Monday, January 23rd 2012

Today we did our daily chocolate tasting, we watched a video on cheese, cheddar cheese tasting, olive and olive oil tasting.

We sampled 4 chocolates made by the same company using cocoa from different locations. They're all 75% chocolate. We're comparing: Caracas Trinitario, Madagascar Criollo, Venezuela Trinitario, Indonesie Criollo. Here's what I thought about the chocolate

Caracas Trinitario has a very chocolate/ earthy smell, hard to break, wonderful initial chocolate taste and full chocolate flavor throughout, bit of a sharp after taste.

Venezuela Trinitario has a very chocolate/ earthy smell. Hard to break, very astringent.

Madagascar Criollo No real smell, lighter brown than all the rest.  Taste like mayonnaise! Very long on the palate.  I really, really don't like this!

Indonesie Criollo no smell, very full flavor like coffee/ and very smokey. I imagine this might be what weed smells like. 

 next we did a mystery chocolate tasting he slipped us a 100% chocolate! It was as horrible as ever. It had a very nutty taste and was really dry and has a weird mouth feel.


 The team cooking Indian food made their menu    and it looks great! I'm really excited  to eat on Thursday.

 Next, Dr. Sloan talked to us about the incredible, edible, egg. he made a really interesting flow chart on all the ways eggs can be manipulated and varied to create new dishes. It only take a few small adjustments to go from a cream anglaise to a clustered to ice cream. 
  

 Olive oil tasting:

Bertoli: light olive oil taste, buttery. 

L'Estornell: stronger olive taste than the previous. 

Masserie di Santeramo: very leafy tasting. 

 Bandia a Coltibuono: fruity, kinda apple tasting with a bit of spice. 

We played a matching game to try to assign the olive oils to the category they are said to be in.The class was all over the place in voting.  I think I matched every olive oil incorrectly. 

 Olive tasting

  Kalamada:  kinda scribbled looking black olive, very salty, good full flavor and flavor profile. 

 Queen: very big and green olive, very vegitabley tasting, nice and fresh. 

 Nicoise:small grayish black olive, very nutty/ boiled peanut taste, wonderful. this is my favorite.

 Manzavilla:  small light green with pimiento in the middle, soooooo salty, light peanut taste, tangy.

 Ripe Black: small greenish grey olive, nice earthy taste.

The crowd favorite was the Nicoise :)


Next we learned about the Umami taste receptor. Before Dr. Sloan's lecture, I didn't know how to describe or characterize the taste. I learned that MSG is the chemical equivalent of natural umami. Then we learned the MSG in Chinese food is not really harmful and it's found in every day foods. 

 The video on farmhouse cheddar was wonderful: I felt my mouth watering from the very first images of the cheese. I never realized how much I loved cheese until I took this course. 

Cheese taste test on various aged cheddars:

Kerrygold: good, full cheese smell, nice and dense, sharp and tangy, nice after taste.

Cabot: full cheese smell,  very sharp, very tangy, a bit crunchy, nice after taste.

Bour's Head: no real smell, nice light taste, kinda meaty/ savory/ smoked taste, no real after taste. 

 Vermont Farmstead: very nice fruity and cheese smell, Great wine 
Ike flavor, a bit of spice, nice flavor profile, good fruity after taste. 

I think the oldest cheese is kerrygold, the second oldest is Cabot, the youngest is Bour's head and second youngest is Vermont. It turns out that I guessed correctly for the youngest cheeses and flip flopped the older cheeses.

OMG I LOVE CHEESE!