Day eighteen

a courtesy of

Why do we have so many ingredients in this recipe? Is author nuts?

Today is Monday, the beginning of a new week. This week we have a lecture on Culinary Fundamentals. The lecture was about ingredients, their functionality and also about the main nutrients, such as water, carbohydrates, lipids and proteins.

Water is main composition of all food (70% and up). Green lettuce has about 95% water content. But milk probably has 80% of water. How that could be? Milk is more watery than lettuce. Milk also contains a lot of different elements, such as fat, protein (in form of lactose), micronutrients (calcium and so on).

Water is also quite amazing liquid. It has
three form, all of which we can see and touch and feel (ice, water, gas - ok may be gas is not safe to touch). Freezing point is 0 C or 32 F and there will be no change in structure after freezing. Boiling point is 100 C or 212 F and you can not heat water more than 100 C or 212 F at normal condition. The water will evaporate, but the temperature is not going above 100 C (unless you apply pressure, in pressure cooker you may heat it up to higher temperature).

Back to the question in line one. There are two ways of cooking. The first one you find a recipe appealing to you and you stick to it. If it says 1 tbsp salt - you put exactly what is required, if it says cook 20 minutes at 400 F - you do this. At the end, if you are lucky, the result will be ok, may be good. However chances are low for a really good result.

Another way of cooking is to understand why we are doing this and that steps, why we have each ingredient in the recipe and what to do if you don't have something on hand. For example, you want to cook braised short ribs. Why do you need salt? Why do you need liquid? When you understand all these steps, it will be much easier to cook.

Second lecture for today was about knives sharpening. At the school we have great tool to sharpen knives. This device will help you to maintain the required angle on each side of the knife. Therefore it will be much easier and faster to sharpen it. I am thinking to book time and get my knife sharp.

Today I have visitred Social Administration Office for the third time. Finally I was able to get my SSN. So I will send a letter to DMV tomorrow to get my driving licence (they were not able to verify my status here) and waiting for a SSN card, so I will be able to start my work on campus.