For the week of 11/19-11/25 I made crepes! The title of the recipe was “Easy French Crepes” but this recipe was not easy in my opinion. Partly because I did not have all of the things I needed. I will explain later on in this blog. I have a couple friends who have eaten crepes before, and they told me they were so good and that they tasted similar to pancakes. So, I figured why not try and make this dish. Once I found a recipe I made sure I had a majority of the ingredients, so that I wouldn’t have to buy so many things. I also read over the directions just to be sure that I had all of the equipment. After reading through the directions, I did not notice anything that I did not already have so I chose this recipe. (Website link at the end of the blog). Once I stared making the dish, I realized that the batter had to sit for two hours! I have no clue how that important detail slipped my mind. It was okay though, because I was not doing anything else that day. After two hours passed, I gathered the equipment to make cook the batter. That is when I realized that I did not have the correct equipment, and I did not whisk the batter well at all. There were still lumps throughout the batter. Although I knew that I did not have the correct pan to cook the crepes, I still continued to work with what I have. After the crepes cooked for about 5 minutes, it was not looking at all like it was supposed to. That is when I knew that I just could not make this dish without the proper equipment. Whats the history behind this dessert? Crepes came to North America from Southwest Asia. Traditionally crepes are served with cider. In many places around the world, they are served with fruit jam, feta cheese, sugar, honey, or hazelnut-chocolate. These tasty treats are so popular in France and around the world, that their is now a day dedicated to crepes. February 2nd, is also known as the day of the crepes. Legend has it that if you hold a coin in your writing hand and a frying pan in the other, flip the crepe and if it lands flat, your family will be prosperous that year. History link: www.excusemyfrench.co.nz/a-little-crepe-history/ epicureandculture.com/french-crepe/ Recipe link: www.delscookingtwist.com/2017/09/19/easy-french-crepes/ Thank you for reading another blog! Stay tuned for the next one!
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For the week of 11/12-11/18 I made Chicken Cordon Bleu Quesadillas! This dish turned out pretty decent. The recipe called for five different seasonings. When I first saw that I was a little hesitant to make it, because I was sure it would not taste that good to me. But I made it anyways. The seasoning was to be used for the chicken breasts. Once the chicken breasts began cooking, it started to smell up the kitchen. After fully cooked, it looked good. Next, I was to assemble the quesadillas. Once assembled the quesadillas had to be cooked for about a minute or two to brown the tortilla. When flipping one of the quesadillas, all of the stuff on the inside spilt out. So that one I just threw away, because I sure was not going to eat it like that. The others came out just fine. Then, I cut the quesadillas into wedges and ate some. I did not really like the seasoning at all. It made the chicken seem invisible. But, if I were to make this dish again I would not use so much seasoning. I messed up slightly on this dish by using too much seasoning on one chicken breast. Also, I used large sized tortillas instead of medium sized tortillas. That changed the distribution of the food inside the quesadilla. Other than that, everything was good. Whats the history behind this dish?
The term ¨cordon bleu" is frequently referenced to a dish ordered by French knights. The actual meaning of the term is ¨blue ribbon" as Henry III ordered the highest knighthood bearing a blue ribbon. The dish first started out with the use of veal, then later chicken, now it is used with cheeses, meats, and anything else you could think of. Sometimes it is pinwheeled, or rolled, or in the form of a quesadilla. For the week of 11/5-11/11 I made little french fudge cakes! I made a lot of french dishes this week as I had to catch up from when I was sick for a couple of weeks. So this dessert is what I was supposed to make for the week of 11/5-11/11. I ended up making it a week later for the week of 11/12-11/18. My family had our Thanksgiving meal on the 17th and I made this dessert and brought it with me for my family to try. The dessert was a big hit! I made 18 little fudge cakes, and every one of them got ate. Many people thought they were brownies, so I am sure they were taken away by the taste when they realized it wasn’t a brownie and that it’s a French dessert. Overall, I got many good comments on it and that made me feel good. This dessert had such a different taste than a chocolate dessert that I am used to having. I can’t even describe the taste with words. It was just amazing. You should try out the dessert sometime! (The link will be at the end.) I made the mistake of buying two different brands of chocolate. I am not 100% sure if that affected anything or not, but when I make this dessert in the future, I will be sure to buy the same brand. Then I will be able to see if that made any difference or not. The two brands used were Ghirardelli and Baker’s. Now these chocolate bars are specifically made to be used for baking purposes. You do not want to eat this! Even though it looks similar to a Hershey bar, it certainly does not taste like one. What’s the history behind this gooey dessert?
