Steak: Art of cooking day 3 (intermediate group)

January 07, 2023

Steak: Art of cooking Day 3 (intermediate group)

(Image of final dish)

Today in Art of cooking we had cooked steaks with side dishes to pair. In all, the recipe had many different parts to it from seasoning the steak to making the mac and cheese, asparagus, caramelized onions, stuffed potatoes and actually finishing everything off on an outdoor grill.

There ended up being a lot of things that I had learned in class because a lot of what we did I had never done myself before. One of these new skills that I had learned was how to properly season steak and how to properly season a portobello mushroom cap. The chief had explained to me that when seasoning steak, you want to coat the layers of the steak with salt and pepper until there's at least a visible layer of seasoning on the steak itself. But when seasoning the mushroom, you want to put a light layer of salt on it because salt travels right through the mushroom and if you put too much it will be easier to over season. I also learned that what was different from seasoning the steak from the mushroom was that you had to brush a layer of oil over the mushroom, unlike the steak.

(Chief showing us how to properly season steak)

(Me seasoning and coating the mushroom in oil)

The second thing that I had learned to do was make a roux for the Mac and cheese. We had learned how to make a roux as it gave us instructions in the recipe. It is not the easiest thing to make as it can be ruined very easily if you add the heavy cream and milk to fast. My team had learned when to add the ingredients to the pot, how fast one should be stirring the mixture and how not to accidentally break your roux when making it.

(Another team mixing the roux with the pasta)

(My team stirring the roux together)

(Imar shredding the cheese for the roux)

For the other side dishes, we all had learned how to prepare asparagus, how to cook and carve out potatoes correctly, and how to slice onions correctly so they cook evenly when caramelizing.

(Other teams preparing their asparagus)

(The prosses of caramelizing the onions)

(Learning proper knife work)

(Ellie carving out the potatoes)

I'd say that my favorite part of the day was when we got to take our food outside and cook it on the grill. This was because I had never cooked anything on a grill before and seeing the process of how it was used and being able to cook some of my own items on it gave me some insight into how it works and how to cook different food with it.