Striving for Perfection

First week of school down, and only 10 to go. It seems like a long time but I know the weeks will go by fast. They always do.

I am taking World Cuisine and Latin Cuisine this quarter. I have one chef instructor that is the same as last quarter she is awesome and I am glad to have her again. The other instructor for Latin is a new one which made me a little nervous, but so far he seems like a cool guy. He is from Israel, is a retired captain of the Israeli army, and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America. He knows his stuff and he loves to talk about it. He is light hearted and funny, but then also reminds us that no one is as serious as he is when it comes to food.

Thursday, on our first day of class, he talked for over an hour on his background, what he expects, and information on Latin cuisine. We didn't get to start cooking until about 4:30pm. In his thick accent he said to us "I am going to keep talking so that you feel the pressure. If I didn't pressure you I would be doing you a disservice. So those of you doing the Mole Verde today, as soon as I stop talking you will be needing to start running like a chicken with no head." Yep, that was me.

Although I definitely had to run in order to get all my ingredients, get my beans on the stove, and get the pork cooking I was able to pull it off without any problems. He spent a lot of time critiquing each group. Keeping our food warm until he came to critique our group was the biggest hurdle of the night considering he came to us last. Our groups food came out great, and I was the only one that didn't have raw beans in my mole. Although it is common sense, no one cooked their beans before putting them in their dish. Duh. Go me, I used my brain. Woohoo.

My new goal is to really take advantage of every chance I get to cook something new, and to cook as often as possible. Practice makes perfect right? I don't know how perfect food can get considering so much of it depends on preference but I would like to get as close as I can--this also means not being afraid of failure which is something I struggle with.

Cheers to a new quarter!