Kira's Kaptivating
Pallet
Kreamy chili
Potato and leek soup
​The recipe we developed was our take on the potato( looks white of the outside but when you peel it, it starts to turn purple) and leek soup as Edward and I have never tried this prior to making it. Every recipe requires preparation, therefore we picked out all our ingredients, washed and then peeled them before moving onto the first step. We first began with our aromatics which were celery, onion, leek and we added the garlic later as it burns easily if you mix it in from the start. Next, we decided to wait for the concoction to evaporate before we added the chicken bouillon and the corresponding water amount to the soup. Following that, we waited for the water to simmer before we measured the amount of heavy cream we wanted to incorporate. Then, after deliberating which spices to include, we came to the conclusion that we wanted something with a kick – which were Thai chilli peppers! After tasting to see how it was, we added salt and pepper and waited for the mixture to boil. That’s when we decided to add our cut potatoes and awaited the results as they boiled. To our amazement, the potatoes did not turn the mixture purple but it was green because of the chicken broth. Next we poured the soup into a blender which turned the soup into a taro purple to then a creamy beige colour. Overall, the taste was creamy with a bit of spice and the potato’s starchy texture still remained!
Savoury Galette
Faux pizza
Here is the link to my foods partner for another P.O.V of the recipe
https://gracelfield.wixsite.com/foodblog
This recipe was definitely fun to play with, while taking 2 classes to create this end process, it took quite a bit of planning before the actual cooking portion. On the first cooking day we worked on the dough and followed Ms. Toteda's instructions pior to that class. Following that dough class it was time to prepare our ingredients that would go into our galette within a 15 minute timeframe as our dough was warming up to room temperature. Gracie and I had planned to include sun dried tomatoes which we substituted for a red bell pepper. We first cleaned and cut our vegetables according to their purpose in our dish. Then we cooked the potatoes first, seasoned with salt and pepper. Moving on, we prepared our sauce mixture which was composed of : balsamic vinegar, dijon mustard, rosemary, oregano, and chilli flakes. We removed the potatoes to let it cool while we prepared to place the mushrooms in the pan to sauté them. We waited till they shrivelled slightly before adding the bell pepper and kale to the pan. Afterwards, we incorporated the mixture but realized that the dijon was lacking and added more onto the pan. Rolling the dough was next on the to do list. Gracie and I took turns to flatten out the dough to around a 14 inch circle and began to cut 5 circular lines on it. Then we arranged our potatoes, mushrooms, kale and bell pepper onto it before we began to fold the dough inwards. Following this, we included some of the potatoes we left aside to decorate it into a reclined domino effect before adding the gruyere and cheddar cheese on the top and brushing the egg wash. We topped it off with some salt and it was ready to be placed into the oven! The galette we made was absolutely delicious, it was full of different flavours but the vinegar and chilli flakes stood out the most. An improvement we could try would be to incorporate more cheese within the galette so that it would remain stringy when the top has tons of hardened cheese after baking for that long. Another would be to add salt onto the bell peppers directly instead of pouring the sauce mixture onto it so that the bell pepper's natural sweetness would prevail instead of the standard steamed vegetable taste which is quite bland.
Sweet Gnocchi
Poison berry
This was an experimental recipe which took 2 classes to complete. Gnocchi is made using flour, spices ( of your choice) and soft ricotta cheese. I wanted to dye my gnocchi purple to have the same effect as using purple yam but was afraid that the consistency would be malleable and when boiling it, it may lose its shape, which resulted in the making of a berry sauce. I made a berry sauce residue using frozen mix berries ( raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and blackberries), fresh blackberries, basil, pepper, lemon and cream cheese. Then, I promptly poured the mixture into the hand powered blender to refine the sauce into a smooth consistency which smelt mostly of berries and the sourness of it. Following that, I gently scooped the sauce onto the dough to incorporate the colour slowly when kneading. After this, I rolled the dough into a long snake-like shape and sectioned the dough into squares. Then, I took a fork and smeared it with flour and then took a gnocchi piece and pressed the cut side of the dough to form a pattern onto the dough. ( This was chilled for 2 days and I saved the extra sauce for later.) For day 2, I took out the saved sauce and began to add cinnamon and honey to it and adjusted based on the quantity of it and taste tested it. I took the gnocchi out and prepared the boiling water while heating the sauce in the saucepan with more berries, simultaneously. After this, I waited for the gnocchi to cook before transferring it into the saucepan and stirred it for a while before determining when to plate it. I also added icing sugar on the top but it dissolved almost instantly so I had to wait for it to cool down before continuing to do so. Overall, I really wanted to play with the consistency of the sauces by altering the temperatures of the sauces to compare which one would be tastier but the taste was slightly disproportionate. I think that because I wanted the sauce to stay onto the gnocchi, I opted for an ingredient with a higher viscosity level but that made the presentation of the dish seem poisonous looking.
