My choice of soup to make was a thickened beef soup with boiled dumplings.

To start, I made my own beef broth for the soup a day before because of the time it would take to make. I placed about a pound and a half of oxtail on aluminum foil on a baking tray covered in olive oil. I baked the meat in the oven at 400°F until browned which takes around 40 minutes. After bringing the oxtail out of the oven, I started preparing the aromatic vegetables. I cut a half of a medium onion into fours and 3 pieces of a carrot 2 inches long each. In a pot I placed the oxtail in and filled the water until it was just above the oxtail, setting it to a boil for 5 minutes on medium, placing the vegetables soon after, pouring the remaining amount of water and submerging everything then lowering the stove to low, and simmering for 4 hours. Broth can sometimes take up to twelve hours but because I was making broth for two servings so I simmered the meat and vegetables for significantly less time. Fifteen minutes after simmering I decided to add a pinch of salt to increase the waters boiling points to prevent it from drying up. I routinely checked on the broth to trim any fat rising to the surface. After simmering I poured the broth into a container and refrigerated overnight. I extracted and refrigerated the oxtail and carrots to use for later.

The next day I was ready to prepare the soup. I sauteed potatoes, onions, carrots and a bit of garlic. I cooked 4 pieces of beef, cut into cubes, until brown and tender then put them aside on a plate. In a saucepan I cooked the roux, placing the butter in first until it melted and mixed it with equal parts flour with a whisked until the roux was light brown. I slowly incorporated the broth while whisking until it was finished, and kept whisking until homogeneous. I made too much roux proportional the soup because the soup was slightly thinker than I intended it to be. I added the beef then the vegetables and left in on the oven on low-medium to form the dumplings. In the bowl I made a small crevasse in the middle of the flour, baking powder and sea salt to pour water into. I flicked the surrounding flour into the water to created the dough, kneading it one or two time times then forming them into small disks and gently dipping them into the soup. I stirred it once more and let it simmer on low heat for 10 minutes, garnished with parsley then served.

The soup had only a hint of onion and garlic and was never over bearing. The broth alone was very rich and had a nice consistency and paired nicely with the beef. The dumplings acted as a side dish, I would periodically scoop a piece of it with the spoon and eat a spoonful of it and the soup itself. The beef was a bit too chewy, I might have left it to simmer too long after adding the dumplings.

When making this dish I learned that the key throughout the whole process is delicacy. The ingredients of the pancake is similar to any other recipe but the key difference is how the eggs are handled. The eggs were separated by white and yolk in two different bowls, the yolk being mixed with every ingredient other that the granulated sugar. The egg whites are to be whipped to a stiff peek to create the pancakes fluff. The mixing of yolk with the vanilla extract ,flour, baking powder and milk was very simple, it just needs to be whisked until homogeneous. Although I didn’t have whole milk at the time, I did have condensed milk which I knew was milk with the water mostly evaporated and sweetened with sugar. Instead of buying some more milk for this, I added slightly more water than the volume of condensed milk and mixed it. The egg whites I had in a separate bowl needed more preparation and precaution beforehand.

To create stiff or even soft peeks in the egg whites the hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acids of the proteins needed to organize itself in which former attaches to the air and latter attaches to the water. The egg couldn’t be used right out of the fridge, it had to be room temperature for the individual amino acids to separate quicker if not the whisking process would take hours. I microwaved the eggs in the bowl enough to make them warm but not enough to solidify it, separated the whites from the yolk being extra careful to not pierce the yolk membrane with the shell to keep fat from interfering with the whisking. The mixer was on low speed initially, to incorporate small air bubble for the amino acids to easily attach themselves to, then increased the speed. When the albumen became fairly foamy I added a third of the sugar, which I grounded beforehand, and continued mixing until it started to looked solid white, then lastly, when it early resembled the consistency of yogurt. Using the an electric mixer sped up the process and it took 5 minutes, maximum, to achieve stiff peaks.

