Chef Barbie cooks: Culinary School

American Regional
January 10-11, 2011
New England

Summary: This week we will be focusing on the cuisine of New England. I am on a team with Jose, Marc and Alicia. After Chef goes over the syllabus, he appoints me to be “Chef of the day”. My team and I divide up the recipes and plan out our meal. I am responsible for making the New England Boiled Dinner. To me this is basically corned beef and cabbage. I also make the horseradish sauce to go with it. I love horseradish. I made the sauce kind of spicy because that is how I like it. During critique Chef tells us that creamy soups should be served in a bowl and that cups like the one we served our clam chowder in should be used for thin soups. The reason for this is because thin soups will cool faster than a thick soup so if you give it a smaller surface it will retain heat longer. During the critique of our dessert, Peach and blueberry cobblers, a question came up about the differences between granulated sugar and brown sugar. Brown sugar has molasses added to it during processing. This led to a question about what molasses is. I looked it up when I got home from class. There are two different types of molasses. The first is made by boiling down sugar cane and the second is made by boiling down sugar beets. Molasses also comes in three different grades. Mild, dark and blackstrap. Mild molasses is made from the first boiling, dark is made from the second and blackstrap is made from the third boiling down.

Day two we made cod cakes, and turkey roulade. The dessert tonight was gingerbread cake. We made a cinnamon whipped cream to top it. I thought the cod cakes needed more fish. All I tasted was potatoes. The tartar sauce that Marc made was very good. I think he added Tabasco to it to spice it up. I burnt my thumb and index finger picking up a spider that someone left beside the stove top. I didn’t realize that it had been sitting in or near the flame. This was a good reminder to me to use my side towels to pick up things that might be hot. I really liked the meal.

This class has its challenges for me due to my shellfish allergy. I am not able to taste all of the food or even participate in the cooking of it. But I enjoyed the first week. I can’t wait to get to the central plains and southwest!