Be A Pescetarian: What my experience

With the advancement of medical sciences, people prefer living a healthier life because our lifespans are becoming longer than past generations. There are many ways to approach the optimal lifestyle including eating healthier foods, learning how to eat correctly, and getting exercise.

Nowadays, more and more people would like to change their dietary concepts to vegetarianism including being lacto-ovo vegetarians, vegans, fruitarians or pescatarians.

This week, I will become a pescatarian; a type of vegetarian who eats fish and seafood but doesn't eat steak, chicken, pork or any other kind of meat. First of all, I have to arrange my meals according to what most pescatarians usually eat and adhere to this diet for a week.  This is my daily menu below.

	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Breakfast	Blueberry Butterilk Pancakes	Milk / Banana / Mixed Nuts	Coffee/ Whole Wheat Bread	Coffee/ Blueberry Muffins
Lunch	Potato Curry	Vegetable Taco Salad	Vegetable Pad Thai	Mixed vegetable salad
Dinner	Vegetable Spaghetti	Tomato Congee	Mushroom Fried Rice	Spicy White Fish with Rice

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday
Breakfast	Sunny Side Up Egg  Milk	Coffee / Cashews / Apple	Boil Egg / Strawberry
Lunch	Kung Pao Mushroom with White Rice	Shrimp and Scallop Ceviche Vinegared octopus Crab Salad	Roasted Shrimp with White bean salad
Dinner	Egg drop Soup / Grapefruit	Sauté Cabbage with White Rice	Mixed Vegetable soup

As seen from my daily menu, pescatarians like to select ingredients that are easy to buy and prepare. I also shared my own creation on my daily menu and it is Spicy White Fish With Rice. There is the recipe below.

Recipe:

                White Fish --------------> 1 piece

                 Rice ----------------------> 1 cup

                 White Onion ----------->  1

                 Tomato Purée ----------> 1 tbsp

                  Potato ------------------>  half

                  Red Pepper -----------> half

                  Green Pepper ---------> half

                  Curry Powder --------->  1 tbsp

                  Cayenne Pepper-------> 1 tsp    

                  Lime ----------------------> 1

                  Vegetable Oil --------->  3 tbsp

                  Water -------------------> 200 ml

                  Salt/ Black pepper-----> taste

Direction:

               1. Chop white onion into finely medium dices and make lime 

                   juice and zest.

               2. Heat 2 tbsp vegetable oil in a medium saucepan with medium-

                    high flame

               3. Sauté white onion until light golden brown

               4. Add curry powder, tomato purée and lime zest. Mixed well.

               5. Add water and rice to boil with a cover.

               6. Once boiled, simmer around 15 minutes or until rice firm but 

                   tender.

                   Let stand with a cover for a few minutes

               7. Place potato into salted cool water and bring to a boil.

                   Simmering until potato is soft

               8. Season white fish with salt / black pepper / cayenne pepper

               9. Heat 1 tbsp vegetable oil in a frying pan with medium flame

              10. Fry fish until golden brown on both sides (around 5 minutes 

                    per side)  

                    Once filets are golden brown and pick them up

              11. Using the same frying pan with a little bit of vegetable oil,

                    sauté red pepper, green pepper and cooked potato.

              12. Add lime juice before serving.

              13. Serve with cooked rice.

See！ The dish looks so yummy and it also tastes excellent.

These are a few pictures of the other foods that I ate as a pescatarian:

As you can see from the pictures, most of my food was raw and fresh ingredients. The first thought in my mind was how would these healthier foods taste? To my surprise, those foods did taste fresh and amazing. I don't struggle with these foods a lot before eating them. I think that's because fish and seafood is a kind of meat to me. So there is no huge difference to my body and mind between pescetarianism and meatatarianism. If you ask me what my experience and thoughts are, I think it is special and valuable to me not only this moment but also my future. I grew up with eating meats such as roast chicken breast and steak although I am not a big meat fan. In this experiment, I didn't starve or feel uncomfortable; on the contrary, I was quite happy and enjoyed these dishes. In addition, I dined on a variety of different vegetables and fruits that I don't usually eat.

After this interesting experiment, I realized that the pescetarianism dietary concept of healthier dining is not only eating raw, fresh and whole foods but also cooking with low fat. In addition, the nutrients of fish and seafood are usually higher than edible land animals such as omega 3, vitamins, protein and minerals. Besides, many varieties of seafood are also low calories and sodium. This knowledge will be brought into full play in my culinary journey. Being successful chefs, we should know what diet trends are and how to make delicious meals while maintaining its own nutrition. In view of this, chefs should learn constantly to enrich themselves no matter how good their techniques are.

