Culinary School Week 16

I'm back in it. Full force up to my eyeballs in dishes, knife cuts, and lecture. This semester I'm taking Professional Kitchen I which is a build on class from my cooking class last semester. We get into menu planning, plating and food pairings, as well as more advanced cooking techniques. I'm also taking Garde Manger it's basically cold food preparation. We cover salads, vinaigrette's, sandwiches, cheese making, fruit carving and lots more. I'm wasn't sure going into my Garde Manger class whether or not I was excited, I think more than anything I just wasn't really sure what to expect but now that I've got a better understanding about what I'll be doing I've become more excited. The things I'll learn in that class will be things I can regularly use, and as of right now the techniques and recipes are things I'm fairly unfamiliar with, I'm really looking forward to delving into this new material. This week in my cooking class the chef wanted to see where we were as far as some of our techniques go. We broke down some chickens and worked on knife cuts and made two dishes a coq au vin and a pan seared chicken breast. In garde manger this week we made mayonnaise, bleu cheese dressing and ceasar dressing. I really liked everything we made (even the mayonnaise) the dressings were really delicious I especially liked the bleu cheese dressing. Homemade dressings are really easy and are so. much. better. It was amazing how different the ceasar dressing was fresh than when I buy it in a bottle. As we worked away in the kitchens this week I was taken back to my first weeks of school and remembered those exciting first few days. It's amazing to me to see my skills and techniques get better and become more fine tuned. I'm learning so much about what I love and am so grateful for this opportunity.