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Blog #4

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  Concluding my time at Catlin Gabel with this project has been special. Going into the first week I was excited to spend time with my friends and eat food I had never tried before. In hindsight, I realize that I was brought closer to my friends through the food that we ate and cooked. Through constant conversation while cooking and eating I was able to learn new things about some of my closest friends. Simply for the time I shared with my cohort I will always remember this project. Beyond this, I was able to learn more about cooking and the food culture in Portland. From finding the right ingredients at QFC to cooking them, I made major strides in my culinary abilities. In addition to this, I learned so much about the food industry in Portland. This project took us to food carts in downtown and established restaurants in Beaverton. I would recommend a project revolving around to food for how accessible it is. We were able to keep our cooking and eating schedule flexible which allo...
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Week 3 Blog

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  This week I feel was our strongest week of the project in terms of cooking. On Tuesday we at Shoyu Ramen at Kizuki Ramen and on Wednesday we ate Sushi and Nigiri at Sushi Mioga. These two meals were complimented with several side dishes and drinks of those cuisines as well. This week we cooked Udon with SPAM and Chicken Butter Masala. A specific moment where I feel we all learned was while making the udon. We had to simultaneously cook the different aspects like the noodles themselves, the vegetables, and the broth. Cooking the noodles first was where we came short in fulfilling the recipe. While the recipe did inform us to cook the noodles first, we let them sit in the pot for quite some time. By the time we had everything cooked and ready to assemble it was evident that leaving them in the pot made them slightly mushy. This being said, the dish as a whole was delicious and fun to make as well. What I feel I learned the most about this week was the act of cooking over a stove to...
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Week 2 Blog

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 This past week we have eaten from two restaurants and attempted to replicate two dishes. The theme for this week was Central and South American food so we stopped at two food carts. The first was a Mexican food cart in Beaverton named Cemitas Poblanas where we ate cemitas and fajitas. The second was a Colombian Food Cart in downtown called El Pilón where we tried empanadas and arepas. Both were fantastic and distinct in taste. Following the first meal, we made chicken fajitas which were fairly easy to make and incredibly delicious once we were done. Our second dish that we made was arepas. This was easily our most difficult recipe to create as we had to use a specific flour and be very intricate with our proportions and cooking. A moment where we had a good laugh and learned a lot was when we created the dough. Halfway through mixing the ingredients together to make the dough, we realized that the texture was nowhere near where it should have been. With a large grin on my face as ...
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Week 1 Blog

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     To finish off my time at Catlin Gabel, I decided to dedicate myself to a project focused around tasting and eventually cooking foods in Portland. When thinking of my senior project, I realized that soon I would be leaving Portland and there are so many cuisines I have not yet tried. In addition, going off to college requires certain skills and I feel that having a few recipes under my belt will be useful. Finally, the past year has been incredibly difficult being away from everyone and I felt that food would bring a few of my friends and I closer.      Grant Underwood initially proposed this project to me as a project to simply try foods and critique them. Along with myself, Rishi Alluri and Cai Fernandez-Powell would be joining us. After some brainstorming we decided that incorporating a cooking aspect would bring even more value to this project. Lastly, we knew that producing our amateur critiques of the food that we try would give us a new...
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