VFW Breakfasts

For the last year and a half, I have volunteered at the West Covina VFW Sunday breakfasts. They have a three hour service every second and fourth Sunday, and I started working at the end of my sophomore year. I spent a full year working exclusively as a waitress, but then I started filling for other positions; omelettes, pancakes, expediter. By the summer before senior year, I began working almost exclusively as expediter, which is a very stressful job; I had to call out all the orders, put together the plates, and find a waitress to take them out, along with Dillon in for any station that needed extra help.
Once senior year started, however, that job became too stressful, so I switched to pancake station!!
Pancake station is the griddle. I make pancakes, French toast, and any breakfast meats needed. I have a lot of fun, because even though we are far slower and run for far smaller amounts of time than a real restaurant, I still feel like I am in a real kitchen.
I work at Carl's Jr., the Avocado House, and I volunteer at the VFW. Out of all of those places, I only ever really cook at the VFW. At Carl's Jr. I run the cashier and at the Avocado House I do mostly prep work. Therefore, even though the VFW takes away my one day a week to sleep in (since I work at 7am on Saturdays for mentorship), I still go as often as I can. Being able to cook the pancakes, organize the gridle, and grill bacon and sausage for a couple dozen people to enjoy is as satisfying as cooking a five star meal for myself.

Answer 2

1. My EQ is: What is the most effective way for a culinary artist to enhance the flavor of a dish?

2. My first answer is: The most effective way for a culinary artist to enhance to flavor of a dish is by multiple tastes perceived by the human tongue.

3. My second answer is: The most effective way for a culinary artist to enhance to flavor of a dish is to utilize all natural ingredients.

4. Three reasons:

• Natural produce is brighter and more appealing to look at. An example of this might be seen at a farmers market, where the lettuce is bright and vibrant green as opposed to the muted color often seen in lettuces at the super market.
• Natural food is fresher and contains less or no preservatives. Preservatives effect taste, such as in the case of many apples bought from the store. If the skin of your apple tastes sour, bitter, or just a bit unusual, it is probably from the protectant sprayed on top.
• Natural food does not need/contain as as many additives. For example, most store bought chicken has been soaked or injected with preservatives that cause it to release flavors, and is then injected with some type of salt-based solution to make it retain flavor; the resulting meat is often dry, salty, and harder to cook.

5. All About Braiseing is a printed source that supports my answer.

6.  My second interview helped me come up with my answer.

7.

"It’s all about the ingredients, because if you make a really simple-ass dish and use really crappy ingredients, the end product isn’t really going to be be that great." -Chris Baker 

Well, I agree. Many things can taste decent after being cooked with tons of spices, seasonings, and other ingredients, but the mark of a good ingredient is how good it tastes on its own.

Blog 15: Independent Component 2 Approval

1. For my 30 hours, I plan to cook a "traditional" dish or meal once, following a recipe as closely as I can, and then again without the recipe. The second time will also have my own personal changes, and I will attempt to improve and enhance flavor.

2. I will show my 30 hours of work by taking pictures of the food I cook and I will also post links to the original recipes as long as my edited versions to my blog.

3. My topic is cuisine, which is basically food. What better way to explore food then preparing and cooking it? I will try to make different foods, some vegetarian, some Mexican, some American, or any other number of types of foods. Exploring various types will help me see trends of what always tastes good; it will also help answer my EQ. My EQ is all about enhancing flavor, so if my overall goal for each meal produced is to enhance flavor, then I can use each meal to try out various answers, mainly the three answers I am determining this month. I can test out methods and hopefully find support for each of my answers through this Independent Component.

4. The last section of my Senior Project Hours is now labeled "Independent Component 2"

Independent Component 1

• LITERAL
• I, Desiree Zarate, completed my Independent Component which represents 35 hours of work. 
• Cite your source regarding who or what article or book helped you complete the independent component.

