Brainfood's blog

“You first eat with your eyes”

Plating and food presentation play a huge role in how we experience food. When a plate of food is put in front of me the first thing I always do is look at it. At this point I’m already calculating if I’m going to enjoy the dish. Just by looking at the plate I can predict if I’m going to have a scrumptious eating adventure or a blah eating experience. Next I take a big whiff, and then that first exciting bite. Now granted sometimes I’m wrong and the gray mush on my plate actually tastes yummy or the beautifully decorated plate of food is too salty or lacks exciting flavors but more often than not that first look is spot on! A well designed plate leads to a delicious meal!

So if plating and presentation is so crucial in our experience with food, you’re probably wondering what types of things you could do to make your plates look delicious? We'll let you in on our secrets... (Thanks to the helpful information from our On Cooking textbook!)

Week 18: Parsley, sage, rosemary or thyme?

At Brainfood we’re all about systems of organization. We label our pantry shelves (baking staples here, vinegars and bottled sauces there) and our fridge shelves (cheese and dairy/vegetables and fruit). Our spices boxes-- they’re alphabetized, thank you. So what was going on when students came into class to find twenty—unlabeled—bowls filled with herbs and spices lined up on their worktables? Herbpocalypse now? Early April Fools? A really, really elaborate chili recipe? Nah, it’s just our annual herb and spice identification challenge.

Put that in your oven and roast it: Chicken at Brainfood

As any Brainfood student (past or present) will tell you, there's always excitement in the air on the first Day We Cook Chicken. I personally think we have a very strong, well-edited lineup for the first third of the program where we focus on baking, grains, and vegetables. Slowly simmered collard greens with chunks of smoked turkey, gooey whole wheat brownies, and a hearty spinach mushroom lasagna, what's not to love? Maybe these recipes aren't what students think of as traditional sources of protein, but still satisfying and filling nonetheless. But I digress...

For whatever reason, the DWCC has a certain perennial appeal. Like the first day of knife skills, the DWCC is an exciting step up, a jaunty new feather for students to add to their culinary caps. Also, cooking chicken is a higher stakes venture. Avoiding drying out chicken breasts, knowing when chicken is fully cooked, and avoiding cross-contamination are common pitfalls that might cause any novice cook a moment of uncertainty in the kitchen--which makes a tasty, well cooked chicken dish even more of a success worth celebrating. And of course, the DWCC provides a drool-inducing preview of future classes (beef, turkey, seafood!).

A Recipe in Pictures: Fake Flake Fried Chicken

1. Rinse, dry, and cut chicken

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s like having the day off… but better!

As you’ve heard many times on this blog, we here at Brainfood love our jobs! I absolutely love being in the kitchen four days a week with our Brainfood students. They are funny, energetic and always excited to get their hands dirty and try out a new cooking skill. However, I do not claim to be an expert on all things culinary or know every nutrition fact in the book so there are times when I can’t answer their questions or don’t have the right skill set to show them how to do a certain cooking technique. It is those times that provide the perfect opportunity for us to call in the experts! This fall we’ve been lucky enough to have several guest chefs and speakers visit our classes and teach us all a thing or two. Not only is a fun change of pace for our participants but it also means that Carina and I get to relax (a little) during class and learn new skills and knowledge right along with our youth.
We want to take this opportunity to thank each of our guest chefs and speakers for taking the time out of their busy days to share their skills and knowledge to our Brainfood participants!
Thank you Matt! Thank you Rebecca! Thank you Christina! Thank you Kevin! Thank you Ralph!
-Amy
Here’s a peek into what we learned from each of them!

Occasions Field Trip

For our first field trip, students with the best attendance records from the Columbia Heights and the Chinatown classes got a real treat: an afternoon excursion to Occasions Catering. Occasions Catering is an upscale catering outfit that furnishes food for all sorts of swanky DC events-- weddings, political events, bar mitzvahs, and everything else in between. As students learned, however, creating the tasty appetizers and impeccably constructed pastries is only a fraction of the work of being a caterer. During our backstage tour, our host, and co-founder, Mark Michael led students through warehouses stacked high with plates, bowls and dishes used for the event. Hot boxes and cold boxes for transporting food to the event location took up entire rooms, speaking to the volume of food, and the challenge presented by the deceptively basic task of transporting food from point A to point B.

Step Into Our Office, part 2

Ok, loyal blog readers, this is an official "my bad" from the Brainfood blogging department. The following post about Chef Teddy and Chef Matt's classroom visits is actually from last year. Yes-- last year. It was initially part of a collection of posts about guest chefs at Brainfood. Rather than let it moulder away in the drafts file, however, I thought I'd take a cue from class and serve it up anyways. Better late than...you know. Just do me a favor and mentally substitute the past tense when applicable.

*New posts on THIS year's class coming soon.


 

It's That Time of Year

You may have been tipped off by the increasingly blustery afternoons, or the quickly darkening skies at 4 in the afternoon. Or maybe it’s the slow reemergence of scarves and closed-toed shoes on the fashion-forward DC workforce that made you take note. And what better urban harbinger of seasonal change than your neighborhood Starbucks? The Chinatown store on 7th and H St. has already brought back the pumpkin spice latte, and in this neck of the swamp, that’s a dead giveaway: it’s fall.

Even sitting in our small Chinatown office, I can spot more seasonal signifiers. My old navy blue hoodie (now officially a “Brainfood” shirt) has acquired a new constellation of bleach spatters around the waist, most likely the result of an overzealous student wiping down tables. A quick sift through the recycling pile reads like The Brief History of Sugar and Butter: Sugar Cookies, Muffins, Banana Cake, makes 25 small cookies, makes 2 9-inch round cakes. Scroll through my camera, and there’s a new batch of faces, shy smiles, and floury hands holding trays of pillowy sweet potato biscuits. And, waiting ever-so-patiently at my side, sits a faithful, silent, and rather pungent work colleague, my bag of dirty kitchen towels. It eyes me beseechingly, as if to say, “Didn’t you miss me? Isn’t it time to spend some quality time with your laundry this weekend?”

And so it begins... Brainfood is back and bigger than ever!

On September 22nd and September 23rd Brainfood opened it's kitchen doors for its 10th year of after school programming. The kitchens at our Columbia Heights and Chinatown locations were once again full of energetic youth ready to cook, bake, eat, learn and serve! This year Brainfood set new records with the most students who signed up to be part of our programs. We tried to fit as many students as we could into our 4 classes although we were forced to put some students on the wait list. With over 90 students enrolled, Carina and I begun the process of grocery shopping for some of the largest classes we've even had at Brainfood. On the first day of class, our 4 classes combined baked over 29 batches of Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies - that's over 370 cookies! We have just finished our 5th week of class and have already tackled how to measure "the Brainfood way," lowfat & vegan baking, working with pizza dough, making healthy sandwiches, and learning knife skills. We are off to a yummy start!
-Amy

Check out this photo review of what we've been up to!


Welcome to Brainfood - Please sign in!

Listen up! Ivory reflects on Brainfood

One of our Brainfood alumni, Ivory Sarceno was recently asked to reflect on her Brainfood experience for the Afterschool Alliance's Storybook project.

Click here to read Ivory's Brainfood Story

Syndicate content