Day Three

The last day of the orientation: Secrets of taste revealed

Yes, it was Saturday and once in a blue moon we have Saturday as study day.

That was a last day of orientation. Next week we are going to start our learning. Hope that will place all small things in place. For now some pieces are confusing - how to read class schedule, what to do and don't do in the kitchen.

This post I am writing with a delay. Yesterday classes finished by 3 p.m. and I jumped in the car and drove to San Francisco. Te road wasn't good, there were a couple of traffic jams and it was raining so people were driving slowly. Anyway I made it.
OK, back to school. I believe it is more interesting than hear about traffic issues:-)

One of the lecture we hade was about fundamentals of cooking flavor dynamics. I learned quite a lot. First thing is that the flavor and taste is quite different. Our ability to smell influenced
what we taste make the picture whole. We experimented twice with jelly beans of different flavour. Close your nose, put jelly bean into your mouth and chew. I was able to feel that it's kind of chewy candy without ANY flavor. The open your nose and bang - the flavor come immediately - the first one was melon and the second one some berry (forget which one). We can distinguish five basic tastes - sweet, sour, salt, bitter and savory. The huge variety of flavors we can taste in any instance is a combination of five basic tastes plus aroma.

Also we had a team building session. It was great to get to know other people who started school at the same time with me. One of activities was cool - we were divided by teams of four and given some items (onion, celery, carrot, pepper, cornmeal and others) and we had to create a picture using these items. Our team created this one - two potatoes in love

Ours was not a winning one, however it was a fun to create it.
I like this one created by other team - the road to success.


Our orientation is now over. Today is Sunday and we are off. Tomorrow we are going to start our learning process.
After this week I am really impressed what the Culinary Institute of America has created. We have all resources to lear and to be successful. Let's begin this exciting journey!