OACC “FLAVORS OF ASIA” CLASS #2: TECHNICAL FOUNDATIONS
PINKY & RED’S CHICKEN AND THE EGG SANDWICH WITH CHEF SICILY!
For our second class with OACC, we focused on temperature controlled cooking and flavor balancing with Chef Sicily by making Pinky & Red’s delicious family recipe for their Chicken and the Egg sandwich, made with french toast, fried chicken, and eggs! The students learned different techniques for heating, such as poaching, boiling, deep frying, and sautéing, as well as proper seasoning with salt.
There are both moist and dry heat techniques for cooking. Moist heat includes such as poaching (to cook by immersing in heat with liquid), and boiling (cooking in water with rapid bubbles). Dry heat techniques include broiling (radiant heat from above), and sautéing (cooking in a small amount of fat).
When a dish comes together, it should always be a little sweet, spicy, creamy and sour, and this can be done in unconventional ways using salt. Ideally, you should salt three times during the cooking process:
- Immediately – When you are cooking vegetables, you want to salt once they hit the hot pan to pull the moisture out, and seasoning your protein prior to putting it into the pan to lock in the flavor.
- Halfway through – Tasting halfway through the cooking process to see if your dish needs more seasoning (if you salted properly the first time, you may omit this step).
- Finishing salt (at the end) – When you are finished cooking your dish, taste it and determine if if needs more salt. Be mindful that this salt never actually settles in to your dish, and only sits on the top, so this is how people can have a very different eating experience. Because those who get the top portion of the dish may think it is seasoned perfectly, but further down, the dish may seem bland.
Because this is a secret family recipe, we will not be publishing it online. Instead, students were able to enhance their intuition in the kitchen by applying the technical skills they’ve learned in the classes so far by making this dish, practicing cooking without following a strict recipe.
