Cooking

For my first meal I was going to prepare, I decided to prepare a classic from my homeplace, the "tortilla de patatas". Also known as spanish omelette, the tortilla is composed of three main ingredients: potatoes, eggs, and onions. It may sound very basic, but mastering these three ingredients and combining them together distiguishes a good chef from a bad chef. I previously cooked a couple of tortillla de patatas, but always with the help of my family. This time, I was going to prepare by myself.

My cooking are quite basic, and things like peeling the potatoes and copping the onion took me forever. I went through the process slowly, but successfully completing every step that my grandmother told me to go through. Although I did not know how to properly use some of the kitchen material, I finally ended up cooking a tortilla worth being proud of. As my mother told me, it is not easy to cook a good-looking tortilla at the first trial, but mine did look good; and not only looked, but also tasted like heaven. This is probably due to the fact that I spent 1 hour cooking it and I overexhagerate, but my family also really liked it.

My first meal has been a total success, as I thought the outcome was going to be a lot worse. I am now even more motivated for my next meal and keep improving my cooking skills.

Score from my family: 7.5/10

This month I wanted to prepare one of my favorite meals, spaguetti carbonara. I have always loved this meal but I have not been able to eat it so often. This would be my first experience cooking an Italian recipe. Two months ago, my brother tried to cook this meal, butthe result was not as expected. The carbonara is a sauce made of egg yolks and it is very important to not cook the egg when adding the sauce to the hot spaguetti. 

The procedure is fairly simple, at least it was easier for me than the tortilla: First, I had to boil the pasta for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, I cooked the pancetta and moved it out of the heat when it was perfectly golden. After this, I beated 4 egg yolf and added some parmesan cheese to it. When the pasta was boil, I placed all the pasta in the pan with the pancetta. After a few minutes, I removed the pan from the heat and carefully added the egg. It was crucial to stir thoroughly and add some pasta water to not cook the egg and to make the carbonara sauce creamy. 

I completed this meal without any recipe, just with common sense and some previous knowledge form my brother. Amazingly, the spaguetti carbonara was probably the most delicious I had ever tried. It was very satisfying to see how I could create such a well-done meal by my own so soon. My family also loved the pasta, and all of them did not doubt on having another plate of it. It has been a total success, and I am sure I will repeat it once again. 

Score from my family: 9.5/10

This month was quite busy for me, it was Christmas and I had many meals with my family. I always cook in the weekends because those are the days I have most time; but this month, I only disposed of one Saturday. That same Saturday, I was informed that I could cook. The problem, however, is that there was almost no food in the fridge. As a result, I had to put my creative skills into work to create a meal without a recipe. 

The only two ingredients with enough quantity were some goat cheese-filled ravioli and onions. After some time thinking, I though some almost-caramelized onion would go perfectly with the goat cheese. Apart from that, I would add some spices and olive oil to give the dish a punch of flavor. 

First, I boiled the ravioli for about 4 minutes. Meanwhile, I heated a pan and covered it with olive oil and added a small square of butter to make the pasta softer. When the pasta was ready, I placed the ravioli in a bowl while I added half an onion with 2 chopped garlic cloves to the pan. Susequently, I added three pinches of cayenne pepper powder and two pinches of pepper. After 5 minutes, when the onions began to caramelize, I put the ravioli in the pan and stirred them for a bit more than one minutes. After that, I put some feta cheese on top, removed the pan from the heat and served my family. My family really liked how I could make such an flavorful dish from two main ingredients. I have learned many lessons with this dish, and I am now becoming more confident in using the kitchen tools without help.

Score from my family: 6.5/10

This month I thought of tackling a dish that I had never attempted to prepare even though its use in my culture. I thought the best example for this this type of dish would be fried eggs with fries. This is one of the dishes that I most enjoy eating, and yet, I do not know how to cook it. 

This dish seems simple, but believe me, a big mess can be made in the kitchen the first time you cook it. Fortunately, I was warned about this by my mother and I cautious with all the process of cooking.