Over the past week, I did learn a lot about myself and pescetarianism. Now, I know how to make good food decisions. The most important part of this experience corrects my misunderstanding about non-meatatarian people. Although this experience has taught me a lot, I don't know what I will do going forward. The main reason why I think I couldn't be a pescetarian forever is that the major ingredients are quite expensive such as blueberry, fish and crab. However, I would like to continue this dietary concept in my eating behaviour if I could consume them under my weekly food and beverage budget.

Innovative food presentation

Nowadays, food plating is basic principle but at the same time it is quite important to chefs who want to convey their spirits. The presentation is also significant to diners since it is first impression they receive before eating. There are many positive changes in the way we ate. However, why is plating playing an important role in the culinary industry? Why does it turn into centre of our dinning experience?

With the growth of economy, people are richer than the past generations and pursue high quality lifestyles. They would like to obtain a multi-sensory eating experience. Besides, social media such as instagram has been brought into full play in culinary industry. People prefer to show beautiful and unique images and it results in innovation of staging food. Therefore, food presentation stopped playing a merely minor role. Actually, food always come out with containers such as bowls, plates and saucers in our daily lives and it is a kind of presentation. However, the presentation should not focus on how expensive the containers are. The more important is what chefs' concept and knowledge of ingredients are. 

Cultural historians always surround the presentation of food and such manifestation led customers to understand the chefs' background and thought process of using certain ingredients. A chef’s own culture is quite vital because it assists them to create a good eating experience for diners. As we seen from Japanese plating, the cuisine has delivered their attitude of dealing with ingredients and brought a huge influence on the current gastronomy. In the 18th century, haute cuisine was created in French cuisine.  Chef Antonin Careme combined concepts of culinary and construction and opened up a new horizon. He piled up ingredients and bestowed food presentation more possibilities. Chef Fernand Point created another idea of plating, Nouvelle cuisine during the 20th century.  He selected seasonal ingredients and staged it with graceful and plain style on the plate. Chef Point tried to focus on ingredients and wanted people to experience the nature of food. In today's food industry, information exchange is indispensable because chefs could gain inspirations between individuals. In the year 1960, French culinary school opened in Japan and it also gave another life of plating, called plate dressing. 

With the advancement of science and technology, molecular gastronomy was point by physicist Nicholas Kurti and physical chemist Herve This. It is a culinary breakthrough and totally overthrows our existing concept of a dish. Of course, molecular cuisine is a new and innovative dinning experience. Such cooking style involves many techniques including cookery and technology; therefore, it became a more complex and hot topic. Molecular gastronomy also attracts chefs and people to taste how unique it is. However, some chefs don't like and can't accept this creation since it doesn't taste better than usual and ignore the characteristics of ingredients. They care that their dishes should be absolutely delicious and give diners healthy and natural cooking style.  As a result, such innovation has passed.

                                

Puffballism's channel. (2012, June 24). Molecular gastronomy:Fruit Spaghetti.[Vide file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX4JD7BAOrU

Currently, people tend to eat healthily and plainly, as a result, food presentation turns out to be the sensory qualities of the food itself.  Chef Martyn Meid, is another star of the food industry and opened a new restaurant in London. His concept is fresh and simple ingredients for everyone with using traditional techniques. I totally agree with his idea and was attracted by the photographs of food since they looked so colourful, beautiful and special.  However, I am a little bit confused from such food plating. How can diners be full from such a small portion? Most ingredients seems as decoration such as orchid and lotus leaves. There is no doubt that plating the food is a key to communicate chefs'  creativeness and inventiveness and it also delivers the memory, experience and expectations to diners; however, a good dinning experience should contain a satisfied appetite and vision although dinning experience determined by aspect of food presentation is very common.

                                

Squid dish. Adapted from tofo.me/inkrestaurant by Martyn Meid, 2015. Retrieved from http://tofo.me/inkrestaurant

One the best things in life is the enjoyment of delectable food with visual feast. Being a chef student, I experience how many different creations are between individuals when I study in the cooking Lab. I also learn how to us the characteristics of food to create tasty dishes. I think a successful chef can seen himself/ herself as a artist and creates many works with amply using the feature of ingredients as much as he/ her likes. I hope someday I could convey my idea to diners in the presentation and texture of food. 

Let's go shopping--- Meat

Today, I am going to enjoy my shopping journey at St. Lawrence Market. The main reason I choose this market for purchasing meats is that there are diversified meats and cuts. In addition, it is a farmer market so their ingredients are usually fresh. Actually, I am always excited when I walk into the market because I really love conventional markets and like to explore traditional and classical foods and dishes. I personally believe that a traditional market is a good place where you can experience their traditions and hospitality.

