This week was super new and exciting because we got to make and try 3 different recipes! I typically cook pretty basic meals at home, so learning new things and ways to cook is awesome!
One technique I learned about this week was braising. I had always heard the word but never really understood what it meant. Braising is known as a combination cooking method because it includes wet and dry cooking. When beginning to braise something, you sear the ingredients in oil first and then you add liquid to simmer the ingredients in. To add depth to your braised sauce is to strain the ingredients out and bring the leftover liquid to a boil. Add the ingredients back in and season/cook simultaneously! Braising and stewing is known to cook comfort food and are techniques used throughout the world. A Taiwanese recipe, called Lu Rou Fan, is a comforting braised pork dish served with rice. Another recipe I found is a Korean dish called Jjimdak which is braised chicken. In Korea, dak means chicken and jjim means steamed, stewed, or braised in a sauce. Cool right? I found one other recipe called Lebanese Lubee which is made of braised beef and green beans. There are so many unique recipes used with braising!
We cooked 3 different recipes this week being a Blanched Green Bean Salad, White Bean Miso Soup, and Zucchini Fennel Soup. There were so many different ingredients that I have never used or even heard of! For the Green Bean Salad, I had used most of the ingredients besides coriander seeds and mustard seeds. I even had to toast them over the stove and wait for them to pop, which was super fun! Another new ingredient to me was fennel from the Zucchini Fennel Soup. I honestly didn’t know what that even was but I learned that it has a licorice-like flavor and is from the carrot family. It also has many health benefits like potassium and Vitamin A. The Miso Soup was probably my favorite dish, and the one that I knew least about! First of all, it has mushrooms in it which I typically try to avoid at all costs, but I tried them and I couldn’t even tell they were mushrooms! Also, the thought of eating seaweed doesn’t exactly make my mouth water, but I learned that it is actually super healthy and doesn’t taste bad! Kombu seaweed, when cooked with beans, actually extracts the anti-nutrients found in beans thus producing less flatulence! Miso is a great source of healthy bacteria and probiotics. It should actually be added last to the soup and should not be cooked or else all of the nutrients will disappear. Wakame seaweed is a super healthy green to add to many dishes and is a great source of iodine! It was super awesome to learn new ingredients and how to use them in a recipe!
My group specifically made the Blanched Green Bean Salad. It took a lot longer than I thought to prep, but once it was finished man was it delicious! I had never blanched anything before so this was new to me. If I were to blanch a different fruit or vegetable, I would choose to blanch broccoli in salted water and then coat it with lemon juice and minced garlic. The texture of the beans was smooth at first and had a perfect crunch when you bit into it. The chili flakes gave it a nice bite at the end and the lemon zest added a sour zing to it. The overall flavors were amazing, I couldn’t resist bringing home leftovers! We also had the opportunity to make home made almond milk! My group chose to keep our milk simple with only adding maple syrup and salt until the flavor was just right. Other groups tried agave nectar and vanilla extract which also tasted amazing! We saved the pulp from the almonds to make almond flour and to use in future recipes which is a great way to reduce waste and re-purpose food!
There were many components in each of these recipes so it is important to know which is which. The fat components we used were olive oil for the green beans, sesame oil in the miso soup, and coconut oil in the zucchini fennel. The acids we used were lemon zest and lemon juice. One of my personal flaws is that I have never been able to really taste specific ingredients or flavors in food. Like I can taste things, but not really identify what I am tasting if that makes sense. My mom never really used seasonings when cooking when I was growing up so maybe that is why it is difficult for me to identify what tastes good together and what doesn’t. So to say what flavors complemented each other, I’d have to try and say in the Green Bean Salad that the sour flavor from the lemon zest went nicely with the salt added. The tarragon and fennel really stood out to me in the Zucchini Fennel soup. I’m not even sure what flavors I was tasting in the Miso Soup but it was definitely one of the best soups I ever tasted.
Overall, this was a successful week in cooking and I can’t wait to try these recipes at home!
Food for Thought 