First of all, I put a vast amount of olive and a garlic clove in a high heat pan. After a couple of minutes of letting it heat up, I put the cut potatoes in the pan. In order to do this, I had to peal and cut the potatoes before cooking. Every three minutes or so, I stirred the potatoes so that they did not burn on one side and be raw on the other. When the potates became crispy, I took the all the fries and put them in a plate. After that, I seasoned the fries with cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and salt. The fries were great. Consequently, I used the same oil, broke two eggs and put them in hot pan. After few second, I took them out (and almost burning myself with the hot oil) and put the eggs with the fries. My family gave the approval, and I enjoyed a tasty meal that I am sure I will repeat in the future.

Score from my family: 7/10

This month I wanted to cook an American dish. Where I live, it is common to order American food to take home or to eat in a restaurant, but it is not usual to cook it at home. I thought that there could not be a more American dish than the hamburguer, so I decided to prepare it. Hamburguers look easy to prepare, but once you put many ingredients, it is hard to master them all.

I only disposed of one pan and had to cook for 3 people at the same time. This was a challenge but I completed it by first planning my method of cooking. Instead of regular hamburguer buns, I had pita bread; and so, I put them first in the pan so that they could become fluffy. Next, I put some butter and cooked bacon three slices at a time. At the same time, I chopped half an onion and cooked it for 5 minutes. Once I finished with both, I seasoned the hamburguer patties with salt, garlic powder, pepper, and cayenne pepper powder. I put them in the pan and let them cook for three minutes. In the meanwhle, I sliced some tomatoes and put all the ingredients in the pita bread. After closing the heat, I realized the meat was undercooked, and had to cook it for another 3 minutes. After this, I painted the pita with a mixture of mayonnaise and cholula sauce, and served the burguers to my family.

I have to say that the burguer was fantastic, the bacon was crispy, the meat well done, and all the ingredients on point, The result was positive, but the process could have been a bit faster. The next time I will cook hamburguers, I will make sure things like properly cooking the meat. I have learned valuable lessons with today's dish.

Score from my family: 8.5/10

This month, I wanted to prepare a meal typical from the country I live in. I wanted this dish to be globally well-known, and the best example of this was paella. 

I have previous experience cooking paella, although the last time I made one was more than two years ago. Apart from this, I used to prepare traditional paellas composed of zaffron; and this time, I will prepare a black paella. I personally like the black paella more than the traditional paella; however, I have never had the chance to cook one.

In order to cook the black paella, I bought squid ink, calamary, clams, and some fish. First of all, I put two diced onions in a large rounded pan, an once it was golden. I put the calamany and the fish. Consequently, I added 4 cups of rice two the pan accompained by a cooked tomato jar, two packets of squid ink, and one liter of seafood stock. Finally, I let the paella cook itself for 20 minutes at high heat. 

After an hour of cooking, I served substantial portions to my family and myself. My family really liked the paella and I did too. The only point of improvement would be to let some rice at the bottom of the pan to get crispy. I have enjoyed preparing this meal, and I will surely prepare again taking the feedback in mind. 

Score from my family: 9/10

This month, I wanted to create a dish that I had not previously created, and though the best dish would be a sandwich; in special a chicken parmigiana sandwich. This time, I did not have a recipe and based all my procedure on the looks of similar sandwiches that I had seen on television. 

I started off cooking the sauce, which included tomato, onions, peppers, olive oil and parmesan cheese. I slowly cooked all of the ingredients until they became the sauce became consistent and bubbly. In the meanwhile, I breaded two chicken thighs with bread crumbs, eggs, and flour. Once they were both done, I put everything into a pot, added a substantial amount of parmesan cheese, and put it into the oven for 20 minutes at medium heat. Once it was done, I sliced a piece of bread filled the middle with the chicken parmigiana.

The result was unbelievable. It is hard to remember whether I had ever eaten a sandwich as good as this one. I let my brother and my dad try it and they were impressed too. The only aspect for improvement is the selection of bread, since a crunchier one would have given it an extra plus.