There is a US chef that claims to have been the first to invent such a cake. Then there is a French chocolatier that says the dish has already been discovered in France. The US chef says he pulled the dessert out of the oven before it was done and says, “The center was still runny, but was warm and had both a good taste and texture.” Most of the time this dessert is a menu item in high-class restaurants. For the week of 10/29-11/4 I made Chicken Fricassée ! This recipe tasted just as I expected. In my last blog I mentioned how I was worried if the chicken and lemon sauce would go together. Well, I was right! In my opinion, the sauce and chicken did not go together. The sauce required lemon, obviously, and the lemon was very overbearing. The recipe only called for 1/8 of a cup of the lemon juice though, so I really do not understand why it was such a powerful taste. My mentor suggested that I try the recipe with some rice or with some pasta, just to see if the lemon taste was, in a way, toned down. I will definitely try that and see if there is a difference. I will update you guys once I do.
I made the mistake of not bringing enough chicken with me to my aunt kirsten’s (my mentor) home. I accidentally brought with me 4 chicken breast tenders, instead of 4 chicken breasts and not the tenders. Therefore, the chicken that I did bring ended up only being 2 actual chicken breasts. So, we ended up having to half the recipe in order to make the correct amount of sauce to match with the amount of chicken I brought with me. What’s the history behind this tangy dish? There are other foods, that could be the main meat/food besides chicken. Often, rabbit or chicken would be used for fricassee during the nineteenth-century. A method of cooking cut up meat that is broiled and sautéed is called fricassée. Chicken fricassée is most common in both modern and antique recipes, but is still ok to have many kinds of meat, fish, etc. Thank you for tuning in to another one of my blog!! I hope to see you back when I post my next blog! Recipe link: www.allrecipes.com/recipe/220764/secret-recipe-chicken-fricassee/ History link: www.lovefrenchfood.com/chicken-fricassee.html atasteofhistorywithjoycewhite.blogspot.com/2017/02/white-chicken-fricassee.html?m=1 Hey!! Welcome back to another blog! For the week of 10/22-10/28 I made beignets! When reading this recipe and looking at some of the comments, I was expecting this dessert to taste like little donut holes. That is not at all what I tasted. This is the fourth recipe that I have made so far into this project, and I am pretty sure all of the recipes have called for a good amount of egg needed for the recipe. The idea of having egg in the recipe is not such a bad thing to me, but the amount of egg necessary is not something that I particularly like. This recipe required 4 eggs! I think that is way too much for how small the beignets wee. Overall the beignets were good, but I just felt that the egg taste was overbearing. One mistake I made was I did not buy enough vegetable oil. I had pretty much a full bottle of vegetable oil, but if I would have had any less then I feel that the beignets would have been altered during the cooking process. Further causing them to possibly end up burnt. What’s the history behind this dessert? The term "beignet" means "fritter" in French. There are two types of pastry developed by French cooks. One type uses steam to rise the dough. The other type uses yeast to rise. If the dough uses steam to rise, it is considered a choux pastry. Classic beignets use steam to rise the dough, therefore it is a "choux pastry." It is believed that beignets are connected to "Mardi Gras in France." There have also been stories of "French settlers migrating to the eastern coast" and with them they brought the beignets. Next week I plan to make Chicken Fricasse. I am concerned that after making this the sauce on the chicken will be nasty. I think this because the recipe requires lemon juice. I personally do not believe the sauce and chicken will go together, but hopefully I will end up surprised from the taste. Recipe link: www.thespruceeats.com/beignets-recipe-1375200
History info. links: whatscookingamerica.net/History/BeignetsHistory.htm www.nationalgeographic.org/media/beignets/ Hey there! Welcome back to another blog! For the week of 10/15-10/21 I made Cheesy Croissant Casserole! Whenever I was searching on google for something to make I came across this recipe. I wasn't 100% sure if I was going to try the dish due to the recipe containing bread and liquids and spices. I was expecting to taste soggy bread and a lot of spice from this dish. That's not at all what I tasted. I actually tasted a lot of egg more than anything, which I particularly do not prefer to have mixed in with other foods. Generally it tasted fine. The recipe called for 1 cup of Gruyere cheese. I have never heard of that kind of cheese before. At the bottom of the recipe it said you could use sharp cheddar cheese instead of the gruyere cheese, so that's what I did. I would like to make this dish again and try it with the gruyere cheese just to see if there is a big difference in the overall outcome of the dish. This casserole is mainly a breakfast casserole, but who says you can't have breakfast for dinner. What's the history behind this casserole? I can't really find anything that tells me the history of this specific dish, but I have found some information on the history of the croissant. So that is what I am going to inform you on. The croissant is actually not even french. The croissant originated in Austria, so it's Viennese! Croissants were believed to have been brought into fashion in France by Marie Antoinette. She loved croissants. Pastry was reserved for high society only back then. Recipe link: www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/a19448795/cheesy-croissant-casserole-recipe/ History info link: www.bakersmaison.com.au/about-us/blog/the-history-of-the-croissant Thank you for reading another blog! I have been sick, so I am a little behind on posting. I hope to get back on schedule this week. Stay tuned for what I make next!
