During week two of genius hour, I worked solely on the technical skills of cooking and preparing meals. I improved my cutting abilities with different vegetables and meat, and I learned about all the preparations required to create a meal.
For instance, I grasped how to organize all of the ingredients before me, so that when each component is necessary, it would be directly available without worrying about how to keep a track of what I was doing. This helps with keeping yourself focused, as well as reducing some stress involved with trying to have your eyes locked on everything. Losing your focus for just a second could cause you to burn something. Think about it this way, grouping your ingredients together near a part of the workstation allows for easy access and less moving around for nothing. Knife skills was the other main topic of this week’s learning. My main job for this week was to cut all of the ingredients out in proper technique, and in correct size and shape. I cut tomatoes, onions, herbs, and meats like chicken and fish. The tomatoes I had to cut into thin slices, while the onions were required to be diced into small chunks. The herbs were to be finely chopped into small pieces. For the meat, however, the chicken needed to be shredded, and the fish simply sliced in half. I had struggles with dicing the onions into a similar shape and size, while my only other hardship was shredding the chicken properly. Shredding the chicken required the use of forks to break it up. If it is shredded too much, however, then the chicken will easily become too thin, and lose all of the flavor inside of it. I had a lot of fun even just learning the basics, and I can’t wait to have the ability to pitch in even more, and eventually take over the entire meal!
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Over the next twelve weeks, I am going to be learning not only how to cook with different techniques such as using a pressure cooker, fryer, stove top, and oven, but also begin creating my own dishes! Cooking has always fascinated me, but I have never really been committed to learning this important life skill before I reach adulthood. Learning and developing this skill seemed like the perfect project that truly encompasses the purpose of Genius Hour.
My dad is going to be my mentor for the twelve weeks of cooking. I was going to cook alongside him while he is making dinner each night, and hopefully become more independent as the weeks progress. For the first two weeks, I will pitch in and learn the technicalities of cooking. For example, knife skills, measurements, and learning about the different tools in the kitchen will be the main focus of these weeks. Over the next nine weeks, I will slowly become more involved until I can completely create a meal without any assistance. During this time, I will learn about cooking temperatures, proper seasoning, and how to blend flavors together. On the last week, my dad and I will compete in a head to head cook-off, using all that I have learned to see if I can best him. The time limit for the cook-off will be an hour. The cook-off will be judged by my mom, brother, and his girlfriend. My blog posts over the next ten weeks will explain my hardships, and accomplishments throughout developing my skills, while the final blog post on the twelfth week will also incorporate the results of the final cook-off. I have two goals for this project. One, being the ability to produce a delicious, and diverse dish from scratch, while the other goal is to put up a respectable dish on the day of the final cook-off. |