of Mozzarella, he suggested we use Jack! 3. Instead of a dessert for our side, we will do stuffed mushrooms. Yum!

One thing that we were able to use this week from a previous week was a concept from week 9, as well as a popular bedtime story: slow and steady wins the race. It is easy to get flustered in the kitchen, however as soon as you start "hurrying" in any process, something is bound to go wrong. When we made our pasta dough, we were sure to measure everything out properly, lay it out to visually double check, and then have Chef come by and check as well! We still went as fast as we could, but we made sure to focus on quality over speed.