For the week of 10/8-10/14, I attempted to make French Opera Cake. It was a major fail. Everything that could've gone wrong, went wrong. I want to start off by saying that I was a little too confident when finding what dessert I wanted to make. As you can tell from the last dessert I made, it was a success. Then from there, I was so certain that I could make any dessert that was out there. Well, I was wrong. I learned that just because I succeeded on one dish, doesn't mean I am an expert and can cook anything. You may be wondering what exactly went wrong. Well, my mentor and I started off with making the sponge cake. Everything seemed to be going fine, until the sponge cake came out of the oven. It only had to be in there for 5 minutes. Once those 5 minutes were up, the sponge cake should have bounced back from a soft touch. It did bounce back, but then it was taken out of the oven. rather. It started to get sort of mushy rather then spongy. The sponge-like texture began to melt. We were then told to take the sponge cake out of the pan, and place it onto parchment paper. That did not work out so well. The cake was sticking to the parchment paper, although the parchment paper had been brushed with butter to prevent any sticking. So we just left it in the pan. We then began to make the sugar syrup that mixes into the coffee buttercream. We had to repeat this step twice, due to the candy-like syrup becoming rock hard very quickly. Which made it impossible to mix in with the coffee buttercream. We started making the coffee buttercream next. The recipe called for 7 tablespoons of butter, 1 tablespoon of instant espresso, and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract to make the coffee buttercream. Those ingredients were to be beaten in an electric mixer. After about 5 minutes the mixture was not mixing together at all. The butter had started to separate from the vanilla extract and espresso. There was nothing we could do to fix it. We decided to just give up at that point. Like I mentioned in the opening paragraph, everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong. I learned a very important note about butter. I had bought margarine, which is NOT butter. Nowhere on the wrapping does it say anything about butter. This mistake caused the sponge cake to not properly set, and caused the coffee buttercream to not mix. What's the history behind this difficult desert? A French pastry chef named, Cyriaque Gavillon, wanted to create a dessert where you can taste the whole cake in just one bite. The name came after "his wife told him it reminded her of the Paris Opera House, Palais Garnier." The 'Opera" just stuck with him after that and remained the name of the cake. Thank you for reading my blog! I hope you tune in to the next one!
