Special Diets Evaluation

by Vaibhaw 9 Orange

During this unit we have been learning about special diets for certain people. In the beginning of the unit we researched a range of 3 diets and included brief information about each of them and shared them with the class to deepen our knowledge of the different world of diets, I learned that there was a lot more than low-fat diets. After this we looked at a master chief episode where the chiefs are given set briefs similar to us for them to follow and create a dish. We also got the chance to interview a person with an extremely restricted diet for us to look into and ask questions. We then were put into groups with our set diet: we first worked on researching, then designed our dishes and finally created it to then evaluate.

Our Final Creations

Greek Salad

Crme Sauce Pasta

Recipe for Vegetarian Pasta

Ingredients:

Equipment:

Spaghetti 0.5 lb Chopped Spinach (6 ounces) Chopped Mushrooms (2 stems) Quorn chicken cutlets (1 pack) Heavy cream (1/2 cup) Butter (2 tsp) Extra virgin olive oil (1 tbl) Corn flour (1 tbls) Milk (3 tbls) Grated parmesan (50g) Black pepper (pinch) Crushed garlic (1 tsp) Oregano Salt (2 tbls) Water (1 litre)

1 Knife 1 Chopping board 3 Small bowls 1 Large mixing bowls 1 boiling pot 1 frying pan 1 teaspoon 1 tablespoon

Method 1. Prepare all the required equipment and ingredients 2. Boil (high) the spaghetti in boiling water with salt until the pasta is just tender (510minutes) 3. Add 2 teaspoons of butter into a frying pan over the stove, add 1 and a half table spoons of flour to the butter and make a liquid-ish paste, add half a cup of milk to the paste and stir till thickens, add a little bit of cream to make the dish creamy and add salt 4. While the spaghetti is boiling, melt butter and add garlic (2 minutes) 5. Add cream and flour/milk mixture to the pan and stir to combine (3 minutes) 6. Stir continuously until sauce thickens. If too thick add milk (3 minutes) 7. Add cheese and pepper, stir (3 minutes) 8. In a separate pan, pour olive oil and individually cook each of the spinach, mushroom, chicken and tofu (1 minute each) 9. Drain pasta and place in cold water (3 minutes) 10. Add pasta to pan (with olive oil) and mix with other ingredients (spinach etc.) 11. Pour mixture onto plate and top with the sauce, sprinkle cheese before serving

Recipe: Making a Vegetarian Greek Salad

This dish can be made in approximately 30 minutes. It is a vegetarian salad for an athlete based diet.

Ingredients: Feta Cheese (100g), Olives (approx. 10p), Lettuce (75g), Garlic (3-5), Salt, Pepper, Baby tomatoes (15-20 babies), Lemons, Puri, Olive oil (6tsp), Oregano, Vinegar, Cucumber (20cm), Red onion (1/2-1), Mob Bacon , Chat Masala Equipment: Chopping Board, Knifes, Bowls, Mixing Spoons, Frying Pan, Stirrer etc. (Please note that all the ingredients will be used as per amounts above)

METHOD
1. Wash all of the required vegetables and fruits to make sure they are hygienic. 2. Cut the garlic, baby tomatoes into 4s, cucumber slices and onions in halves. (710min). Put this in a big silver bowl 3. Prepare the bacon by sauting it with seasoning and olive oil and then set it aside in a separate small bowl. Sometimes it may need defrosting. (7 min) 4. Prepare the lemon juice and add oregano into it. (3 min) 5. Add it into the main big bowl with the vegetables. (1min) 6. Cut the feta cheese correctly into small pieces and add the masala on the top of it. Then add it to the big bowl. (4min) 7. Put in the bacon from the bowl into the main bowl. Everything else should be added and then stir it gently. (1min) 8. Add salt pepper, oregano and any other flavors into it. Also crumble up the puri together and add it to the salad Mix it up and serve it correctly. (5min) 9. Done. Serve and enjoy.

