Culinary camp debriefing

So, I have not been posting on my blog for a week since I was teaching culinary camp. I had planned to post each day of the camp with a summary of how it went but it became more important to get ready for the next day. So here is my summary of each day.

The concept for the camp this year was "Around the World in Five Days" and we prepared cuisine from five different countries. Below are the menus for each day and comments on how well received these were by the girls at the camp.

Monday - Mexico
Gazpacho - they really did not like it. Making it was fun, but most of the girls did not eat it
Cheese enchiladas - these were pretty good and most of the girls enjoyed them
Mexican red rice - I basically made this since making the enchiladas took twice as long as I thought
Churros - a big hit! A little

Tuesday - China
Wonton soup - making this was fun for the girls and they enjoyed eating it, also.
Cold peanut sesame noodles - this was both tasty and easy to make. Tyler Florences' recipe
Chinese bbq chicken lettuce wraps - a big hit!
Fortune cookies - these were fun but did not fold correctly. I used a recipe from Gale Gand and I totally trust the recipe. I think perhaps the cookies were too thick. I had the girls write fortunes and I mixed them all up and folded them into the cookies. Basically, they were just folded in half.
Green tea ice cream - my brand new ice cream maker over heated and died about half way through the mixing. I was rather disappointed.

Wednesday - Italy
Italian bread salad - this was neat to make but maybe a little odd to the girls. I think they liked it...
Lasagna Rolls - this was probably my favorite and the girls loved it! Easy to make and really delicious. My recipe called for a Bechamel sauce on the bottom of the pan and although Bechamel is French, I was glad to see them all make this sauce without burning it, which is easy to do.
Tiramisu - I was surprised and how much the campers liked this. It was not too sweet but they really enjoyed it.

Thursday - USA
Pizza three ways or as I called it - Pizza coast to coast since we made NY pizza, Chicago style pizza, and California pizza. Pizza of course was a big hit with teenage girls. And with me!
BBQ wings and Buffalo wings - again, making and serving this kind of food with teenagers is all too easy.
Apple pie - yup. A winner!

Friday - France
Crepes filled with warm spinach and mushroom salad - the girls liked the crepes but not the filling so much. They had fun making the crepes.
Croque monsier - a couple of the girls did not want to cook these sandwiches but eat them as cold ham and cheese without the mustard, of course. I did not push the issue since I felt the crepes challenged their taste buds enough.
Chocolate creme puffs - fun to make and I was proud to see the girls "pull off" another staple of French cuisine. They were of course delicious, although it was reported that several were not filled with pastry cream. That will get you an F in culinary school!

The capstone dinner on Saturday was a blast! We had performers from the Operetta workshop do a preview of the show. They sang four songs and did a couple of scenes from The Mikado and Pirates of Penzance. Dinner was pretty good, too!

One Night, Five Cuisines

Cheese quesadillas
Potstickers
Caprese salad
Cassoulet
Creme puffs
Apple pie
Tiramisu

Okay, so that was culinary camp. It is odd to be back at work this morning and not in the kitchen cooking. I cannot believe how much fun the week really was! :)

Okay, so back to reality here. I will post all of the recipes from the week. Most of the recipes are mine but some are from Tyler Florence and Giada deLaurentis.

Unfortunately, I did not get a lot of great pictures of the food. I did get some good pictures of the girls cooking but I just don't feel right about posting pictures of teenage girls (who are not my daughters) on my blog.