Lessons From the Test Kitchen

Reaching the halfway point of Food Lit brings a mix of emotions. Well actually this is a bit over the halfway point for me, since the seniors leave for internships in May in place of classes, but this is still an important time to reflect on my time within this course. Below, I have listed my top 3 most important lessons that I have learned so far, as you read I hope you learn from my mistakes and triumphs as well!

Throughout this semester and also from my experience with my own baking business, this is quite possibly the most important thing to remember. No one starts out perfect at cooking, I still make plenty of mistakes, but I always make sure to pull it all together with presentation. For this most recent cook, I made a lemon tart. All was going well, my crust was cooked to a perfect golden brown, the lemon juice smelled delicious, and I was ready to make my filling. Although, since I was using agar agar, a natural seaweed substitute for gelatin, I wasn't sure how much to add and my filling wasn't solidifying like the instructions described. I was running late for my next class so I decided to just hope for the best and that it would magically solidify in the fridge overnight. However, the next day I came back and it was a liquidy mess, completely not what I'd expected. But, I needed a good picture for credit so I carefully took it out of the pan, sliced some lemons and fresh mint, and was careful not to shake the table so it wouldn't spill over mid shoot (if you look closely you can see on the side of the pan how it spilled a bit anyway). If I had just given up or put minimal effort into the garnish, these pictures wouldn't have turned out as well and I might have gotten a worse grade. And after these photos were taken, I dumped it in a ziplock to take home and used the lemony glaze to top desserts at home, way to make the most of everything!

Sourdough bread. Over the pandemic, my family attempted countless times to make a sourdough bread, but had failed countless times. Despite these past attempts, making sourdough bread has always been something I wanted to try and make, but since 2020 I've been too scared to actually try it again. Coincidently, my connections teacher, Ms. Cirino, lovingly makes our group sourdough bread for monthly connections parties, and one day she was giving out starter to anyone who wanted it. I took some and figured I could make a bread in Food Lit. Since the week's theme was to make a bagged lunch, I thought it was boring to just use packaged bread, so I decided this was an excuse to make my own bread. With Chef's guidance whenever I had a question or concern, I was able to make a delicious loaf of sourdough bread! While I haven't made one since, I am glad that I got over my fear of failure and was rewarded with a perfect loaf.

I'm going to keep these three lessons in mind for the rest of my cooks this semester, hopefully they'll be better than ever! I hope you learned something from my mistakes and will go out of your comfort zone to make delicious things too.