Results from Testing

Classmates

Target Audience (non-veg athletes) and teachers

Positives - Salad has quite a nice dressing with a refreshing taste of lime - Pasta tastes alright - Interesting substitution of meat with the mock - Cool looking salad garnish with yummy feta cheese - Wonderful taste of juicy salad with a wide range of colours - Better balance of flavours from the first time - An excellent substitution that tastes reasonable appetizing (mock chicken) -

Criticism - Pasta looks quite horrible and unappetizing - Pasta needs more colour and more crme

Unappetizing Pasta Salad needs to be served cooler

Success of my Dish
I think one of the successes of my dishes was their tastes alone. I believe that they both had quite nice flavours to them each. The salad I thought was quite tasty with a wide range of flavours and colours that blended together quite well to create a nice sourly, fresh and juicy Greek salad. On the other hand I believe that my pastas taste was alright. It was not extremely successful in other aspects maybe such as appearance although it actually tasted quit nice when eaten fresh. Furthermore, I believe that we conquered our brief and problem quite well which was to supply the nutrients to vegetarians as well. We included high protein veg products that tasted quite good as a substitution. A massive noticeable mistake was appearance and garnishing of our pasta dish. I believe that this may be so due to time constraints. I also believe that the texture of our pasta was quite weak due to our lack of sauce and overwhelming majority of pasta on the dish. Also we made quite a big error in our initial cooking stage as we put pasta in non-boiling water and we should have paid closer attention to these smaller things. If we were given another (3rd chance) I would try and improve the garnish of our dishes. I personally believe that 50% of a dish is in its appearance and we should have spent more time on it if we were to do this again. Also I am quite disappointed in not making rich pasta as it is quite a simple dish and we should not have failed quite so badly on it. Also I think next time we should be more innovative and creative with our dishes as we choose too simple dishes and should work on using skills to make richer and more complex dishes.

Specifications:
It must be suitable for a vegetarian- We have easily achieved this one as we did not use any meat products at all in any of our dishes, instead we used mock meat as a substitution.

It must contain a wide range of nutrients and minerals- I think we have achieved this one as in our salads comes a wide variety of these that we have fulfilled. It must have high amounts of protein - I think we achieved this by including mock meat which is high on protein and also including cheese which is relatively high It must be high in carbohydrates to provide enough energy for the athlete complex carbs which are extremely high in calories for an athlete. It could contain dairy products, eggs or nuts as a crme sauce pasta. It should have some form of green vegetables our pastas spinach Must be created in a matter of 60 minutes amount of time to work on. - Pasta is made up of

- We achieved this in our feta cheese usage as well - We have achieved this in our salads lettuce and

- We have achieved this as we were only given this

Impact on Target Audience

The product may impact the audience as we made the dish for veg athletes who may not fur fill their complete dietary requirements in their profession and we have introduced to them an innovative new product know as mock meats that they can use as a substitution to make their dietary requirements. I also believe that sharing the new recipes that we have created of the dishes we can pass on to the audience themselves so they may want to potentially create their dishes on their own.

Link to the IB
Communicator- This was a major part of all group work as to be successful we need to collaboratively work together to make sure that everything that is expected will be full filled. We also learned a good lesson as there was a miscommunication in the 1st trial run but we got it correct the second time round. Collaboration- This is quite important when cooking together as a group we need to be aware of what steps each individual must follow to complete duties. We did this by chopping the group into half, me and bek onto the salad and angus and Rishabh working on the pasta. Reflective- We have done this as we had one lesson in between the 2 cooking classes where we needed to re-create our dish by seeing what is wrong with it and think deeply on what we needed to re-do. In our case 1 thing was we needed to reduce the amount of lemon in our salad.

What I learnt
From this unit, I have learned that about quite a new broader topic about how hard it is for some people to live like the person we got to meet and the lifes that they must live. I have also learned some new cooking ideas and innovations as we had to create dishes without some very important ingredients that can be quite difficult but we managed to pull through it and learn a lot in this new experience.