Garde Manger week one

Our piggy for the class

Why knife skills are so important in Garde Mange?

This week we started a new block - Garde Manger. This block is all about cold buffet, appetizers, and different techniques for preservation. We are going to make sausages, pates, and some other exciting dishes. The instructor for this block is extremely knowledgeable about the subject and very passionate. Also he is very open minded and understandable. His position is that mistake could happen, but you should analyze your mistake and learn from it, to avoid the same or similar mistake in the future. Garde mange is all about presentation. As a result knife skill

Cuisine of Asia week three

Spicy Lemongrass Tofu

Cuisines of Asia is over!

The final week of Asian cuisine class. I was so happy that this class is over. It has been probably the biggest disappointment for the whole school so far. The instructors for the two pm classes did not do great job. The main idea for the whole block was that we are not going to be experts in Asian cuisines anyway, so why to bother. It's true that this is not feasible to learn a cuisine even for one country in three weeks. However, looking back I guess that Cuisines of Europe was the heaven.

Cuisine of Asia week two

Miso marinated Black Cod

The continuation os Asian cuisine.

We continued our 'trip' in Asia. This week we started with Korean cuisine. Then we moved to Japan and finished in Vietnam. It seems the class in general is not well organized. Our production is consistently low. We have too much time to prepare these dishes, and our class is only 13 people. The sister group is 20 people, what they are going to do is a big question.

Cuisines of Asia week one

The dish of the day on Friday:
Lion Head Meatballs

Chinese cuisine...
As we finished our short 'trip' in Europe and Mediterranean our next destination is Asia. The first stop was China, or to be more detailed Chinatown in Oakland. On Tuesday, the first day of class, we went to a field trip. We visited Ranch 99 Chinese grocery store in Berkeley, Dim Sam Palace Chinese restaurant in Oakland, Koreana Plaza market Korean grocery, and Chaat and Market an Indian store and cafe in Berkeley.
This field trip was interesting, but we spent way too long time at grocery stores. Our instructors needed to buy some ingredients for class and we got 45 minutes time to discover unfamiliar ingredients. In a normal day, when I do grocery shopping it rarely takes 30 minutes for me. Here I got 45 minutes, and I did not buy anything.
Dim Sam Palace was

Cuisines of Europe and Mediterranean week three

Sauerkraut with sauasages

How to chose the menu?

The final week in the Cuisines of Europe and Mediterranean. For this week we had four days of normal classes and Friday was our special project. For the special project we had to prepare the menu of the country chosen on day one by drawing. It had to be a full menu - how it would be in the country. We were not allowed to cook any dish we prepared during our class. Our country was Morocco. We chose really simple menu, which was easy to execute and it paid off. The chef said we were the best team, the menu was Moroccan, very traditional.

During the week we finished Central Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary), cooked English Islands menu, and had Scandinavia and Russia for