Mexican night!
Sorry for the long absence. I have been busy with midterms and other classwork (yes, even as a senior I still occasionally get some work). Last week we had Mexican food night, widely considered by those in my group and the rest of the class to be the most delicious day so far. Among the dishes we prepared were chicken in traditional chocolate mole sauce (Tom uses guajillos here, which are a bit harder to find countrywide and less hot than the adobo I usually use to make mole at home), and seafood enchiladas, which were the biggest hit, although very mild, as well as your standard chicken enchilada filling. But I promised pictures, and pictures you shall have.
When we finish our bit of the cooking and are waiting for the TAs to take over and finish the bit involving ovens, (all our TAs are undergrads who have taken the course before and spend hours before and after prepping ingredients and cleaning up), we can relax in Tom’s awesomely appointed living room. Below is Tom’s dog, Murphy.
Behold the man himself, Tom Mannion, who gets his hands dirty almost every class.
A pot of baked beans the kitchen staff was making for the vegetarians in our class to accompany the meal.
This is Gilberto, a member of the CDS kitchen staff who cleans out dishes for us. Without him, we would never be able to get stuff done on time, and he is the real power behind the cooking class.
For the mole recipe, we had to deseed the guajillos and toast them in the pans very briefly. They tried doing so over open flames and apparently it went badly. :(
Here you see the front living room of Mannion’s house, where we all gather at the beginning of class to hear lectures about cooking technique and practice and eat our delicious creations afterwards.
And here were our results for that class, you can see the mole on top and the seafood enchiladas on the bottom.
I hope to join you next when Stephen Hawking vists us for Indian food night!
