Behind the Fries

     Behind the Fries

   Anyone with at least some British blood in them should be well aware of the two most important vitamins in a healthy diet: Fish and chips. Those without any British backing may be confused as to why anyone would want to eat a bag of chips with their fish, but to set them straight would lead them into an even further confusing world of the differences between fries, chips, and crisps, and what means what, where.

    As someone who works in a Fish and Chips restaurant I've become more than familiar with the inner workings of the chip manufacturing process. It may seem obvious as to what goes on, but when you think about how many chips need to be pumped out constantly to please the customers, you can easily realize that the simple way you go about making your chips, (or fries,) may be a lot different.

     From the potato sack to the plate, the process of making chips isn't that complex. It starts with grabbing the large brown bag from the back room. The bag for first use is always marked with a black X, like a hidden cache of pirate loot. This package is the oldest of them all, making it important to get it out of there before it starts to go bad. Once the bag's been dragged out into the dish pit, it's propped up onto a small stool that clearly shows its age with it's peeling wooden surface and myriad of globs of glue holding the crumbling thing together. When the sack is ready, seated nicely beside the peeler, a quick cut of the tying strings opens it up, revealing the lovely dirt-grown potatoes--now ready for peeling.

   There are three main pieces of machinery used in creating chips. The first of those is the peeler. Now, for a normal kitchen at home, not many potatoes are needed. That, along with the fact that there usually isn't much of a rush, leads to the chef hand peeling each potato with a hand peeler. But when it comes to the rush of a restaurant, hand peeling just isn't fast enough. That's where the peeler comes into play. The peeler is a fairly large, barrel-shaped machine. Inside, is a bumpy, rough and round platform that, when on, spins around really fast. When you pop a potato into the machine, the spinning and grinding quickly removes most of the skin from the potato. For maximum efficiency, you place around ten to fifteen potatoes at a time, depending on their size. Once ten to twenty seconds to pass, you unlock and open a small hatch in the peeler's side, and the potatoes all come rocketing out, into the sink. If you aren't chipping the potatoes as you peel them, the potatoes build up in the sink until they're all done, at which point you plug the sink and fill it with water so all the potatoes are soaking.

     After, or during, peeling you move onto chipping. This is the step where the chips are finally created. This step also uses the next piece of machinery; the chipper. The chipper is a wall mounted work of metal. At it's base is a small grate with chip sized holes in it, and above that is a presser covered in bumps that fit perfectly into the grate gaps. All you have to do to transform the potato into a bundle of chips is by simply placing it on the grate, and pressing it down with the presser. This murders the potato, and chops it into several chips nearly ready for serving. A sack full of potatoes usually fills a sink about three-fourths full, and once the deed is done, the sink is filled with water to the same height as the potatoes. By soaking the chips, and potatoes, in water, you stop enzymes that you've recently exposed, from coming in contact with oxygen. When the enzymes are given oxygen, they begin to produce a brown and unappetizing color and so the bath keeps them nice and pretty for presentation. Once the water is ready, a cup of whitener is added and mixed in. This also stops the fries from going brown, as soon they will be exposed to the air as they wait to be fried.

    Once fifteen or so minutes of sitting in the whitener bath are up, the sink is drained. Once that has finished, and the workers up front at the fryer need some, the chips are shoveled out of the sink,  and into a container. This container is then race-carted up to the front. (Literally too. I usually put both hands on one end of the container, and simply push it nice and quickly to a snug little spot beside the fryers.)

    Now, from here on I personally take no part in the chip-making process. The rest is taken over by the fryers and the waitresses, and so my knowledge of the process isn't exact. I can, however, guess from what I've seen, (and simple logic) that the chips are grouped together into small frying baskets. These baskets are then soaked in the deep fryer's oil for a short while before being taken back out as the very chips you lovingly digest. These chips are then placed onto plates as the orders demand, and the waitresses carry them over to the happy customers.

    All-in-all, the making of chips isn't a rather long or complex process, but it is most likely very different from how you would make them at home. So go on out and enjoy your fish and chips once again, or, if you've been so terribly mistreated as to never having tasted fish and chips, do give it a try.

Cookie Review

FOOD REVIEW OF COOKIES

I decided to upload a video because it would be more fun to do and more interesting.

"Hi my name is Dorian, today I will be reviewing big value pack cookies from Safeway. It comes in 4 flavours, MM flavour cookies, raisin-oatmeal flavour cookies, chocolate flavour cookies, and big chocolate flavour cookies. Today I will try... these cookies and see how they taste.
...
mmmmmhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh this is good
...
This is definitely a buy.

Oh your still here, I guess ill just review these cookies like a in-depth review.
What I really like about theses cookies is the texture. I feel like when I hold these cookies its like a real cookie not like a fake cookie.
I prefer soft cookies but when you hold these cookies they are hard cookies, so they are easy to grip on to and when you eat them they are like soft cookies and that equals goodness.
I really like the chocolate in this one especially with the big chocolate one. I felt that they were going to overdo with the chocolate and put way too much and it would be gross but then its actually good.

Im Dorian and you can get these cookies at Safeway
goodbye

You can get these 12 cookies at Safeway for 9 dollars. There are 12 cookies in the box, each about 9.5cm vertically and 9.4cm across.

The Apple Crisp Experiment

The Apple Crisp Experiment

Recently i made a peach crumble for dessert. When i attempted this peach crumble i under estimated the difficulty and measuring involved in creating the perfect crispy crust. I guesstimated the measurements and ingredients. The crumble came out looking beautiful, but with a sad excuse for a crispy crust. The filling tasted amazing, the crust was more chewy instead of crunchy as i had left out flour in the topping and used melted butter instead of cold crumbled butter.

