Days Remaining to Finish Cooking Class: 75 Average Grade: 97%
I just finished Unit 3. Thank goodness! I typically do not procrastinate but I was dragging my feet a little on this unit. It was a lot of information and I was feeling uncharacteristically intimidated.
Just as I suspected, my grade keeps going down. Ugh. 🙁 Although, I have to admit, I was a bit sloppy on my quiz at the end of the unit. I missed 2 questions of the 20 and they were questions that I had correctly answered at the beginning of the unit. How stupid is that?
At the start of each unit, they ask you to gauge how much you THINK you know on the subject to be covered. This unit covered steaming and submersion techniques. I thought to myself ……. I’ve been cooking for, oh, 35 years or so, I know a few things. 50%? OK, sounds good. Then you take a 10 question quiz to see what you ACTUALLY know. I scored 100%.
I’m not sure how that happened because, then …… why would I need their cooking class, right? (This is where I should admit that I guessed on a few questions).
The unit is finalized when you complete the quiz at the end. This does count towards your grade. (There might have been a glass of red wine involved when I took this particular quiz) End result: 18/20.
Note to self: No wine before taking quizzes.
This assignment, however, I did super well on. 100%.
We had to cut our broccoli into similar size pieces and display them so the instructors could see them easily. (Everything on a white plate)
My name tag needs to be included in every one of the submission photos, as there are over 400 people in my class. I suppose they need to make sure we didn’t just get lazy and take a picture from the Internet? idk….
I brought the salted water to a boil, and cooked the broccoli to demonstrate the 3 levels of submersion stages we studied: blanching, parboiling & the tender state.
I had to figure out, on my own, how long to cook the broccoli to achieve each of the three required stages. I started with about 10 pieces and pulled them at different times to find the correct phase.
If you look closely, you can see the broccoli on the far left has a white stripe down the center of the stalk. I removed that piece after 1 minute of boiling and put into an ice bath. That’s blanching, which is used for vegetables you want to freeze for later.
The middle was parboiled and removed at 2 minutes. That technique is used for vegetables you want to cook ahead and keep in the fridge for easy reheating.
The piece on the right was cooked to the tender stage and taken out after 3 minutes. Ready to serve immediately.
So this assignment came out great, but I am definitely ready to move on to the next unit. I peaked ahead and saw that we are going to actually start making some recipes and honing those knife skills!
“My cooking is so fabulous, even the smoke alarm cheers me on!”
xoxo – Katy
*Original post from 5/19/17