Another long, informative day in New Mexico. The day began in the kitchen, where we had a few demos and then cooked our lunch to be eaten a few hours later; we will be cooking our lunches for the rest of the week. Today we made pan-fried chicken breasts in a basil, lemon, white wine, cream sauce. A sauteed vegetable medley, green salad with numerous dressing choices (made by us, of course), and polenta cups with roasted red peppers, pesto, and mozzarella were the accompaniments. All in all, everything was pretty good.
We had a meat demo after lunch, which was particularly useful to me since I am not the biggest meat fan. Flank steak, round steak, and sirloin steak were all prepared and tasted, not only to show how they should be cooked, but also how they should not be cooked. Let me tell you, some of the meat was like leather.
Pressure cookers have been talked about a lot here and a large chuck roast was cooked in one today - 35 minutes and it was done. I've just heard the horror stories about old-day pressure cookers exploding, but they are apparently much safer today than the original versions. The thought of being able to make homemade stock in 20 minutes is very appealing!
The business portion of the course has been very helpful, bringing up many things I would not have considered on my own. I will definitely need to make my notes a bit more concise when I get home.
The days have been beautiful here - perfectly clear skies and temps in the 50s, but the mornings sure are cold. We're at about 5000 feet here, so I guess it's not surprising that it's been around 20 when I have headed to class in the morning. The worst thing is how dry my skin is here! Ugh.
Okay... off to unwind some more.
No comments:
Post a Comment