                                              

                           

                 

            

Wow...There are many kinds of meats and different cuts depending on animals. You might feel how excited I am during this journey through these pictures. Here! Chicken, is one of my favourites.  It is very popular and the most common type of poultry in the world especially in these past decades due to promotion by various groups. Indeed, chicken is highly nutritious containing, about 20 % of protein and it is low in fat. Chicken isn't divided into many cuts; however, it usually consists of white meat (breast and wings) and dark meat (legs). Both of them are main parts of chicken. Besides, there are some edible components such as chicken feet, kidneys, neck and giblets. For main cuts, Taiwanese would like chicken legs more than breast in my hometown because they are juicier. Therefore, I chose chicken legs for making a presentation this time.

To begin, I think most of us are familiar with chicken legs and know they are below the joint of the back. However, there are specific and different cuts from legs such as chicken thigh with back portion, chicken leg quarter, chicken thigh and chicken drumstick. A chicken thigh with back portion consists of a thigh and some back.  Therefore, it contains a thigh, the upper part of the leg, a drumstick, lower part of the leg and some back. Sometimes pelvic meat and fat are attached. Chicken leg quarter is similar to chicken thigh with back portion. The only difference is chicken leg quarter includes some stomach fat and tail. However, all of them are dark meat and it means more fat, more connective tissue and more cooking time compared with light meat. Dark meat is usually muscle tissue and it needs more oxygen during exercise and movement. When muscles are used more frequently, the become darker. Therefore, we could know there is more myoglobin protein in dark meat

Chicken is subject to federal inspection the same as other meats such as beef and pork and it also could be graded including Canada Grade A, Canada Utility Grade and Canada Grade C. However, grading is not compulsory. All right, let's go to purchase chicken leg quarter and see what price is.

Well, as we can see from photo below, 1 lb for $2.19 so 1 kg for $4.84. It is not expensive compared with other cuts, breast, wings, drumstick and thigh are 4.99, 3.99, 2.89 and 3.19, respectively.

But how do I utilize this cut for optimum cost benefit? I am for sure that I usually won't waste any meat even bones when I prepare to cook. Today, I have chicken leg quarter so I am going to make Three-Cups Chicken, famous Taiwanese cuisine. First, I debone from chicken leg and separate bones and meat. I only use meat and fat to make the dish; therefore, bones will be stored in the refrigeration for creating my own stock next time. Here is my mom’s recipe below.

Ingredient:

                Fat from chicken---------------------------------> several pieces

                 Vegetable oil-------------------------------------> 1 tablespoon

                 Chicken legs, boneless and bite-si-------------> 2 pounds

                Ginger, thinly slice-------------------------------> 8 slices

                 Dried red pepper----------------------------------> 4 

                Fresh red pepper----------------------------------> 4

                   (2 for cooking/ 2 for garnish)

                Garlic, peeled and minced----------------------->1 head

                 Green onion, only white part/medium dice --> 1 bunch 

                Rice wine------------------------------------------>1/2 cup

                 Soy sauce ----------------------------------------->1/3 cup

                Basil leaves----------------------------------------> 4 stalks

                   (save some for garnish)

                Light brown sugar--------------------------------> 1 tablespoon

    Direction:

                   1. Heat up  a wok and then render chicken fat. Strain it         

                   2. Add chicken oil  in a wok over medium flame 

                  3. Add chicken meat into pan and pan fried until golden brown. Dish up and
                       set aside

                   4. In the same wok add vegetable oil over high heat then follow by chopped

                       garlic, sliced ginger, white part of green onion and dried red peppers, and

                       sauté until fragrant. 

                 5. Add light brown sugar, stir fry until sugar melts. Add pan fried chicken,

                       stirring evenly around 2 minutes 

                   6. Add rice wine, soy sauce and fresh red peppers and bring to a boil 

                   7. Once it boils then turn it down to low heat and simmer until sauce is

                       reduced to reduce to half its original volume. Sauce should be getting

                       thicken

                       8. Add basil and lightly stir all ingredients until fragrant around 30 seconds

                 9. Turn off the heat

                 10. Serve

      

 

See! It looks so tasty. I chose from many ways to cook it such as pan fried, sauté and simmer since chicken leg is dark meat. The reason why I pan fried chicken at first is because this way of cooking could sear meat and keep the juice inside. The second way is sauté, making flavour more incorporated. In the end, it is simmer, keeping meat moist and tender, making flavours are more concentrated.

In summary, this is a good journey not only purchasing meat but also creating dish. The more important thing is that I obtained knowledge about cooking ways depending on their property of animals and cuts. Indeed, this mission enriches my techniques and thinking.  Being a student in chef school, I should start trying to  learn and grow from different missions. I believe each mission brings a lot of valuable experience and  improves my skills. They will be highly useful for my future career.

Reference:
Smart Kitchen (n.d.). Chicken Pieces. Retrieved January 22, 2016 from https://www.smartkitchen.com/resources/ingredients/protein/poultry/chicken-pieces