Day 32: Breakfast of Champions

It was a quick day in the kitchen today learning how to make the perfect stir fry served with rice. For the stir fry we jullienned vegetables that were left over from this week ~ an assortment of red and green peppers, mushrooms, onions, asparagus, cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, and green beans.

For today's dish ~ a breakfast of champions ~ I made half a cup of uncooked par boiled rice. The ratio for cooking this rice is two parts water to one part rice. Rice doubles in size and for half a cup of uncooked rice we get one cup of cooked rice. To give the rice a bit of flavouring, we added ginger and a pinch of saffron to the rice.

For the sauce I minced some ginger and garlic and sauteed it in butter. I began building the flavours of the sauce by adding salt and pepper, and a pinch of allspice. Next I added coconut milk and a whole Thai chili pepper sliced, followed by about half a litre of chicken stock and let it simmer to reduce the sauce by about half.


I forgot to take a photo of my plating before
Chef tasted the components of my dish.

I started the stir fry with sauteing onions first, then adding an assortment of julienned (thin sliced strips) vegetables. The stir fry was seasoned with salt, pepper, allspice, worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, and soy sauce.

When the rice was done and the stir fry cooked to al dente, I cooked a few shrimp (peeled with tails left on and seasoned with salt) in the coconut sauce. The stir fry was placed over the rice with the shrimp and coconut sauce on top.

This dish was so delishous! The shrimp was cooked perfectly. Shrimp when cooked properly should look like an open "C". Overcooked shrimp will look liken an "O". I loved the flavour of the coconut milk and the heat from the Thai red pepper. I was pretty happy about this dish ~ Chef commented that I had cooked the rice and shrimp perfectly.

It was a short day in the kitchen as we moved to the classroom to discuss our food business plan project. Chef helped us with the requirements of the project and surveyed the class to find out what our projects were going to be about. There is lots to do for this project ~ we are required to cost out each of our dishes/recipes as well as complete a two day preparation plan.

Homework this weekend will be to work on my project and make rye bread. I purchased some flax seeds and sunflower seeds to add to the rye bread.