I decided my failure should be redeemed by an amazing Apple Crisp.

First i hand peeled 6 Macintosh Apples.

I then cut the apples into halves then quarters, creating apple slices.

I coated the apples in 1tbs of flour, 2 tbs of white sugar, and 1/4tsp of cinnnamon.

Next i measured out 4oz of slightly chilled butter that i had chopped into small pieces.

By previously cutting the butter into small pieces i saved myself time when i had to use the pastry cutter to mix the butter in with the dry ingredients.

I then combined 1cup of flour, 2 tbs of white sugar, 5 tbs of brown sugar, 1/2 cup of chopped pecans, and the 4oz of slightly chilled butter.  

I packed the dry mixture ontop of the apples in the glass dish.

The crisp baked for 1 hour and 15 minutes with the oven set at 350*F

~Here is the finished Apple Crisp.

The crisp tasted delicious with Vanilla Ice Cream, or a small amount of Creme Fraiche.
I will deinfetly be making this simple and tasty recipe again.

~By: Sage Bishop.

Recipe for Disaster

Have you ever eaten black cake? I have, and trust me, it wasn't black because it was burnt. The colour was just black.

This all started when my friend told me it was his mom's birthday. We decided to take it upon ourselves to make her a cake. Here's the catch, his mom can't eat gluten. I didn't think much of this. I took a recipe for New York Crumb Cake and we went over all the ingredients, eventually deciding we only needed to buy gluten-free flour. This is not as easy as it sounds.

The first grocery store we stopped at did not carry any kind of gluten-free flour. Safeway was our next best bet. We came up to the flour aisle, overwhelmed by how many different types of flour there were. We eventually came across two packages that advertised gluten-free flour. Having never dealt with this kind of flour before, we were pretty hopeless as to knowing what we needed. The two packages were of the Bob's Red Mill brand. It was the only brand in the store that sold gluten-free flour. There were two kinds, Black Bean Flour and Green Pea Flour. We had no idea what these flours were, we didn't even know what flour with no gluten tasted like. We eventually picked the Black Bean flour because upon reading the back of the package, it said "great for baking!" We took our flour back home and proceeded to make our cake. The first sign where we should have realized something wasn't right was when we mixed all our dry ingredients. The mixture was.. a sort of grayish colour. We didn't think anything of it and mixed in our wet ingredients, greased a cake pan and poured the batter into the pan. The batter was a very dark colour and looked more moist than it should have been. The cake topping was more or less the same colour as the batter. This is when we started to question the flour. The cake was eventually put in the oven. Twenty minutes later the timer rang and out came our wonderful smelling, black New York Crumb Cake. I dared my friend to take the first bite and being the brave soul that he is, took a big mouthful. As he chewed his nose began to wrinkle in disgust. I tried a piece and immediately had to spit the foul concoction out of mouth and drink 3 glasses of water and eat an apple.

This is more or less what our cake looked like ^^^

When his mom came home, she split her sides laughing when we told her what had happened.

I did some research when I got home and discovered that there are MANY different types of gluten-free flour out there. The most common type of gluten-free flour used in baking is rice flour as this tastes more or less like normal flour. Black Bean flour is used for things like pizza dough and tortilla shells. Green Pea flour is used mostly for making dips. Potato flour is also used for making baked goods.

Here is a guide on what the different types of gluten-free flour are good for..

http://glutenfreecooking.about.com/od/glutenfreeingredients/tp/20-Gluten-Free-Flours.htm

More and more people are going with the gluten-free diet partially due to things like Celiac Disease and also because the gluten-free diet is supposed to help you drop a few pounds. Grocery stores should make gluten-free flour more available to buyers.

For my first time baking with gluten-free flour, having no knowledge about it whatsoever, I don't think I did too badly. Needless to say though, we threw the black cake out. I think I'll stick to my gluten enriched diet thank you very much.

We're Back!

It's September, which means that school is back in session. After a good (though they think too short) summer break, a new crop of Food Studies 12 students are ready to give their thoughts on food. Expect new postings coming soon!

White SPot glooore

The other day my family and I went to white spot for dinner after a long drive. It was getting late around 9:30pm, so my younger sisters where getting grumpy and tired. The staffs at the restaurant were very helpful to my little sisters to keep them happy. They brought us our food super-fast and kept made sure we always had a beverage. I had a legendary burger and it was really good. It came with French fries, and it came with blueberry pie and a creaser salad, I was very pleased with my meal. My four year old sister had a fish and chips pirate pack, and because it was so late she shared with my one year old sister. They greatly enjoyed the meal which also came with a bowl of ice-cream. My dad got the same meal as me but he got the larger burger and I had a regular one and he enjoyed it as much as I did. The staffs at the restaurant were young and fun. My older sister got the vegetarian burger with fries and a chocolate milkshake she loved it and said it was the best milkshake she has ever had! My stepmom got a Greek salad type of meal that was on special when we went, it was delicious. The staff where very chatty and assisted us by helped keep my little sister busy and playing while we finished our meals. Me and my family where extremely pleased with the hospitality that white spot had given us. I strongly recommend family’s to go to white spot because they have good service and good food.

School's Out for Summer

It's June, which means that the school year is almost done! It also means that this blog will be quiet for the next few months. Thanks again to everyone who has visited our blog. The students really appreciate it. Please feel free to leave comments as well.

Enjoy you summer and see you in September!