Day fifty nine

Gargouillou

Can the whole part be more than 100% ?

Today was all about Liberal Art Classes. All as usual - Math, Gastronomy, Nutrition, and First Year Experience. We can feel that we are going to the end of semester.

The next week is the last one. We will have practical exam on Culinary Fundamentals (knife cuts, written exam, and practical) and quizes on all other subjects. Also we have to complete final project for the First Year and probably something else...

Math today was a little bit about ratios and we started to review what we have learned so far. Answer to the question at the beginning of this post is yes, in case we use baker percentage. Do not think that bakers are crazy people and therefore they have more
then 100% as a whole part. This is not true. They just use different method of calculation. When bakers do their calculations the flour is always 100% and all other ingredients listed in percentage to the flour. So let's say pie dough 3:2:1 (3 parts flour 2 parts fat and 1 part of water) in baker's language will be 100% : 66.67 % : 33.33 %. But, you can not add all these numbers to get the whole part, it simply does not work.

Gastronomy was about creating cuisine. We watched video how a French guy - Michel Bras created one of his signature dish named gargouillou (I can even pronounce this). This is fabulous in terms of presentation and it was interesting to see how he did it.

Nutrition... What it was about? Oh, it was about sodium and calcium. It seems that we are eating too much salt and this is not good for health. 1 teaspoon is about 2300 mg sodium, basically the daily norm.   How to reduce amount of sodium? First, the most people do not notice 20% reduction. Second, use straight salting (finishing with salt, use cheeses, olives, anchovies). Third, bump up other tastes and flavours (sweet, sour, bitter, umami, or add some herbs and spices).

At work it was not easy day. The chef decided that we need only two people and we had to finish a lot of work.