Cooking Lesson #3!

Today we did a lot!

Trudy with her cooking tools

Trudy cut the acorn squash and I peeled & cut eggplants (cut off the ends, and peel the end at around the edge so that you can get a better starting point peeling down the sides. Otherwise it’s hard peeling it. Put salt on them to "bleed" or get the water out of them so they're more flexible), roast things at 375 or above, chopped bell peppers, garlic.

Mis en plac (french for "everything in its place"- prep everything/all ingredients)

Learned to make:
* Spicy shrimp (start w/ butter & olive oil- to raise the smoke point. add bell peppers and garlic in. cut green pepper in half to add spicyness. add white wine for flavor and to get the brown-ness off the bottom. Don’t want the ingredients to caramelize/brown too much. add butter later for fullness to thicken it, and round out acidity of tomatoes/spicyness)
* Acorn squash & Eggplant Lasagna (see recipe below)
* Teriyaki salmon (take out bones w/ tweezers. we didn't have them, so we used scissors to pull them out. Ideally marinate for at least an hour in teriyaki sauce. Bake for ~15-20 min. can take off skin with a boning knife before baking, or it comes off nice & easy after baking)
* Crispy kale (fold Kale in half, cut along stem, separate kale into 2 halves, arrange on tray w/ parchment paper on it, brush a lil olive oil, sprinkle some salt on it, roast for a few minutes, ~5 min, flip over and roast a lil more)
* Cooked kale (can just pull off leaves from stem, chop up into sections, cook in a pan w/ a lil salt & olive oil, ~1 tbsp lemon zest for flavor, outside of about 1 lemon)

When you are tasting things, esp for meats or egg dishes where you need to add seasonings but can’t, take small portions and try them out. For example, with an egg bake, cook a little egg with the vegetables in a pan to see if everything tastes alright, then add whatever you need to the dish. For the lasagna, we put one slice of eggplant, a lil acorn squash, ricotta mixture, spinach, and cheese on a spoon to see how the dish would most likely taste. Really good! Great flavor