​
Choux puff - Éclair
Cheeky chocolate Chu
For my choux pastery lab, I was able to successfully make éclairs that tasted great but I know the presentation of our choux pastery needs much improvement. For instance the length and width of it were each unique as in they were all different shapes and sizes. That being said, I was able to adapt our custard into a lighter consistency by using more than the recommended amount of milk to make it fluffier which reduced the heaviness of the custard which I have a difficult time adjusting to.( I am not entirely sure about the exact mesurements I used but we had to make more custard filling because it was lacking when we were piping it into the chouz pastery… we improvised. ) As for the skills used in this food lab, I was able to practice tempering the milk and eggs by ensuring that I was not distracted or even stepping away from the mixture as it is very heat sensitive and would be detremental to our recipe if it were to burn. However, as I was stirring it, the custard lumps went away but came back again so I thought it was still undercooked but by the time we placed it into a heatproof bowl we found that the texture was indeed still lumpy and to our surprise, overcooked! I was able to practice my piping skills by ensuring checking to see if our lines were consistent but Naomi and I were highly confused as we did not know how to mark the baking sheet so we made tactical errors when piping. Another skill I was able to practice was drizzling chocolate when I decorated my éclairs as I was attempting to find the best way to make it more presentable but failed as the chocolate did not harden as quickly as I wanted them to. Upon returning home, I kept them in the freezer to let the choclate harden and it tasted so much better when frozen. The custard was frozen so it had an ice-cream like texture to it, added with the crunchy chocolate which was an excellent treat. An improvement I would make for future reference would be to change the custard to make it taste more milky without tasting the egg and if possible, to practice piping it in a uniform manner.
Biscotti
Primrose marble
For the biscotti recipe I was able to adpat it to suit Naomi and my curiosity. We both wanted something that was intersting so we combined a few of the flavours that we wanted but had to switched some ingrediants out last minute because we did not have them. We originally wanted to make a simple dough biscotti with chocolate chips, raspberry jam, cashews, chia seeds and dried cramberries but we ended up having to abandon the chia seeds and cashews because we didn’t have enough. We wanted to make it fun and flavourful with different textures which is why we collectively agreed that jam would be a creative risk becuase it may become too soggy or even harden if we add too much or too little of an amount. It was a strange planning process because we had no clue how it could taste like and I even adked her if she would want any spices or savory components but it was a bit of a stretch to incorporate even more ingredients if we were already unsure about the jam and dried cramberries. We did initially think about making a chocolate biscotti but when comparing it to the other class who was finishing up their 2nd baking attempt, it was different from what I envision so I dropped the thought of making it all chocolate because it reminded me of an all chocolate muffin and I could already taste the overpowering sweetness from it. By going out of our comfort zones, we created an interesting biscotti but I to recreate this in the future, I would need to plan out the amount of jam as some pieces broke apart and had evidently more jam than the rest. Overall, this biscotti tasted weird… it was a combination of many sweet ingredients and I felt like it needed some salt or something to counter having the sweet fruit syrup, dried fruit and chocolate, it was too much. I really think we could’ve added pumpkin seeds ( the green ones) for a different texture and maybe mixing the chocolates to have white and dark chocolate chips mixed in with strawberry jam.
Evergreen
2020
Nourish bowl
For my nourish bowl, my group planned to use quinoa and lentils for our grain base ; edamame, and salmon sashimi for our filling protein; cucumber, zucchini and baby spinach for our vegetables and avocado for our healthy fats. For the add-in we decide to use soy-sauce to slightly marinated the sashimi for a few minutes before plating it into the bowl and to drizzle some spicy mayo to top it off. Afterwards, we decided that our bowl’s theme would be green and that we would use poké as a references for our inspiration.( we can make this an official earth day inspired poké bowl!) To my surprise some of my group members has never tried this before and it was quite interesting to create something that they’ve never had before to showcase this.
On the day of the cooking lab, we found that the zucchini from the fridge was starting to become mushy and the spiralizer was not present so we dropped the zucchini idea. We started to make the grain base and to boil the edamame beans while we ravaged the kitchen stations to find forks, spoons and bowls as they had been misplaced. I began preparing the sashimi by slicing them into sashimi slices but forgot that I should’ve probably sliced them on an angle but as long as I sliced them against the grain then the fish should be easier to chew. Upon Madeline’s request I had a few cut into cubes to prevent her taste buds from being overwhelmed by the taste and texture of raw fish. I mixed sesame-oil with soy to create the marinade and let it soak until it could be plated.
Moving on, Edward was dicing the cucumbers and we had to work with an unripe avocado and it was bizarre when we researched that microwaving it can help it ripen quicker. Ian and Edward were working on making the spicy mayo (mayonnaise mixed with siracha sauce), we all peeled the edamame beans from the husk and plated it into a bowl. We topped it off with placing in the grains first and adding the baby spinach underneath the salmon as a bed but we forgot about seasoning our grain so it was bland when comparing it with the soy-sauce. Next time, I would suggest we have a mix in sauce that would compliment the grain and if we could have a squeeze bottle to layer the sauce on properly on the top with some chopped nori, sesame and tobiko. Overall, I think that our bowl was very balanced in terms of nutrition but in terms of colour we need to work on finding vegetables so that my group wouldn’t be allergic and to find a better platting method.