Greek Week

These are some pictures of the recipes I made. The pictures were not taken at my house since I made this elsewhere. My brother’s friend is Greek so he helped with the recipes that I made. He did not know all the recipes but he surely had eaten them before. For the Tzatziki, I peeled and grated a cucumber. Then I got all the water out of the cucumber. I then mixed the garlic and dill. I kept the mixture in the refrigerator for a few hours and then sprinkled it with some pepper, salt and chili flakes along with some more dill. Overall, it turned great and what I loved about it was that it was really refreshing almost like a lemonade. For the roasted potatoes, I peeled and cut them thin slices. Then I mixed all ingredients except chicken broth together in a cake pan until potatoes were coated. I added chicken broth until I covered all the potatoes till the top. I then baked them for about 30 minutes and waited for about 10 minutes before I put them back in for 20 minutes. I think this recipe is very common in my family and we cook it every other week. For the chicken souvlaki, I mixed all of the ingredients and put it in a air free zip lock bag and left it to marinate in the refrigerator overnight. The next day I cooked the chicken on the pan for about 10 minutes before serving. Out of all the recipes, this has to be my favorite and because I absolutely love chicken. The Greek salad was like any other salads except I made the dressing this time. I don’t really enjoy salads but I just eat them thinking that they are healthy so this was not a very good recipe for me. For the Pita Bread, I put warm water in the bowl of the stand mixer and sprinkled it with yeast. Then I mixed in the oil and salt. I, then, added the flour. I kneeded the dough for about 12 minutes. Coat the dough lightly with oil and place in a clean glass bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, poke a hole, label and put into fridge. After some time, I cut the dough into four pieces and kneeded them further. I then cooked them for about 3 minutes. I ate this with the chicken souvlaki actually and it tasted awesome. I loved the combination. For the last recipe, I basically made christmas cookies but with a little difference of ingredients. Overall, it turned out really good for a first time but I would add more sugar if and when I make it the next time. And those were all the dishes I made for the Greek week.

Chocolate Lava Cake

For this food assignment, we had to watch any one video and make a chocolate lava cake. In the beginning, I melted some chocolate chips and butter in a bowl. I buttered my loaf pan and dusted it with some cocoa powder. Then I took an egg and beat it for 7 minutes until it started having a very foamy texture. I then poured the egg into the batter and mixed it well enough while adding some sugar and salt. I also added some vanilla and flour to the batter and then I let the batter into the loaf pan and put it in the oven at 400 degrees for roughly 20 minutes. It turned out great and I loved the texture. I would probably add some more sugar next time I make this because I like mine really sweet.

Mushroom Risotto

This is the first time I ever made risotto. It was easy to make but most of the time that I spent making this, I had to just stand near it, stirring it occasionally. I do not like rice at all so I did not like this recipe what so ever. But I think my mom liked it and so did my brother so believe it turned out good. I topped it with parsley. I had to cut the mushroom and then I sauteed it in oil over medium heat. Then I added green onions and chilli. After some time I added veggie broth and kept adding it for 20 minutes and then it was done. I added pepper and black salt and topped it with parsley.

Home Cooking Assignment #6

For the Home Cooking Assignment #6, I made an eggless omelet. This was actually really easy to make. All I needed was some besan (ground flour), all-purpose flour, salt, pepper, parsley, chilli, and onions and instead of regular onions, I used green onions instead. I mice en placed these ingredients and started with mixing the besan and flour together with water. And then I started adding the other ingredients to it. I mixed them all together, heated my pan with butter and added the batter onto the pan. In the end, the omelet turned out incredibly well. I liked the texture, taste and how it tasted with the ketchup. The whole process was very easy and did not take a lot of time and I would recommend anyone making this even though it’s not as healthy as an omelet made of eggs. I would give this recipe a 2/5 because of the lack of nutrition this recipe originally had.

