Ali McAuliffe

This week I made a bigger meal with sloppy joes, cornflake potatoes, and strawberry pretzel pie. I had to prepare some stuff in the morning, and then finish it that night. I started with the sloppy joes, which my mom helped me with this week, since I was busy. We got some ground beef out and put it in a crock pot to cook and heat up, then we put some packets of sloppy joe mix and some tomato paste. My family likes to serve them on toasted hamburger buns, so I buttered some and then broiled them for a couple of minutes. Broilers can be difficult sometimes, I was little bit late getting them out, so some of them burnt, but there were enough good ones where I didn't have to do it again. The next thing I made was cornflake potatoes, which I have already made in a previous blog. My sister was home and I had to make them again just for her, because they are her favorite. This time when I made them they turned out better, I cooked them a little longer so the cornflakes were crispi...

For my cooking task this week, I made flank steak, which is like a sweet thinly sliced steak. I wanted to try different kinds of steaks and marinades this week, so I got two different kinds of steak and two different dressing to marinade with. We got a normal italian dressing and marinaded a top sirloin steak and a round steak. We then did the same thing with a citrus salad dressings to see the difference in taste. Let that sit in the marinade for a day, take it out of the bag and put it on a rack in a pan, so it is not laying directly on the pan. Put some seasoning on the steaks and then you broil it on each side for six or seven minutes. This is what it looked like when it came out of the broiler. When it was done broiling, I took it off the rack and cut it into thin slices, and this is what it looked like when I was all done with everything.  This week went pretty well, the only thing that I have really been struggling with throughout this process is finding the time...

This week was the first week that I ran into some trouble. I made chicken fajitas this week. My issue was that I was gone this weekend, so I did not have as much time as I usually do to cook. So, I only got to cook the chicken and I did not get as much practice as I usually do. I also had to prep everything, then go to practice, and then when I was cooking the food I would run and do homework in between it cooking. Chicken fajitas are very simple and easy to make. We thawed out chicken, and cut it into strips, during this part I did almost cut myself, because I was in a rush and not using my cutting skills that I practiced, but I made sure to be careful after that. After you cut the chicken put it in a ziplock bag with fajita seasoning, and let it marinate. Then, after I let it sit for a while, I put a pan on the stove with a little splash of oil, enough to cover the bottom of the pan, and cook it covered on medium heat. After it cooks for a little bit, you go and flip the chicken pi...

This week I wanted to make fondue, which is typically a three course meal of melted cheese, broth, and melted chocolate. My family doesn't usually like the broth course, which you boil broth and let the meat cook in there. So instead of boiling chicken in broth, my family will pan fry or grill chicken. The first course, which is cheese, you can use many different recipes. The recipes usually contain some sort of cheese, alcohol, and garlic or something to give it more flavor. We decided to use, colby jack and pepper jack cheese, a dry white wine, and some cornstarch to make the cheese thicker when you melt it. To add some flavor, I added some garlic and lemon juice. We like to dip bread, tortilla chips, and green apples into our cheese. I used my cutting skills from one of the past weeks to cube the bread, and I also practiced grating with the cheese. With your final results, you want it to turn out stringy so you can dip it easiest. It took a second to get the cheese right, beca...

This week I got to cook potatoes a couple different ways. The different kinds that I made are things that we make at home all the time, so none of them really have a specific recipe. So, there was a lot of guessing and eyeballing, it all depends on your taste and how you like it. I made cornflake potatoes, cheesy potatoes and fries two different ways. This week was pretty easy, except for the fact that I had a little difficulty with the fries. I made cornflake potatoes first, which is what my family calls them. We make these all the time at home, but I have never made them myself before. These are pretty easy to make, and I did not have time to cut and prepare potatoes, so I just got some frozen hash browns. You take the hash browns and mix them with some sour cream, then add a can of cream of chicken soup. If you want it more creamy, then add another can of soup. After that you add a couple handfuls of cheese. Then, you will put all of that into a greased pan. Now is when you add th...

Different cutting techniques is what I worked on and learned this week. The techniques that I tried are called julienne, slicing, large dice, and batonnet. I knew all of these techniques, except for batonnet, that one was a new one I learned. All these techniques I knew of, but I had not tried all of them before. The first one I tried was julienne, it is when you make long thin strips while cutting. I decided to use this technique on a carrot. First, I cut the carrot into long, wide strips, then you cut those into thin strips. I struggled a little with this one, because my knife wasn't quite sharp enough to cut the carrot into as thin of strips as I wanted. This is what the julienne cuts came out looking as. The batonnet cut was the one I had tried next. I had never heard of this technique before, but I had cut things like this before. For this cut you are supposed to square off your item, which I used a carrot, and make rectangular sticks. Squaring off your item means m...

This week I decided to try and learn different techniques to cook eggs. There are many different ways to prepare eggs such as, boiled, scrambled, an omelet, sunny side up, over easy, poached, basted, and deviled. The techniques that I decided to use were scrambled, sunny side up, over easy, poached, and an omelet. Also, when I was done cooking the eggs I had my dad taste them to tell me if they were correct. The first technique that I tried was scrambled, so I had to put a pad of butter into the pan with the eggs, then stir and when it is almost cooked add a dash of milk. When I did this technique I only cooked one egg, so when I put it in the pan it cooked really fast, which I then over mixed them because it was cooking faster than I thought it was going to. The pieces of egg ended up being a little smaller, so next time I would use lower heat or more eggs and mix less, so I would end up with bigger pieces. I made a sunny side up egg next. To make these kind of eggs, you crack ...