To mix the whites with the yolk I used a rubber spatula and shoved a third of the egg whites into the yolk and gently mixed it by flipping it with the spatula until there was no more egg whites left, as to not release the air. I poured three spoonfuls unto the lightly oiled pan, set to extremely low heat , the batter not dispersing more than four cementers then topped each pancake with the remaining batter evenly with two more spoonfuls each as high as I could and cooked for three minutes with the lid on .I lifted the lid and placed another two spoonfuls of the batter on top of each slightly solidified base, placed the lid back on and repeated this process until the batter was finished. I then turned the stove to around three, i.e medium-low heat, and cooked for three and a half minutes. A good metric to determine if the side is cooked is if you’re met with the instant smell of pancake after lifting the lid. I flipped the pancakes carefully and slowly so the spatula doesn’t touch the other pancakes. I dripped water in the pan to steam it and placed the lid on for another three minutes. In hind sight I should have dripped water in the pan when cooking the first side.

To garnish, I used blueberry sauce, some butter and the last bit of strawberries from the fridge.The sauce was just blueberry, water, sugar and lemon juice, because I don’t like overly sweet tasting things, set to a boil. Biting into the pancake, it was naturally very fluffy and sweeter than I thought despite having one and a a half teaspoon of sugar but the sour blueberry sauce balanced it out nicely. The pancakes had a nice browning on both sides and the inside where a solid color. When you cut into it it sounds like multiple, miniature bubble wrap being popped at the same time.I wish the pancakes were just a few millimetres higher, I might have poured too many spoonfuls each time which caused the pancakes to incrementally spread out. Regardless, I had fun making this dish, it very unforgiving and every detail, each step of the way, is shown in the final product.

For my Buddha Bowl I used red pepper cut into strips, yellow peppers cut into cubes, green peas, onions carrots and roasted cashews under a semi circle of lettuce on top of a base of rice. My original plan was to use avocados and strawberries but opted out of it at the last minute because I didn’t cut the avocado right and the strawberries might make the salad to wet, so I replaced them bot with the pepper. Everything was fried or oven roasted except for the carrots and lettuce. I rarely prepare rice so it was difficult to gauge how much I needed to fill about half the bowl ‘s height. I washed, boiled and fried the rice with some soy sauce. When I poured the rice into the bowl I realized I cooked too much rice, so I left the rest in the pan and used it for dinner. I placed the top ingredients in such a way that the colors wouldn’t blend together. The green peas are opposite the lettuce and the red peppers are separated from the carrots by the yellow peppers. While eating the salad, the peppers made the whole thing exceptionally more spicy so I poured some salad dressing to counter it. Other than the peppers, every other ingredient was very crisp especially the carrots that were cut into strips. The most prominent smells were the peppers, the cashews, and a bit of the salad dressing when I applied it. The cashews themselves, which I ate last, had a distinct crunch to them, which resemble a cracker, from being roasted in the oven.

For my assignment I made a loaded potato which is basically a baked potato hollowed out and refilled with added ingredients along with the potato’s insides, then baked again. I was following the first quarter of this recipe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gsuZvX7GpU and using some of the tips from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBpxVdpMBZk, although it’s comedic I got some valuable tips like the method to test if the potato’s inside are properly cooked. Speaking of which potato’s are extremely stubborn to bake through, the first video I mentioned baked 3 potato’s in the oven for an hour successfully. I thought, since I was only using one, it needed only a third of the time, but when I took it out of the oven it was still uncooked internally and I had to bake it for the full hour. After fully baking it it came out slightly more brown and steaming on the inside, the shell/skin was so scolding hot I had to use oven mitts to open it after initially cutting it. The insides were supposed to resemble mashed potato’s, which mine did, but I thought I could have baked it more to be softer. Loading it was the easiest, although, I had to find the right teaspoon to cup conversions ,because as I said before, I only made one potato so the loading ingredients had to be divided into thirds. The recipe also called for sour cream, but I only had cream cheese, I researched the difference and found out I only needed to whip milk with cream cheese to make a suitable substitute. I topped it with cheddar cheese and bacon then placed it back in the oven. Surprisingly, the cheese didn’t melt but became rather crispy which didn’t look as aesthetically pleasing, I had to resort to microwaving some more cheddar for a few seconds to melt it. The inside of the potato was very consistent in texture, the bacon,milk,cheese,butter,etc that were included in the loading mixed quite well together. It tasted really smooth, just like mashed potato’s and overall very delicious.