Home Cooking Assignment #4

For Home Cooking assignment #4, I made another Indian dish called chana poor. There was barely any mise en place required for this since all I needed were some chane, also known as, chickpeas, in English. I cooked the chickpeas in boiling water for some time and then I took them own. I cut some onions and I added some dal masala into the water along with the chickpeas. This way the chane got flavour and got soft. Then I started making the poori, where I needed some dough and then set it aside for a few minutes. I then rolled the dough out and cooked it in a pot full of oil and I cooked it till it blew like a balloon. and there you go! These two things were ready to be served together although I could not get a picture of them together. It really did not take that much effort but it did take about 2 hours because I was making them for the first time and I had to keep getting my mother’s help in between.

Cooking at Home Recipe #2

For this home cooking lab, I made Indian bhaji. This is another one of the Indian dishes that I absolutely enjoy making and eating as well. and NO, THIS IS NOT CURRY. THERE IS NOT EVEN A SINGLE OUNCE OF CURRY IN THIS RECIPE. I thought I should put that out there since people assume if an Indian recipe is orange/yellow, its curry. Making Bhaji doesn’t take a lot of time but there’s a special masala needed to make this recipe and its called the pav bhaji masala. I used some tomatoes and crushes them to extract the juice, added in some frozen veggies and masala and then I let it cook. Meanwhile, I made butter parantha. I loved this recipe and it tastes amazing!

Cooking at Home Recipe #5

I decided to make a breakfast sandwich for this recipe. I made this breakfast sandwich with cheese, carrots, broccoli, feta cheese, mushrooms, spinach, green onions, purple onions, green bell pepper and Brussel sprouts. I mise en placed all these vegetables and set oil to heat up on low heat. Then I added green onions, purple onions, carrots, tomatoes, and green bell pepper. Then slowly as the onion turned brown, I started adding other vegetables. Then, I heated some bread and put all my vegetables inside the bread sandwich. Then I put some Italian dressing on top of the sandwich.

Cooking At Home Recipe #3

For this food cooking recipe, I soaked some rice in boiling water for about 40 minutes and drained the water. Then I added some cold milk into the rice and waited for the rice to absorb the milk. I then added in some almonds and Kesar and I boiled the recipe for about 15 more minutes and then I refrigerated it for 30 minutes and I was done! This recipe takes time, based on how much you make. You can eat this hot or cold, it depends on how you like it.

Cooking at Home Recipe #1

A while ago, we got a food assignment where we had to choose a recipe and make it at home. I added some Indian masala in a bowl and mixed them up before putting in anything else or preparing the ingredients. I mixed in some besan (ground flour) in the masala. Then I mise en place my vegetables which included onions, green bell pepper and spinach. I cut small bread pieces diagonally into half and then oiled a non-stick frying pan. Then I added the vegetables into the masala mixture and mixed until the mixture became moist. While the oil was heating up, I dipped the bread pieces into the masala mixture from both sides so the mixture was stuck on the bread. Overall, I loved making this. It turned out to be extremely tasty and full of Indian traditional flavours. I would love to try till recipe with some ingredients like broccoli, cheese, mushroom and I will definitely make it again.

Breakfast Recipe

I basically made three recipes, two of which were breakfast, brunch recipes. I didn’t need to take much safety precaution in any of them; just knife, stove, stove and washing my hands after using the meat for sanitation. I followed the recipe exactly how it was originally written and yet I felt like there was something missing in one of them. Overall, I would say the nutrition was super good and healthy as it had lots of minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates and protein and some fat. I chose some ingredients, like grapes and blueberry together because it looked very aesthetic and appealing and I knew both of the ingredients would taste good together. I chose these recipes because they were easy to make and required less time, effort and ingredients. A challenge was when I was trying to cup the brioche buns from the inside, they would either tear up or bend too further down. The product standards were met. My strengths were that I carefully followed every step very carefully. The entire process took me two days, I cut up and mise en place the vegetables one day, and did the cooking the next day. For the cleanup, it didn’t take me that long because there was not a lot of stuff to clean as I kept cleaning up along the way. I didn’t communicate with anyone but I would occasionally ask my mom about how much pepper or salt she would want me to add. I don’t think I will make this recipe again because it takes time and effort even though it’s not a lot. These recipes did not turn out great even after me following the recipe precisely. I would have changed the corn fritters entire recipe if I had to because it turned out really bad.