Friday, November 23, 2012

Class #5 and Contestant #3

We, no pun or cruelty intended, killed 2 birds with one stone at tonight's class by bringing our 3rd vegetarian entree contestant for us and everyone else to try. Tonight's recipes were going to be all about Thanksgiving anyway so it only seemed fitting. We checked with our instructor to make sure she didn't mind.

 
The Gardein brand "roast" was well received and completely
gone by the end of class. It comes with gravy and is stuffed.


The class recipes for this session included: mushroom onion gravy served over potatoes, stuffed acorn squash, braised brussel sprouts, cranberry chutney, cauliflower and pumpkin pie.

Our kitchen in addition to tending to the roast which was simply baked in an oven for about 60 mins chose to make the acorn squash. Due to limited students we also made some brussel sprouts which were divided among a couple of the kitchens.


We don't think the home economic ovens are all that, meaning their heating isn't up to par so we had a few hiccups making the squash but it all worked out in the end. Here is a picture of how they turned out:
  
The acorn squash was done by mixing together some chopped walnuts, dried cranberries, raisins and cinnamon sticks which you remove before serving. We were instructed to drizzle olive oil over the cut squash then stuff and bake. However we learned partly due to the "oven inadequacy" that it would be better to roast them unstuffed first for awhile then stuff and finish off.
 
I was remiss in taking some pictures of individual dishes, maybe because I was just plain anxious to try everything and hungry too. But here are some group shots of our feast that night.
 
The cauliflower, not exactly my favorite, but
perhaps it needed a bit more cooking.

A peek of the pie in the back of the photo. It was good
but needed more time to cool which we weren't able
to properly give it.
The roast sliced with the gravy and our brussel sprouts.
The bowl in the front is the mushroom gravy.


 
It was a lovely feast, and if the empty dishes were any indication, I think enjoyed by all. Several people mentioned they thought the "roast" tasted good and asked for the brand name. Aaron and I ranked this roast as a contender for our holiday table.

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