I wish it were last weekend again.
Even if the weather was as dreary as it was today, at least we didn’t have the
dismaying prospect of Monday classes dampening our moods. Even better was that
last Sunday we could look forward to celebrating the last few hours of our
daylong vacation cooking yummy food with fantastic people. Last Monday
afternoon, Bon Appétit and Firebellies joined forces to launch Cooking 101,
Carleton’s first-ever campus-wide event that gives students the rare
opportunity to use the LDC facilities while learning to cook a meal from
scratch. With the generous help of Executive Chef Michael Delcambre, Executive
Sous Chef Daniel Watrin, and Dining East Sous Chef Gibson Price, the twelve of
us learned how to prepare our very own stir-fry.
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| Chef Michael teaching us how to cut chicken |
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| Chef Daniel explaining how to cut veggies |
The chefs enthusiastically
demonstrated everything from proper knife-handling form to preparing our own
stock to peeling ginger with a spoon to tossing stir-fry with gusto. The
eclectic ingredients in our cornucopia consisted of naturally fed chicken from Ferndale
Market; fresh vegetables including baby bok choy, mushrooms, ramps (wild leeks which are awesome and can be found in the arb), peapods, ginger, garlic, and
more; and a delicious concoction of a sauce that carried a hint of teriyaki
flavor with a secret ingredient: orange.
Divided into three teams that were
each lead by one of the chefs, we embarked on our delectable mission. Vayu,
Taylor, and I, assisted by Gibson, elected to make a vegetarian stir-fry, in
which we replaced the chicken with seitan. I was fascinated by the artistry
with which Gibson flipped the stir-fry into the air with such precision and
adroitness, and I hope to one day gain even an iota of that skill.
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| Left to Right: ramps (yum! so fresh and crisp, with a peppery aftertaste), garlic (of course!), ginger (crucial in azn cuisine) |
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| Tori + Yawen + mushrooms + baby bok choy (d'aww) |
Stir-fry was originally invented by
the Chinese to be quick and delicious, which proved to be true for us. Ideally,
the actual stirring part of stir-fry takes about three to four minutes because
all of the ingredients are parboiled. This means that they are partially boiled
beforehand and therefore cook sooner when they are introduced into the menagerie in the scathingly hot wok.
For us, the stir in stir-fry took about ten minutes, and the whole cooking
process took less than half an hour. We were able to enjoy the fruits of our
labors in no time.
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| Chef Gibson and his cool flippy skills |
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| So triumphant |
Stay tuned for the next installment
of Cooking 101 next midterm break. Anybody have any scrumptious ideas for what to cook then? Hope to see you all there joining in on the
fun!
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| Yes, you're hungry now. |
