Cooking manga?

Recently I've been given manga titles to look into for cook. Indeed Japan has an entire industry revolving around cooking comics. This particular page is from a comic called: "Addicted to Curry" while it has typical manga plots in there, it does talk a lot about the history and flavor of different curries. It also does recipe theories, trying to make a recipe more from a particular country while trying new ingredient ideas.

One of the new things was it talked about an traditional Indian beef curry. It explained that the population holds the cow sacred and that they wouldn't eat this, but it goes on that other religious denomination do live in India. I thought this was interesting but was left wondering how true it was about cows being sacred animals. The day after reading about how the cow is viewed in India I went to class and was taught the same thing.

It's nice to see the artist really took time to research different recipes and explain them in detail before furthering the story. I'll have to keep my eye out for good recipes from manga now! :D

Hustle and Bustle

The Kitchens were aglow today with chatter. Today was the grand opening of the culinary building. When my cost management teacher asked the class for help I instantly extended a helping hand.

WOW

I did not once regret the 3 hours of talking I had to do as a stationary tour guide in the Bistro's Kitchen. It was extremely fun explaining the kitchen, and watching people's faces light up as I explained the equipment. I don't think most of the people who came knew what the inside of a kitchen looked like. Those that did (there were some chef's coats) learned somethings about the special equipment we had in that lab. I loved taking and answering questions about the lab. It felt like an honor!

Afterward it was nice to go up and talk to the rest of the students and teachers about the night. There were some tired faces, but I highly doubt anyone of them would of given up that night for anything. Tonight was the college's night to shine, and I think we sparkled brilliantly :D

Fried Chicken in snow

Has anyone taken the time to watch the snow fall outside the windows of the kitchen in the culinary building? (probably) It was an amazing sight to behold, I just wish I had a cup of green tea!

Oh anyway on with what I've done:

The Pilaf was okay, it has a light flavor and will definitely make for some good meals. I wish I had better containers for it. Oh well. This pilaf has carrots, onions, broccoli, and cauliflower, along with the rice. I used some of the seasoning for the fried chicken in this for color and taste, all in all it's decent.

I also worked on my fried chicken homework. Producing a batch of fried chicken that had an amazing scent, and taste. I also did a basic pilaf. I didn't have money for anything special (yet).

The chicken (despite looking a little dark) came out wonderfully crisp and had a nice flavor. Good eats as it were.

Rice Dishes

So our homework for class is making fried chicken (which I messed up the temperature on in class) and a rice dish. I'm looking forward to learning more about rice dishes. I didn't want to focus on the dishes we learned about in class. Instead I'm researching other ethnic rice dishes to try here. i'm hoping I can find a good recipe that is challenging, but easy to prepare (like the dirty rice).

Living in the dorms has it's own set of challenges, so I want to try to make the rice dish two ways. One traditional style using a full kitchen with stove tops. (Still need to look up what day would be good to go to a class and do this)The other I would like to make a "Dorm style" version of the recipe using only what I have for cooking here at the on campus dorms (a microwave and maybe an outdoor grill(?)) the second part probably isn't going to be easy, and may end up with little resemblance to the original dish, however it should be a blast even if I fail.

Something like this provides it's own challenge. Not only will I learn more about the dish from trying two different styles of preparation, but I will also take away knowledge about cooking that I couldn't do with our labs.

Test

this is a test of the new blog :D