CCA Culinary Arts Fundamental Course Session 10 - American Cuisine

The CCA Fundamentals in Culinary Arts is coming to a close. This is the 3rd to the last session and I’m starting to miss the weekend habit of going to class at 7am. For this session, our focus is on American Cuisine.

We started with the usual lecture and cooking tips then we went straight to cooking. Chef Teacher Kat cooked and prep some of the stuff to demonstrate how to do them.

I cooked Crab Cakes with Tartar Sauce. I set a challenge for myself at the start not to use a blender for both the crab cakes and the tartar sauce even though the recipe clearly calls for it. I even just used a knife to chop the bread slices into crumbs. I was proud of myself until I got to the tartar sauce. I felt that the sauce really needed a blender to get to the right consistency soooo Blender: 1, Roch: 0 😂

It is also important to note that after forming the crab cakes and blending the sauce, keep them in the chiller first. This gives time for the crab cakes to form and for the sauce not to get spoiled. The dish is pretty easy to prepare. Tedious but easy.

I served the Crab Cakes w/ Tartar Sauce together. Taking notes from previous class that in order to make the plating a bit elegant, no need to serve them family-style. Thus, I served it that way. It looked good at least in my opinion, hehehe!

And the verdict by the teacher?

Crab Cakes
- Crab flakes needs to be squeezed prior to prepping/cooking.
- the doneness of the frying has to be consistent in all the crab cakes on the plate
Tartar Sauce
- Best not to use blender as the sauce came out grainy.
- Add more Tabasco to the sauce to make it a bit spicy/more delicious

Overall, not much problems. Just those lil changes pointed out above will make the dish better. I don’t mind getting a lot of feedback coz that’s the only way I can learn.