Kai Gamboa's Senior Project Blog

 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 ...

     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...