For the week of 10/1-10/7 I made meat pie!! In France it is called Tourtiere. The ingredient that stuck out the most to me was the cinnamon. The recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Of course, I added all of the ingredients needed to make the dish. Once the dish was baked completely, I tasted it. It really didn't taste that bad, but the cinnamon was clearly tasted and a bit overbearing. The ingredient I was most worried about tasting was the onion. I do not like onions at all, but I couldn't really even taste any onion in the pie. One reason I believe the cinnamon didn't taste well was that there were potatoes mixed in with the ground meat. I don't know about you, but potatoes and cinnamon do not go well together. The idea of cinnamon being added into something other than a dessert also made the taste not very pleasing. One mistake I made was I didn't buy ground cloves. I wonder if the ground cloves plays any role in the powerful taste of the cinnamon. One of the many cooking tips I learned, is when onions are involved in a recipe, and you have to cook something on the stove top, you should put the onion in first and let it cook for a few minutes. Then, add in the other ingredients. The onion will help enhance the flavor of the meat. Also I learned that when you buy a head of garlic, it has 10-12 cloves of garlic in it. (Image inserted below) What's the history behind this dish? Tourtiere is referred to as pâté à viande. The word tourte comes from Latin slang: tortus panis, meaning "a round of bread." It is famously served as a traditional feast enjoyed by the Catholic Québécois after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. An editor, named Nathalie Cooke, suggests that lard would have been the primary fat used due to the fact that "olive oil was expensive; butter scarce." The dish is likely named for a shallow pie dish used for cooking and serving tourtes (pies) in France. History citation: https://www.britannica.com/topic/tourtiere Tourtiere recipe: https://growagoodlife.com/tourtiere/ Thanky you for reading my blog! Stay tuned for another food update! ![]() As you can tell from the title, I made profiteroles (cream puffs)! This dessert was so good, but it didn't taste like anything I expected. Which I wasn't really sure exactly what I was expecting. You're probably wondering 'What did it taste like?' One of the ingredients needed were 4 eggs. Therefore, I could clearly taste the egg in the bread. When I first read the recipe, I thought to myself, 'why does this recipe need that many eggs?' The profiterole was still very good and warm. So warm that when I inserted the cream into the center, the cream had melted by the time I ate it. It was still very good though. I will probably end up making it again some other time outside of this project. Thanks to my mentor, Kirsten Link, I didn't make really any mistake cooking wise. Now for the ingredients, I accidentally bought semisweet chocolate morsels instead of semisweet chocolate squares. I feel that if I would have bought the correct size of chocolate, then the chocolate sauce would have been darker than it ended up being. I am surprised I liked the dessert I made. Normally I am very picky when it comes to trying new foods. I am hoping that the completion of this project will change how picky I am when I eat. I learned some key tips that I need to know to be a successful cook. I learned when scooping out flour, you need to level it off with a flat object (for example a butter knife). I also learned that you use a specific measuring cup when measuring liquids, and when measuring dry ingredients, you use the different sizes of individual measuring cups. (Image below.) What's the history behind this delicious dessert? It is believed by many that a 16th-century Italian chef named Popelini, who worked for Catherine de Medici, wife of the French king Henri II, was the first person to put filling inside of profiteroles. The dough is prepared on on the stove top, hence the French name of the pastry being 'pate a chaud' or heated dough. The term Profiterole refers to the baked pastry round, which explains why the pastry is round. I will be gathering with my mentor tomorrow, Thursday, October 4th, to complete my next dish. My next dish is called 'Tourtière'. I will be buying the ingredients today so I am not buying the stuff at the last minute. While I am with my mentor, I will try to get a schedule made for when we are both available to cook, so I can have a set time and date every week to meet up and cook the dish of my choice. I might share that schedule with you all once I've got it done.
Profiteroles recipe link: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/152076/profiteroles/ History Citation: https://www.cooksinfo.com/profiteroles Thank you for reading my blog! I hope you tune into the next update! Welcome to my blog! My name is Kayana Caldwell. I have created this website to complete what is called a 'Genius Hour' project. My project consists of cooking french cuisine (desserts and main dishes alternating every week) for 12 weeks. I will be providing some history on the food I decide to make for that week and I will be sharing videos and photos of the cooking process as I go along. I do plan to make mistakes during these next 12 weeks, but I hope to persevere in completing the project.
I do have a plan for how I am going to go about completing this project. I plan on having each recipe, for what it is that I am going to cook, typed out into a google document a week before I cook it. This will help me to stay up to date on what I need to buy (ingredients) and the amount of time I will need to be able to cook the food efficiently. I also plan to take on a time management skill that will be used throughout these next 12 weeks. I hope that skill can help me with everyday management of life. I will have schoolwork, extracurricular activities and volunteering obligations that I will need to work around to stay caught up with my project. As I mentioned earlier, I will be providing some history on the dishes I cook. I will need to stay ahead to be sure I have that information completed with each blog post. I will also be including cooking tips that I learn from my mentor, Kirsten Link. No matter how much of a fail the dish that I cook is, I will still post an update because I feel that my mistakes should be noted. I hope anyone that reads my blogs will understand that making mistakes on something you've never done before is okay. Thank you so much for reading my first blog post! I will be posting later on today as I am a little behind on my blog posts. Next time it will include pictures/videos of food! |
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Welcome to my blog! My name is Kayana Caldwell. The name of my project is named cuisine française because my project is based on cooking French cuisine. Cuisine française is how you say 'french cuisine' in french. |