• Stevens, Molly. All About Braising. New York. Gentl & Hyers: 2004. Print.
• Ramsay, Gordon. Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking: Everything You Need to Know to Make Fabulous Food. New York. Grand Central Life & Style: 2012. Print.
• Dornenburg, Andrew, Karen Page. The Flavor Bible. New York. Little Brown and Company: 2008. Print.
• Ruhlman, Michael. Ratio: the Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. New York. Scribner: 2009. Print. Pgs. 177-181.
• Recipes
• Garten, Ina. "Garlic Roasted Potatoes." FoodNetwork.com. Barefoot Contessa Parties, 2001. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.
• Drummond Ree. "Pots de Creme." foodnetwork.com. Food Network. n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.
• "Apple Stuffed Pork Loin With Cider Sauce." williams-sonoma.com. Williams-Sonoma Inc. n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.
• "Apple Cider Vinaigrette." myrecipes.com. Time Inc. n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.
• Over the last couple of months, I planned and hosted a 7-person dinner party. I also spent time crafting and then writing down the recipes used the night of the party. The party required research on season, dinner party hosting, flavor combinations, and recipes. I also looked at the night of the party and thought about how the food could have been made better, then spent the last week recreating my two least favorite foods at the party to create more flavorful food. I ended up with a much more flavorful stuffed pork tenderloin and better-textured potatoes.
• INTERPRETIVE
• My work was important because it helped me understand the craziness of a professional kitchen; it showed me how much work goes into feeding a table of people. Beyond that, it taught me the importance of planning and how much goes into cooking; to create a good meal, it is important to appreciate that more then a couple hours of chopping and frying was involved. This is what my Lesson 1 was all about. I also gained confidence in cooking and found support for potential EQ answers (more information on this is found below, under APPLIED). My work proves to be more than 30 hours of work, as is reflected under Independent Component 1 in Senior Project Log. I was able to reasearch on four separate occasions, shopped during four different market trips, spent over 6 hours on five different occasions making blog posts (a total of 7 posts) and internet-documents (logging in Senior Project Hours and Independent Component 1: Dinner Party Planner) to record my progress and what I learned, and cooked on 5 separate occasions. The cooking definitely took up most of this time, as I made each course twice and one course three times. However, it only makes sense that cooking food would take up the most time, as my project is on Cuisine.
• Evidence can be found throughout my blog, as I posted recipes and updates regularly. Most posts include pictures, and all are detailed. Here are links to the articles in the order they were posted on my blog:
• My First Dinner Party
• Stuffed Mushroom Recipe
• Spinach-Cranberry Salad with Apple Cider Vinaigrette
• Some Revisions
• Apple-Stuffed Pork Loin Recipe
• Sides
• Dinner Party Dessert
• Here are pictures from my final day of cooking, which took place February 4th:

  

  Pork loin roast, already salted, in the process of being stuffed.

  
  

  

  Pork loin roast in the process of searing! The outside it slightly darkened.  I  didn't have enough
  kitchen string for the roast, so I used toothpicks instead.

  
  

  

  Here is the finished roast! The cider helped carmelize the outside of the roast, which
  became a slight problem, as the fat ended up burning; thankfully, though the appearance
  of this roast isn't the best, the taste was not affected.

  
  

  

  The potatoes, post boil/dressing, pre roasting. You can see the minced garlic and the soft
  outter edges. The center isn't completely cooked, because that will be taken care of during
  the roasting.

  

  My beautiful roasted potatoes! Color-wise, they could have benefitted from longer
  oven exposure, but other than that I was satisfied! Well seasoned, still crisp, and
  pefectly creamy within.

  
  
• APPLIED
• Having to pay attention to everything from forming a list to plating showed me how long the process of cooking can be. This in itself is the basis of cooking: knowing what you can cook, when, and your ability to do so. I created a meal to a schedule with practice, which was season appropriate, balanced, and even. Also, in evaluating myself and my food, and reading multiple articles and book entries on creating proper flavor combinations, textures, or a certain dish itself has made me feel much more confident in creating those items. For example, the idea of stuffing anything but a turkey terrified me a few months ago, but after stuffing a pork tenderloin and it coming out perfectly white and still juicy, I now know I have the proper skills to stuff almost anything. (Here's a hint: BASTE! The loin was too fat to retain all the juices on its own.) I also had never made a vinaigrette before, and even though it took a couple tries, the outcome was delicious and well-balanced. Re-making the potatoes and pork tenderloin allowed me to test certain methods I read about after the dinner party or had forgotten about before; some of these theories. Overall, this meal has given support to my answer 1 (the fact that one taste balanced another, sweet stuffed pork and salty seasoned potatoes. This also reminded me that my question is on a dish, not just a single piece of food, meaning the different parts of a meal affecting one another is part of my answer) and gave support to two potential answers: salt enhances flavor (which was salting the meat and letting it rest, then cooking it) and that cooking (using heat) allows flavors to be melded and married, producing better, more developed flavors than before (which was the searing of the meat, meant to lock in the flavor before baking the loin).