Hi guys. I’m loving this Sunday already. It’s going to be a great day.
I wanna do a quick little shout out to MAMO Dad, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! You’re the best Dad and you’re papa skills are way better than Darth Vader’s!
This morning I made a quick little egg breakfast and I’m writing my post while eating it. So my post isn’t all boring with just words, I’ll put a few pictures of my fried egg throughout.
Soup Week!
This weekend is the end of the first part of the first course on Top Chef University. The first part was all about getting cooking and using a bunch of the Basic Techniques to make a few different types of soups. A clear based soup, a cream based soup, a pureed soup, and a cold soup.
Here they are if you missed any:
- Rustic Chicken Noodle Soup
- Home-style Potato Leek Soup (with BACON)
- Stupid Good Roasted Tomato Soup
I skipped the cold soup. It was supposed to be a gazpacho. I skipped it because it’s been super cold lately and during winter cold soup sounds awful. Maybe I’ll make it later in the year.
Some of the things I learned during Soup Week…
- how to dice an onion like a Top Chef (video coming soon, I promise)
- how to work with garlic including crushing, slicing, dicing, and breaking the cloves from the bulb
- how to set up a mis en place
- I poached something!!!
- I pureed something with an immersion blender
- I shredded chicken, by hand
- how to cut up a tomato without crushing it… use a serrated knife!!!
- I learned with a shallot is, and it wasn’t what I thought it was… lol
- layering flavors means seasoning between steps
to read through my Top Chef Posts, click on over to my Top Chef University Page!!!
I’m really glad TCU decided to start out with soups mainly because I’d never choose to make soups from scratch on my own. If I were searching for recipes to cook I’d pick something that I felt was fancy… although I LOVE LOVE LOVE soup, I’d pass over those recipes and go for something else. Now I have 3 delicious and simple recipes in my back pocket.
I was also really scared of making soup. Layering flavors sounds intense and I didn’t want to invest a bunch of time to have mediocre tasting soup. Now, I know making soup isn’t very hard and it’s really easy to make them tasty.
I wanna just say, yes I’m cooking through Top Chef University to learn how to be a better novice-chef. But I’m not going to be cooking or posting about everything in the courses. I’m not doing all 230 lessons in 230 days or anything like that. I’m going to cook what looks exciting and what I know will help me be a better chef applicable to my normal life. In no way will cooking guts be on the agenda. And honestly, making stock from scratch sounds fun, for like one time but I’m a city girl… I’m probably going to buy my stock 99.89% of the time.
I just want to let you know so that way when I skip something, like gazpacho, you won’t think I’m falling off the TCU bandwagon.
Every wonder how people get that perfectly round fried egg??? This is how I do it.
Next week is Sauce Week and here’s a little peek at what we’re makin’
- Chimchurri with seared strip steak (raw sauce)
- Asian Beef (marinade type sauce)
- The 3 Pan sauces (sauces made out of the juices left at the bottom of the pan)
- Red wine reduction with strip steak
- Dijon-apple sauce with pork chops
- Sea bass with buerre blanc
- Chicken Mole (a fun sauce!)
We might make mayonnaise and cover the 5 mother sauces… I don’t know yet.
Tell me about you!!! I want to know…
Are you feeling saucy yet?
YES
What is your most favorite sauce?
I really love bbq sauce!
Have you ever made a sauce from scratch?
I made bbq sauce a few times.