Score from my family: 9,5/10

This month, upon request from my father, I decided to cook a traditional meal from my home country, the Bonito a la Bizkaina. First, I began to cook the sauce that that consisted of tomato and onions. The originial recipe also has "chorizo peppers", but I did not have any at my disposal. After cooking the sauce for around ten minutes, after the onions began to turn brown, I placed a piece of Bonito fish (very similar to red tuna) and cooked it for ten more minutes. 

This dish looks complicated when served, but it actually is not. The sauce, considering it did have the peppers, was on point; and the bonito was slightly overcooked. Still, the dish was well done and my family and I enjoyed eating a traditional dish. 

Score from my family: 7/10

After cooking fish the previous month, I decided I need to go for the basics with meat. Cooking a steak seems like a simple task, but cooking a proper steak requires high attention to detail in the procedure. After being guided days before by my grandpa on how to cook the perfect steak, I decided to try it by myself. First, I took the three steaks and seasoned them with just the right amount of salt and a bit of pepper. Then, I heated a pan and greased it with olive oil. I later added a garlic clove to the oil along with the three steak. I positioned the steak vertically, by only placing the fat strip on top of the pan. This way, the fats would melt and the meat would not overcook on the outside and undercook in the inside. Finally, once the steak began to change of color, I cooked the steaks' sides 30 seconds each side, placed them on a plate and added some chunks of salt.

The steaks were cooked on point, and it was almost as good as the ones my granpa prepared. The problem is that my grandpa's meat quality was better than mine, making my family be badly accostumed. In general, the dish was properly done but couldstill be improved.

Score from my family: 8/10

This month, I decided to prepare a dessert instead of a main dish. One of my favorite desserts is the oven cheesecake, and therefore decided to prepare it. One week before cooking, I went to a famous cheesecake bar in my hometown and fell in love with it; however, I still thought there were some aspects for improvement. Due to the restaurant being famous, their cheesecake recipe was on the Internet and decided to use it but changing some ingredients. I decided that in order to make it less runny and creamy, I would substitute some of the cream with butter and flour. After mixing all the ingredients together and putting it in the oven for 50 minutes at high heat, the cheesecake was done. I tasted it and it was heaven on Earth. Literally the best cheesecake I had ever eaten; and it was not only me thinking the same way. This recipe has worked perfectly this time, and I will see how it works the next time that I prepare the cheesecake.

Score from my family: 10/10 !!!

I am especially proud of this dish, since I believe it is the best one I have produced to date. The truth is that I have not tried harder or anything for this dish; I believe that the key to my recent cooking success is the fact of consistently cooking each month and persevering despite of some unwanted results. Practice makes perfect.

This month, my dad and I decided to cook something together. Given that we were celebrating a family birthday, we wanted to prepare something that would fill a lot of people. Doing so would also give me the opportunity of cooking a dish at a large scale, something I had not done before.

Due to my father and I linking the taste of lamb and not having eaten it for a while, we decided to roast lamb in our own home oven. First of all, a good quality lamb leg needed to be found in a large supermarket, which was harder than first thought. The process of cooking it was not extremely hard. We added some spices to the skin of the lamb, including salt, pepper, thyme, and a bit of paprika. I thought that it would be best to cook it a low temperature for a long time. After an hour and a half at 150 degrees celsius, we both carefully flipped the lamb and left it for another hour at the same temperature.

When it was done, we tasted it, and it was extremely flavorful. It was not a lamb of the level of a specialized restaurant, but it was still special. The skin was perfectly crispy and the meat extremely tender.

Score from my family: 9/10

From this month on, I will try to improve the dishes that I previously made most of the times. This month, I will preaper a gourmet hamburguer once again.  The one I made last school year was very tasty but there were still some things to improve on. 

This time, the meat was not undercooked and was seasoned less severely with cayenne pepper. As a result, the hamburguer tasted more like meet. The bacon and the cheese were very similar, but the sauce consisted of mayonnaise and tabasco instead of the cholula sauce. This gave the burguer a bit of a spicy but savory kick. Finally, the most important modification was the bread. Last time, a pita bread was used, and this time, a bread made especifically for burguers was used. The result was a simple tasty burguers that has all the components to be the perfect burguer. My family enjoyed it and, from now on, I will cook hamburguers the same way.

