The Mayhem of Carrots...

In culinary, we are now making foods using vegetables. We learned about the different categories such as fruit vegetables, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, etc. We took that knowledge that we learned and tried to apply it to vegetables. For example, my group chose carrots to prepare. We were given frozen, canned and fresh carrots and had to decide how to cook them. Unfortunately, my group did not choose the correct ways to cook the vegetables. We took the frozen carrots and sautéed them, the fresh carrots we roasted and the canned vegetables we boiled. After we made our mistakes we realized that the canned carrots should have been used for sautéing because they are already soggy from the can. The frozen carrots should have been used for boiling or steaming and the fresh carrots actually turned our pretty good because carrots have a lot of natural sugars and when we roasted them, the carrots caramelized.
As we continue working with vegetables, each group in the class had to pick a recipe using at least two vegetables. My group and I chose a recipe called Spinach and mushroom lasagna roll-ups in gorgonzola cream sauce. Today, 2/29/12, we started to make our mise en place. We decided who would prepare the different parts of the recipe. For example, Georgia made the pasta dough while Allie and I chopped up the vegetables. Along with spinach and mushrooms in the recipe, there was also onion and garlic. We also added zucchini and red peppers. After all of the vegetables were chopped, we sautéed everything together so now the next time we have class we just have to roll out the pasta dough and fill it with the sautéed mixture of vegetables. Hopefully it will be delicious!

–Jen B