Week 3: May 23rd-27th, 2011

Thursday May 26th, 2011

Today, I had another opportunity to make another dish of my own.  This time, a pasta dish.  I didn't have to think long before I knew what pasta dish I wanted to do.  My lemon pasta dish was a pretty big hit when I cooked it last Thursday for the dinner at Mike's place.  The only difference about the dish that I made was there was a lot more sauce than last Thursday's dish.  Just like yesterday, I read the recipe then grabbed all the ingredients after multiplying it by the necessary amount.  This happened to be 24.  24 times more than what the original recipe asked for!!  That's crazy!  However, another lesson that I learned from this project is that when you make a recipe for a big crowd, you can't multiply everything by a certain number and expect the dish to turn out just fine.  You have to taste the dish for yourself and add what you need as you go along.  For example, I was suppose to use five pounds of butter.  I ended up using only one pound because I felt the sauce didn't need to be any more buttery.  The same principle applies to the method.  Just because the recipe says to cook something a certain way in a certain order doesn't mean it will work if you make the dish for a bigger crowd.  You have to adjust and see what equipment you are using and the amount of time you have to cook the dish.  The lunch itself was exactly like yesterday.  People liked my pasta dish so much that I had to literally keep making batches of pasta because once I was done with one batch, another batch will be required by the time I got another batch done.

Also during lunch, my advisor Mike Koenig dragged me out to the main dinning hall and made an announcement to everyone in the dinning hall about congratulating me and my efforts in the kitchen during senior project.  To top it off, the kitchen crew got me my very own (with my name on it) a chef's top complete with a chef hat and.... a potato peeler!!....... fond memories.  So thanks a lot guys!  I really appreciate it!

Tomorrow is sort of my last day in the kitchen during senior project (I still have to cook for the wise show).  It's crazy... I've done so much in three weeks.  The weeks really flew by.  Tomorrow is also carnival day.  I think everyone will love lunch.  Bring on the meats!!