Kitchen Brigades Grade 9 Year

Actually, since we’re on this topic already, I might as well start off with my internships and LTI experiences throughout the year. Like I had mentioned already, Kitchen Brigades was an internship I had started somewhere in late February or early March, and it lasted for about two to three months ending in mid May. For those of you who don’t know what Kitchen Brigades is, it’s basically a cooking program where you are taught basic techniques and recipes in the kitchen. Not only do we learn how to cook but we also learn about the nutritional values of foods we make there at Kitchen Brigades.

In Kitchen Brigades I had actually learned quite a bit about knife techniques like..

Julienne - Long thin strips
Floral - For cutting off the the parts that look like a tree on cauliflower or broccoli
Half moon - things that are circular like cucumber, slicing it into disk and then cutting the disk in half
Cubes - Simple, you know your shapes (I hope), slicing it into small blocks
Dicing - Smaller version of cubes
Mince - Mincing is cutting into extremely small pieces, almost like rock salt where you turn the lid and grind it up

Now, during this internship experience I have learned a few things about myself. The first thing being that I am more of an independent cook than I thought I was before, especially after having my groupmates bump into each other while ONE WAS HOLDING A KNIFE and the other trying to cut some vegetables, ending up in a bloody situation. I’ve ended up not having my voice heard at times and end up doing something wrong because I ask a teammate if I’m supposed to do this and not that, and that ends up being wrong so I have to salvage the mistake somehow.

Speaking of people accidentally harming each other's fingers, that event actually happened during the black box challenge, or the battle of the Brigades if you’re imagining some boss music in your head right now. If you are unfamiliar with the black box or you haven’t seen cooking shows such as Master Chef Canada, it is a challenge where you get a box containing different ingredients in which you have to incorporate within your dish, which you are going to be making without a recipe. I honestly had a bit of fun doing this challenge and even though I cut myself and my groupmates cut each other’s fingers, it was still the most collaborative activity we’ve done together unlike some other recipes we’ve done. If you are wondering what we made, we made pasta with sweet potato fries and sriracha along with a cucumber salad.