Score from my family: 9.5/10

Given my recent success preparing a desert, I decided to continue preparing deserts to see whether it was just my lucky day. 

One of the desert that I most enjoy eating has to be cookies. In my opinion, there is nothing better than watching a series with a cup of milk and a box full of homemade chocolate chip cookies. So that is exactly what I did!

I took out an old butter cookie recipe from the recipes closet, which was probably from my grandmother. I loved the recipe, but I did change it a little to my wants. I maintained the dough the same except that I used cane brown sugar instead of white sugar. In addition, when preparing the dough, I added many dark chocolate piece along with some crumbled Oreo cookies in order to give it some crunch. When baking, I found that the best way to organize the cookies is by placing them far away from each other and placing an icecream scoop of dough. This way, they ended up being golden brown and amazingly tasty. This recipe is amazing! I will definitely repeat it soon.

Score from my family: 10/10

This month I decided to make a new recipe. I was looking at a YouTube video and really liked the idea of preparing a whole rack of ribs. And so, after watching a couple of videos, I came up with a list of spices I would use for the ribs. These were cayenne pepper, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and salt. 

The rack of ribs was bought in a local butcher's and it was actually quite large. Therefore I decided to place the ribs with the seasoning in the oven at low heat (around 160 degrees celsius) from about three hours. After that, I painted the ribs with honey-infused barbacue sauce and broil the ribs for about 10 more minutes.

The result was a charred, spicy, tender rack of ribs that tasted like heaven. I do not exactly know how I got to make this recipe, it may be pure luck; but the ribs were really tasty. I will definitely repeat this recipe in the future to see whether they turn out as good as this one, especially since I did not write down the exact amount of spices that I put.

Score from my family: 10/10

A while ago, I prepared a dish that is famous in my family, which is the black squid ink paella. The last time I prepared it was a huge success and I wanted to know if I could repeat it or even make it better. 

According to my family, the only thing that could be improved was that some rice grains should be a bit crispy. In addition, I believe that praws, in addition to the clams, would make the dish more complete and sophisticated. Therefore, I decided to implement these improvement following the same technique as last time; only adding the praws at the end and cooking the rice a bit more time.

The result was an amazing black paella that could hardly be improved, unless the recipe was completely changes. I am personally satisfied with this recipe and will use it from now onwards everytime I cook paella.

Score from my family: 9.5/10

This month, I wanted to repeat one of the traditional dishes of my region. Since the bonito con tomate was one of my worst scored dishes, I wanted to make the dish again and improve the dish. The previous dish was not bad at all means, however there were some major downsides that need to be improved. 

The most important thing that needs to be improved is mastering the cooking point of the fish, which should be too raw but should not be overcooked. To do so, I followed the same recipe as the one I used for the last time, but cooked the onion a little more time until they became more caramelized, and also cooked the bonito for about 3 minutes each side. This time came out to be perfectly cooked, actually. The sauce was on point and the bonito was perfectly done. The only thing that can be done to improve is to completely change the recipes; maybe adding some other ingredients that are not the traditional ones.

Score from my family: 9/10

This is the last month that I will be cooking for CAS, however, it will definitely not be the last time I will be doing it. In order to end this journey in the best possible manner, I think it is a good idea to repeat the dish I started with, which is the spanish omelette. The first time I cooked it, the taste of the omelette was correct, but the eggs were quite overcooked which led to the tortilla to be hard. Some people prefer it this way, but my family and I prefer the eggs to be a bit runny or undercooked. 

Following the same method as the last time, although slightly increasing the eggs to potatoes ratio for increased runnyness and slightly increasing the onion to potatoes ratio to improve taste, I ended up with an amazingly good tortilla de patatas. The appearance does not look great, but believe me, the taste and the texture was unbelievable. 

I feel extremely poud of producing dishes of such good quality, and although I started with quite a bit of background knowledge in cooking, I did not nail the recipes the way I think I do now. This definitely shows that perserverance, constructive criticism, and practice lead to mastery; and I believe that this can be applied to any other field apart from cooking, where one's skills can significantly improve with commitment and perserverance, no matter how big of a challenge is faced.