Jam Making – Apples!

Making jam is pretty easy and cheap. The best part is, it lasts for a long time!

Candied Nuts

I used to hate nuts before when I was young but now, I feel they’re sexy. They give great texture to food and add another layer of flavor that is quite distinct. You know what’s even sexier? If you candied them.

Deveining Shrimps/Prawns

I have actually deveined a shrimp before but like the basic tomato sauce post I figured I need to create a separate entry regarding deveining a shrimp.

Basic Tomato Sauce

If you were to look at my archives, I have already made dishes that came with tomato sauce before like here and here but I never had a separate entry on making a basic tomato sauce alone.

Dashi Stock – Japanese Cooking

Since I am currently taking my culinary arts in ISCAHM, I will be doing pretty much a lot of French Cooking. With that in mind, I think I need to start cooking Asian cuisine so that my learnings won’t be redundant in a manner of speaking. Since my knowledge is heavy on Japanese cooking, I thought of starting with the basic dashi stock.

Mise en place – Chicken Stock

Mise en place is a french culinary term meaning ‘putting in place’ or ‘everything in place’. Professional kitchen do their mise en place so that during service hours, cooking is faster and easier. Technically, your ‘miz’ is your prep work in your kitchen. This the time when you make and set aside all the things that can be done in advance like flavored oil, stocks, chiffonades of herbs, sauces etc.. Moreover, it is also about placing everything that must have already been prepared in advance on your work place like cuts of beef, kitchen tools etc..

Normally, the mise en place I do in my small kitchen is all about making stock since it will take you a pretty long while to finish making a stock. A good stock is the foundation of any french cooking, and in my humble opinion, to any cooking.

Stock making is also difficult. It is not just toss everything into the pot and done. There are certain criteria that one looks into their stock: flavor, aroma, body, color, *I think am missing one more*

So here is my prep table for that.

I cut the mirepoix (50% onion, 25% carrots, 25% celery) into large pieces.