:: HE lesson ::

8 Sept 2010 marked the first home economics lesson. Browsed through the course document and this particular document made me worried =x Competency Profile! My god! For your information, it's a list of items that test our ability for practical as well as planning skills. For every lesson, different items would be tested and we need to get our tutors to sign their initials (if we manage to hit the expectation).

So for our first lesson, it was a test on our CUTTING technique.On my part, i googled on the meaning of these terms and also how to go about cutting it. To be honest, it was the first time in my life coming across terms like "chiffonade", "julienne", "brunoise" and "macedoine"  ("-_-)

Ready for some mini tutorial? =p

Chiffonade - it involves the use of leafy vegetables such as spinach. We have to roll up the leaves and slice very thinly so that it appears to be very fine. Imagine those herbs used in cream sauce, it's about that size.

Julienne - cutting of food into thin long strips eg: carrot

Brunoise (fine dice) - this refers to very tiny cubes ~ 1 - 2 mm each side. We can incorparate the skill for julienne before dicing it into small cubes.

Macedoine (small dice) - it's also cube-like but its bigger in size than brunoise ~ 5 mm.

For more details, you can refer to:
1) http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~media/foodprep.htm for illustration on how to go about cutting.
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brunoise for explanation of the different cuts.

We have also learnt about HANDY MEASURES! Remember how we measure flour in school? Scoop a rounded tablespoon of flour and tap 2 times by the edge of the container.

A rounded tablespoon - 25g flour
A level tablespoon - 25g sugar

Some of you might be thinking why is it that for the same 25g, sugar has to be levelled while flour is rounded measurement? Sugar is heavier compared to flour hence for the same weight, we actually requires lesser amount of sugar than flour =) This kind of measurement is really useful when you do not have the necessary measuring equipments at home.

Did not manage to take pictures of what i cut =( but i promise more pictures in future!