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- Joined Jan 11, 2010
Hello all,
I would be glad if you could help me out with some advice. I'm a novice cook and I am not looking to change careers to be a chef (yet) just looking to improve and be able to prepare meals that the average person would think gourmet.
I tried learning from cook books but found that it basically is all about memorizing recipes and not so much on actual techniques. For example, the recipe may say to chiffonade the herbs but not tell you how to actually chiffonade them.
So after searching and searching (my apologies if this has already been covered here - I tried searching but couldn't find anything) I figured I would post my idea for a home cooking lesson plan and see if I could get some feedback.
My approach is to look at different stations in brigade style kitchen and then learn to cook at each station. I figured that since stocks and sauces are kind of the foundation for cooking (totally guessing here) I would start there and make brown, white, fish and vegetable stock and then "graduate" into learning different sauces.
I figured that by making lots of stock, soups and sauces I would get a lot of practice cutting up vegetables which would help develop knife skills as well as work on organization (I think it's called mise en place?).
The problem is that I don't know where to go from there. My goal is to prepare and serve a five course meal at the end of the year and I am hoping that I can learn these various skills in that time frame.
Can anyone offer up some pointers, tips or thoughts on this? Am I crazy shooting for the five course dinner party? Should I start somewhere other than stocks, sauces and soups?
Thanks in advance
I would be glad if you could help me out with some advice. I'm a novice cook and I am not looking to change careers to be a chef (yet) just looking to improve and be able to prepare meals that the average person would think gourmet.
I tried learning from cook books but found that it basically is all about memorizing recipes and not so much on actual techniques. For example, the recipe may say to chiffonade the herbs but not tell you how to actually chiffonade them.
So after searching and searching (my apologies if this has already been covered here - I tried searching but couldn't find anything) I figured I would post my idea for a home cooking lesson plan and see if I could get some feedback.
My approach is to look at different stations in brigade style kitchen and then learn to cook at each station. I figured that since stocks and sauces are kind of the foundation for cooking (totally guessing here) I would start there and make brown, white, fish and vegetable stock and then "graduate" into learning different sauces.
I figured that by making lots of stock, soups and sauces I would get a lot of practice cutting up vegetables which would help develop knife skills as well as work on organization (I think it's called mise en place?).
The problem is that I don't know where to go from there. My goal is to prepare and serve a five course meal at the end of the year and I am hoping that I can learn these various skills in that time frame.
Can anyone offer up some pointers, tips or thoughts on this? Am I crazy shooting for the five course dinner party? Should I start somewhere other than stocks, sauces and soups?
Thanks in advance