Orpheus
07-14-2009, 08:48 PM
Long time foodie here that recently decided to consider cooking as a career path. I'm 21 and will be taking the food safety course at my local community college this semester and then the cooking classes the following semester since the former course is the prerequisite of the latter classes.
I've been cooking for myself for a few years due to dietary needs and digestive problems. I have IBS which is set off by overcooked meats, fried foods, too much sugar, and stress so cooking was really therapeutic for me as a way of way of taking control of my diet. It's also turned out to be loads of fun.
Since I recently realized that I've been able to cook more complicated dishes and more than one dish at a time I've been trying to challenge myself to cook things outside of my comfort zone to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and to aim to impress the family enough to be a bit more supportive. Over the weekend I made a creme brulée for the first time and found it was harder to say than it actually was to prepare. Today I made a seared pork shoulder that I rubbed in a coffee spice rub that I made and finished cooking in the oven where I checked with a meat thermometer every 5-10 minutes so that I could know when I had gotten it at just the right internal temperature. It was the best pork I've every had in my life and probably the only pork that I've ever had that wasn't dry or overcooked.
I'm really hoping to get a job working in a restaurant kitchen in the near future and plan to focus on properly cooking all type of meat and cooking things that I haven't been confident enough to attempt before. Hopefully I can have a lot of fun talking people's ears off here about food since nobody at home seems to understand why I get excited about food or certain ways of preparing it instead of just accepting that food is just food.
I've been cooking for myself for a few years due to dietary needs and digestive problems. I have IBS which is set off by overcooked meats, fried foods, too much sugar, and stress so cooking was really therapeutic for me as a way of way of taking control of my diet. It's also turned out to be loads of fun.
Since I recently realized that I've been able to cook more complicated dishes and more than one dish at a time I've been trying to challenge myself to cook things outside of my comfort zone to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and to aim to impress the family enough to be a bit more supportive. Over the weekend I made a creme brulée for the first time and found it was harder to say than it actually was to prepare. Today I made a seared pork shoulder that I rubbed in a coffee spice rub that I made and finished cooking in the oven where I checked with a meat thermometer every 5-10 minutes so that I could know when I had gotten it at just the right internal temperature. It was the best pork I've every had in my life and probably the only pork that I've ever had that wasn't dry or overcooked.
I'm really hoping to get a job working in a restaurant kitchen in the near future and plan to focus on properly cooking all type of meat and cooking things that I haven't been confident enough to attempt before. Hopefully I can have a lot of fun talking people's ears off here about food since nobody at home seems to understand why I get excited about food or certain ways of preparing it instead of just accepting that food is just food.