Foods of the World

My favorite unit was the China unit. I really liked the egg roll lab. It was fun to experiment with different plating techniques. It was also cool to make Chinese foods because I’ve eaten a lot of Chinese food, but only ever from restaurants. It was cool to learn how to make them.

If I had to add a unit it would be Italian food. I love Italian food and it would be so cool to make homemade pasta. There are so many different types of pasta dishes we could experiment with. I would also like to make Italian desserts, such as Tiramisu or a cannoli. Because Italian food is my favorite food, it would be really fun to experiment with lots of different dishes, and learn how to make them at home.

A lot of these recipes require ingredients that we have barely used before. It’s harder to cook with these because we don’t really know how to cook with some of them. I also have not had a lot of these foods before. For example, I have never had spanakopita before. When cooking, I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like, or even taste.

The thing I have enjoyed most about cooking foods from other countries is trying new foods. Almost all of the things we have made in this class I have never had before. It’s a cool experience to try new foods all the time. It’s also very cool to cook these new recipes. However, I am very excited to cook foods from the US because I will be cooking foods I have never cooked before but am familiar with.

The grade that I have right now is good. I’ve struggled with my grade before because I missed a lot of class for being sick. Then I couldn’t make up the labs at home. But this year I haven’t missed any labs yet, so my grade is pretty high. Usually missing labs is the hardest thing.

In order to maintain my grade I need to do two things. 1. Make sure I don’t miss class so I don’t miss the labs. 2. Make sure the lab stations are clean after we cook. We’ve gotten points taken off before for that. We are now double checking to make sure the sinks are clean when we’re done cooking.

The most challenging part of the lab was rolling the sushi. I’ve never made sushi before, so I had to learn how to roll it. It was difficult to keep everything close together so it didn’t spill out of the roll. It was also difficult to cut it because sometimes the ingredients bulged out. Overall, it was kind of difficult because I had to be very gentle in order to not break the sushi rolls.

Last time I used ingredients like carrots and broccoli to add a pop of color to the plate. This time the sushi rolls already had lots of colors inside, but I still added a garnish. I wanted to set the sushi rolls up next to each other, but for some reason they wouldn’t stay in position. Instead I just laid them flat. For both summative labs, I positioned the food differently so it would be unique.

I liked researching one topic and then doing class presentations better. When we did all the topics and shared them, we were basically just hearing the same information over and over again and not really learning anything new. This way, people were able to get more information on one topic by listening to the presentations. We were also only hearing information once which saved time. Overall, I liked the class presentations better because it was time convenient and we only heard the information once.

The most challenging aspect of the lab was completing everything on time. All 3 people in my group made different things to add to their plate (noodles, sauce, vegetables). We had to make sure our egg rolls were done well and on time. We also had to work together to make sure we all finished our own parts of the lab. There was a lot going on in the kitchen, but we were able to work together to get it done!

I really liked being able to plate my food differently. We haven’t really done much plating in any of the other cooking classes, so this was a cool experience. I wouldn’t really do anything differently for next time. I thought that plating was a unique aspect of this lab because everybody has different ideas. Plating allows me to be creative and it was probably one of my favorite parts of this lab.

I really liked this unit because we cooked a variety of different Chinese foods I’ve never made before. I liked how I was able to compare some of the foods I’ve eaten before, like the beef and broccoli, with how my group made it. Something I might change would be a choice lab. Each group could choose a 1-2 day recipe so we have the opportunity to make something we are interested in making. Overall, I really liked this unit and the egg roll summaries lab was my favorite.

I decided to take Foods of the World because I have taken all of the other cooking classes and liked them, so I wanted to keep taking them. I also wanted to cook new foods from other countries. By taking this class, I will be able to cook foods that I probably would never make at home. This class will also be different from the other cooking classes I have taken during high school. It will give me the chance to explore other cultures and their foods!

One thing I am excited about is cooking foods from other countries. It will be interesting to see the popular foods in other countries compared to how Americans make their food. For example, American Chinese food is completely different from authentic Chinese food, and I’m excited to cook and eat the authentic Chinese food. However, this class is first hour, so we will be eating all these interesting dishes right in the morning. Lastly, I’m curious to see how many of these foods I actually like. Different countries have very different tastes, and I tend to be very picky.

The unit that sounds the most interesting to me is China. I eat a lot of American Chinese food, so I want to compare that with authentic Chinese food. Chinese food also seems to have lots of meat, rice, and vegetables, and I love all of those. Some Chinese food is also fried. However, I’m curious to see the other ways Chinese food is cooked.