“Cooking is at once child’s play and adult joy. And cooking done with care is an act of love.” – Craig Claiborne
Over spring break my mentor and I decided to try something new with our baklava recipe. Instead of just the classic nut filling, we made a cream to put inside and decorated it with crushed pistachios. Because it isn’t the traditional way to make baklava, for the final project I won’t be doing it with the cream. But adding the extra piece to the filling was a fun test at my baklava making skills, because it added a new challenge to what I’ve already become fairly proficient at making.
On my own I remade maqluba, and in the process of putting the dish together I realized I’d forgotten to salt it. It came out a bit blander this time around because of that, but aside from spices (or the lack of them), I was able to execute the making of the dish. As I had done with the baklava I made during the previous project period, I worked a bit on plating for the maqluba. I added a garnish to it for a bit of colour on the plate, and surrounded the rice with some cut almonds for an extra element. But the process of making it could be better. There’s a lot of different things going on consecutively when prepare it, the rice and the meat and all the various vegetables. It’s really easy to forget an aspect of the dish, or to burn one piece of it because of taking care of another piece. I can make sure this happens by spending more time on it, and practice cooking multiple things at one time. I can set alarms to go off to check the different pieces of the dish, and count an average of how long they each take to cook to help with the following times I make the dish.
My biggest mentoring challenge has by far been meeting with my mentor. Our schedules are so different that making time to see each other is a challenge. A lot of our communication is done via the phone, FaceTimes and the like, which can be a bit difficult when it comes to cooking. However we do make it work, seeing each other and speaking as often as we can. When we do see each other our meetings are very productive, and we cover a lot in our time. Alone I will continue to look into food plating, adding colour and flair into the dishes I make.
Recreating the dishes alone at home helps me see which aspects of my three dishes that I need to work on the most. Having first made all the dishes with my mentor however showed me clearly how things should be done, so my progression is simplified. It worked really well, having something to compare the dishes I make against, and that’s why I’m confident that I’ll be able to perfectly prepare these three Iraqi dishes by the end of this project.