October Soups and Sauces

I think the whole soups and stock unit went well. There were little to no errors and if there were errors, it wasn't an extreme error. While making the stock, I learned several new techniques like how to add spices (bouquet garni) using a cheese cloth and adding the mirepoix which was the vegetables. In our stock, then nourishing element was chicken, and once the stock had a chance to simmer and absorb the spices, it was liquid. We made broccoli blue cheese soup for one of our dishes and for that, we made a little mistake by adding the ingredients incorrectly. We were supposed to add the broccoli last and add the other ingredients before that, but we ended up adding them all at the same time. It wasn't a big deal because almost all of the vegetables needed the same amount of time cooking anyways, but we've learned to read the recipes thoroughly. In our recipe for that soup, it also said we have to purée it, so once it was all cooked, we put the hand blender in the pot and let it turn into liquid with very little chunks. When we made the soup out of random vegetables, we chose to make a carrot and potato soup with hot sauce in it. This turned out a bit better than the other one because we didn't have any mistakes. There was no recipe, so we just did what we thought was right and what would taste good, and to our surprise it all worked. We didn't really garnish our work, for we didn't think it needed to be garnished because we were the only ones eating it. For the most part, this unit was good and a well learned experience. I think we did a good job executing the recipes and working as teams. Samantha D.