Advanced Foods Class: Cooking our own European and Asian Food!

My students and I finally got our turn to try some European or Asian recipes

and what fun we had experimenting.

I steamed the vegetarian buns I purchased at the Korean market

and we decided these were not our favorite.

We all loved the crunchy Korean (or maybe Chinese?) snacks

that were crunchy honey-flavored delights!!

Similar to Bugles only sweeter.

We sampled a delicious apple cinnamon filled crepe.

Ashlyn made a fabulous stir fried beef with snow peas that ended up being the

class favorite.

Somehow, I failed to get a picture of that?

Our final dish was a french inspired marinated chicken breast with

purple cabbage.
She also made an amazing blackberry upside cake

which I also somehow failed to photograph.

What a sensational way to wrap up our study of the cuisine

of these vast and varied continents!!!

Advanced Foods Class: Asian Guest Speaker

What a privilege it was to have a brand new friend

come to our Advanced Foods Class and teach us about the

country of her birth.....South Korea!!

She taught us several fun factoids about this country

that we previously were not aware of:

1.) In Korea, knowing your blood type is very important.

Certain personalities are associated with each blood type,

so when you meet a potential life-mate one of the first

questions you ask is their blood type!!

2.)  Eating seaweed soup on your birthday is traditional.

Seaweed soup is full of health benefits and it's a great way

to begin a new year of life.  It's also very common to eat this dish after

giving birth because of it's detoxing properties and nutrition!!

Read more about that here!

3.)  You are not likely to have cold feet in South Korea because most homes have

heated floors!

This lovely lady prepared two different dishes for us

that exploded with deliciousness!!

  

This stir-fried dish of transparent noodles (made from sweet potato?!) 

and vegetables had a subtle, delicious flavor.

The beef was tender and we all enjoyed this tremendously.

The second dish she prepared was a traditional Korean ssam (pronounced "sum")!

Read more about that here!

The idea is to start with a leafy green (she used romaine) 

topped with a sesame leaf.

Read about those here!

Then she put a bit of sticky white rice on the leaves.

She made an incredible spicy plum sauce, dipped a small strip

of fried beef in the sauce, and placed that on top of the rice.

Finally, she folded it all up into a small packet and popped

the whole thing into her mouth!!

This struck me as the perfect little lunch that you could customize

with whatever little bits of meats, veggies, and rice you have leftover.

Her plum sauce was exquisite though and really added

a great flavor to this dish.

The sesame leaves were very different and tasted

like roses to me.  Very pungent in an appetizer

and not one that I was immediately won over with!!

Finally, our guest showed us some pieces of her traditional dance

costumes that were really beautiful!

What a wonderful experience this was learning

about a culture very unfamiliar to us!!

Thank you so much Mrs. Heeyah Lanty!!!!

Advanced Foods Class: The Korean Market

Right in the middle of our study of European and Asian foods,

I took my Advanced Foods class to the "H Mart" in Carrollton, Texas!

What an amazing cultural experience that was!!!

You walk into this huge warehouse sized shopping experience

and immediately you are overwhelmed.

The sights, the sounds, the smells!

I gave my students instructions on what they were to look for

and off they went while I browsed all over this Asian superstore!

If I learned anything as I was wandering around, it was this:

Americans are food snobs.

Our diets are intentionally limited.

We are pretty happy with about 5 different food choices and are unwilling

to try anything new and unusual simply because it's different.

I'm willing to bet the consequences of those attitudes

are reflected in the staggering amount of disease and prescription drug dependence

that is epidemic in the United States.

There were just shelves and shelves of squid.

And more varieties of fish than I even knew existed.

Fresh, frozen, freeze dried, honey coated......it was there.

There were so many different kinds of mushrooms and fruits

and vegetables that I had absolutely no idea what to do with.

Seaweed, fish balls, kimchi, rice, noodles, and other flavors 

I had never been exposed to!!

I was certainly intrigued by my lack of knowledge of how to prepare

and serve 99% of the items in that store.

It never ceases to amaze me the incredible variety that our Master Designer

gifted to us on this earth to display his creativity and love for us!!!

British Invasion: Advanced Foods Class

We launched our unit on European and Asian food with a bang!!!

I have friends who are church planting missionaries in Great Britain!

Our family has committed to pray for them almost daily, and to do

what we can to encourage them 

and let them know that we support what they are doing

for the Lord in this spiritually dark place!

Imagine how thrilled I was then I learned they were coming back to the states,

to stay with their family in the next big city over from us,

just as we were about to begin this unit!!!
So as they were packing for their flight,

I sent a message asking Ashlie if she would be interested in coming

to our class to discuss British food culture!!

She said, "YES!!"

What an amazing morning this was!!!

Because Great Britain was part of the European Union, they had to switch

all their measurements over to the metric system; therefore, all the recipes

are written in grams and milliliters.

We learned how to use a scale to measure out our ingredients. 

Next, we made two wonderful dishes that are common and very popular in England:
1.)  Banoffe (rhymes with coffee) Pie
2.)  Coronation Chicken

 Banoffe Pie is a caramel/toffee pie with banana topped with fresh

 unsweetened whipped cream topped with shaved chocolate!! 

 Very popular with the locals.

Coronation Chicken is a recipe that was developed to serve at the coronation

of Queen Elizabeth in 1953.  It's made with a mango chutney

and curry powder giving a nod to the Indian culture so prevalent in Great Britain!

  

Of course, we HAD to learn how to make a proper cup of English tea!!

 

We finished up this lovely morning by sitting together sipping hot tea,
tasting our sandwiches and pie, and hearing Ashlie's testimony
of how she uses hospitality to reach so many women for Christ
in Great Britain.  She and her husband live in
a community that is very multi-cultural and heavily muslim.
These ladies are often very lonely and isolated and crave the fellowship
of other Moms.  Using hospitality has been a marvelous, Biblical
tool to reach into homes that they might never reach otherwise.

Thank you, Ashlie Gillit, for your graceful presentation and for all the thought

and preparation you put into this!!!

What a blessing it was to us!!!