Week 5, day 2

Hello everyone, and happy Tuesday.  My Exam on Monday went pretty well in pastry, although my bread didn't quite work out the way it was supposed to. I'm not sure if it wasn't proofed enough, or if we all screwed up, because both exam classes, everyone had the same problem. The bottom had a bunch of dough explode out of it, even though we cut slits in the top to allow for expansion. Hmm,... anyhow, I'll have my mark on Friday, and I'll let everyone know how that went. My pastry turned out well, although I should have cooked it for about 2 more minutes, so I almost got perfect on it, but it was just slightly undercooked... I should have known better, but I'll learn, and hopefully won't make mistakes like this again.

This week we are learning how to Pot-Roast, beginning on Thursday, and for the first half of the week, I have been learning how to Stir-Fry. I never believed that stir-frying would be as exciting as I find it!  The amount of heat involved is insane, and the industrial stoves don't quite have what we need, but it's a really good representation of what stir-frying is. It is an extremely fast cooking method, and the flavours involved, the half cooked veggies, and the tenderness of the meats is just fantastic!  As you can tell, it has been a very exciting few days this week in practical cookery. I have found such an appreciation for this cooking method, and I am changing my views cooking in general because of it, at least in one aspect. I hope to learn a lot more in the near future, and hopefully I can use a stove with the proper temperature for this method in the future.

Exams are finished, but all the projects are coming up, and homework keeps building, so my posts are going to be relatively short for now. Saturday is the wine tour, so I will try to post on Sunday in the evening explaining how the tour goes. I will be eating at the Stone Road Grill there as well, so I will add my experience at this restaurant into the blog that follows the trip. Until then though, I will be learning pot-roasting, and I will try to add my pictures at the end of the week. I forgot to take my camera to class these past few days, but luckily, I have some awesome classmates that have offered to let me use their pictures, so I give credit to Cecelia, and Jeff for whenever I get around to adding the pictures. Off to finish the rest of this week's SPEC, or at least the beginning of it, and to finish a couple other assignments for tomorrow. I'll post whenever I have time again, hope everyone has an awesome week!